MFA, Otis College of Art and Design
BA (Art History and Visual Arts), Occidental College
Tucker Neel is an artist, writer, curator, and educator living and working in Los Angeles, CA. He holds an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design and a BA in Art History and Visual Arts from Occidental College.
Neel’s work investigates the apparatuses, actions, and contradictions ideology renders invisible for allegiances to congeal and truths to take hold. He is particularly interested in the objects, texts, and rituals that stand in for or alter individual and collective presence and memory. His often project-based, heterogeneous works explore various topics and phenomena, including voicemail services, political campaign ephemera, Youtube concert documentation, internet conspiracy theories, gentrification and boosterism, memorials and monuments, false memories, hook-up apps, souvenir postcards, and museum vitrine design.
He is currently an Associate Professor in the Liberal Arts & Sciences and Illustration departments at Otis College of Art & Design. His pedagogical focus centers on the history of Graphic Design and Illustration, travel study initiatives to Rome, Italy, Senior Studio & Critique, and academic assessment.
- 2020 Teaching Excellence Award for Full-Time Faculty, Otis College of Art & Design
- 2019 Faculty Development Grant, Otis College of Art & Design
- 2016 Faculty Development Grant, Otis College of Art & Design
- 2016 Otis Assessment Research & Scholarship Grant, Otis College of Art & Design
- 2013 Faculty Development Grant, Otis College of Art & Design
- 2013 Otis College of Art & Design Curricular Innovation Grant, Otis College of Art & Design
He has exhibited work in venues such as The MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Commissary Arts, Samuel Freeman, Bonnelli Contemporary, and Control Room, and well as in various site-specific exhibitions and actions in public spaces. As a curator, he has organized exhibitions for CB1 Gallery, the Bolsky Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design, Highways Gallery in Santa Monica, and GATE Projects in Glendale, CA. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, The Los Angeles Times, L.A. City Beat newspaper, The Tennessean, Art Week, The Nashville Scene, and Flavorpill.com. Neel is also the founder and director of 323 Projects, a gallery that exists solely as a voicemail system and website. Audience members visit the gallery by calling a phone number to hear works of art, often engaging in participatory actions by leaving sounds of their own to be gathered and remixed by exhibiting artists, who then create new works. 323 Projects exists to provide a dispersed, peripatetic, and always accessible venue for artists of all kinds who seek to explore issues important to their respective practices. The artists involved with 323 Projects provide, create, or perform works that can be appreciated in bits and pieces, and at more than one time, in both public and private spaces, by an unseen, yet omnipresent, local and international audience. The gallery is currently closed until further notice.
Neel is a contributing editor for Artillery Magazine in Los Angeles, CA. His writings and reviews have also appeared in publications such as X-Tra, ART LIES, Artpulse, Peripheral Vision, and The Los Angeles Alternative Press. He has also written numerous catalog essays for artists like Nancy Baker Cahill, Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia, Martin Durazo, and Hillary Baker.