KERRY TRIBE:

STANDARDIZED PATIENT

October 23 – November 30, 2023

Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery, Orange, CA 

Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery, on the occasion of Wilkinson College’s Engaging the World: Leading the conversation on Health Equity, is thrilled to announce Standardized Patient, an exhibition of related works by Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker Kerry Tribe. 

Standardized Patient (2017) is a two-channel video projection that offers insight into the work of Standardized Patients (“SP’s”)—professional actors who portray patients in a simulated clinical environment as part of medical students’ training. The installation features an angled screen that presents a progression of SP encounters on one side and a synchronized montage of supporting materials on the reverse. Fragments of the patients’ scripts, diagnostic flow charts, and textbook illustrations offer glimpses of the kinds of information that underlie the action. Such an encounter format suggests that these performers inhabit a dual headspace—holding conversations while mentally tracking checklist items to be submitted afterward—an inversion of roles in which the “patients” are now the evaluators. The paradox of the SP exam lies in its artifice: both parties are acting while also being themselves. Yet there is the potential for medical student and actor to connect when both willingly suspend disbelief. The project explores questions of empathy, communication, and performance, and was developed through Tribe’s close collaboration with professional clinicians, communication experts, and Standardized Patients at Stanford University and the University of Southern California. The project was commissioned by SFMOMA for its New Work series in 2017.

Kerry Tribe is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Known for expansive and profound works in film, video and mixed media, her practice explores elusive aspects of human consciousness including memory, love, and doubt. Recent projects consider text messaging within a family, the use of “standardized patients” in medical training, and the interconnected ecologies of the Los Angeles River. Tribe’s work has been the subject of solo presentations at the Wellcome Collection, London; Cantor Arts Center and Anderson Collection at Stanford University; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and The Power Plant, Toronto.

Cedric Tai

@fakingprofessionalism

August 28 – October 14, 2023

Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery, Orange, CA 

I’d like to propose that ADHD/Autism just means ‘being bad at capitalism’ (being on time, accepting authority, etc.), which… isn’t the worst thing to be allergic to. - Cedric Tai

@fakingprofessionalism is an evolving mis en scène that brings together artworks, a modular minigolf course, the artist’s temporary and improvised studio space, as well as references to keeping up appearances on social media. The installation blends three distinct social spaces: the workplace (the office and studio), a locus of negotiation and production; the exhibition space where finished products are displayed and discussed; and the sites of recreational activities, which are often haunted by the specter of professional networking. The merging of these spaces in the gallery provokes questions around the purposes, similarities, and differences of these sites. The fragmentary and ephemeral nature of @fakingprofessionalism mirrors not only diverse approaches to problem solving and the adaptable nature of the creative process, but also becomes a model of neurodivergent thinking. This is represented in how elements within the exhibition undergo transformations, unite with other segments, disappear, and subsequently resurface over the course of its duration.

In the realm of work-life, professionalism stands as a valuable standard that upholds quality, expertise, and ethical conduct. It sets a benchmark for proficiency and ensures that individuals are adequately trained and qualified to carry out their responsibilities. However, our rigid understanding of this concept often creates a culture of exclusivity, perpetuating a narrow definition of what constitutes legitimate expertise, while marginalizing individuals who do not conform to these standards. This rigidity frequently acts as a gatekeeping mechanism, stifling individuality and inhibiting the full realization of diverse talents and perspectives. In stark contrast, some neurodivergent individuals perceive intricate patterns and connections, especially valuable in fields that require complex problem-solving, data analysis, and innovative thinking. Furthermore, viewing all minds as existing within a neurospectrum challenges the idea of a singular ‘center’ from which all others diverge. 

The exhibition raises compelling questions: What if we were to embrace a broader spectrum of behaviors, bodies, and minds that don't conform to traditional societal norms, rather than labeling some human actions as pathological? How can we further support the ways in which marginalized people live, work, and play, on their terms? In what ways can we redefine the usual rules of engagement, and what might this look like?

In conjunction with Chapman University’s new Health Humanities Minor, Tai invites gallery visitors to observe the ways in which they navigate mental health resources and systems in place for the public today. The artist also shares their perspectives through printed brochures such as ‘How to Advocate for Yourself at the Doctors Office’ and ‘An ADHD Zine for/by Artists’. In @fakingprofessionalism Tai gives experimental, provisional, and non-clinically proven answers that provide a middle ground between social media hot takes and inaccessible scientific discourse. Tai shares their personal journey through the American healthcare system, professional sphere, and art world.

Bio:

Cēdric Tai is an undisciplinary artist, born in Detroit (1985), has an Art Education degree & BFA from Michigan State University (2007), and an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art (2013). 

Tai thinks through sculpture, talking, writing, performance and experimental exhibitions.

Their artwork and teaching focuses on neurodivergent experience, labor and politics. They have partnered with neuroscientists, academics from critical psychiatry, artist collectives, disability justice social media influencers, and somatic therapists to co-create accessible resources particularly around mental health, potentially as a form of anti-capitalist solidarity.

Lovingly referred to as 'Pathologically Curious', Cedric shifts Autism/ADHD shame into wonder, absurdity, meaningful challenges, and joyful interdependence. 

Some of their work is setup systematically (coding/spreadsheets/workshops/repetition) so that a given audience can become aware of their relationship to and agency within otherwise invisible structures.

Other works are like love letters, or are intentionally not efficient, wherein they come to know someone/something through immersing themselves in an intimate process. 

C.V. in a sentence: 2009 Kresge Artist Fellowship, 2015 Knight Foundation Challenge Grant,  2016 Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, 2021 The Brutus Fund at Yucca Valley Art Material Lab, and a 4-month 2023 Sculpture Space Residency in Utica, NY

Favorite Exhibition Titles: “Concept Structure Torture Survival Title", New City  Space, Glasgow (2011),  "Indirectly Yours", Intermedia, CCA, Glasgow  (2013),  "We Need More ________!", Simone DeSousa Gallery (2014),  "Amateur  Strategies", CAC, UCLA (2016),  “50 Bad Artworks”, Casa Lü, Mexico City (2020) and, "@FakingProfessionalism", Chapman University

<Product>: or how I learned to stop <doing something> and love <idea>

Benjamin Lord & Kim Schoen 

February 1 – March 10, 2023

Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery, Orange, CA 

With <Product>: or how I learned to stop <doing something> and love <idea>, Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery is thrilled to celebrate two works drawing from the pool of art history and visual culture, each in their own way related to translation and authorship.

Kim Schoen's work Baragouin (2021) (Baragouin, from French; unintelligible speech) gives voice to copies of sculptures whose origins range from Buddhism to Rococo to Neoclassical to Modernism. The video takes us inside the now-closed retailer Stones & Gifts Inc., a business for domestic and garden sculptures formerly located in Los Angeles's Chinatown, and delineates the tableau of some four dozen figures of what western culture perceives as archetypical images of humans and animals. Alternating between slow pans and steady views, between close-ups of faces and bodies, and overviews of groups, the video invites the viewer to linger at this strange and ambiguous gathering of characters. Playfully oscillating between suggested narrative and documentary, it dramatizes the display throughout the afternoon and into the evening, while reflections of the shifting sun and the headlights of passing cars illuminate the showroom. 

The work, created in collaboration with the art historian Edward Sterrett, and voice actors who imitate the sounds of languages from around the world in different ways, presents sculptures that all seem to "speak" in tongues which refer to the provenance of their originals. In Baragouin, both language and image are imitations and translations, visual and verbal approximations that nonetheless communicate in unpredictable ways. These replicas, together with the echoes of the languages ascribed to them, stimulate reflection on the emergence of artistic forms as expressions of specific traditions and cultures. The work asks about accessibility to these qualities in a world determined by commerciality, in which surfaces are perceived as essential while being separated from their original ground like a bouquet of flowers.

Benjamin Lord's monumental work The Golden Jackal (2023) consists of over 300 images that narrate a cluster of fictional scenarios in and around Venice, Italy. A mob of hooded figures arrives at the train station and infiltrates the city, setting it ablaze. A dance party at a museum gala turns violent. In an elegant penthouse apartment, a bearded figure chain-smokes, watching the spectacle unfold. In a bracketing scenario, an unoccupied gondola from the city drifts out into the neighboring lagoons, where a field of glasswort blooms bright red. The title character, a wild European wolf-like canid, appears at various junctures, wandering in and out of view. The work is presented at the Guggenheim Gallery as a sprawling installation of unframed photographic prints hung in salon-style groupings.

All the pictures in The Golden Jackal were created using Dall-E 2, a recently released artificial intelligence service available on the Internet that can create realistic images from text-based descriptions or "prompts" written in natural language. The resulting images are not selected or cobbled together from an existing database but generated inferentially using what is called a digital "model" using a complex technical process called "diffusion". The resulting new images, while not intelligent per se, codify and extend the patterns, habits, and biases of the massive digital image set that the model was trained on.

The manual copying of works of art has probably existed since there were works of art themselves. Movable type made the copying of the written word affordable and swift. The technologies of photographic reproduction radically accelerated the copying of images, disseminating low-cost pictures globally. We have reached a watershed moment with the arrival and ever accelerating development of digital computation. In the past thirty years, internet culture fostered by the ubiquity of personal computing has propagated the social expectation of free (or nearly free) copying, resulting in radical transformations to the culture industry. In the latest development (which builds unmistakably upon the previous), computer programs freely generate complex and novel texts, sounds, and images based on relatively minimal initial human input. This art-historical moment, while long predicted by technologists and media theorists, has nevertheless arrived somewhat ahead of schedule. The crisis of authenticity, one of the theoretical hallmarks of what was called postmodern art, thus returns to the stage with new intensity.

The questions posed by these two works are broadly disquieting. What is authorship? How do the geneses of digital and analog works inform their reception? What are the future domains of expression, originality, provenance, and meaning in a globally networked world?

Kim Schoen’s work in video installation, photography, and text engages the rhetoric of display. Her absurdist, experimental approach takes on objects and language that try to persuade or convince us of something, using them as raw materials to say something new.

Kim Schoen (b. Princeton) received her MFA in Photography from CalArts in 2005, and her Mphil from The Royal College of Art in 2008. Her work has been exhibited at LACMA; MMoCA; BAM, Brooklyn, New York; Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, Kleine Humboldt Galerie, Germany; Museo di Arte Contemporanea di Roma; Whitechapel Gallery, South London Gallery, and MOT International, London; The California Museum of Photography, Moskowitz Bayse Gallery, Young Projects and Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles. Her work is included in private and public collections, and has been written about in Artforum, Mousse, Art in America, The Los Angeles Times, and Hotshoe International. Her own writing (‘Cracking Walnuts: Nonsense and Repetition in Video Art’, ’The Serial Attitude Redux', 'The Expansion of the Instant: Photography, Anxiety, Infinity') can be found in X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly. Kim is also the co-founder, publisher and editor of MATERIAL, a journal of writing by artists.

Benjamin Lord’s work explores the poetics of the mediated subject, with a particular regard for the relationship between photography and fiction. Spanning the techniques of printmaking, sculpture, drawing, the artist’s book, and the occasional performance, his work often presents situations in which old and new worldviews intertwine or collide, with harmonious, comic, or tragic results.

Lord began as a painter, studying at the University of Chicago with Vera Klement. He began making large photographic prints after college, in the early days of ubiquitous digital image editing. He received his MFA at UCLA. He has since exhibited his work internationally. His work is in major public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Los Angeles County Museum. He lives and works in Los Angeles.