Through the end of May there are some great shows in the West and Duff galleries on the campus of Cal State University Fullerton. The calendar of shows and some information about the artists is listed at...
Spring Into the Fire
There have been some amazing shows so far. Check out some of the press and blog pages on the SITF website. Barbara Milliron started the season off with Traces of Consciousness and her collaborative project, Life of an Artist. Jennifer Frias, artist, curator and collaborator followed with an evening of installations and performances in addition to a conceptual group project/installation. Tiffany Ma , Devora Orantes and Julianna Rico each installed strong shows in the West gallery.
Tiffany transformed the gallery into a miniature landscape which applied the metaphor of a dollhouse or dream home to describe the compartments into which memories, feelings, dreams and aspirations might be housed. After walking into a darkened gallery the viewer was invited to peer into windows, doors and small openings in a house which floated in the center of the space. Tiffany's sculptures, small scale installations and fantastical interior spaces were revealed as one circled the "home"... bending to look into low windows and standing on tiptoe to look into the upper levels of the dreamscape.
Devora Orantes presented a series of strangely intense and unnerving drawings which invited contemplation while completely eluding understanding. Evoking landscape and figure traditions these large scale wall works employ a vigorously marked surface and complex layering to suggest states of mind, the fragility of memory and the fragmentation of experience. There is trauma and perhaps injury, isolation and longing in the fog of these subtle images. The title of her show, Tectonic, led me to feel that what was felt were not just personal, daily oversights and cloudy memories of unforgiven bruises, but cataclysmic, global collisions which lurk deep in the unconscious or hang perilously in the future.
Spring Into the Fire
There have been some amazing shows so far. Check out some of the press and blog pages on the SITF website. Barbara Milliron started the season off with Traces of Consciousness and her collaborative project, Life of an Artist. Jennifer Frias, artist, curator and collaborator followed with an evening of installations and performances in addition to a conceptual group project/installation. Tiffany Ma , Devora Orantes and Julianna Rico each installed strong shows in the West gallery.
Tiffany transformed the gallery into a miniature landscape which applied the metaphor of a dollhouse or dream home to describe the compartments into which memories, feelings, dreams and aspirations might be housed. After walking into a darkened gallery the viewer was invited to peer into windows, doors and small openings in a house which floated in the center of the space. Tiffany's sculptures, small scale installations and fantastical interior spaces were revealed as one circled the "home"... bending to look into low windows and standing on tiptoe to look into the upper levels of the dreamscape.
Devora Orantes presented a series of strangely intense and unnerving drawings which invited contemplation while completely eluding understanding. Evoking landscape and figure traditions these large scale wall works employ a vigorously marked surface and complex layering to suggest states of mind, the fragility of memory and the fragmentation of experience. There is trauma and perhaps injury, isolation and longing in the fog of these subtle images. The title of her show, Tectonic, led me to feel that what was felt were not just personal, daily oversights and cloudy memories of unforgiven bruises, but cataclysmic, global collisions which lurk deep in the unconscious or hang perilously in the future.
Juliana RIco installed a contrasting exploration of trauma through the documentation of the state of mind brought on by insomnia and consciousness without relief. The act of keeping your eyes open, remaining fixed and alert, while the world sleeps, piles up through Rico's images and video... slowly investing the space with a similarly keyed up level of seeing. In her work she looks into the mirror, literally, and engages the face who looks back in a fierce interrogation; "Why are we not sleeping? What is on that mind? Who are we trying to reach? What are we going to do?" Unlike documentation which uses repetition and the tools of scientific presentation to establish a safe distance, Juliana hangs the camera around her neck, the albatross of the photographer, over her heart. In particular her video offers a high definition diary of sleeplessness which puts the viewer just outside of her head as she does chores, studies, tries to relax and watches the sun come up... again. As opposed to the soft focus of dream memory, this clarity feels like the jittery, early morning vision of an artist. Her attention to detail is matched by the tools she selects and every hair is in focus. This is not the memory of a bad night. It is a beautiful and achingly sharp evocation of awareness and attention themselves.