Insights @ the CSULB University Art Museum

Photos by Barbara Navarro.

Wallpaper like WOW!

Start the video. The sign in the first few seconds says:

Aaron Morse is a genius. He understands that, like time and space, there is no up and down or back and forth. There just ins't a way of putting it in order either. This is something wild and true that he's accomplished to portray via "Timeline," a one-of-a-kind floor-to-ceiling chain of murals showing in the lobby of the spacious and polished Hammer Museum in Westwood. And, just as the title suggests, Morse sticks to using historical (and futuristic) ideas for this epic wall masterpiece. See the surreal, imaginative configurations this 30-something-year-old Los Angeles artist (he's originally from Tuscon, Arizona) has created, before the walls go back to nude in mid-June.

And for the record, that sign doesn't say all that.

Video and photos by Barbara Navarro

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Read art show reviews by other Daily Forty-Niner writers featured in Diversions...

• Lauren Williams reviews "Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love" (The Hammer Museum will host on their signature Hammer Screenings dedicated to selections by Walker for every Tuesday in April, starting with "Body & Soul.")
• Cynthia Romanowski reviews "California Video," now at the Getty Center

Weekend: LB Museums Celebrate Women

The University Art Museum invites opera singer Melodee Fernandez for for a special Spanish Operetta (or Zarzuela) performance and discussion tonight from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Click here for the UAM official flyer.

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On Saturday, from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., An Afternoon Affair: Women in Contemporary Society, will take place at the Museum of Latin American Art. Two different panels will discuss the role of women in contemporary society and the arts. Various performances will also take place on that day.

Click here to see the official notice on MoLAA's website.

On Sunday the festivities continue when, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., A Women’s Family Festival will take place, offering guests hands-on art workshops as well as the opportunity to enjoy a variety of live performances.

Click here to see MoLAA's official notice.

What is the Purpose of Art on Campus?

What may be one's vision of a knotty, bony collection of metal sticks and tangled angles might be another person's reminder to not focus on the chaos.

I have not learned the creator of this sculpture, nor do I know the name of it. But I'm on my path to finding it out.

Staring at this piece rouses my imagination—on what it might all mean. To explain it may be somewhat complicated, but just imagine me (or all of us) being somewhere in those scrambled lines.

Maybe these are lines that mimic a sick tongue with irregular interlacing layers of muscles, which in their disordered condition cause great immobility.

Maybe this is an empty cell, with only the traces of lines like we see on connect-the-dot games. Once upon a time things were the way they used to (and should) be—membrane and cytoplasm, to organelles and nucleus, to ribosomes, centrioles, peroxisome, vacuoles, and the whole deal.

Yes, maybe there was somebody who saw the logic in the beautiful way birds' feathers and hair and wings follow a pattern, like connecting a huge population of stars into short, romantic phrases—Hydrus and Mensa, Centaurus and Crux. (Find them in the "Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.")

But with motion, nothing, not even the prettiest constellations, stand still. And that may be because we don't stand still. Isn't that somewhat appealing in all its chaos and asymmetry? Maybe the artist thought about that, too. And viola.

The reminder: not to focus too hard. (After all, there's a shower of water next to that McIntosh Humanities Building, always ready to lure you off the deep fixation.) So, just move on.

That is my insight, my interpretation, on this sculpture. It's safe to wonder. It's safe, because, as they say in class sometimes, there are no right or wrong answers.

There are some facts attached to this piece and those answers will be found in the Diversions section of the Daily Forty-Niner soon, so stay in touch. (I'm working on a feature regarding the University Art Museum's unique permanent collection, and these sculptures belong to that collection.)

Do you ever visit the UAM or sit and stare at those steel/concrete/wooden sculptures all over campus? Maybe, you know, just to wonder?

Photos by Barbara Navarro

Coming Attraction: Collecting Collections

While I realize that none of the art pieces from MOCA's upcoming "Collecting Collections" exhibit come from one of my favorite exhibits in recent years ("WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution"), I know they'll have plenty of great pieces to show off, especially with the competing BCAM $56-million gallery opening across town at LACMA.

Here's a photomontage from "Wack!":

Photomontage by Martha Rosler, Nature Girls (Jumping Janes), from the series Body Beautiful or Body Knows No Pain, 1966-72. Courtesy of the artist via MOCA.

Please be sure to read today's review in the Daily Forty-Niner on the retiring exhibit at MOCA Contemporary, © MURAKAMI, by clicking here. (It's writer Steven Sabetti's observation on Takashi Murakami's wearable, and rather ostentatious, art.)

What's been your favorite exhibit at MOCA?

Museum Guide

Marta Minujín (Argentina, b.1943), "Plataia," 1988 Painted plaster and styrofoam, 96 x 84 x 84 in. (7 pieces)

My guide to local museums is coming soon!