This is the last week of our exhibition Hanging in the Balance: Ten Emerging Chinese Artists. The Sacramento Bee's Victoria Dalkey described the various works in the show as alternately "hilarious," (Jia Zhixing's photos) "quirky and unsettling," (Chen Wei's drawings--see an example below) or "hypnotically beautiful" (Zhifei Yang's film Day Dreams). Read Dalkey's full review here, and don't miss your chance to see this rare show of international art.
To enhance your experience of the exhibition, you have the opportunity to attend a special lecture this Thursday, March 29 at 7pm. Titled "New Art from New China," the lecture will be given by Katharine Burnett, Associate Professor of Art History at UC Davis.
The show closes this Sunday, April 1st, so be sure to come and visit us this week!
On Saturday, May 28, CCAS is putting on a tour of some of Oakland's artistic hot spots in conjunction with Marianna Stark, author of the San Francisco art blog The Stark Guide. The tour will start with a late morning viewing of the MFA thesis exhibition, Walking Forward Backwards, at Mills College. The group will eat lunch together at Bakesale Betty ($8-15 per person) before continuing on to a special guided tour of the Johannson Projects and the Chandra Cerrito and Krowswork galleries. The tour will finish around 2:30pm, after which a map of the Oakland Art Murmur District will be provided and tour goers will be encouraged to explore on their own.
This event is free to CCAS members. Non-members may join the tour for a price of $35, but if you become a NARM member today you will receive a free copy of the catalog for Gay Outlaw: The Velocity of Ideas (while supplies last).
Space is extremely limited, so register today! Reservations must be made by 5pm on May 24. To sign up, please call 916.498.9811 or email ccasacramento@gmail.com. The full flyer for the event is below, or you can view it full size on our website here. Hope to see you there!
The current exhibition at CCAS is Gay Outlaw: The Velocity of Ideas, a solo show of sculpture and a few small works on paper by San Francisco artist Gay Outlaw. Primarily regarded as a conceptual sculptor with a growing national reputation, Gay Outlaw works as an investigator of physicality, perception, memory, and materials. Her work revolves around combining inherent contradictions: sculptures that seem to be constructed of voids; photographs of false surfaces transformed into solid objects; images of holes, reversed, and cast in bronze and glass.
The show opened on April 5, and on Second Saturday, April 9 CCAS premiered a 30 minute video of a conversation between Outlaw and exhibition curator Chris Daubert. A highlight from the video is up on our YouTube channel and may be viewed below:
Daubert also wrote the catalog for the exhibition, which is available for purchase at CCAS for $14.95 ($9.95 for members). An excerpt from the catalog is available online here.
The show has been the talk of the town recently, with mentions in the Sacramento News & Review, Midtown Monthly, the Sacramento Bee's Friday Ticket, the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau website, Examiner.com and even the Newton Booth Neighborhood Blog. So what are you waiting for? Come and see for yourself what all the fuss is about!
As always the gallery is open 12-5, 6 days a week (Tue-Sun excepting Easter Sunday, the 24th) and the show is up through May 15. The artist will give a lecture ($5 entrance, free for members and students) at 3pm on May 14, and there will be a closing reception that evening from 6-9pm.
SN&R's Shoka described the show as "brain-explodingly good"--you don't want to miss this!
Last Saturday Enid Baxter Blader gave a lecture on her paintings and film currently on view at CCAS. If you missed it, you can download the lecture audio here. Blader started the lecture with a discussion of her paintings. Having started her artistic practice as a child with a passionate love of painting, a discouraging painting fellowship at Yale in her early twenties caused Blader to rethink her artistic identity. At the fellowship there was pressure to use thick paint, whereas Blader has more of an affinity for lots of thin layers and washes. She ended up discovering digital film editing and finding that it "wove things together," allowing her to combine several of her interests--including writing and making music--into one practice. Meanwhile, she "kept painting secretly." This is Blader's first show since she decided to stop showing in commercial galleries, and she expressed relief at the lack of stress when showing at a non-profit space. As for the most frequently asked question in the gallery--what's the deal with the canola oil paint?--Blader explained that she developed an allergy to turpentine early in her painting career and thus prefers to use canola oil paint, which is water soluble. An audience member asked about the connection between her film "THE ORD" and the paintings on display and Blader pointed to the murals she discovered at Fort Ord which were, like her paintings, "constructed to affect mood," as well as the respective "landscapes" of the works. Blader discussed the circumstances surrounding the making of "THE ORD" in detail but you'll have to listen to the full lecture if you want to hear all the juicy details. She was even summoned by the Department of Defense to give a briefing on her work! Suffice to say Blader learned a great deal about the military through this project and she tells lots of great stories related to it. Download the full lecture to hear more technical details about Blader's painting and film techniques, the ten things Blader says she learned at art school, an interesting description of making websites from hand-painted graphics and much more.
The video footage of Gretchen Skogeron's lecture is now up on our YouTube channel. All five parts are below for your viewing pleasure. In his introduction, Youngsuk Suh emphasized the importance of "emptiness" to Skogerson's work, particularly her more recent projects documenting industrial landscapes at night. Then Skogerson took over, starting her lecture with an overview of her earlier work, beginning with her student days. Her first video pieces centered on the body and had some roots in feminism, which Skogerson attributed somewhat to the masculine and tech-based environment she was immersed in as part of the small electronic arts department at a large engineering school. She then described her elaborate thesis installation, which she said made her realize she wanted her work to be simpler. She also spoke about a piece that stemmed from a personal ad she left in the Village Voice and the resulting messages on her answering machine. Another intriguing piece was a collaboration called "Mirror, Mirror" consisting of a mirror that would say "psst!" to passers-by and then, when they leaned in close, it would tell them a secret. The "secrets" were also gleaned from a solicitation in the Village Voice. This brought us to DRIVE-THRU, which came from Skogerson's "being in love with" the nighttime devastated industrialism in Miami. The piece was selected for the Whitney Biennial. For the Whitney's satellite exhibition at the Park Avenue Armory, Skogerson worked with an industrial sign company to recreate five of the signs from her video. Skogerson showed a striking image of the Armory with the signs installed that had been printed in the New York Times. Next Skogerson gave an overview of her residency at Pittsburgh's Mattress Factory and other recent projects, all of which have had something of a focus on light as a material for art-making. Skogerson pointed out that light's potential as a material is easy to ignore because it is so ubiquitous in our lives, but that it can nonetheless be a powerful tool. The lecture concluded with a viewing of Skogerson's latest work, Night Parking, another piece devoted to industrial spaces at night, and a thoughtful question-and-answer session. For all the details and a look at some of the pieces Skogerson discussed, watch the lecture in full below:
Okay, so maybe we are not very good poets but we do know good art! Come visit us during the last weekend of Light Matters, which ends Sunday, February 13, and start your Valentine’s Day early. What better to start kindling all the warmness of Valentine’s than to transport to Paris or any of the other fabulous cities on display in Christina Seely's cityscapes in her Lux seriesphotographs? Don’t have a Valentine’s? That’s okay! Bring a friend instead and discuss the “accidental works of art” captured in Gretchen Skogerson’s work titled, Drive Thru,...or maybe you should just stop by for the love of art!
Hope to see you at CCAS this weekend and be careful of Cupid’s arrows!
