Universe City, a new exhibit at Cal State L.A., features the ‘New Genres’ concept of combining several art forms
Los Angeles, CA — By projecting their art on the walls of both a model-sized Cal State L.A. campus inside the University’s Fine Arts Gallery, and a real building outside, Universe City, a new exhibition of 38 video works by 40 professional artists from Los Angeles and beyond, demonstrates the artistic variety possible within the “New Genres” art movement.
The CSULA Fine Arts Gallery will host an opening reception for Universe City on Saturday, Jan. 29, from 6 to 9 p.m. Organized by Jim Ovelmen, an assistant professor within the College of Arts and Letters at CSULA, and Barry Markowitz, an art lecturer, the exhibit will be open to the public from Jan. 29 through Feb. 26.
Also offering a cross-academic and cultural dialog between students and the Los Angeles art world, the experimental, multi-media installation features a gallery-sized cardboard model of the CSULA campus with the artists’ pieces projected onto the small facades. At twilight, a different video work from the gallery will be projected on the southern facade of the University Library’s Palmer Wing, which faces the Fine Arts Gallery.
The exhibit also invokes the idea of the university as a central metaphor.
“The artists selected—whose approach, subject matter, and aesthetics vary widely—become an aggregate of current contemporary thought,” said Fine Arts Gallery Director Karin Lanzoni. “The installation enables the artists and patrons to think about this installation as a vision of ‘institutions of higher education’ in the 21st century.”
Lanzoni continued, “The viewers’ perceptions of the cardboard model of the campus are [formally and conceptually] transformed by the video-projected artworks, while the students, through their distinct interpretations and culturally complex perspectives, absorb and transform knowledge within the University itself.”
As a stimulating, interactive exhibition, Universe City also points to the amalgam of the new 21st Century metropolis—a collection of understandings, approaches, and technologies as well as an inclusive and complete demographic.
Exhibit dates & time: Jan. 29 through Feb. 26, Monday through Thursday and Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. (The outdoor projected art pieces will not be displayed on Saturdays.)
Location: The Fine Arts Gallery is located on the northeast corner of the CSULA campus, in the Fine Arts Building, Bldg. 9 (Click here for a campus map).
Cost: Free to the public.
For more information: (323) 343-4040, or e-mail Lanzoni at [email protected].
# # #
Working for Californiaa 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 215,000 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