CCA News
The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts Presents the Exhibition Route 2: Undisclosed Destination
Posted on Monday, January 31, 2011, by Sarah Owens
Given the increasingly international nature of the art world, not to mention culture in general, is it realistic to generalize about the artistic production of a particular geographical region? Route 2: Undisclosed Destination considers this question in the context of the West Coast. The exhibition will take place from February 15 through April 9, 2011, in the Logan Galleries on the San Francisco campus of California College of the Arts. The exhibition is free and open to the public, with an opening reception on Tuesday, February 15, from 6-8 p.m.
The exhibition is composed exclusively of works by artists originally from, or working on, the West Coast, from Vancouver to Los Angeles. Aiming to establish commonalities among them beyond their geography, the show arranges them into two different paths that run in parallel, and in tension. The first path focuses on landscape, a long-established subject in art. West Coast cities carry the load of having served as imagined Arcadias for utopian thinkers and idealists, and San Francisco seems especially trapped between its amazing natural and urban scenery and a history that seems to haunt it. This section of the show includes straightforward depictions as well as works that deal in a more oblique way with aspects related to the American territory, for instance questioning the way it is understood and represented in the popular imagination, or by presenting it as a beautiful and privileged spectacle ripe for plundering (by the movie industry and others).
A second path through the exhibition is arranged chronologically, encouraging viewers to perceive distinct genealogies of influences and correspondences—or perhaps making the case for a lack thereof. One constant along this path is a mode of production that involves reuse and repetition (of both materials and topics).
Route 2: Undisclosed Destination featured artists:
John Baldessari, Wallace Berman, Elisheva Biernoff, Jedediah Caesar, Geoffrey Farmer, Rachel E. Foster, Rodney Graham, John Gutmann, Todd Hido, William E. Jones, Jordan Kantor, Edward Kienholz & Nancy Reddin, Alicia McCarthy, Gareth Moore, J. John Priola, Stephen G. Rhodes, Will Rogan, Mungo Thomson
The works in the exhibition are drawn from the 101 Collection of the ArtNow International Foundation. Based in San Francisco and assembled under the direction of Wattis Director Jens Hoffmann, the collection includes photography, painting, sculpture, drawing, film, installation, and more by contemporary artists who live and work along the West Coast’s iconic Highway 101.
Route 2: Undisclosed Destination is curated by Sharon Lerner, a 2010 graduate of CCA’s Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice. She also holds a BA in visual arts from the Catholic University in Lima. Lerner is the second 101 Curatorial Fellow. This fellowship is a unique initiative between ArtNow and the Wattis Institute with the collaboration of CCA’s Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice. Each year, a recently graduated Curatorial Practice student is selected for the fellowship, during which they conduct research around the artists and artworks in the 101 Collection and realize their first curated project in a public arts institution.
About the CCA Wattis Institute
The Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts was established in 1998 in San Francisco at California College of the Arts. It serves as a forum for the presentation and discussion of international contemporary art and curatorial practice. Through groundbreaking exhibitions, the Capp Street Project residency program, lectures, symposia, and publications, the Wattis Institute has become one of the leading art institutions in the United States and an active site for contemporary culture in the Bay Area.
About California College of the Arts
Founded in 1907, California College of the Arts (CCA) is noted for the interdisciplinarity and breadth of its programs. It offers studies in 21 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 San Francisco and Oakland, CCA currently enrolls 1,800 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.
About the ArtNow International Foundation
The ArtNow International Foundation is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco. It is dedicated to promoting modern and contemporary art through the constitution of art collections and their display in art institutions locally, nationally, and internationally. Parts of the collection are shown in various Bay Area venues, including Stanford University’s Cantor Center for Visual Arts and the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco. ArtNow is affiliated with the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris.
PRESS CONTACTS:
Brenda Tucker 415.703.9548 btucker@cca.edu
Sarah Owens 415.703.9549 sowens@cca.edu