Blank Stare
Photo 309 Exhibition
November 13th–December 2nd, 2009

Reception: November 19th, 6–9PM

3001 Gallery 3001 S. Flower St.
Los Angeles, CA 90008

The 3001 Gallery was established by the Photography Area of USC's Roski's School of Fine Arts in 2009. It is located in the Advanced Photography Lab in the IFT building which is located on the south-west corner of 30th Street and Flower. Enter from the 30th Street entrance.

Student featured during the exhibition are:

• Savannah Wood
• Josh Zeive
• Sherry Zambrano
• Jon Wingo
• Craig Stubing
• Molly Murphy
• Lisa Losorelli
• Josh Dunn
• Erica Doo
• Akhila Bhoopalam

Nicole Miller
30 Seconds off an Inch
November 12, 2009–March 14, 2010

Opening: November 11, 7–9pm

The Studio Museum in Harlem
144 West 125th Street
New York, NY

Presenting approximately one hundred works by dozens of artists, the exhibition will provide an overview of a generation of artists who use a variety of media, including photography, video, large-scale sculpture, figurative painting and site-specific installations. 30 Seconds aims to show how this group of artists engages with the body and race in clever, subtle and astute ways.

Emily Mast
Everything, Nothing, Something, Always (Walla!)
Wed, Nov. 11th & Thurs, Nov. 12th, 2009, 6–9 pm

Performa 09
X Initiative
548 West 22nd Street
Ground Floor
New York, NY

In Everything, Nothing, Something, Always (Walla!), the medium of theater has been adapted to an exhibition context in order to stage a conversation-cum-argument between five characters who represent various aspects of the artist's psyche. Through spoken language and movement, these representations of the complex self turn the artistic process inside out for the viewer, thus opening it up for examination.

The performance itself is a time-based installation that takes the form of a one-act live theatrical play looping for three hours, varying slightly with each repetition and simultaneously acting as a performative "sculpture" in the center of the exhibition space, visible from all angles. The characters on stage are faced with seated actors who play a (very reactionary) artificial audience. The actual audience is encouraged to question their role in the space: they watch not only the play, but also another audience watching a play, all the while looking across the exhibition space and through the play at each other. Embracing artifice, caricature and parody, the script teases out earnest existential dilemmas in the face of artistic production via melodrama, cliché, and self-reflexivity. The result is simultaneously sincere and ironic, humorous and serious.

Dianna Molzan
The Case of the Strand
November 8th, 2009–January 9th, 2010

Opening Reception: Sunday, November 8th, 6–8pm

Overduin and Kite
6693 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90028

]]> http://roski.usc.edu/news/alumna-dianna-molzan-solo-exhi.html http://roski.usc.edu/news/alumna-dianna-molzan-solo-exhi.html news Dianna Molzan Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:24:04 -0800

Sharon Lockhart
Passing Thoughts and Making Plans
4 November–13 December 2009

Jerwood Space
London, UK

Passing Thoughts and Making Plans is an exhibition that brings together artists who use photography as part of their thought process; as a tool for working out, following and shaping ideas that will develop into a finished work.

The concept behind the exhibition comes from curator Catherine Yass' desire to reveal work in process and to consider that the experience of viewing preparations and sketches for art works holds complexities and interest in its own right. Passing thoughts and making plans features previously unseen work from internationally renowned artists Tacita Dean, Jeremy Deller, Sarah Jones, Alex Katz, Sharon Lockhart, Cornelia Parker, Richard Wentworth and Rachel Whiteread.

The exhibition is the third in the Jerwood Visual Arts Encounters series, which act as conversations about and between the disciplinary fields of the Jerwood Visual Arts program. Passing Thoughts and Making Plans is a conversation about the role of photography in each of the artists' practice and aims to give visitors a deeper understanding of the process of making work, through having a rare glimpse of the preparatory work behind a finished piece. Finished examples of the artists' work, displayed in books and catalogs, will also be on show.

Mores McWreath
November 13, 2009–January 9, 2010

Opening reception: Thurs. Nov. 12, 6–8 pm

CUE Art Foundation
511 W. 25th Street
New York, NY

Occupying a world between the cerebral and the grotesque, the multimedia work of New York-based artist, Mores McWreath, examines notions of freedom, choice and materialism. McWreath appropriates commercial slogans, pop music lyrics, and other commonplace, confrontational sources of American consumerist culture and joins them together, not only mimicking the information overload with which we are faced daily, but underlining the fragmented, senseless nature that media can achieve in contemporary culture. His chosen format mirrors the traditional method of advertising - brief and attention-grabbing. Placed together in seemingly inconsequential sequences, the viewer is led to view human existence through a construed mental play-back perspective, one imbued with dark humor and oftentimes a blurred sense of meaning. Leaving the viewer to actively pursue understanding of and meaning in the information presented, McWreath challenges the viewer to rise above passive observation to critical self analysis.

McWreath's suburban childhood home of Westlake, Ohio has left the greatest impression on him and it is this for which his on-screen alter ego, Will Westlake, is named. Dominating his most recent work, Will Westlake is the volatile, fickle, über consumer. Constantly kicking, screaming and antagonizing, mostly in commercial spots for chain restaurants and clothing stores, Westlake exudes the token arrogant masculine aura with which American mainstream culture has always had a love-hate relationship. Westlake is not a foil to McWreath's own self, rather he serves as the artist's acknowledgment of his own struggles and failures to resist the allure of capitalism. The Bud, The Seed, The Egg, 2008, features multiple vignettes of Will Westlake caged in a suffocating, bland corporate office space. Each varies radically regarding topic - from reciting the ridiculous amounts of toothpaste options at Target to singing the theme song of the television show, Growing Pains. His newest video, Remain , 2009, uses a deserted, post-apocalyptic scene as its backdrop and sets Will Westlake to providing the viewer with an interchangeable set of platitudes and enigmatic statements such as "Your instincts are wrong" and "Fashion is all about self expression." In conjunction with the large, empty space, and Westlake's obvious isolation, it appears as if Will Westlake may even be reflecting on himself.

Curated by Roski faculty member Andrea Zittel.

Mores McWreath, Remain, 2009, HD Video, 7 minutes.

Frances Stark
But What of Frances Stark, standing by itself, a naked name, bare as a ghost to whom one would like to lend a sheet?
Nov. 19, 2009–Jan. 24, 2010

Nottingham Contemporary
Weekday Cross
Nottingham, UK

Frances Stark is one of the most intriguing artists to have emerged from the vibrant Los Angeles art scene in the last two decades. Visually her stylish collages are reduced to a minimum, yet they reveal rich areas of thought.

Writing, used visually, has always been central to her work. The words are rarely her own. Instead she lifts them from a wide range of literary sources - the American poet Emily Dickinson is a particular favourite. Somehow the words of others reveal her own thought processes.

The exhibition starts in 2001, when visual imagery becomes part of her collages - beginning with birds, which seem to hop amongst the texts as if playing the role of their author - or the reader. Since then these pictures has played an increasing role in her work, to the point where language drops away altogether. Peacocks exhibit their extravagant tail feathers. Chorus girls take the stage or wait, self-consciously in the wings. The women in her art resemble Frances herself.

For this exhibition Stark has made a number of new works, including some magnificent kimono costumes.

Frances Stark, There Will Also Be Things I Don't Like, 2007, Image Courtesy of Beth Rudin DeWoody, 2009.

Laura Riboli
Circumvolver
October 24th–November 29th, 2009

Redling Fine Art
Kunsthalle L.A,
932 Chung King Road
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Redling Fine Art presents the first solo exhibition of Los Angeles based artist Laura Riboli. Entitled Circumvolver, this exhibition will take place in a temporary off-site location on Chinatown's Chung King Road.

Riboli's videos investigate objects within phantasmagorical settings, often using a combination of puppetry and animation to explore the uncanny physicality of objects that, within the cinematic space of the video, seem to move freely under their own power, as though they were sentient beings.

For her new works, Riboli has enlisted actors in her interplay of bodies and objects, adding the human form to her bizarre repertoire of materials. In Rolls, Tosses, Rotations (ball), 2009 and Rolls, Passages, Rotations, Walkovers (hoop), 2009, Riboli puts her once animated objects into a real time relationship with the bodies that manipulate them. Using a ball and hoop respectively, a lone figure negotiates with their object in a movement that dialectically demarcates the figure's form, and the contours of the object itself. In this uncanny interplay, the object and figure act as equal collaborators in the sequence of movements that unfold.

Together these films delineate the body's ability to define an object as well as that object's ability to define the body. Each time the figure and the object cross the frame, another iteration of this duality is explored, as the object becomes an extension of the body and the figure strives to mimic and exploit the object's form.

Two series of photographs will complete the show. The first set creates a visual synecdoche of body and appendage, using a painted hand as a stand in for the human form. Using tropes from product photography these photographs merge the image of the body as a unitary form, with the incompleteness of the partial object. The second addresses the interaction of the actor and object together in a motionless space, allowing the viewer to consider how the body both imitates and contrasts with the geometric forms.

Laura Riboli, Rolls, Passages, Rotations, Walkovers (Hoop), 2009, Color HD Video, 5 min looped, courtesy of Redling Fine Art.

Joshua Decter's essay, titled “Art and the Cultural Contradictions of Urban Regeneration, Social Justice and Sustainability: Transforma Projects and Prospect.1 in Post-Katrina New Orleans,” appears in the Autumn/Winter 2009 issue of Afterall (no. 22).

Full text of the article is available on Afterall's Web site, here.

Afterall is a research and publishing organization based in London. Founded in 1998 by Charles Esche and Mark Lewis at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London, Afterall focuses on contemporary art and its relation to a wider artistic, theoretical and social context.

In 1999 Afterall, a journal of art, context and inquiry, was launched. Afterall offers in-depth analysis of artists' work, along with essays that broaden the context in which to understand it.

Wangechi Mutu, Mrs. Sarah's House, 2008–09. Installation view, Prospect.1, Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans. Photo by Joshua Decter.

The 20th Los Angeles Printmaking Society National Exhibition
October 29, 2009–January 3, 2010

Public Reception: Sunday, Nov. 1st
Talk by Phil Sanders, Director of the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, NYC

Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery
Barnsdall Park
4800 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90027

This year's LAPS National Exhibition presents 193 artists as well as recent prints selected from eight of the celebrated Los Angeles presses: Cirrus Editions, Gemini G.E.L, Hamilton Press, Josephine Press, Pat Merrill Fine Art Prints, Mixografia, El Nopal Press and Zita Press; and two special LAPS exhibitions: Robert Blackburn (1920-2003) and Connections: LA Printmaking; 1962 to 1973.

Dean Weisberg's work will be featured in Connections: LA Printmaking; 1962 to 1973, a survey of celebrated and influential artists from a decade of activism, innovation and transformation that changed the art of printmaking and established Los Angeles as a center of printmaking worldwide.

Dean Ruth Weisberg and Alumna Joyce Dallal
the L.A. Story
October 25, 2009–January 20, 2010

Platt & Bornstein Galleries
American Jewish University
15600 Mulholland Drive
Bel Air, CA 90077

the L.A. Story features ten Los Angeles Contemporary Jewish artists working in diverse styles. Their media includes drawing, oil painting, metal collage, photography and digital manipulation.

Ruth Weisberg, Blessing, 2008

Duration:London
London, UK

Duration:London is a series of events that gather film, video and sound pieces which explore the ambiguities & absurdities of our contemporary existence. Whether it is approached from a fine-arts, documentary, experimental, formal, abstract or interdisciplinary angle, we believe that there is value in fostering a space which provides a forum for sharing which is neither a gallery, a juried film festival or an institution.

Third Biannual LAXART Benefit Auction
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Silent Auction: 7–9 pm
Live Auction: 8 pm

LAXART
2640 South La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90034

LAXART is Los Angeles' leading independent nonprofit contemporary art space, producing experimental exhibitions, publications and public art initiatives with emerging and mid-career local, national and international artists.

Founded in 2005 to support the production on new works by contemporary artists, architects and designers, LAXART occupies a critical space in the cultural landscape of LA between the large institutional and commercial sectors.

Participating Roski Alumni: Justin Beal, Erik Frydenborg, Patrick Jackson, Nick Kramer, Joel Kyack, Nicole Miller, Dianna Molzan, Ry Rocklen, Amanda Ross-Ho, Lisa Tan, Lisa Williamson

Participating Roski Faculty: Shannon Ebner, Robbert Flick, Alex Klein, Alex Slade, Erica Vogt, Charlie White, Mark Wyse

Participating Roski Students: Cayetano Ferrer, Alex Isreal

For ticket information, visit http://www.laxart.org, contact office@laxart.org, or call 1.310.559.0166. ]]> http://roski.usc.edu/news/roski-alumni-and-faculty-parti-2.html http://roski.usc.edu/news/roski-alumni-and-faculty-parti-2.html news Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:53:49 -0800

Paul McCarthy
White Snow
November 4–December 24, 2009

Opening Reception: Wednesday, Nov. 4, 6–8 pm

Hauser & Wirth
32 East 69th Street
New York

Hauser & Wirth New York presents White snow, a group of never before seen pieces from a new body of work by Paul McCarthy, drawing upon the famous 19th century German folk tale 'Snow White' ('Schneewittchen') and commenting upon the modern interpretation of the story in Disney's beloved 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

White Snow comprises two sets of drawings made by the artist since late 2008. The first is a selection of diminutive black and white pencil works as detailed, atmospheric and unapologetically lovely as Old Master drawings. Here, McCarthy develops his characters - the young Snow White masturbating in a solitary romantic reverie, various phallic-nosed dwarfs in a dither at the arrival of the beautiful stranger in their midst - as players in a sly yet poignant coming-of-age narrative packing a metaphorical wallop. The images touch upon myriad dark associations invited by the Snow White tale while simultaneously suggesting a love story with profound personal resonance for the artist.

Paul McCarthy, [White Snow] Dwarf Heads (detail), 2009, Set of 7 drawings; pencil on vellum, tape.

El Camino College Art Gallery
16007 Crenshaw Blvd.
Torrance, CA 90506

The 2009 Faculty Show includes a variety of works of art in a wide range of media. The exhibit provides a look at the aesthetic and educational philosophies advocated by El Camino College Art Department and demonstrates an array of concepts and techniques currently characteristic of the art world.