Monday, September 16, 2013

"Nothing Heavy" a one night group show curated by Mario Vasquez, September 14, 2013, Pomona Packing Plant, Pomona, California



Curator’s Statement

When I was invited to curate a show, I was not interested in doing an exhibit that was heavy on theory or a theme that was weighted in the milieu of the current art debate. I instead wanted to do a show that was casual and fit the laid-back approach to curating. I decided that the works would curate themselves. Thus the idea and concept of the title, “Nothing Heavy” came about.

As I began to do visit studios and choose the art, the title became a theme, and the art began to define the show. The title has a double meaning. Taken at its literal, “Nothing Heavy,” means the absence of weight; lightness or the absence of excess. The other meaning can describe casualness or the lifting of a burden. The artists of this show explore both the weight and lightness of various ideas and emotions. From the weight of nature and aggression (Andrew K. Thompson and Tamarind Rossetti), the emotional and physical states of being (Liz Nurenberg and Lisa Talbot), form and color (Jocelyn Grau and Dion Johnson), to memory and spirituality (Christy Roberts, Atilio Pernisco and Kim Zsebe); all represent the exploration of weight upon both the artist and contemporary society. Some works may overlap and transgress into each other themes. In the end, each of the artists and their work explore the idea and concept of weight and the weightless.

Each person has weight that burdens us each day. That weight comes in many forms and expressions. The artists in this show explore how each of those burdens affects their practice, and through their work help release the weight, and thus nothing heavy remains.

In additional to the art and art work, I chose some literary works that explore the same ideas of weight and the weightless. Works by Virginia Wolfe, Christina Rossetti, and Vitruvius, explore the natural, emotional and the physical idea of weight and weightlessness.

In conclusion, I would like to thank LGT, especially Jackie Bell Johnson and Takeshi Kanemura, and the artists who put their faith in me; Andrew K. Thompson, Liz Nurnberg, Lisa Talbot, Tamarind Rossetti, Kim Zsebe, Dion Johnson, Christy Roberts, and Jocelyn Grau. You will all be in heart. Finally to my family and friends, without you my life would be nothing. Thank you


Mario D. Vasquez

Curator                                 



Installation View (Install Day)


9. In the case of Archimedes, although he made many wonderful discoveries of diverse kinds, yet of them all, the following, which I shall relate, seems to have been the result of a boundless ingenuity. Hiero, after gaining the royal power in Syracuse, resolved, as a consequence of his successful exploits, to place in a certain temple a golden crown which he had vowed to the immortal gods. He contracted for its making at a fixed price, and weighed out a precise amount of gold to the contractor. At the appointed time the latter delivered to the king's satisfaction an exquisitely finished piece of handiwork, and it appeared that in[254] weight the crown corresponded precisely to what the gold had weighed.

10. But afterwards a charge was made that gold had been abstracted and an equivalent weight of silver had been added in the manufacture of the crown. Hiero, thinking it an outrage that he had been tricked, and yet not knowing how to detect the theft, requested Archimedes to consider the matter. The latter, while the case was still on his mind, happened to go to the bath, and on getting into a tub observed that the more his body sank into it the more water ran out over the tub. As this pointed out the way to explain the case in question, without a moment's delay, and transported with joy, he jumped out of the tub and rushed home naked, crying with a loud voice that he had found what he was seeking; for as he ran he shouted repeatedly in Greek, "Ευρηκα, ευρηκα."

11. Taking this as the beginning of his discovery, it is said that he made two masses of the same weight as the crown, one of gold and the other of silver. After making them, he filled a large vessel with water to the very brim, and dropped the mass of silver into it. As much water ran out as was equal in bulk to that of the silver sunk in the vessel. Then, taking out the mass, he poured back the lost quantity of water, using a pint measure, until it was level with the brim as it had been before. Thus he found the weight of silver corresponding to a definite quantity of water.

12. After this experiment, he likewise dropped the mass of gold into the full vessel and, on taking it out and measuring as before, found that not so much water was lost, but a smaller quantity: namely, as much less as a mass of gold lacks in bulk compared to a mass of silver of the same weight. Finally, filling the vessel again and dropping the crown itself into the same quantity of water, he found that more water ran over for the crown than for the mass of gold of the same weight. Hence, reasoning from the fact that more water was lost in the case of the crown than in that of the mass, he detected the mixing of silver with the gold, and made the theft of the contractor perfectly clear.

Book IX
Ten Books on Architecture

By: Vitruvius


Jocelyn Grau

Installation: Jocelyn Grau

Jocelyn Grau

Jocelyn Grau

Jocelyn Grau


Andrew K. Thompson
Andrew K. Thompson
Andrew K. Thompson
Andrew K. Thompson
Andrew K. Thompson
Andrew K. Thompson

Andrew K. Thompson


Clouds
By Christina Rossetti
White sheep, white sheep,
On a blue hill,
When the wind stops,
You all stand still.
When the wind blows,
You walk away slow.
White sheep, white sheep,

Where do you go?


Kim Zsebe

Kim Zsebe

Kim Zsebe

Dion Johnson

Dion Johnson

Installation: Dion Johnson
Lisa Talbot
Lisa Talbot
Lisa Talbot

Liz Nurenberg

Liz Nurenberg


Tamarind Rossetti

Tamarind Rossetti


Atilio Pernisco
Installation: Atilio Pernisco

Atilio Pernisco

Atilio Pernisco

Atilio Pernisco
Atilio Pernisco

Atilio Pernisco

The scene beneath me withered. It was like the eclipse when the sun went out and left the earth, flourishing in full summer foliage, withered, brittle, false. Also I saw on a winding road in a dust dance the groups we had made, how they came together, how they ate together, how they met in this room or that. I saw my own indefatigable busyness — how I had rushed from one to the other, fetched and carried, travelled and returned, joined this group and that, here kissed, here withdrawn; always kept hard at it by some extraordinary purpose, with my nose to the ground like a dog on the scent; with an occasional toss of the head, an occasional cry of amazement, despair and then back again with my nose to the scent. What a litter — what a confusion; with here birth, here death; succulence and sweetness; effort and anguish; and myself always running hither and thither. Now it was done with. I had no more appetites to glut; no more stings in me with which to poison people; no more sharp teeth and clutching hands or desire to feel the pear and the grape and the sun beating down from the orchard wall.
‘The woods had vanished; the earth was a waste of shadow. No sound broke the silence of the wintry landscape. No cock crowed; no smoke rose; no train moved. A man without a self, I said. A heavy body leaning on a gate. A dead man. With dispassionate despair, with entire disillusionment, I surveyed the dust dance; my life, my friends’ lives, and those fabulous presences, men with brooms, women writing, the willow tree by the river — clouds and phantoms made of dust too, of dust that changed, as clouds lose and gain and take gold or red and lose their summits and billow this way and that, mutable, vain. I, carrying a notebook, making phrases, had recorded mere changes; a shadow. I had been sedulous to take note of shadows. How can I proceed now, I said, without a self, weightless and visionless, through a world weightless, without illusion?
‘The heaviness of my despondency thrust open the gate I leant on and pushed me, an elderly man, a heavy man with grey hair, through the colourless field, the empty field. No more to hear echoes, no more to see phantoms, to conjure up no opposition, but to walk always unshadowed, making no impress upon the dead earth. If even there had been sheep munching, pushing one foot after another, or a bird, or a man driving a spade into the earth, had there been a bramble to trip me, or a ditch, damp with soaked leaves, into which to fall — but no, the melancholy path led along the level, to more wintriness and pallor and the equal and uninteresting view of the same landscape.
‘How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly. In thin stripes. It hangs like a glass cage. It is a hoop to be fractured by a tiny jar. There is a spark there. Next moment a flush of dun. Then a vapour as if earth were breathing in and out, once, twice, for the first time. Then under the dullness someone walks with a green light. Then off twists a white wraith. The woods throb blue and green, and gradually the fields drink in red, gold, brown. Suddenly a river snatches a blue light. The earth absorbs colour like a sponge slowly drinking water. It puts on weight; rounds itself; hangs pendent; settles and swings beneath our feet.


An Except from “The Waves” by Virginia Woolf (1931)








Performance by Christy Roberts: "Atonement" 2013

 Christy Roberts: "Atonement" 2013

"The Exploding Feathered Inevitable Punk Rock Pillow Fight" by Andrew K. Thompson

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

2013 California Pacific Triennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California

California-Pacific Triennial 

32 artists from 15 countries around the globe to be included
Only ongoing exhibition in the Western Hemisphere devoted to art from the Pacific Rim

On view June 30 – November 17, 2013

NEWPORT BEACH, CA—The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) today announced the
names of the 32 artists whose work will appear in the 2013 California-Pacific Triennial. Formerly
known as the California Biennial, this first iteration of the new format includes artists from 15
countries that border the Pacific Ocean; placing California art within a Pacific Rim context.
California’s geographical position on the Pacific Ocean has long enriched its cultural prominence,
and the demographics of the state are strongly linked to the diverse countries along the Pacific
Rim, which are producing some of the most innovative art today. The California-Pacific Triennial
is on view June 30 through November 17, 2013.

Despite the phenomenal economic and cultural growth of the Asian and Latin American countries
that border the Pacific, and California's proximity to these developments, there had previously
been no exhibition in the Western Hemisphere to regularly explore this activity. With national
boundaries becoming more porous and cultural connections taking place between artists and
viewers from various backgrounds, the flow of ideas and images crisscrossing the planet
becomes a crucial component of any contemporary art survey. The California-Pacific Triennial,
under the direction of Chief Curator Dan Cameron, places artists working in California within this
broader global network, one that is particularly relevant to our region and that will offer visitors a
unique opportunity to engage in a more cosmopolitan conversation about contemporary art.
Besides hailing from 15 countries, the 32 participating artists in the 2013 California-Pacific
Triennial represent a full range of artistic media—from traditional painting and sculpture,
ceramics, fiber art and drawing, to forms more associated with recent developments, such as
photography, video and film, performance, installation and conceptual art. It is also an
intergenerational group, with artists ranging from 31 to 76 years of age; and represents a diversity
of careers, from the internationally renowned to the barely known.

According to Curator Dan Cameron, “the exhibition design for the Triennial sets up what I hope
will be very dynamic exchanges between artists whose work appears highly divergent, while
pulling the viewer into the process of locating the common ground between them. My goal is for
our public to experience the Triennial as a genuine celebration of artistic possibilities, nurtured
here or brought to California from all these nations and peoples with whom we share the Pacific
Ocean.”

2013 California-Pacific Triennial Participating Artists

John Bankston, San Francisco, USA
Brice Bischoff, Los Angeles, USA
Fernando Bryce, Lima, Peru
Masaya Chiba, Tokyo, Japan
Tiffany Chung, Saigon, Vietnam
Hugo Crosthwaite, Tijuana, Mexico
Gabriel de la Mora, Mexico City, Mexico
Dario Escobar, Guatemala City, Guatemala
Pedro Friedeberg, Mexico City, Mexico
Shaun Gladwell, Sydney, Australia
Farrah Karapetian, Los Angeles, USA
Kim Beom, Seoul, Korea
Kimsooja, Seoul, Korea
Robert Legorreta, Los Angeles, USA
Michael Lin, Shanghai, China
Liz Magor, Vancouver, Canada
Danial Nord, Los Angeles, USA
Eko Nugroho, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Yoshua Okón, Mexico City, Mexico
Raquel Ormella, Sydney, Australia
Sebastián Preece, Santiago, Chile
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Chiang Mai, Thailand
Adriana Salazar, Bogotá, Colombia
Mitchell Syrop, Los Angeles, USA
Akio Takamori, Seattle, USA
Koki Tanaka, Los Angeles, USA
Whiting Tennis, Seattle, USA
Lin Tianmiao, Beijing, China
Camille Utterback, San Francisco, USA
Adán Vallecillo, Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Mark Dean Veca, Los Angeles, USA
Wang Guangle, Beijing, China


























































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