This is OCMA Curator Sarah Bancroft's first biennial at the museum, and this time around the show is emphasizing the diversity seen in California art today: installations, conversations, paintings, and even one artist's struggle to change the museum's admissions policy.
David Adey, of San Diego, made an ingenious piece called "Pump," using a pump, tubing, drywall screws, and a football. (CLICK THROUGH TO SEE THE OFFRAMP MOVIE)
Luke Butler's paintings in this year's biennial focuses exclusively on one of the most popular television series in history: Star Trek. And through the show he weaves a complicated quilt that intersects anguish and fear with masculinity and heroism, not to mention the Captain himself, James T Kirk.
Alexandra Grant assesses what she considers the human body's six "portals": sight, sound, touch, smell, taste along with thought. In doing so, she's created six massive paintings full of geometric shapes, backwards word and dense bubbles of information.
A globe-trotting explorer/prostitute who documented her life in photographs inspired Zoe Crosher's project "The Reconsidered Archive of Michelle duBois." She talked about it with Off-Ramp's John Rabe.
Kevin Ferguson talks with David White about his collective Agitprop's contribution to the Biennial: "The Third Party". It aims to start a conversation with normal, every day people about art, politics, and anything else. He was carting around a table with two chairs and a PA, happy to interview any and all willing participants.
Off-Ramp's John Rabe was struggling for words to describe one of Sherin Guirguis's pieces, but Sherin said it herself: it's like a cross between an earring and a Weeble.
If anyone ever deserved the title "painter of light", its Berkley painter John Zurier: his work in this year's biennial practically consume the viewer with a massive expansive of sky blues and cloudy whites. He talks about how, in his paintings, he both tries to transport viewers to far off places and make them think about about the story behind his surreal, ethereal landscapes.
He wasn't being difficult. Vishal Jugdeo, who hails from Regina, but lives in LA, doesn't believe in over-interpreting his work for the viewer. "Too early," he told Off-Ramp's John Rabe of the installation at OCMA that he'd only completed Thursday.
Patrick Wilson is a Los Angeles resident with a penchant for the kind of beauty you can't find in a sunset or a tree. He paints geometric shapes, mostly squares and rectangles and layers them densely on top one another. It's too polished to be your typical hard edge abstract paintings, and has too much going on to recall the finish fetish movement of the 1960's.
Alexander Israel (who you might know for his LA themed line of designer sunglasses) doesn't necessarily create anything new with his art. His museum pieces consist entirely of props rented from movie studios: ephemeral installations of borrowed random items, juxtaposed to tell a new story.
In this interview with Taravat Talepasand, Off-Ramp's John Rabe learns that breast enhancement surgery is readily available in Iran. It seems a small and possibly "Beavis and Buttheady" point, but it says a lot about the contradictions the artist finds in the world. BONUS: on December 16, OCMA will screen "Pearls on the Ocean Floor" a documentary by Robert Adanto. It includes interviews with Taravat Talepasand along with other female Iranian artists. Click through for a clip from Adanto's documentary!
It's not for Halloween! Artist Brian Dick and his partner Christen Sperry-Garcia initiated a nationwide campaign to create mascots for every museum in the nation. They've gone to Brooklyn, San Diego, and even crashed LACMA. It's all in hopes to bring in more and more visitors to museums around the country.
It's a simple thing. A plastic tent covering a pair of slippers duct-taped to the ground. To Zlatan Vukosavljevic, it's about de-cultifying art. He explained it all to KPC's John Rabe.
Violet Hopkins paints uneasy things: surreal underground landscapes with mysterious fleshy forms in the middle, massive volcano eruptions scaled down to the size of an iPod. And despite all that, she's one of the most friendly and approachable artists in the show.
This movie (CLICK THROUGH TO SEE) eyes detail from Lisa Williamson's "Shelf Painting/A Model Situation has Five Parts." Acrylic on linen, wood, and miscellaneous objects, courtesy of the artist and Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago.
Last year, Off-Ramp correspondent Jackson Musker explored hidden private beaches in Malibu with the Off-Ramp Urban Rangers. This year, they're a featured artist in the 2010 California Biennial. Here, again, is Jackson's trip to the beach!
