Dawn Kasper Performance/Exhibits Ending/Upcoming

As part of CSULB's Visiting Artist Lecture Series, Dawn Kasper performed "clues to the meaning of life part 6: for David" at the University Theater last Wednesday evening.

Kasper, whose work has appeared in Beautiful Decay, Contemporary 21, LA Weekly and the LA Times, was one of the three artists that were featured in the UAM's exhibit "Unfiguring the Body."

That exhibit as well as the Andy Warhol exhibition "Warhol: 15 min/24 fps" and "Maya Schindler: Present Progressive" end today.

The UAM will be closed until next year when it will return in 2009 with "Paul Shambroom: Picturing Power" an exhibit of series-based colored photographs that, according to the UAM website, "reveal both local and global manifestations of power, depicting scenes in industrial, business, community, and military environments."

Also available will be a publication of the same name to which UAM director Christopher Scoates contributed.

"Paul Shambroom: Picturing Power" will run from January 22 – April 5, 2009.

UAM/LBMA Press Conference on Getty Grant

At a press conference discussing the Getty grant, LBMA director Ron Nelson expressed his excitement about the exhibition and called the UAM a “leader in visual exhibitions.”

According to UAM director Christopher Scoates, the project will bring his museum and the LBMA to the same level as other larger museums in the area. The exhibit “allows two institutions back on the world stage,” Scoates said.

The exhibit will “make Long Beach a greater center of art,” said Robert Swayze, manager of economic development for the city of Long Beach.

“It is important to use the strengths of this community to build a stronger Long Beach,” said CSULB President F. King Alexander. “We want people to come see Long Beach. We have so much talent.”

Long Beach-based artist Bill Viola also appeared at the press conference and spoke of his enthusiasm for the project.

"This is a great time for the city, the museum, the world," Viola said as he proclaimed video art the "wave of the future."

Viola also discussed the creativity involved in video art saying that anyone can pick up a camera and "push that red button and record. But not everyone can put heart and soul into it."

Gallery Talk with Maya Schindler

Letters and lanuage form an integral part of artist Maya Schindler's work as was seen during her gallery talk at the CSULB UAM on Wednesday.

Born in Israel, Schindler moved to the United States in 2000. As English became her second language, Maya said, "I decided I don't know enough about what language is."

As she displayed a photo of her work "We Love to See You Smile," Maya explained that this slogan, which she got from a McDonald's campaign, "doesn't make sense in any context."

Schindler was attracted to the McDonald's song and slogan and decided to make it into an 18-foot-long, two-foot tall work of art made of paint and resin. The piece was shown in a museum in Brooklyn, NY.

She also spoke about her 2006 work "Situation."

"For me growing up in a tense place like Israel, they talk a lot about 'the situation,' " Schindler said. "But the situation is never really defined. I like multiple possibilities."

"Dichotomy is something that defines things, and I think that is important," Schindler said.

Her installation, "I Am Political" is currently being shown in the UAM through December 14.

Alice Hutchison Interview Part I

Extensive and exciting preparations for the new exhibit "Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980" will begin in two weeks, according to Alice Hutchison, curator of the CSULB UAM.

In October, the UAM and the Long Beach Art Museum were jointly awarded a $175,000 grant to research and develop an exhibit which will explore Long Beach’s central role in the early days and development of video art.

The award was one of the 15 grants that the Getty Foundation endowed to museums across Southern California to fund its $2.8-million project “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980.”

After seeing the UAM’s September exhibit “art/tapes/22” LBMA’s director of collections, Sue Ann Robinson, personally invited curator Alice Hutchison to be involved with the project.

When the LBMA staff asked her, Hutchison said, she told them that the UAM had to be involved. It needed to be a partnership because she could not do it on her own.

Hutchison will be working as co-curator with the LBMA's Kathy Rae Huffman who is currently based in Europe. This means they will be using a lot of the video chat tool Skype, Hutchison said.

"This project is one of the only international features," Hutchison explains, not only because Huffman lives in Europe but also because of the history surrounding video art history.

Three decades ago, artists from around the world traveled to Long Beach to use the state-of-the art technology that was available through the CSULB art department and the LBMA, making the city an important fixture in the developing world of video art.

These pioneering videos of art are “an important piece of art history that hasn’t been told,” Hutchison said. And it is an “important acknowledgment,” she said, for both the city of Long Beach and for the UAM to be a part of this exhibit.

Dawn Kasper "Unfiguring the Body" Gallery Talk

L.A.-based artist Dawn Kasper performed her piece "Things to do when you can't sleep" to an audience of 35 people at the UAM's noontime gallery talk.

Kasper, a slight-framed woman with long, curly brown hair dressed in plaid pajama pants and a purple T-shirt, gave an emotional performance that included an organ, and an old television playing a silent Buster Keaton film.

As she manipulated the film from her seat at the organ, Kasper spoke in a free-flowing manner of her friend David, of her feelings and of her art.

Of Buster Keaton Kasper said during her performance that she "really admired him as a performer" because of Keaton's clear artistic vision.

"I am learning I have a lot to learn," Kasper said toward the end of her performance.

She left the organ seemingly crying and returned smiling and in different clothes ready to answer the audience's queries during a Q&A session that followed.

"It does affect me a great deal," Kasper said of her emotional performance.

And though she said she tries not to "dump everything" on the audience, she feels it is important to express herself.

And though she is grateful to have an audience, she said she "would probably be doing it anyway," even without one.

Kasper likened her work to a science experiment saying, "Failure's a big part of my work."

As she reflected on how her experiences shape her art, Kasper said, "I don't want to walk into a room and find my friend dead on the floor. I wanna be here with you guys. But in order to be here with you guys, I had to have experienced that."

When asked about whether or not this performance helped her insomnia, she replied, "I probably won't be able to sleep tonight."

The exhibit runs through December 14.

New Warhol exhibit opens today

The Andy Warhol exhibit "Warhol: 15 min/24 fps" opened to a crowd of about 50 people on Thursday evening at the CSULB UAM.

The exhibit features silver gelatin prints and some of the 152 Polaroid photographs that the UAM received by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

"This incredible gift from the Warhol Foundation allows us to build upon the museum's wonderful Pop Art legacy and give future scholars and students the chance to explore the creative process behind one of the 20 century's true artistic minds," said Christopher Scoates, the UAM director in a press release given earlier this year.

Scoates was also present at the opening, as well as Ilee Kaplan, the UAM associate director, and Alice Hutchison, the museum's curator.

Lecturing at the opening was CSULB art history program head, Dr. Karen Kleinfelder, who discussed the importance of the concept of identity and image to Warhol's work.

The idea behind these photographs, which include some of actor Dennis Hopper, is to "take a singular identity and fragment it."

Identity, Kleinfelder argued, should be viewed here "not as personality, but as positionality."

She quoted Roland Barthes' "Camera Lucida" at the beginning of her lecutre with excerpts relating to the notion of image, self-awareness and posing when being photographed.

Reading from her own writings, Kleinfelder said, "Andy Warhol is an artist of faces, not of heads."

"Don't think they're portraits," she told the audience of Warhol's Polaroids, "think they're portraits of photographs."

The exhibit is open through December 14.

More on the Getty Grant

UAM Receives Grant from Getty Center

The CSULB University Art Museum will be among the recipients of the 15 grants the Getty Foundation will give totalling $2.8 million, it announced Tuesday.

The grants are part of a project called “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980" which will include various exhibitions throughout Southern California with a special focus on Southern California and Los Angeles.

The Long Beach Art Museum will collaborate with the CSULB UAM in studying and presenting an exhibition that focuses on the Long Beach Museum of Art's role in the development of video art both within the community and internationally.

Ilee Kaplan Talks Smart Facility

Associate Director of the CSULB University Art Museum Ilee Kaplan said the new smart facility will be built as a museum that merges art with technology.

Kaplan described the museum as one that will be a "laboratory for new ideas - for the gestation of ideas that cross boundaries between science, technology and art."

The smart facility will use technology for exhibitions and visitor services so that if a visitor wants to learn more about an artwork he or she can download it instantly onto their iPod and read about it later.

The new museum will rely heavily on technology to enable "ephemeral performances," Kaplan said, which can be difficult to maintain and store.

More and more, artists are beginning to explore new types of expression for their art and one of these is performance art in which an artist creates an experience rather than a physical piece of art. What is left behind are instructions, rather than an object, Kaplan explains.

Thus, the smart facility will be "storing ideas," Kaplan said, and the artwork can be experienced as "interactive projects online."

"The museum itself will be a work of art."

President Alexander Talks UAM

Plans for a new smart facility in downtown Long Beach will not be affected by the recent economic crises, President F. King Alexander said Thursday.

"The only way it'd be affected will be the construction possibilities which might be more favorable now," said Alexander. The president seemed optimistic about the plans since construction costs will go down as a result of the country's economic turmoil.

This, he said, "improves our chances of being present" in the downtown Long Beach community.

The University Art Museum has a lot to gain from building a new off-campus museum, Alexander said.

For one thing, the UAM's permanent Hampton Collection, which is worth about $10 million, has to be housed in a law firm in downtown Los Angeles because there is not enough space at the campus museum.

"We have about 6,000 square feet and we need about 20,000 to do what we want to do," Alexander said.

Another problem for the UAM is parking. When the museum has events, parking is always a problem for the visitors who come from the community and have to pay fees and search for a space.

It's a problem, Alexander said, when we tell people, "Hey, come to our musuem, but there's nowhere to park."

A new facility would help solve this problem.

It would also "give our students a place to showcase their art better," Alexander said. By having a museum in downtown Long Beach, art students would have the chance to get "more exposure."

The UAM, Alexander said, is "one of the things we should be showcasing, instead it's cocooned within the heart of campus."

*Photo from http://www.csulb.edu/president/; www.tripadvisor.com; and http://www.csulb.edu/org/uam/

5D: The Future of Immersive Design

Media heavyweights converged at Cal State Long Beach to attend the two-day conference, 5D: The Future of Immersive Design, which took place at the Carpenter Performing Arts Centeron October 4 and 5.

Henry Jenkins, co-director of the Comparative Media Studies at MIT and the author and/or editor of 12 books on media and pop culture, was the keynote speaker.

Presented by the University Art Museum and the Art Directors Guild of America, the conference included panels and workshops all of which discussed the future of various forms of design.

Among the moderators were John Tarnoff, from Dreamworks Animation; Ann White, a programming executive from PRN by Thomson; Scott Fisher, Interactive Media chair at USC; and Alex McDowell, a production designer who has worked on the films Minority Report, Fight Club and Watchmen.

Workshops featured Disney Imagineers, Dreamworks animation artists and other industry experts to explore the impact of technology in their fields and new advancements in creating engaging visual experiences.

To see the 5D Conference YouTube Channel and videos from some of the guest speakers click here: http://www.youtube.com/user/5Dconference08

College of the Arts Dean Talks UAM and Christopher Scoates

College of the Arts Dean Para spoke about the University Art Museum’s plans for a new smart facility and how Christopher Scoates is leading the way.

The smart facility, Para said, will be a big bonus for the UAM as well as the university.
Right now there are three to five possibilities that are being explore, said Para. These options, he said, are primarily associated with private donors.

The UAM is still looking for a partner along with the city of Long Beach and President F. King Alexander is still in the conversation stages with people in the city such as the mayor and the development manager.

The president has “championed the idea of moving the museum downtown and has provided great leadership in integrating the university with the city of Long Beach,” said Para.

And despite current economic woes, Para remains optimistic about completing the museum in 2011.

It would be a simple construction, Para explained, since a lot of the museum would be open space.

The “cutting-edge facility with wonderful art collections” would not only provide the UAM with the space and resources it needs to grow as a museum, said Para, it would also show a link between the university and the city.

“Everybody wins in that one,” he said.

As for Christopher Scoates, the UAM director, Para said, he is “a tireless worker on behalf of the UAM.” Scoates is “good at attracting an amazing group of people from art, entertainment and technology worlds to serve on his advisory board,” he said.

Scoates, Para said, has a “unique vision for the museum. He believes art is not just stuff you hang on the wall.”

Christopher Scoates Background

Education

Scoates has an MFA in photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in graphic design from the University of Florida. o Cranbrook Academy of Art is a graduate school and offers Master of Architecture and Master of Fine Art degrees only, and is located in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Scoates also studied at Salisbury College of Art in the Film and Photography program.·

Career

Scoates was formerly chief curator for the University Art Museum at UC Santa Barbara.§ Announced February 2002o

When he came to CSULB in July 2005, he had 20 years’ experience as a curator.o Was also acting director of UC Santa Barbara’s University Art Museum. He served as the director of the Atlanta College of Art Gallery.

His writings have appeared in New Art Examiner, Sculpture, and Art Papers magazines.o He has published numerous exhibition catalogues including Nosegays and Knuckle Sandwiches: Work By Thomas Woodruff; Green Acres: Neo Colonialism in the US; On Translation: The Games; and Mining Culture in Technicolor.

2005: “I believe the mission of a university art museum is to pursue the margins, explore unknown territory, rediscover the familiar and take risks,” said Scoates. “It is my goal to guide the UAM with the conviction that contemporary art is a vital social force that extends beyond the art world and into the broader culture.”

*Photo from www.csulb.edu

art/tapes/22 Gallery Talk with curator Alice Hutchison and artist Simone Forti

In honor of its new exhibition art/tapes/22, the University Art Museum at Cal State Long Beach hosted a gallery talk on Sept. 16 with Alice Hutchison and artist Simone Forti.

Forti, 73, a former dancer, discussed the inspiration for the dance movements she performs in on of the art videos in the exhibit.

Forti had an apartment near the zoo when she lived in Rome for two years and it was then that her interest in the animals' movements fueled her creative desire to experiment with those naturalistic and primal movements.

www.csulb.edu/uam*

"As a dancer, I was interested in how my body moved - the vertebrae."

"There's a beautiful sense of frailty," Forti said of the segments of film in which she appears nude.

The exhibit features the works of various artists displayed on a range of equipment including televisions from the 1980s to the present.

It also marks the first time that artist Daniel Buren's 1974 video installation appears in its newly restored version.

art/tapes/22, a video production company, produced film art in Florence, Italy from 1973 to 1976.

Forti became involved with art/tapes/22 when she met and began working with Charlemagne Palestine, one of the artists who contributed to the visual media exhibit.

The exhibit came to CSULB because Bill Viola, who was technical director of the art/tapes/22 studio from 1974 to 1976, is based in Long Beach.

art/tapes/22 runs from Sept. 4 through Oct. 19, 2008 at the University Art Museum.