Stray Edge
Monique van Genderen, Shila Khatami, Lisa Williamson, Ulrich Wulff
September 28 - November 6, 2015
Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery, Orange, CA
Stray Edge; Catalog
Abstraction finally crystalized into the picture plane in high modernism when the German Bauhaus school and Dutch artist group De Stijl, and individuals auch as Piet Mondrian, Kasimir Malewitsch and Sophie Tauber-Arp, developed distinct styles using destilled geometric shapes in their compositions and designs. In architecture of the time, a sobering developent took place, eliminating ornament, and with it, perhaps, some of its memory and history, from buildings, interior designs and furnishings. Painting discovered its materiality and began to see its surface as the actual drama, as if the viewer were to slowly zoom out of what was once the window into a different world onto its earthly, woven reality.
These reductive maneuvers, counteracting the logic of perspective and the mimicry of visual reality, were meant to highten awareness, sharpen the intuition, and express universal truth and beauty. But it wasn’t long before capitalism deveoured and homogenized these honorable ideals, and led them ad absurdum. Today everybody can purchase a piece of that high modernist action, or rather its broken limbs, the remains of a once vital utopianism, by purchasing a "Fjälkinge"-shelf or a "Stolmen"-storage system at their local Ikea store.
What can abstract painting do to reclaim the philosophical vigor inherent in its modernist components? Does it even have to? Or have the goals of artists who work with abstraction changed alltogether?
Stray Edge brings together four artists that work with abstraction through painting and sculpture, and who are investigating the possibilities of the painted surface in order to set in motion a play of perception and meaning. The pictures and three-dimensional works are open to figurative as well as conceptual or literal readings and set in motion a negotiation between arbitrariness and intentionality. Rather than seeking absolutes in truth and beauty, they are undogmatically propositioning the significance of the painted surface.
Paths and Edges
John Baldessari, Edith Baumann, Mary Corse, Sam Francis, Frank Gehry, Betty Gold, Anne Hammilton, Al Held, Roger Herman, William Kentridge, Soo Kim, Roy Lichtenstein, Bruce Nauman, Eric Orr, Michael Reafsnyder, Ed, Ruscha, Richard Serra
Co-curated with Natalie Lawler
July 20 - September 15, 2015
Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery, Orange, CA
XX REDUX-Revisiting a feminist art collective
Marsia Alexander Clark, Nancy Buchanan, Diane Calder, Audrey Chan, Merion Estes, Vanalyne Green, Micol Hebron, Mayde Herberg, Connie Jenkins, Carol Kaufman, Jan Lester Martin, Rachel Rosenthal, Nancy Weber, Faith Wilding, Nancy Youdelman, Rachel Youdelman
Co-curated with Nancy Buchanan and Micol Hebron
February 2 – March 14, 2015, 2015
Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery, Orange, CA
Double X, a feminist art collective that flourished from 1975-1985, was committed to expanding the visibility of art made by women—not just work by their own members, but by other women, both established and emerging. In their founding statement, XX declared: "We are committed to expanding the notion of what is considered art . . . .We recognize a pluralistic art that is both stylistically diverse and expressive of a variety of points of view in a framework such that although different modes may conflict with one another, they do not negate one another." More perspectives now considered the foundation of the feminist art movement were espoused by Double X—although until now, the group has been left out of history. However, XX contributed to the making of this narrative; one of the first projects of the collective was the publication of Faith Wilding's The Women Artist's Movement in Southern California, 1970-76. This exhibition offers an opportunity to update the record—not necessarily with historic work, but current pieces. In this spirit, in addition to art made by former XX members, XX Redux includes performance, photography and painting by younger colleagues Audrey Chan and Micol Hebron.
Recent works featured in the exhibition include sculpture (Nancy Youdelman), drawing and painting (Merion Estes, Micol Hebron, Connie Jenkins, Carol Kaufman, Rachel Rosenthal, Nancy Buchanan, and Faith Wilding), collage (Jan Lester Martin, Nancy Webber), video (Marsia Alexander-Clarke, Vanalyne Green), photography and digital prints (Diane Calder, Audrey Chan, Mayde Herberg, Rachel Youdelman).
An upstairs space displays books by Faith Wilding and Vaughan Rachel, and feminist ephemera from the past, in an installation designed and realized by gallery assistants Tayler Bonfert, Gina Kouyoumdjian and Elizabeth Plumb. In addition, Double X Redux will display posters from the Gallery Tallyproject organized by Micol Hebron, which continues to illustrate the disparity between male and female artists shown in professional art galleries. These chilling statistics reinforce the importance of recognizing the legacy of Double X.