Ben Maltz Gallery

CURRENTLY ON VIEW

October 1, 2011 - February 26, 2012
Click on the building image below to see the full Doin' It in Public website

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts  |  Henry Luce Foundation  |  
Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Los Angeles  |  Barbara Lee Foundation

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS 

March 17 – April 14, 2012
Globalize THIS! International Graphics of Resistance
Curator: Carol Wells
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 29, 5:30-7:30pm (in conjunction with Purely Observational, see show below)
Press Release (pdf)

Climate change, outsourced jobs, pollution, wars—globalization affects every aspect of life on this planet.  As the crises escalate and resources diminish, activists and artists throughout the world are speaking with a clarity and coherence exceeding that of most politicians. Their message: as our planet shrinks, we'd better all start getting along.

The anti-globalization movement was dramatically announced to the world in the 1990s by two memorable explosions. On January 1, 1994 the international community suddenly became aware of an indigenous guerrilla movement in Chiapas, Mexico—the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). Declaring that "the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is a death sentence for the indigenous peoples of Mexico," the Zapatistas staged their insurrection to coincide with the day NAFTA went into effect.  Five years later, on November 30, 1999, the Battle of Seattle began to protest the World Trade Organization (WTO).  Since then protests have taken place against meetings where the world's most powerful economies have set agenda's for the rest of the world's people.

The images in Globalize THIS! will range from haunting to humorous. Posters on racism, AIDS, nuclear proliferation, child labor, genetically modified food, environmental degradation, and the increasing indebtedness of developing nations offer sobering messages. These posters remind us of the passions and commitment of the protesters and demand our involvement to make a difference. They are reclaiming the power of art to inspire people to action.

Globalize THIS! is organized by Carol Wells, Director of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in partnership with the Otis' Integrated Learning Class Designing the Political led by faculty Guy Bennett and Kerri Steinberg.

   

        

March 17 – April 14, 2012
Purely Observational / Everyday Political: Artwork of and inspired by Corita Kent
Curators: Nancy Jo Haselbacher and One Over One Printmaking
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 29, 5:30-7:30pm
Press Release (pdf)

Corita Kent focused on the importance of love, respect, and dignity for everyone throughout her career as an artist and a teacher. Her style and subject matter shifted with the political climate of the day and her relationship with the church, but this underlying current remained.  This exhibition includes a selection of work that reflects her ethical outlook and her inherent optimism about life. Using Corita Kent's teaching techniques of looking and systematic assignments, the One Over One Printmaking class at Otis College of Art and Design has selected a sampling of Corita's work to present alongside art they have produced in response to Kent's images and to the politics of our everyday lives.
 
One Over One Printmaking was a Communication Arts studio class offered at Otis in Fall 2011 and taught by faculty member and artist Nancy Jo Haselbacher. The student work presented in this exhibition was made by Liesel Plambeck, Andrew Rahn, Meghan Riley and Dan Zins. Thank you to Sasha Carrera, Director, Corita Art Center for making the archive and work available to the students and gallery.

For more information about the archive visit www.corita.org



Harness the Sun, 1967
Image courtesy Corita Art Center

April 28– July 7, 2012
Meticulosity
Curators: Meg Linton and John O'Brien
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 28, 4-6pm
Press Release (pdf)

Meticulosity is a contemporary art exhibition featuring work by a multi-generational group of artists working in a variety of genres ranging from painting to installation and digital/virtual formats. Featured artists include: Tanya Batura, Hilary Brace, Eileen Cowin, Linda Hudson, Gegam Kacherian, Sandeep Mukherjee, Ross Rudel, Linda Stark, Arthur Taussig, Elizabeth Turk, Samira Yamin.

The title Meticulosity references both the technical / formal approach of the artists as well as the spiritual focus of their creative efforts, their tenacity and continuity. The premise for Meticulosity is that these artworks are created in meditative mode or through a trance-like process and that the painstaking kind of exactitude determined by these works on different orders is something these artists want the viewer to perceive along with the conceptual values. We connect that visual meticulousness to a sense of the ineffable, or that which is beyond words, and to the meaning of beauty.

Our interest is in bridging the way in which the conceptual and the visual seem to have diverged. The thoughtfulness (a conceptual dimension) of the geometric underpinnings in a Piero della Francesca painting such as The Flagellation are not in any way contradicted by the meticulously beautiful surfaces he has painted of the scenes of the Flagellation (a purely visual dimension). As curators, our self appointed task was to avoid preclusions on either side of this divide. We are presenting exceptionally thoughtful artwork where the visual acuity is as important as the originating idea to the process of its creation and have selected a variety of genres to underscore the plurality of our point of view for this project.

This project is sponsored in part by the OTIS Board of Governors, and supported in part by the Pasadena Art Alliance

August 18 – October 27, 2012
Alison Saar: STILL . . . 
Curator: Meg Linton
Opening Reception: TBA

This is a solo exhibition of new work by Alison Saar. Saar's sculptures explore the role of women, African-American history, and African religious traditions. Her sculpture uses the history and associations of her materials, everyday experience, African art and practice, Greek mythology, and the stark sculptural tradition of German Expressionism to create work that has a primal intensity that abounds in cultural and historic references, but doesn't depend on them for blunt visual power.

Saar was born in Los Angeles and raised in the Laurel Canyon area. She received her B.A. in studio art and art history in 1978 from Scripps College, Claremont, California and her MFA from Otis-Parsons Institute, now known as Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. Saar has held a number of distinguished artist residencies including Studio Museum, New York,1983; Roswell Museum of Art, New Mexico,1985; Washington Project for the Arts, Washington D.C.,1986;  Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, 2003. Saar has received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1984 and 1988. She was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1989, and the Flintridge Foundation Award for Visual Artists in 2000.

Saar's work is included in numerous public collections, including the High Museum, Atlanta, Georgia; Walker Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Santa Barabra Museum of Art, Ca, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; and in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art where she was included in the 1993 Whitney Biennial. She has done numerous public commissions including: York for Lewis and Clark College a Harriet Tubman Memorial "Swing Low" for the City of New York, Conjure for the California Endowment in Los Angeles, Califia for the Capital East End Complex in Sacramento, Nocturne Navigator for the Columbus Ohio Museum of Art, Monument to the Great Northern Migration in Bronxville, NY. MTA 125th St. Station.

Alison Saar profile and images at LA Louver Gallery http://www.lalouver.com/html/saar_bio.html