| PRESS RELEASE |
Sweeney Art
Gallery, UC Riverside
For Immediate Release
September 01, 2004
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Press Contact:
Karen Rapp
September 01, 2004
new area code: T. 951/827-1467
new area code: F. 951/827-3798
E. karen.rapp@ucr.edu
W. http://sweeney.ucr.edu
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REMEMBERING
Group Exhibition
Curated by Charles Gaines
Venue: Sweeney Art Gallery, UC Riverside
Show dates: October 1 to December
11, 2004
Artist's Reception: Saturday, Oct
2, 4 to 6pm
Artist's Panel: Wednesday, Nov. 17,
7pm in ARTS 335 (across from the Gallery)
Participating artists: Edgar Arceneaux,
Todd Bourret, Matthew Buckingham, Terry
Chatkupt, Kira Lynn Harris, Glenn Ligon,
Adia Millett, Matthew Monahan, Connie Samaras,
Corinna Schnitt, Gary Simmons & Dee
Williams
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Varying from
painting and sculpture to photography and
film, guest curator Charles Gaines
brings together twelve artists whose respective
practices orbit points of intersecting concerns.
REMEMBERING explores issues of memory
in personal, social, and cultural contexts.
Addressing strategies of disorientation
and displacement, these artists question
the indeterminate relationship between image
and meaning, and solicit a conscious engagement
with the audience and its own conditions
of reception.
Edgar Arceneaux's real-time installations
and object constructions reassess how knowledge
is formed. Arceneaux favors epistemological
investigations over empirical methodologies
because of its focus on poetics and its
ability to show how feelings play a role
in the accumulation of knowledge and the
effects this has on our ideas of culture
and politics. Todd Bourret's painted
images evoke scenes of not-too-distant disorder
and disarray, conjuring associations of
mayhem both real and fantastical. Matthew
Buckingham's films and photos investigate
geological and geographical sites, past
events and situations, and archival documents.
By separating them from their initial use,
Buckingham generates new narrative possibilities.
From these scissions, our own memories link
image to content and forms by this, a collective
fantasy of history. Terry Chatkupt
makes video and installational projects
that engage a constructed language of nostalgia
as he explores his childhood sites in the
Midwest. Kira Lynn Harris's photographs
investigate the transcending and sublime
effects of light in familiar, highly charged
urban spaces. Glenn Ligon stitches
personal and historical narratives together
forming a critique of the subject that does
not privilege the generality of ideas over
the specificity of the individual experience.
Adia Millett's constructions of miniature
houses hold within their furnishings and
lighting a narrative of urban domesticity
that plays between theater and reality.
Matthew Monahan's subtle works on
paper imply much more than is stated; flirting
with the boundary between the literal and
the evocative, Monahan's drawings hover
with only a suggestion of form and question
the dialectic between real space and illusion.
Connie Samaras' "Angel Of History"
series draws its title from the pairing
of Walter Benjamin's concept of the angel
of history and the military terminology
for artificial timelines that create post-mortems
on disasters of war, defeats in battle,
and failures of strategy and intelligence.
Corinna Schnitt's videos and films
often explore the invidious politics and
history of the pomp and décor of European
Baroque design and the class-based society
that produced it. Gary Simmons reveals
social and political histories woven into
architectural interiors, such as old theaters,
that use the past to reveal how content
is actually façade and how knowledge is
constructed from this. Dee Williams'
photographs treat cultural spaces (such
as cities) as archival markers of history.
The needs of urbanism conflate with historical
narratives suggesting in this happenstance
relationship new narratives that combine
cultural and political knowledge with historical
truth.
Guest curator Charles Gaines was
born in Charleston, South Carolina, June
23, 1944 and raised in Newark, New Jersey,
Gaines attended Jersey City State College
and received a B.A. degree in Art. He received
an MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology,
School of Fine Arts, in 1967. Gaines has
had over 40 one-person exhibitions in the
U.S. and Europe, and he has participated
in numerous gallery and museum group exhibitions
including the Whitney Museum (the Biennial),
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum
of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Oakland Museum,
Deichtorhallen (Hamburg), Kunsthalle (Basel),
Stadtgalerie (National Musseum of Art, (Stuttgart),
Lenbachhaus (Munich). He has organized exhibitions
such as "Touring the Frame" (1999-2000),
and "Theater of Refusal" (1993-1994). He
is also a writer and is working on a book
on theory and criticism. He has published
essays such as "Theater of Refusal, Black
Art and Mainstream Criticism" (University
of California, Irvine, 1993), and "Art,
Post History, and the Paradox of Black Pluralism"
(Merge, 2003). Gaines is on the faculty
of the California Institute of the Arts
and had served as the Program Director for
Fine Arts from 1993 to 1999; he also teaches
at California State University, Fresno.
The Sweeney Art Gallery
is located across from the UCR campus
in Watkins House, at 3701 Canyon Crest
Drive, Riverside, California.
Hours are Tuesday thru Saturday 11 am
to 4 pm; Admission is free.
Visit our website: http://sweeney.ucr.edu
Call 951/ 827-3755 for more information
or for exhibition images
All events are free and open to the public. |
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