Larry Bell, Bill and Coo at MOCA’s Nest (2019)

“MOCA presents an outdoor installation by Los Angeles-based artist Larry Bell. Commissioned specifically for the Sculpture Plaza at MOCA Grand Avenue, Bill and Coo at MOCA’s Nest is a signature, space-defining work, at once creating a public art space while also echoing and highlighting the geometric forms that comprise the museum’s Pritzker Prize winning Arata Isozaki-designed building. This installation was generously gifted by MOCA Trustee Carol Appel, who has served on the board for four years, and her husband David Appel.

Bill and Coo at MOCA’s Nest extends Bell’s decades of experimentation with glass. With this work, the pioneering artist long associated with California’s Light and Space movement juxtaposes luminous reds in various saturations, the shades of which are lyrically called habanero, cerise, hibiscus, and carmine. The title refers to the protagonists of 1948’s Bill and Coo, a peculiar and delightful film whose cast is made up entirely of trained birds. The names of the film’s titular lovebirds were in turn drawn from an old-fashioned way to refer to the flirtations of young lovers: within the space of the Sculpture Plaza, a concave hollow defined by the surrounding forms of Isozaki’s architecture, the pair “bill and coo” while nestled in their home in the nest.

This sculpture is the seventh work by Bell to enter the museum’s permanent collection, underscoring MOCA’s commitment to collecting Los Angeles-based artists in depth and joining a rich array of works in MOCA’s collection by other artists associated with the Light and Space movement such as Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, and James Turrell. MOCA’s holdings by Bell include sculptures, drawings, and mixed media works, but Bill and Coo at MOCA’s Nest is the first commissioned work by the artist to enter the collection, and the largest and most significant of his work within the collection.”

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

“The Venet Foundation is the culmination of more than fifty years of artistic creation and Bernar Venet’s encounters with an impressive roster of other major artists, who have become his friends, which has led to an extensive collection that is emblematic of minimal and conceptual art. Created in 2014, the Venet Foundation aims to conserve its collection, and to ensure that Bernar Venet’s work is presented in an ideal setting.

The Venet Foundation loans artwork to other cultural institutions around the world, providing access to a larger audience, and hosts annual exhibitions of works by other artists.” – per webiste

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

“VICTOR VASARELY is a unique artist in the history of twentieth century art. Famous during his lifetime, he distinguished himself from contemporary art with the creation of a new movement: optical art. The evolution of his life of work is inherently coherent, progressing from graphic art to the artist’s determination to promote a social art that is accessible to all.

Victor Vasarely was born in Pécs, Hungary in 1906. In 1925, after graduating from secondary school, he studied medicine briefly at the University of Budapest. Even though he did not pursue these medical studies past two years, Vasarely acquired a commitment to method, objectivity, science and the thirst for knowledge which would follow him all throughout his life.

In 1929, he enrolled in Muhely, known as the Bauhaus of Budapest. This school, founded by Alexander Bortnyik and modeled on the Bauhaus of Dessau, Germany taught the lessons of artists such as Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Josef Albers. The impact of Bauhaus teachings on Vasarely’s lifetime of work would turn out to be considerable. During this period he discovered Abstract art and was introduced to constructivism. This is when he produced his famous “Etude bleue” and “Etude verte” (1929). He also devised and supported theories which promote art that is less individualistic and more collective, art which adapts to the changing modern world and to the world of industry.

Under the pressure of the Hungarian government at the time, numerous avant-garde movements were being associated with the progressive movement that was developing in politics. Like a number of his compatriots, Vasarely left Hungary and settled in Paris in 1930. He began working as a designer/creative artist at the Havas advertising agency and at Draeger’s, a renowned printer of the time. His graphic work in these agencies and later in Dewambez, allowed him to approach the world of design and aesthetics “while playing (his) role as a plastic artist.”

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

The Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson is pleased to present GROPING in the DARK curated by Alex Young. GROPING in the DARK addresses human land use and the effects of the modification of Earthly matter upon interdependent ecologies of mind, society, and environment.  The exhibition serves as an experimental presentational platform for artist-researchers whose ecological practices are informed by and actively agglomerate a diverse array of disciplines and media in examining world systems and developing new models of being-in-the-world.  Spanning an array of inquiries into planetary scaled networks, agricultural engineering, multi-species entanglements, and the simultaneous expansion and collapse of anthropogenic space, the works collected for this exhibition take the form of in-depth ecological open works wherein their subjects are continuously observed, reexamined, acknowledged as far from fully knowable, and the assumed whole is always less than the sum of its parts. GROPING in the DARK is presented in response to our ecological moment and present reactionary political climate. In stark contrast to a backdrop of manifest anti-egalitarianism, hetero/cis-normative gender constructs, xenophobia, and speciesism, GROPING in the DARK gathers artist-researchers actively exploring plausible worlds through social ecology and multi-species intersectionality, migration, placemaking, and resilience.

The title of this exhibition is borrowed from the 1982 publication Groping in the Dark: The first decade of global modelling—produced as the conference proceedings for the Sixth International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis Symposium on Global Modelling—collaboratively authored by Donella Meadows, John Richardson, and Gerhart Bruckmann.  Released ten years after Meadows co-authored The Limits to Growth—the foundational report on the findings of the World3 systems dynamics computer model simulating interactions between human population, industrial and economic growth, food resources, and the limits of earth ecosystems—Groping in the Dark was created as an experimental guide for the production of new world models and the modelling of new worlds. Constructed as a patchwork of disparate-yet-interconnected texts ranging from reports on major works and methodologies in global modelling, to ruminations on the contradictions and limitations of the burgeoning field, to a list of the editors’ respective biases—Groping in the Dark provided an abundance of entry points into then-current attempts to understand and create change within complex social and environmental systems.  In a manner akin to its namesake, this exhibition joins practitioners and projects that employ diverse modes of thinking in the examination of how humans modify Earth systems and how we might better model new worlds. Photo credits: “Wild Relatives” by Jumana Manna, “CASH CROP” by J. Eric Simpson, and “Cooking Sex” by Epicurean Endocrinology.

Participating Artists:
Epicurean Endocrinology (Liz Flyntz + Byron Rich), Ryan Griffis and Sarah Ross, Mary Maggic (with genital collaborator Tamara Pertamina and technical collaborator Char Stiles), Jumana Manna, J. Eric Simpson and Caleb Lightfoot , and SPURSE

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

“Celebrating the photographers who have played a critical role in bringing hip-hop’s visual culture to the global stage, CONTACT HIGH: A Visual History of Hip-Hop is an inside look at the work of hip-hop photographers, as told through their most intimate diaries: their unedited contact sheets.

Curated by Vikki Tobak, based on the bestselling book of the same name, and with creative direction by Fab 5 Freddy, the photographic exhibition includes nearly 140 works from 60 photographers. Guests will also see over 75 original and unedited contact sheets—from Barron Claiborne’s iconic Notorious B.I.G. portraits and early images of Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, and Kanye West as they first took to the scene, to Janette Beckman’s defining photos of Salt-N-Pepa, and Jamel Shabazz and Gordon Parks documenting hip-hop culture—CONTACT HIGHallows visitors to look directly through the photographer’s lens and observe all of the pictures taken during these legendary photo shoots.

The exhibit also includes an exclusive new, documentary short film – produced by the Annenberg Foundation and Radical Media – featuring a selection of CONTACT HIGH’sphotographers at work and in conversation, including Barron Claiborne, Brian “B+” Cross, Eric Coleman, Estevan Oriol, Jorge Peniche, Jamel Shabazz, Janette Beckman, Joe Conzo, Jack McKain, Dana Scruggs, and Danny Clinch.

Rare videos, memorabilia, and music are included to complement the photographs, demonstrating how the documentation of a cultural phenomenon impacts politics, culture, and social movements around the world. And in a first for the Photo Space, visitors can enjoy Contact High Records, a pop-up record shop featuring rare vinyl spanning the history of hip-hop.”

CONTACT HIGH was created in partnership with United Photo Industries.

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

From Discovery to Rediscovery

CONTEMPORARY SINCE 1968

Founded in 1968, Art Brussels is one of the most renowned contemporary art fairs in Europe and a must-see in the international art calendar.

Art Brussels represents a unique opportunity to discover the richness of the artistic and cultural scene of the European capital, and attracts a growing number of collectors, gallerists, curators, art professionals and art lovers from around the world. Every year in April, the fair welcomes around 25,000 visitors. Since 2016, Art Brussels takes place in the emblematic building of Tour & Taxis, in the heart of Brussels. In 2019, Art Brussels has launched a new and diverse INVITED section, supporting emerging galleries or art spaces that are transcending the typical gallery format and that have never before participated in the fair.

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

“In recent years Ruby Neri has become increasingly recognized for her ceramic sculptures featuring figurative female forms. Almost always based on the centralizing idea of the vessel, these works are notable for the physicality of their construction and the intensity of their glazes, which are often applied using an airbrush. This exhibition will feature a group of some of the largest and most complex objects of this kind that Neri has made to date. 

Neri arrived at what has become a signature typology by synthesizing an idiosyncratic group of influences, including the Bay Area Figurative Movement, street art, ancient fertility figures, and more recent currents in ceramic-based contemporary art. The work is defined by its psychologically and sexually charged content and its bawdy feminism, with women engaged in what appear to be ritualistic power dynamics. Several of the new sculptures are composed of numerous figures that differ greatly in size. Smaller women are held, supported by, and wrapped around bigger ones, suggesting relationships in which one dominates the others. The ambiguity and playfulness of these tableaux add a layer of narrative richness to the works, especially because they are highly three-dimensional objects in which visual and sculptural information flows across every surface, front and back, under and over, inside and out.

This narrative quality draws attention to the qualities of the figures themselves, which all share certain basic characteristics. Blonde, with dramatically full lips, voluptuous bodies, and revealed genitalia, they can also be considered variations on a single character whose most prominent feature might in fact be her disarmingly frank facial expression. Enraptured, knowing, bemused, the gaze she returns to the viewer suggests that the complexity of her relationships–with her own interiority, the other versions of herself that surround her, the viewer, the materials from which she has been crafted, and the artist who made her–comes as no surprise.”

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

“Porch Gallery Ojai presents the Ojai Invitational 2019, The Arnoldis: Selected Works by Charles Arnoldi & Natalie Arnoldi – a collaboration with EMS ARTS. With works ranging from 2017 to present, Charles continues his exploration of color, shape and pattern. While, daughter, Natalie Arnoldi’s works explore the fine line between abstract and figurative painting and the psychological effects of ambiguous representation.Charles Arnoldi was born in Dayton, Ohio. Arnoldi attended Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles in the late 1960’s, and by the 1970’s was having exhibitions at prestigious galleries across the United States. He was the recipient of the 1969 Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Young Talent Award, two NEA Artist Fellowships in 1974 and 1982, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Maestro Grant from the California Arts Council. His work is in the collections of major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California.Natalie Arnoldi is an artist living in Central California. Trained academically as a marine biologist, with a bachelors and a master’s degree from Stanford University, Arnoldi has had over 45 paintings exhibitions. Arnoldi is currently pursuing a PhD in marine ecology at Stanford University studying with Dr. Fiorenza Micheli.”

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson