Bruce Nauman, Violins Violence Silence, 1981-82, Neon tubing with clear glass tubing suspension frame, Camille O. Hoffmann Collection, Chicago.
ELUSIVE SIGNS: BRUCE NAUMAN WORKS WITH LIGHT
MCASD LA JOLLA
MAY 25, 2008 THROUGH SEPTEMBER 1, 2008
Bruce Nauman has been recognized since the early 1970s as one of the United States’ most innovative and provocative contemporary artists. Although Nauman works in diverse media, Elusive Signs: Bruce Nauman Works with Light focuses solely on the artist’s experimentation with light. Consisting of approximately 15 works, the exhibition explores Nauman’s early neon pieces that confront issues of identity; works from the 1970s that emphasize neon as a sign and present provocative twists of language; and his most recent figurative neon works. Working in his first professional studio, the neon beer signs in the shop fronts of his San Francisco neighborhood intrigued Nauman, who became determined to subvert the commercial purpose of the advertisements. He was acutely aware of the confrontational potential of neon when exhibited in a museum or gallery and offered harsh and humorous socio-political commentary in his work, acknowledging the great power of images to convey ideas.
Elusive Signs: Bruce Nauman Works with Light is organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum, curated by Chief Curator, Joseph D. Kettner II. The exhibition is sponsored by Andy and Carlene Ziegler.
The San Diego presentation is made possible by the Sheryl and Harvey White Foundation. Additional support comes from the LLWW Foundation and gifts to MCASD's Annual Fund.
Artist Xu Bing during his residency in Mount Kenya National Park. Courtesy of the artist.
HUMAN/NATURE: ARTISTS RESPOND TO A CHANGING PLANET
MCASD DOWNTOWN, JACOBS BUILDING AND 1001 KETTNER
AUGUST 17, 2008 THROUGH FEBRUARY 1, 2009
Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet is a pioneering artist residency and collaborative exhibition project that, for the first time on this scale, uses contemporary art to investigate the relationships between fragile natural environments and the human communities that depend upon them. This collaborative multi-year exhibition project sent eight leading artists to eight UNESCO World Heritage sites around the globe to create new work informed and inspired by their experiences in these diverse cultural and natural regions.
Organized by MCASD and the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA), in partnership with the international conservation organization Rare, the exhibition features new commissioned works by Mark Dion, Ann Hamilton, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Marcos Ramírez ERRE, Rigo 23, Dario Robleto, Diana Thater and Xu Bing created in response to their travels to these threatened sites. Human/Nature will also be on view at BAM/PFA from February 25 through June 28, 2009.
Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet is co-organized by the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, in partnership with the international conservation organization Rare. The exhibition is supported by The Christensen Fund; the Columbia Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; the Nimoy Foundation; the East Bay Community Foundation; the Baum Foundation; the Rotasa Foundation; and individual donors. The project's Web site is made possible through the efforts of the Studio for Social Sculpture and the Annenberg Foundation. Dwell Magazine is the exhibition's official media sponsor.
The San Diego presentation is made possible by generous gifts from Mary Keough Lyman and Patsy and David Marino. Additional support comes from the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, the County of San Diego, the James Irvine Foundation, and Sempra Energy.
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Memory is Your Image of Perfection), 1982, photograph, Museum purchase with proceeds from Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego Art Auction 2002, International and Contemporary Collectors Funds, and funds from Nancy B. Tieken.
Memory is your image of perfection
MCASD DOWNTOWN, 1001 KETTNER
AUGUST 3, 2008 THROUGH NOVEMBER 30, 2008
This exhibition takes its title from a black-and-white photograph by Barbara Kruger that juxtaposes text and image to call attention to the part played by memory in creating each of our realities. Photography and video are considered means of recording the past and documenting memories. Yet, memories are also constructions that respond to present desires and needs, and as such reflect individual subjectivity.
Memory Is Your Image of Perfection presents the work of women artists who, motivated by a feminist disregard for adherence to established models, have exploited the ambiguity of the photographic medium as evidence of a real event or as expression of an individual viewpoint. Works by Eleanor Antin, Uta Barth, Andrea Bowers, Suzanne Lacy, Sharon Lockhart, Ana Machado, and Yvonne Venegas, among others, span the gamut of approaches from straight documentary photography to pieces that record conceptual performances; video and photography that manipulate the physical characteristics of the medium to imply the personal and subjective; and finally to works that apply formal and narrative strategies from mass media, drawing, and painting, and transpose those into photographic forms.
The interpretive elements of the exhibition are sponsored, in part, by The Getty Foundation.
Skeet McAuley, Maderas Golf Club, 1st Green, Poway, CA, 2000, Fujichrome print, edition 1 of 5, Museum purchase, Elizabeth W. Russell Foundation Fund.
SELECTIONS FROM SKEET MCAULEY: THE GARDEN OF GOLF
MCASD LA JOLLA
APRIL 11, 2008 THROUGH AUGUST 31, 2008
Skeet McAuley: The Garden of Golf was originally shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in 2001. Selections from the exhibition showcase six large-scale photographs, now in the Museum’s collection, of golf course landscapes in the San Diego region. Between the summer of 2000 and the spring of 2001, Los Angeles-based artist Skeet McAuley traveled throughout San Diego County visiting and photographing more than a dozen golf courses, from the most dramatic mountain and desert fairways to rocky greens by the sea.
Throughout his career, McAuley has used photography as a means to study the relationship between today’s consumer-driven culture and the natural environment. By photographing the courses in the early morning and at sunset, McAuley took advantage of the dramatic lighting and atmosphere to study these unique landscapes that are at once natural and man-made. The enormous, color-saturated images document how the courses are designed, watered, and cared for to satisfy the needs of the game of golf and create an idealized concept of nature.
NANCY RUBINS, PLEASURE POINT, 2006, stainless steel and boats, museum purchase, international and contemporary collectors funds. PHOTOgraphy by PABLO MASON.
NANCY RUBINS: PLEASURE POINT
MCASD LA JOLLA
ONGOING
MCASD commissioned Los Angeles-based sculptor Nancy Rubins to create a permanent, large-scale work on the west side of the MCASD La Jolla facility, and the site-specific sculpture's installation was completed in January 2006. Overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Pleasure Point is an accumulation of rowboats, canoes, jet skis, and surfboards. Attached to the roof of the Museum and cantilevered above the heads of viewers, Rubins' gravity-defying sculpture is held together under tension through welds and wire.
ERIKA ROTHENBERG: MONUMENT TO A BEAR, 2003, GLASS REINFORCED CONCRETE OVER STEEL, BRONZE PLAQUE, COLLECTION MCASD. photography by pablo mason.
GARDEN GALLERY
MCASD LA JOLLA
ONGOING
The Garden Gallery features newly acquired and commissioned pieces by artists Erika Rothenberg and Marcos Ramirez ERRE. MCASD also commissioned Allison Wiese to create a site-specific sound installation, Vamp. A graduate of UCSD and the prestigious Core Fellowship program at the Museum of Fine Art in Houston, Wiese creates works across a broad range of media. Her work is generally site-specific, often transforming everyday items into performative experiences. In the spirit of John Cage, Wiese has developed a solar-powered theremin that can be played by Museum visitors, the ocean breeze, or passing seagulls. With Vamp, she has created a deliberately low-tech and low-maintenance sound installation that related to the specificity of the Museum’s location on the Pacific Ocean and the beautiful artificiality of the garden landscape.
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
T 858 454 3541 / F 858 454 6985 / info@mcasd.org
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