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.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
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 Kleinfe
lder,
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.
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 Kleinfe
lder,
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.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
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