Note to editors
and news directors:
Select hyperlinked text for an image from Cindy Bernard’s “Year-Long
Loop (2-hour version)” and a photo of students setting up the “Short
Order” exhibit.
____
IN ‘SHORT ORDER,’ 15
CAL STATE L.A. STUDENTS
SHARE GALLERY WITH
BERNARD’S ‘YEAR-LONG LOOP’
June 6-27
exhibit showcases array of concepts in variety of media;
Saturday’s
reception celebrates culmination, investigation
Los Angeles, CA
– An innovator in integrating sound and imagery shares gallery space
with 15 California State University, Los Angeles students in “Short
Order: Accretions, Arrays, Anomalies,” an exhibition at the
University’s
Luckman Fine Arts Gallery June 6 through 27. The opening
reception will be Saturday, June 6, from 6-9 p.m.
The showing
culminates an
Art Department spring seminar that brought artist Cindy Bernard to
Cal State L.A. to mentor the project’s graduate and senior art students.
Bernard creates
photographs and projections that explore the relationship between
cinema, memory and landscape. Many of her works also make sound their
focus. She has received grants and awards from the J. Paul Getty Trust
Fund for the Visual Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial
Foundation; and her work has appeared in museums and galleries in the
United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe and Japan.
For “Short
Order,” Bernard is premiering “Year-Long Loop (2-hour version),” which
combines her interests in landscape and sound. Recorded between October
2004 and September 2005, this “ambient video”—as Bernard describes it—is
a cross between John Cage’s “4’33” and Andy Warhol’s “Empire.” Its
24-hour version is an exercise in “extreme structuralism,” she said.
Bernard is the
founder and director of The Society for the Activation of Social Space
through Art and Sound. Her current work, “Silent Key,” maps
communications across vast territorial and political divides. It was
recently exhibited at the Boston Center for the Arts.
According to the
seminar instructor
Richard Wearn, the students used “an investigation of the archive as
a point of departure” in creating their projects, with graduate students
mentoring undergraduates. (See full listing below.)
“The experience
helped build an artistic community,” said Wearn. “It gave the graduate
students teaching experience.” Bernard’s participation, he said,
fostered discussions about the conceptual interplay of sound, visual
projections and other, more traditional media.
The
Luckman Fine Arts Gallery is open Monday through Thursday and
Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free.
“Short Order”
features works of the following Cal State L.A. students (listed with
brief statements):
Fiona Cochran
works with photographic imagery to lend order and shape to irresolvable,
intangible concerns. She attempts to disentangle truth from reality
which results in a moral, emotional, and intellectual schematic.
Kat Cutright
is interested in how an understanding of nature is socially and
intellectually constructed. She draws on collections of organic residue
to create sculptures that reframe the concept of landscape.
Lorri Deyer
brings ephemeral objects to the attention of the viewer in order to call
attention to the elusive nature of the Everyday. Her sculptures foster
an awakening and reexamination of our experiences in the world.
Matt Dressler’s
work investigates the dynamic between physical and psychological
experience. Using constructed environments and situations, he
manipulates social interaction with the intent of provoking an emotional
response and reevaluating the self.
Bill Faecke
uses video to portray his grandfather’s tools, carvings, drawings,
watercolors, and other related objects. He translates this footage into
an absurdist evocation of the spaghetti western.
Oralia Gomez’s
work is inspired by the mystic and spiritual teacher G.L. Gurdjieff, who
stated, “We consist of a multiplicity of separate small i’s, not the
conscious I, that we all assume we are.”
Charles
Hachadourian
photographs knocked down light poles as a part of his daily Los Angeles
commute. He sees these seemingly insignificant traffic casualties as
poetic signs of random yet conspicuously familiar urban landscape.
Karlin
Hovasapian
explores the visual perception of color and the physiological and
emotional reactions it evokes. Her installation expresses notions of
nostalgia, curiosity and childhood through the use of color symbolism.
Brittney Lane
works with stoneware and mixed media to explore the significance of the
archive to modern culture. Currently, she is contemplating the effects
of an overload of information on society.
Dalia Monserrat
explores the idea of her body as subject and creating an indicative
residue of her presence, leaving behind a woman’s mark. Working with her
body allows for a more intimate exploration of the self and her
femininity.
Poorang Nori
draws upon ethno-regional specific reference points from the Mid-East
and current cultural cues as a point of departure for his sculptures.
He aims to prompt discourse on the dynamics of displaced/placed people’s
experience.
Chandra Pok’s
work opens a dialogue between history and the present, making explicit
the corpulent nature of American imperialism. Her recent work uses
apathy toward processed food products as an analogy for the frivolous
names given bombing missions in Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
Patrick Quan
uses objects extracted from everyday life as material. His work explores
the relationship between these objects and contemporary culture.
Greg Schenk
appropriates commercial/industrial products and materials, re-organizing
them into interactive devices that excite the senses. His work seeks to
question the evolution of technology and its role in our lives.
Michael Shields
is interested in Los Angeles’ unique infrastructure, the diversity of
its synthetic terrain, and the relationship people have with its
landscape. He sees Los Angeles as a place that allows for customized
experiences, has a very high level of chance, and is as efficient as it
is inefficient.
# # #
Working for California since 1947: The 175-acre hilltop campus of California State University, Los Angeles is at the heart of a major metropolitan city, just five miles from Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. More than 20,000 students and 205,000 alumni—with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds—reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Six colleges offer nationally recognized science, arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education and humanities programs, among others, led by an award-winning faculty. Cal State L.A. is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Jazz Orchestra and to a unique university center for gifted students as young as 12.
Programs that provide exciting enrichment opportunities to students and community include an NEH- and Rockefeller-supported humanities center; a NASA-funded center for space research; and a growing forensic science program, housed in the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. www.calstatela.edu
Back to: News site | Services for Journalists | Public Affairs | Cal State L.A.