2016

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

BCAM, Level 3

October 30, 2016 – April 2, 2017

www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/la-exuberance-new-gifts-artists

Since LACMA’s establishment, living artists have played an instrumental role in understanding the museum’s encyclopedic collection through a contemporary lens. L.A. Exuberance: New Gifts by Artists features a selection of works given to the museum for its 50th anniversary, as part of an unprecedented campaign led by artist Catherine Opie. Featuring over sixty gifts, the exhibition includes additions to the collection by Edgar Arceneaux, John Baldessari, Uta Barth, Larry Bell, Tacita Dean, Sam Durant, Shannon Ebner, Charles Gaines, Ken Gonzales-Day, Alexandra Grant, Glenn Kaino, Friedrich Kunath, Sterling Ruby, Analia Saban, James Welling, Mario Ybarra Jr., and Brenna Youngblood. This exhibition marks the culmination of LACMA’s 50th anniversary year, one that began with historic gifts to the museum represented in 50 for 50: Gifts on the Occasion of LACMA’s Anniversary.

I was born to love not to hate (5), 2014, mixed media on paper backed with fabric, 116” x 72”. Permanent collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

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TAKING LENA HOME
Screening and discussion
August 16, 2016, at 7pm
Film Streams, Omaha, NE
www.filmstreams.org/film/taking-lena-home/

On Tuesday, August 16, 2016, at 7 pm, Film Streams, Omaha Public Library, and the Greater Omaha Genealogical Society will present a special screening of the documentary TAKING LENA HOME at the Ruth Sokolof Theater, 1340 Mike Fahey Street, followed by a post-show discussion featuring the film’s director, Alexandra Grant.

In 2000, Los Angeles-based artist Alexandra Grant came across a curious object in a Wyoming junk shop: the tombstone of Lena Davis, a baby girl who died in 1880. Inexplicably drawn to the stone, she took it home, where it sat in her studio. Years later, she began a quest to discover the origins of the headstone, a mission that led her all the way to Polk, Nebraska, and an adventure in first-time filmmaking. TAKING LENA HOME documents the marker’s return to its rightful place, as well as Grant’s journey from owner of the stone to its caretaker.

After the movie, Film Streams Deputy Director Casey Logan will moderate a panel discussion with Grant; Cindy Drake, Nebraska History Library Curator and Statewide Cemetery Registry Coordinator, Nebraska State Historical Society; and Julie Middendorf, a genealogy enthusiast who solved the mystery of Lena’s provenance.

For more information: www.facebook.com/TakingLenaHome/

TAKING LENA HOME trailer:

Tickets for this special screening at Film Streams’ Ruth Sokolof Theater are $9 general; $7 for students, seniors, teachers, military, and those arriving by bicycle; and $4.50 for Film Streams Members. Advance tickets can be purchased at http://bit.ly/29VrQst or through the Film Streams Box Office, in person or at 402-933-0259 x15.  For more information, questions or requests, please contact Patrick Kinney at (402) 933-0259 x 11 or [email protected].

The screening and discussion are part of Film Streams’ Community Development Program, which facilitates partnerships with other nonprofits and community groups on film-related events that speak to their missions and programming.

Film Streams is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to enhancing the cultural environment of the Omaha-Council Bluffs area through the presentation and discussion of film as an art form. For more information, visit www.filmstreams.org.

Omaha Public Library strengthens Omaha communities by connecting people with ideas, information, and innovative services. For more information, visit http://omahalibrary.org/.

The Greater Omaha Genealogical Society is a non-profit organization whose purpose is (1) to unite those persons interested in the pursuit and study of genealogy and family history; (2) to encourage the preservation of public and private records; and (3) to promote programs of education which support the growth and development of these fields. For more information, visit https://gogsmembers.wordpress.com.

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new grantLOVE x RISK collaboration

Sur Le Mur art is happy to present a new, limited edition HPM print collaboration between the Los Angeles artists Alexandra Grant and RISK. Each of the 15 unique pieces is screen-printed and spray-painted on paper, 30 x 24″.

Kelly Graval, the graffiti artist and illustrator known as RISK, has been a central figure in the Los Angeles street art community for decades. With a career spanning 30 years, RISK pioneered the painting of freeway overpasses, signs and billboards, dubbed “heavens.” From his days as a student at the USC School of Fine Arts to gallery and museum exhibitions around the world, RISK is a legend in the graffiti world and a rising star in the contemporary art world. www.riskrock.com

The grantLOVE symbol is Grant’s trademarked brand for philanthropy in the arts. The grantLOVE project is an artist-driven philanthropic project that produces and sells original artworks and editions to benefit artist projects, arts non-profits and art education. www.grantlove.com

A percentage of the profits from the sale of this work goes to benefit The Union for Contemporary Art in Omaha, NE. The Union for Contemporary Art is committed to strengthening the creative culture of the greater Omaha area by providing direct support to local artists and increasing the visibility of contemporary art forms in their community. In every endeavor, we strive to unite artists and the community to inspire positive social change in North Omaha. The organization was founded on the belief that the arts can be a vehicle for social justice and greater civic engagement; we strive to utilize the arts as a bridge to connect our diverse community in innovative and meaningful ways. www.u-ca.org

For more information and to purchase, please contact Megan Phillips: [email protected] or 310.429.0953.

www.surlemur.com/main

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SHADOWS

Ochi Gallery

119 Lewis Street
Ketchum, ID 83340

July 2 – August 6, 2016

Opening reception: July 7, 4-7pm

http://www.ochigallery.com/alexandra-grant-shadows/

Ochi Gallery is pleased to present Shadows, an exhibition in our project space of photographic works by Alexandra Grant. The work will be on view July 7th through August 6th with an opening reception Thursday, July 7th from 4-7 pm.

For this series Grant collaborated with actor and writer Keanu Reeves, The Lapis Press and Steidl Publishing to produce a striking collection of images that explore the concept of the shadow. Through a series of dramatic photographs, Grant captures Reeves’ silhouette in a sequence of movements where his figure often blurs beyond the point of recognition, causing the final images to border on abstraction. After the shoots with Reeves, Grant manipulated the images to invert the images black for white, making the shadow itself the source of light. Despite their mysterious and elegant qualities, the images are narrative and figurative, supported by Reeves’s poetic texts in the titles and accompanying book. Hauntingly beautiful, the images are also playful, allowing the viewer to sense the intimacy and exchange in the collaborative relationship between subject and artist.

Printed at a large scale on velour paper at Steidl Publishing in Germany, the photos possess a remarkable surface. Also published by Steidl is a book of Grant’s photos accompanied by texts written by Reeves. Additionally, The Lapis Press produced a suite of smaller scale, limited edition color prints.

Press:

“Only a Shadow,” Big Life Magazine http://www.biglifemag.com/only-a-shadow/

Image: Shadow (2), after Keanu Reeves’s “I can’t say all I wish to say,” 2016. Acrylic pigment printed on Arches velour paper rough, 60” x 40”. Edition of 2 with 1 AP. Printed in Germany by Gerhard Steidl.

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ghost town is a participatory drawing project that will take place during the 20 Bienal de Arte Paiz in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Curated by Alma Ruiz, the Bienal, called “The Ordinary/Extraordinary: The Democratization of Art or the Will to Change Things” features artists from Guatemala and abroad such as Carlos-Cruz Diez, Magdalena Fernández, Alejandra González Escamilla, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Kimsooja, and Lawrence Weiner.

As part of the 40th year of the Bienal de Arte Paiz, Alexandra Grant’s ghost town will be an invitation to the public to join the artist in illustrating a series of poems by the Guatemalan writer Vania Vargas. For the purposes of this collaboration, Vargas created an anthology titled  “Cartografía de un pueblo fantasma” (“Cartography of a Ghost Town”), that maps out memories, real and fictive, across the urban landscape of Guatemala City. For ghost town Grant will use Vargas’s “Cartografía” as a linguistic plan or guide to create a collaborative drawing over 90 feet in length over a period of 17 days. The main theme of “Cartografía” is love—familial and romantic, lost and found—across a solitary or various subjects’s lifetime. At it’s essence ghost town is a collective memory mapping project, with “ghosts” familiar to those who live in Guatemala City, are fans of Vargas’s poetry, or have experienced heart-ache or break. Both ghost town and the text that informs it are democratic in their invitation to explore and co-create a shared imaginary landscape.

The hospitality and the communal dream of ghost town are informed by Grant’s work with the French philosopher and writer Hélène Cixous. In 2013, Grant collaborated with Cixous to complete a twinned-city drawing project in Los Angeles and Paris called “Forêt Intérieure/Interior Forest” based on Cixous’s book “Philippines.”

If you or your group would like to participate in ghost town, please email: [email protected]

Please join our community on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ghosttownpueblofantasma/

Dates for the 20 Bienal de Arte Paiz and ghost town

The 20 Bienal de Arte Paiz will take place from June 2nd to July 3rd in the historical center of Guatemala City. The public will be invited to join Alexandra Grant in illustrating ghost town beginning May 25th, with a separate celebration for all participants on June 10th.

About Vania Vargas

Vania Vargas is a Guatemalan writer and poet, born in Quetzaltenango in 1978. After receiving her university degree in literature at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, she worked as a journalist in both Quetzaltenango and Guatemala City. Her published works of poetry include “Cuentos infantiles” (“Children Stories”) y “Quizás ese día tampoco sea hoy”  (“Perhaps today isn’t that day either”) published in 2010 by Catafixia editorial and Editorial Cultura respectively. She also wrote “El futuro empezó ayer: apuesta por las nuevas escrituras de Guatemala” (“The Future Started Yesterday: Betting on New Writings from Guatemala”) with Catafixia editorial and UNESCO in 2012. Her most recent work in poetry “Señas particulares y cicatrices” (Particular signs and scars”) was released by Catafixia editorial in 2015. Her collection “Cartografía de un pueblo fantasma” (“Cartography of a Ghost Town”) is a collection from three of her books of poetry and put together in 2015 for her collaboration with Alexandra Grant in the project ghost town. Vargas published a book of short stories in 2016 called “Después del fin” (After the end) published by Ediciones del Pensativo.

About Alma Ruiz

Alma Ruiz is Senior Fellow in the Center for Management in the Creative Industries, Latin
American Specialist, Sotheby’s Institute of Art and Claremont Graduate University. She holds a
B.A. degree in Art History from the University of Southern California and a M.A. in Italian
Literature and Language at Middlebury College in Vermont and the University of Florence in
Italy. A former Senior Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, Ruiz
has curated numerous exhibitions focusing on the postwar period in the United States, Italy, and
Latin America with artists such as Alighiero Boetti, Mauricio Cattelan, Lygia Clark, Magdalena
Fernández, Carlos Garaicoa, Gego, Kcho, Ernesto Neto, Marco Maggi, Ana Mendieta, Piero
Manzoni, Hélio Oiticica, Gabriel Orozco, Damián Ortega, Rosângela Renno, Mira Schendel, and
Francesco Vezzoli. In addition to having served as a guest curator at La Fundación/Colección
Jumex, Mexico City; the Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; the Art Museum of the Americas,
Washington, D.C., the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, and Fundación Telefónica,
Buenos Aires, she has acted as a juror for numerous biennials in Latin America, including the V
Panama Biennial, the Tamayo Biennial in Mexico City, and the Second Exhibition of Central
American Emerging Artists in San Jose, Costa Rica. Ruiz has also been a panelist for The Paul
& Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, Creative Capital Foundation in New York, and the
U.S. Fund for Culture in Mexico City, and is a member of the Advisory Committee for the
Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation in Miami.

About the 20th Paiz Bienal — The Ordinary/Extraordinary: The Democratization of Art or the Will to Change Things

The 20 Bienal de Arte Paiz celebrates 40 years of supporting the Guatemalan visual arts by the Fundación Paiz for Art and Culture. The twentieth edition aspires to greater inclusiveness by bringing the public closer to contemporary art, through the promotion of a simple and direct dialogue as a first step for a better understanding of the art of our time. In the historic center of Guatemala City, the Bienal de Arte Paiz will endeavor to close the gap that exists between the public and the work of art through participatory works and other works inspired by the idea of art and life. Created by national and international artists, the works of art included span from the sixties to the present and explore the notion of the everyday through various themes: Object: Deconstructions, Obsessions, and the Exercise of Collecting; Observation of Space and Place; Individual and Social Identity; Politics and Activism; and the Everyday Unconscious.