Bryan Valenzuela

Bryan Valenzuela's Multitudes Converge at Golden 1 Center

Photo by David Wakely

     I attended a lecture by Sacramento artist and Sac State alumnus, Bryan Valenzuela.  He spoke about first starting school as a musician studying composition with violin.  He even has road exerience as a touring musician.  As a musician myself, it was interesting to hear another artist also speak about the music side of their creative life.  Valenzuela described falling in love with making art and "dramaticism of color" being his first interest, in parallel to his attention to music tonalities.  He also spoke about his formal influences being Chuck Close and Jean-Michel Basquiat.  He was drawn to Close's hyper-realistic, redering ability, and the use of text when it came to Basquiat.  He also spoke about Sac State's library's collection of artist monographs, and them being a huge asset in his learning.  I think it's good for students to hear that and recognize the importance of learning outside of the classroom envionment, too.

     Valenzuela then spoke about his process and work.  He primarily makes pen-and-ink drawings.  A lot of the drawings are constructed from using his writings and/or writings of poets, to weave and wrap the text so it constructs a portrait.  Literature is an important source to his work.  He also spoke about sewing canvas together for the "hand-made" quality and because it's cost-effective when you have a lot of scrap.  He then mentioned the long and laborious process of designing and completeing his Multitudes Converge piece, which is currently installed in the Golden 1 Center.  The inspiration came from a line in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas which says, "Yet what is an ocean but a multitude of drops."  From there, Valenzuela got approved for his piece, as one of five artists competing for the grant.  He then went to the Czech Republic and made over six-hundred glass spheres, in sizes of twelve, sixteen, and twenty. Even though he displayed a little over four-hundred pieces, he had to make extra because many would break.

     It's good to get insight on what a big project like Multitudes Converge involves.  It was exhausting just hearing about the arduous process but also great to see the result of so much hardwork and dedication.

Photo by Brett Melliar

Hippie Modernism at BAMPFA

Photo by Brett Melliar

Art Wall by Lawrence Weiner

Inflatables

Inflatables

Ayiti Mon Amour

Image still from Ayiti Mon Amour, from the Toronto International Film Festival

     On April 28th, I attended a screening of Ayiti Mon Amour by Haitian-born filmmaker Guetty Felin, at BAMPFA, with fellow graduate students Polo Lopez, Sean Hong, and Brett Melliar.  There was also a brief lecture and Q&A component.

     Ayiti Mon Amour is set five years after the devastating, 2010 earthquake in Haiti.  It's fictional and described as "documentary meets magical neorealism."  There are three tales surrouding the teenager Orphee (played by Felin's son), the old man, and the muse, all with the theme of connectivity.  Most of the fisherman in the film are actually fisherman since Felin wanted to keep a sense of realism intact.  Most of the conversations between the fisherman describing the challenges of catching fish are not scripted, either.  Felin's goal, however, was to not show a pity film and focus on the negative aspects of post-earthquake Haiti.  She wanted to express the beauty of her homeland, "a true Haiti," as she said; I believe she succeeded.  The cinematography is gorgeous and the color grading is excellent.  In emphasising Felin's desire for portraying connectivity, the film has a global aspect.  The teenager Orphee speaks Japanese, which brings to mind Japan's 2011 earthquake and Fukushima disaster.  Felin also notes that after Japan's earthquake, the world forgot about Haiti.  Haiti was no longer "vogue."  There are also multiple languages in the film including French, Creole, Japanese, and English.

Guetty Felin at BAMPFA

     Guetty Felin said she got into filmmaking because she's always been a storyteller.  Her drive is to tell stories and show visuals that people don't often hear and/or see.  Sean Hong asked her an important question about the possibility of goverment influence during her creation of the film.  She said there was absolutely none and proudly spoke about the freedom of press in Haiti.

Trailer for Ayiti Mon Amour

Art History Symposium

Professor O'Brien, Rachel Teagle, Lawrence Rinder, and a bunch of heads

     

     I attended two lectures on April 8th by Rachel Teagle and Lawrence Rinder.  Rachel Teagle's talk How Do You Make an Art Museum and Why? centered around the construction of the Manetti Shrem Museum in Davis, CA.  I learned that UC Davis has wanted to create an art museum for more than twenty years and there's been a plan since 1994 for one.  Teagle's mission in building the museum focused on answering "what does it mean to be a state of the art museum?"  She invited the public as an additive process to figure out what the museum should be like.  The Eli and Edyth Broad Art Museum, designed by architect Zaha Hadid, at Michigan State University was a reference.  In contrast to Hadid's architectural design style which could make a form work anywhere, Teagle and her team wanted to build something that was specific to Davis.  She listed "innovation, experimentation, and openness" as core values.  In consideration of UC Davis' interdisciplinary community, understanding how to build a space that could exhibit a wide variety of work was also important.  Teagle ended her talk by saying she wanted the Manetti Shrem to be a place where students could "find transformational experiences."

     Lawrence Rinder's talk The New Downtown Berkeley provided a history and mission statment for the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA).  As director for the museum, his mission statement is as follows: "inspires the imagination, ignites critical dialogue, and activates community engagement through art, film, and other forms of creative expression."  Certainly great goals to strive for when it comes to most museums.  During the talk, I learned that collector William Ernest had donated his big collection of Japanese prints to the museum in 1919.  At the time, it only featured about a dozen Western and American work.  Abstract expressionist painter Hans Hoffman then left forty-seven of his paintings for the museum.  Film is also an important aspect and the Pacific Film Archive was created as "part and parcel of the museum."  In 1940, the museum was moved to the UC Printing Plant of late deco design.  Also interesting to learn that ninety percent of the museum's visitors are not students.  I have recently had the pleasure of visiting the museum for the first time and I really enjoyed seeing the Collection Portal, which allows anyone to digitally see the museum's entire collection.

-My question would have been for Rachel Teagle in regards to the lab coat uniform for the staff at the Manetti Shrem.  She had said that she wanted to eschew a "research" feel from the experience but the lab coats seem to contradict that.

The Relevance of Mass Media

Getty Group (Dominique G., Brett M., Shixiang H., Trevor L., Allie L., and Danh C.)

Also, our new band photo

     The first day of my two-day trip to Los Angeles with fellow Sac State students was spent at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  As nice of an experience as that was, it lacked in much contemporary work.  Our second day was spent at The Getty, which had an exhibit on contemporary work titled Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media.

     The exhibit, which runs from December 20th, 2016 to April 30th, 2017, shows how various artists used the news media as source material for their photos and videos, over the last fifty years.  Most of the work is a response to how the media covered the Vietnam War (1955-75), and George W. Bush's declared "War on Terror," post the 9/11 attacks.  Part of the exhibit's statement reads:

"Artists began to question both the authority of the news media and the veracity of its images, employing strategies of mimicry and appropriation to highlight and challenge the glut of visual information.  They were concerned as well with the instability of a photograph's meaning and the different ways in which news is mediated, manipulated, and interpreted according to the surrounding context."

Sarah Charlesworth, Osservatore Romano, March 17-May10, 1978, electrophotographic prints

From the series Modern History

     The show exhibits over two-hundred pieces from seventeen different artists.  The first one I was drawn to is the conceptual work of artist Sarah Charlesworth.  Charlesworth would reproduce the front page of a newspaper, erase the print with the exception of the masthead, then trim the print to the size of the original newspaper.  This series of work is titled Modern History.  Within this series, Osservatore Romano, the name of a piece as well as the name of the Vatican City State's newspaper, is an image-only documentation of the abduction and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro by a terrorist organization.  The layout reveals editorial decisions and the importance of image placement.

Sarah Charlesworth, Osservatore Romano, March 17-May10, 1978, electrophotographic prints

From the series Modern History

Martha Rosler, First Lady (Pat Nixon), 1967-72, printed 2011, inkjet print

From the series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home

     My favorite work in the exhibit is Martha Rosler's House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home series.  Rosler would take magazine issues of Life and superimpose croppings of Vietnamese citizens maimed in war on idealized, domestic interiors.  I can imagine almost missing these juxtapositions, if this work was featured in a magazine.  But once noticed, they're striking, especially when one considers that the images come from the same source.  

Martha Rosler, Giacometti, 1967-72, printed 2011, inkjet print

From the series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home

     The work is a sobering reminder of the "Us Versus Them" mentality of war.  We tend to forget that we are part of a system that is destructive of others when we're so steeped in our embrace of capitalist, commodity culture.  Through the House Beautiful series, the viewer is pushed into reconsidering their "here" and "there" worldview when images of the horrors of war are brought literally right into the affluent, American living room.

Me by Alfredo Jaar's Searching for Africa in LIFE

Photo by Allie Lown

     It's important to have a news media with a free press.  But it's more important to know how that media can shape a story and present it so it's perceived in a particular manner.  The artists behind the works in the Breaking News are clearly aware of that and their work encourages the viewer to develop the same critical understanding of the process.  I'm really pleased to have been able to see this exhibit.  And I'm happy that my first time at The Getty was with friends who share the same enthusiasm for experiencing art.  The weather was also unbelievably nice.

Trevor L., Allie L., Shixiang H., Dominique G., and Danh C.

(We lost Brett)

LACMA Visit

R.W. Witt Gallery Exhibition: "Convergence" by Jeremy Alba

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     Jeremy Alba exhibited his work last week (3/06-3/10) at the Witt.  Titled Convergence, the work made great use of the space.  There were wall-mounted pieces, a large scale installation (above), and work on pedestals.  Considering the variety of the work, Alba was successful in uniting everything under his obvious interest in sharp, geometric forms.

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     Though it's easy to get lost in such a large and sleek installation such as the one in the first image, I was equally drawn to the rest of the work.  The smaller pieces are interesting and it's from them that I feel they're an origin point for the rest of the work.  At the area where they rest against their support, they feel soft.  It's as if the angular structures they start to take on is their attempt at reaching out to see what else exists in the world; a sort of growth through knowledge.

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     Pictured above are two of three pieces he also exhibited that are similar in their almost painting-format and installation.  The mostly triangular shapes that form the entire piece seem like a jigsaw puzzle before it's come apart.  Though I like the contrast in the wood grain and size of each shape resting against each other, the work didn't hold my attention for long.

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     My favorite piece in the gallery is the one posted above.  It's hard to tell whether the bottom part is meant to be a pedestal that flows into the work or if it's an essential part of the piece, but I really like it.  The manner in which the top, dark, geometric form and the bottom, white shape, sandwiches the the twisting, organic form really drew my interest.  The top and bottom parts also feel like they're in stasis while the center part appears to be in motion, endlessly coiling upon itself.

     I enjoyed Alba's show.  I think he found a successful way to exhibit his work in a very challenging space.

Photo by Polo Lopez