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Montalvo Arts Center

DSN: Do Something New
with Mario Ybarra Jr. and Karla Diaz
Through September 30, 2007

Montalvo Arts Center’s
Project Space
15400 Montalvo Road
Saratoga, CA 95070
Information: 408.961.5814

http://www.montalvoarts.org

Los Angeles-based artists Mario Ybarra Jr. and Karla Diaz did something new at Montalvo Arts Center: they collaborated with eleven teens to facilitate the development of the Center’s first teen program. The culminating installation, DSN: Do Something New, is presented in the Project Space through September 30 and tells the story of the teens work with the artists. On view is media created by the DSN teens, including t-shirts, sound pieces and publications, as well as an oral history project capturing the stories of 10 members of the Montalvo Service Group, an auxiliary that has supported Montalvo since the 1950s. The installation includes a studio area where visitors can
create their own art.

Commissioned by Montalvo to develop a series of teen programs and an installation addressing the theme Concerns of Our Times, Ybarra and Diaz served as collaborators/mentors to the DSN while they were in-residence at the Center’s Lucas Artists Programs. "Our goal for the first half of the DSN project was to give the students an opportunity to develop their skills and learn to collaborate with each other and with the community," said Ybarra. "Every student has different strengths and ideas to bring to the group and it has been very interesting learning what these students see as concerns of our times. The second half of the program focused on giving the students sounding boards for voicing their concerns and what they wanted to learn about, then creating projects that focused on these things."

Like most artistic projects, Montalvo’s DSN group has evolved since its execution. Originally the group was just called Teen Council, but Ybarra, Diaz and the students wanted the name to represent their mantra for making decisions and creating projects that meant something to them — the name Do Something New was born. Four main themes surfaced from the DSN Teen Council — friends, family, technology and violence. Ybarra and Diaz tailored their ten weekly sessions to include different artistic exercises that allowed the students to create projects that included these themes.

"Aside from having the students create their projects, we also wanted them to experience real-world applications," said Diaz. "We’re hoping the students will develop a sense that what they are producing in class can be transferred to their experiences outside of the DSN."

Robert Sain, Executive Director, noted, "The next generation is an important part of Montalvo’s new initiative for thematic programming. It is important for young people to see Montalvo as a place where they can learn about art as well as express themselves."
Montalvo’s Project Space is open Fri-Sun, Noon-3 p.m.

Mario Ybarra Jr.’s work has been featured in a number of institutional exhibitions, recently including Alien Nation at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Uncertain States of America, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and the 2006 California Biennial, at the Orange County Museum of Art. This year, he is participating in The World as a Stage, curated by Jessica Morgan at the Tate Modern, and the Prague Biennial 3 in the Czech Republic. He is a founding member of the artist’s collective Slanguage.

Karla Diaz is a poet, performer and art critic. She has read her work and exhibited projects in venues including the Getty Art Museum, REDCAT and the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles; the Serpentine Gallery, London, and at the Zocalo in Mexico City. She is a founding member of the artist’s collective Slanguage. She lives and works in Los Angeles where she is associate director for the New Chinatown Barbershop gallery.

About Montalvo Arts Center
Montalvo Arts Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to forging meaningful connections between art, artists and the communities it serves through creation, presentation and education in extraordinary ways and settings.

Photo caption: DSN: Do Something New opening held at the Project Space, June 10, 2007. Artists Karla Diaz (far left) and Mario Ybarra Jr. (far right) with 9 of the 11 DSN teens that they mentored while in residence at Montalvo’s Lucas Artists Programs. (Photo by Jakub Mosur)

For more information go to: http://www.montalvoarts.org

Deep Dream, Mixed Media on Canvas, 100×70cm, 2007

“Pleasures and Terrors” in The Mill Theatre Art Gallery would be Katarzyna’s seventh instalment in the last year in Ireland.

The relation between painting and imagination, eroticism, dreams all have been always a constant theme for me. The abiding theme is the human condition, explored over in painting. It is the relationship, the struggle and fragility of feelings that inspire me. Self destructive love, imagination, mystery, compulsiveness, addiction, insecurity, mistrust, tragedy, love, imagination, continuity, dream, safeness, fear, cold, hot, night, day, peace, trap – it is a journey of pleasures and terrors. What I am telling is a story about dark and private theatre, which is reaching the subconscious roots of human condition. A massive expanse of rich colour is exposing the raw vitality of the mind.
A big part of the paintings is open – ended, which constitutes effects of saving suppressed emotion. Some parts of the paintings are abstracted (Utilizing automatic techniques and careful study I am exploring physical expression of emotion) because of the elusive nature of our feelings. The effect of the feeling’s complexity is doubled by the works chaotic texture. Trying to contour human silhouette in bold structure on the surface, I am exploring the physical expression of the theme. The paintings give direct attention to their own physicality and because of that, the human form emanates with psychological structure, driving to insubstantial. Colour and texture are symbols.
The tale of passion and reflection is improvised.

Like all addictions and strong love and emotion, painting is my pleasure and my terror.

Pleasures and Terrors, New Paintings by Katarzyna Gajewska
The Mill Theatre Art Gallery, on Saturday, 8th September 2007, at 5.30 pm
Exhibition continues until 4th October,

Dundrum Town Centre,
Dundrum,
Dublin 14,
Co. Dublin,
Phone : +353 01 296 9340
Email : aoife@milltheatre.com

Centre for Contemporary Art Nottingham

Senior Curator

The forthcoming Centre for Contemporary Art Nottingham (CCAN) is looking to appoint a Senior Curator with excellent creative and organisational abilities. He or she will work closely with the Director, Alex Farquharson, to develop an ambitious, innovative and diverse programme of exhibitions and other events in a new landmark building of around 3000 square metres, in the middle of Nottingham, designed by Caruso St John. He or she will be responsible for the day-to-day management of the exhibitions team.

The individual we are looking for will have excellent international knowledge of recent contemporary art; experience of devising and managing international exhibitions of both loaned and commissioned work; a proven ability to raise funds for projects; excellent written and oral communications skills; and an interest in art’s social, political and cultural contexts and frameworks. S/he will have an enthusiasm for teamwork and collaboration and a commitment to engaging creatively with diverse publics.

CCAN will be the East Midland’s flagship contemporary art venue. Starting this autumn, we are preparing an imaginative programme of off-site artistic and education events in anticipation of our opening in late 2008.

Nottingham is the cultural capital of the region, with one of the largest student populations in the UK per capita. It is well connected by train to London (1 hour, 41 mins) and other major British cities. East Midlands Airport, which is 11 miles away, serves many European destinations.

Salary: £28,770 to £31,339

Please email info.ccan@btconnect.com for further details and an application form.
Closing date for applications is 24 September:

CCAN aims to be an equal opportunity employer.

http://www.ccan.org.uk/

Registered Charity No:1116670

For more information go to: http://www.ccan.org.uk/

Van Abbemuseum

FORMS OF RESISTANCE
Artists and the desire for
social change from 1871 to the present
22/09/2007- 06/01/2008

VAN ABBEMUSEUM
BILDERDIJKLAAN 10
EINDHOVEN - THE NETHERLANDS
+31 [0]40 238 1000
info@vanabbemuseum.nl

http://www.vanabbemuseum.nl

On 22 September, the exhibition Forms of Resistance will open in the Van Abbemuseum. It departs from four historical moments: the French Commune in 1871, the Russian Revolution of 1917, May 1968 and our world after 9/11. Based on these benchmarks it includes works by Manet, Courbet, Lissitzky, Rodchenko, Malevich, Brigada Ramona Parra, Atelier Populaire, Tucuman Arde, Sherk, Haacke, Johanesson, General Idea, Leonard, Piper, Ressler and Superflex amongst others.

THE NARRATIVE
The exhibition tells the story of art and social change through the lens of resistance and artistic desire. Ambitions for progressive social or political changes in the past 150 years are compared, selecting specific moments at which collaborations between art and activism were at their most pronounced.

The connection between art and social change was a fundamental aspect of modernism. The concept of the avant-garde as the phalanx of a revolutionary movement intended to resist or destroy old habits and produce the new man, was bound up with modernism’s formalist innovations as much as its direct engagement in political action. Artists combined resistance with speculating about the future and support of certain political developments, their critique was propositional as well as severe, and they often made work for a world that did not yet exist — but that they wanted to see come about.

Following the political and social upheavals of 1968 and 1989, this modernist and avant-garde model gradually lost its applicability. Artists developed different ways to resist and speculate. In the 21st century, with ideological struggles beginning to reconstitute themselves, the role of art is once again under pressure. Do resistance and speculation have a place in a world where economy is the instrument of contemporary politics? What does it mean to resist the current political establishment? What can we learn from past models and experiences and what light do they shed on our contemporary ideas of the world?

ARTISTS AND MOVEMENTS
Gustave Courbet and Eduard Manet are the key figures from the first period, followed immediately by William Morris, the founder of the British Arts & Crafts movement. Next up is the constructivism of artists such as Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Liobov Popova and Varvara Stepanova, Bauhaus student demonstrations and the surrealism and actions of Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro during the Spanish Civil War. The San Francisco Diggers, Bonnie Sherk and The Artists’ Liberation Front precede May ‘68, the Paris and Prague revolts. We also examine wall paintings from Chile. The activism and political identity studies of the 1970s can be found in the work of Hans Haacke, the Artworkers’ Coalition, Zoe Leonard, Martha Rosler, General Idea and Adrian Piper. Why some did artists opt to abandon the art world after ‘68, while others chose to comment on conflict zones within the confinement of the institution? How did art relate to the identity politics and rainbow coalitions of the 1980
s and 1990s? Disobedience, finally, is a small exhibit curated by Marco Scotini, in which Oliver Ressler, Marcelo Esposito and others provide insight into art activism in recent years. The present day is again a time for collectives but also an opportunity to look back on the past utopian century. What went before and what will follow the major ideological shifts of recent years?

CURATORS
The exhibition has been put together by a team of curators: Will Bradley, Phillip van den Bossche and Charles Esche.

PUBLICATION
Art and Social Change: A critical reader, edited by Will Bradley and Charles Esche, published by Afterall Books and Tate Publishing.
ISBN: 978 1 85437 626 8

This project has been realized in part by a contribution of Mondriaan Foundation.
The project has been carried out within the framework of TRANSFORM and with the support of the Culture 2000 programme of the European Union.

For more information go to: http://www.vanabbemuseum.nl