SYROP&CHANG - A two person exhibition in conjunction with the 2013 California Pacific Triennial
Mitchell Syrop, York Chang, co-curated in conjunction with the 2013 California Pacific Triennial curated by Dan Cameron
June 30, 2013 – September 14, 2013
Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery, Orange, CA
Mitchell Syrop has been investigating the written word in previous bodies of work, hereby drawing connections between text and its qualities as an image. His maniacally written abstracts, blow-ups of scribbled notes are concerned with ambiguities of language, the visual properties of its presentation, identity, and interchangeability. The physio-psychological aspects of the work and its self-deprecating content are disrupted by the technical sophistication and confidence of the final image, evidence of performative actions, presented in a distanced manner.
York Chang’s interest in text lies with its possibility to create history. Via the construction of a fictitious historical art movement, the “visceral realists” and the re-enactment of actions attributed to the group, he challenges the notion of the grand historical narrative, which contemporary art is committed to. He exposes it as similarly arbitrary, playing with its function as creating meaning, and makes us aware of a society drawing conclusions based on truths, which are always created one-sidedly, as is mostly the case, by the ones in power. The notion of the type of political and actionist artist that the visceral realists promote is an option that although it never existed, indeed had its moment in time. Chang poses questions of identity and authorship in creating these heroes, which are not a romantic fantasy, but rather a poetic improvisation on art history’s keyboard. This in turn is utterly contemporary.
Where Syrop is direct, expressive and sometimes goes blue, Chang answers in his deadpan, sly and calculated style. The pairing of their different methods of investigation provides commonalities, and exciting new constellations and timbres of their respective work, while showing the continuation of conceptual approaches in L.A.’s most recent art history.
California Visual Music - Three Generations of Abstraction
Heather Brown, Tony Delap, Michael Dopp, Roy Dowell, Craig Kauffman, Ed Moses, Michael Rey, Brian Sharp, Jay Sagen, Patrick Wilson, Bobbi Woods
Co-curated with David Michael Lee
May 20, 2013 – June 15, 2013
Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery, Orange, CA
The Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University in conjunction with Chapman University’s Escalatte Collection is pleased to present California Visual Music - Three Generations of Abstraction. The exhibition brings together work from L.A.’s vital art scene with selected pieces from the Escalate Collection that exemplify key innovations in abstract art.
Abstraction’s debut on the California stage was initiated by pioneering gallerist Felix Landau and the legendary Ferus Gallery in the 1950’s. The 1960s and 70s brought Finish Fetish and Light and Space, distilled from op art, minimalism and geometric abstraction, which are identified with the American West and are tied to a unique period in which many California artists investigated the picture plane beyond the concerns of the canvas and representation. Craig Kaufman, Tony Delap and Ed Moses, whose works are highlights of California Visual Music,developed a discourse with regional specificity in company with artists such as Robert Irwin and James Turell.
Most recently, the broad field of what abstraction could mean is being re approached by a new generation of L.A. artists. Some of the most vivid of these new positions are featured in California Visual Music alongside their predecessors. The exhibition examines the heritage and influence of classical abstraction while presenting a survey of strategies that continues to bring new insights, from the serendipitous experiments of light and space to the manias for new materials and properties of color.
Wir Drei - Figurative Painting
Yesim Akdeniz, David Bell, Charles Garabedian, Roger Herman, Dietmar Lutz, Andre Niebur, Laura Owens, Suzanne Wright
January 30 – March 1, 2013
Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery, Orange, CA
The Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University is pleased to present Wir Drei, a selection of contemporary figurative painting from Istanbul, Los Angeles and DÜsseldorf. Nested symbolic systems, personal mythologies and psychological approaches are at the core of this exhibition. Coming from different backgrounds and generations, the eight artists in the exhibition employ a wide variety of figurative painting concepts. The title, Wir Drei (We Three), is taken from a Yesim Akdeniz painting, which, in turn, is an homage to Phillip Otto Runge's original work of the same title. Runge's Wir Drei was painted in 1804 and destroyed by a fire in 1931 while in an exhibition at the Glaspalast in Munich. Typical for a romantic painting, it is full of symbolism and metaphor, filled with codes, hard to decipher today and leaves us wondering about what hidden desires and relationships are underneath the surface as the following quotes illustrate:
„The painting (depicting the artist with his wife and his brother) could be seen to exemplify the symbiotic romantic love relationship that is at the same time open to others. (...) it suggests a fusion of erotic love, which remains open to intimate friendship with others, (...)"--Encyclopedia of the Romantic Aera
"Philipp Otto Runge's We Three is a "friendship picture", a common genre in the Romantic age. (...) In the relationship between its three figures, you have the same sense of hidden depths that is characteristically found in the mono self-portrait (...) these depths are transmitted by faces (...) that both reveal and conceal the heart's plots. We Three: you'll never know."--Tom Lubbock, The Independent Akdeniz's version of the picture alludes to this symbolism and enigma. The roles are reversed, though. Keeping the original composition for the most part, Akdeniz assumes the pose of the woman, (the wife in the original), who now has a man on each side. Is it a joke? Or rather the opposite: a postulate of female power? Maybe both. The two men look like twins. Are they brothers, or two aspects of the same personality? Or do they represent the dichotomist, possibly schizophrenic relationship of the author to one person? We won't get a definite answer. What we get is a pictorial space that clears for possible answers, a space that clears for interpretation. The exhibition embraces this space, which opens up somewhere between image and psychogram, between genre and confession. It is a possibility of painting, that slides in and out of popularity, but always remains at the heart of the craft: The complex relations between the painter, the painted and the viewer. We Three.