California College of the Arts will host opening receptions for three major year-end exhibitions on Thursday, May 6, from 6–9 p.m.: the MFA Exhibition, We have as much time as it takes, and the Baccalaureate Exhibition. We have as much time as it takes is the thesis exhibition of CCA's Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice, being presented in the galleries of the CCA Wattis Institute for the first time in the program's seven-year history.

All of these events are free and open to the public and take place on CCA's San Francisco campus. The MFA Exhibition will remain on view through May 15, We have as much time as it takes will remain on view through July 31, and the Baccalaureate Exhibition will remain on view through May 11.

The MFA Exhibition

The MFA Exhibition is organized by Fine Arts faculty member and critic Glen Helfand, who says, "With a particularly large group of students this year—66 in all—the show will express the dynamic, interdisciplinary identity of CCA's diverse artistic community."

The works address a wide range of subjects and issues stemming from a world in transition; they expand the boundaries of photography, painting, printmaking, sculpture, textiles, video, installation, animation, digital media, and various combinations thereof. Vibrant abstract paintings will share space with faux-museum projects exploring issues of identity, land use, and the act of finding. All of the artists demonstrate a deft handling of materials, from the industrial and machine made to the obsessively hand crafted.

One photographic project tracks the social and psychic condition of Merced, California, a Central Valley town hit hard by the economic downturn. A group of watercolors evokes the difficult history of People's Park in Berkeley. An interactive, theatrical installation allows viewers to insert themselves into an open coffin. And there is a daily, participatory acknowledgment of the moment of sunset.

The show will be accompanied by a cell phone audio tour featuring interviews with artists and an introduction by Lawrence Rinder (former Wattis Institute director, and now director of the Berkeley Art Museum).

We have as much time as it takes

We have as much time as it takes, the thesis exhibition of CCA's Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice, reflects the experimental and ambitious spirit of both the program and the CCA Wattis Institute (whose galleries it occupies this year). The show features works by a range of contemporary artists and collectives: Nina Beier and Marie Lund, David Horvitz, Jason Mena, Sandra Nakamura, Roman Ondák, Red76, Zachary Royer Scholz, Tercerunquinto, Lawrence Weiner, and Christine Wong Yap.

The curatorial intent derives from a questioning of academic and art-world processes. Productivity, expectations for achievement, and bureaucratic systems are highlighted, questioned, and critiqued through works that embody circular processes, resist completion, and refute the demand for definable results or resolution. The majority of the works are site-responsive commissions or existing projects that have been recontextualized for the exhibition and the Wattis galleries.

An accompanying 112-page catalog includes interviews with each of the artists, a project by current Visual and Critical Studies graduate student Matthew Rana, and texts by the local poet Jasper Bernes and the writers Erica Levin and Daniel Marcus. A robust series of public programs will take place over the course of the three-month exhibition, both inside and outside the gallery.

Images and interviews with the artists or organizers are available upon request.

About California College of the Arts
Founded in 1907, California College of the Arts is noted for the interdisciplinarity and breadth of its programs. It offers studies in 20 undergraduate and seven graduate majors in the areas of fine arts, architecture, design, and writing. The college offers bachelor of architecture, bachelor of arts, bachelor of fine arts, master of architecture, master of arts, master of fine arts, and master of business administration degrees. With campuses in Oakland and San Francisco, CCA currently enrolls more than 1,600 full-time students. Noted alumni include the painters Nathan Oliveira and Raymond Saunders; the ceramicists Robert Arneson, Viola Frey, and Peter Voulkos; the filmmaker Wayne Wang; the conceptual artists David Ireland and Dennis Oppenheim; and the designers Lucille Tenazas and Michael Vanderbyl. For more information about CCA, visit www.cca.edu.