Episode 3: Connecting the Dots

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Ken Gonzales-Day: Profiled, Dorit Cypis: A Symmetry
Las Cienegas Projects
March 5, 2011

Episode 3, Connecting the Dots, documents two solo exhibitions held at Las Cienegas Projects during the month of March: Ken Gonzales-Day’s Profiled and Dorit Cypis’ A Symmetry. Both artists rely heavily upon the photograph to capture evidence of their contentions. Moreover, the photographs are arranged in such a way as to reflect upon each other in order for the viewer to form comparisions and conjectures about their relationships within a wide sociohistorical context. Gonzales-Day intermingles collections of 19^th and early 20^th century photographs of same-same sex couples with his own large-scale photographs of historic sculptures offering a timely response to debates about same-sex unions and reflects upon the idealization of whiteness, the emergence of racial typologies, and the latent sensuality found in so many museum collections. Cypis explores the psycho-physical-social aspects of history, knowledge, and experience by presenting a time line of photographs charting when seven objects, chosen form the artists’s personal archive, were created, sighted, and/or obtained. The stories behind these objects confound their linear indexing suggesting a labyrinthine path of personal, historical, and political dimensions. The objects include a letter by Lord Byron, a letter from King George V, a Weeping Beech tree in Hyde Park, London, a silver box engraved with Arabic text, pre-biblical urns and vessels, post enlightenment European porcelain, and a tree in Yosemite National Park.

In the same way that Gonzales-Day and Cypis are bridging links between photographic documents of the past by revealing new relationships between objects that were not necessarily apparent when regarded individually, Connecting the Dots hopes to serve as another insight for artists to learn from the past experiences and knowledge of these successfully, emerged artists by finding correlations between their own lives, interests, and practices.

The episode features interviews with Ken Gonzales-Day, Dorit Cypis and Amy Thoner, co-director and co-founder of Las Cienegas Projects.

Ken Gonzales-Day lives and works in Los Angeles. His interdisciplinary and conceptually grounded projects consider the history of photography, the construction of race, and the history of representational systems ranging from the lynching photograph to museum display. He received an MFA from UC Irvine, MA from Hunter College (C.U.N.Y), and was a fellow at the Whitney Museum’s ISP program.  He has shown extensively both nationally and internationally.

Select solo exhibitions include UCSD Art Gallery, San Diego; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles; LAXART, Los Angeles; CUE Art Foundation, NYC; Susanne Vielmetter Projects, Los Angeles; Deep River, Los Angeles; and White Columns White Room, NYC.  Select group exhibitions include How Many Billboards, MAK Center, West Hollywood; Phantom Sightings, LACMA, Los Angeles; Encuentro Hemispherico, Bogota; Under Erasure, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin; Under Pain of Death, Austrian Cultural Forum, NYC; ArtMediaPolitique, DIX291, Paris; Crimes of Omission,ICA Philadelphia; Exile of the Imaginary: Aesthetics, Politics, Love, Generali Foundation, Vienna; Civil Restitutions, Thomas Dane Gallery, London; Log Cabin, Artists Space, NYC; Made in California, LACMA, Los Angeles, among others.

www.kengonzalesday.com

Dorit Cypis has used performative strategies, photography, and social sculpture to explore identity as psychophysical and political since the 1980’s. Her work has been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, International Center of Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Orange County Museum, Walker Art Center, Musee d’Art Contemporain/Montreal, Musee desBeaux Arts/Bruxelles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Orange County Museum of Art, in addition to international galleries and artist spaces. Cypis has taught on the topics of identity, representation, social relations, and conflict transformation at universities and colleges across the USA as well as in Canada, Holland, France, Switzerland, and Israel.  She is currently teaching at Otis Center for Art and Design.

Cypis has designed and directed public programs including Kulture Klub Collaborative, Minneapolis, 1992-1998, (artists working with homeless youth to develop their capacity for creative expression) and Foundation for Art Resources, FAR, Los Angeles, 1979-1982, (assisting artists to work collectively and to situate art in the public domain). She earned an MFA (1977) from Californian Institute of the Arts, and after completing a Masters of Dispute Resolution (2005), Cypis founded and currently directs Foreign Exchanges, developing tools of engagement across personal and cultural differences.

Cypis has received numerous awards and fellowships, i.e. National Endowment for the Arts, Japan Foundation, Bush, McKnight, Jerome, Ordway and Durfee Foundations, City of Los Angeles Cultural Arts, and Fellows of Contemporary Art.  She is Chair of the Middle East Initiative, Mediators Beyond Borders.

www.doritcypis.com

Las Cienegas Projects is an artist-run curatorial project and gallery space focusing on large-scale, collaborative and project-based artworks by emerging and established artists both local and international.

Las Cienegas Projects is co-founded and directed by Amy Thoner and Steven Hull.

www.lascienegasprojects.org

Episode 2: Reviving Ambitions

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Back to the Future, Think Tank Gallery
March 11, 2011

The second episode, Reviving Ambitions, documents the group exhibition Back to the Future held at Think Tank Gallery. The exhibition featured paintings by a varied selection of artists from across the greater Los Angeles area: Theodora Allen, Beatrice Poon, Abel Gutierrez, John Kilduff, Antone Könst, Ryan McGuffin, and Tomas Mickiewicz Seidita. It aimed to present painting as a viable, critical medium who’s constant struggle with the notion of “painting is dead” still pertains to the contemporary art world more so than ever before, yet it, nevertheless, lives on. The show sought to create a cohesive forum for a new dialogue between emerging contemporary painters.

A few months ago, curators Seidita and McGuffin, who recently graduated from Cal Arts, decided they wanted to put on a studio exhibition devoted entirely to painting’s constant struggle as a medium in a post-medium epoch. Similar in their attempt to revitalize the medium, both practicing artists had moments of falling out and later resumption within their own art practice: Seidita took a long break from painting while enrolled at Cal Arts and McGuffin nearly stopped making art altogether but was fortunately impelled to attend Otis by his generous parents. Likewise, Reviving Ambitions, embodies the perpetual struggle of self-perserverance within all art practices especially pivotal following graduation. Furthermore, Seidita and McGuffin serve as exemplars of those pioneer artists who create opportunities for themselves using that which is at their disposal.

The episode features interviews with John Kilduff, Ryan McGuffin, and Tomas Mickiewicz Seidita.

John Kilduff: Originally Let’s Paint TV began as a Los Angeles cable access tv show in 2001. Where Kilduff hosted and produced hundreds of shows. In 2006, Kilduff began to upload these videos to youtube where Kilduff became an internet celebrity. Soon, Kilduff performed live on Tyra, VH1′s Big in 06′, and America’s Got Talent Season #2. Clips ofw Let’s Paint TV have appeared on multiple tv programs as well. Kilduff now does his show daily M-F on the internet and performs live at various venues around the world. Kilduff received his MFA in Painting at UCLA in 2008.

www.letspainttv.com

Ryan McGuffin is a Los Angeles based artist, whose work attempts to investigate the dishonesty of the image. Ryan uses a wide variety of distortions in his imagery as a tool in blurring the narrative to create a sense of removal from the image. Interested in the lack of truth he sees in nostalgia, he chooses painting as a medium to remove even further the image from the idea of reflection on photography, or more specifically the photograph. Ryan’s curatorial work displays a serious investment in addressing the problems associated with the painting and the painter in the contemporary art world. Ryan received his BFA from California Institute of the arts in 2010.

www.ryanmcguffin.com

Tomas Mickiewicz Seidita is a Los Angeles based artist whose work seeks to negotiate the fundamental nature of that which defines “the American,” often resulting in an experience as politically charged as is the cultural landscape of 21st century America. Regularly utilizing appropriation as a means by which to investigate this essential quality, or essential qualities, his work has engaged a variety of sources, from American history, cinema, and of course news media. Political art often attempts, in the general tradition of agit-prop, to offer some kind of solution—presenting an answer as opposed to asking a question. In essence, the result is a complex issue rendered down to that which is readily digestible, a product that is simple rather than intelligible, obvious rather than accessible; something that is at its core easy. Tomas’ work attempts to subvert this standard, to place the responsibility of generating a concrete meaning completely in the hands of the audience, to let them answer those questions of their own accord and to face a complex political issue in a moderately complex way. Tomas received a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2010.

www.tomasseidita.com

Think Tank Gallery is a studio building in downtown Los Angeles. Back to the Future was the first exhibition to be held there.