Helen Pashgian: Working in Light
January 23 – April 11, 2010
 

	Helen Pashgian Studio View

Helen Pashgian '56  is a pioneer Light and Space artist, a member of the small group of Southern California artists who coalesced in the 1960s around the use of industrial materials, which offered unique optical and color possibilities. Technically innovative, Pashgian continues her rigorous exploration of the spatial qualities of color in light. This exhibition brings together early small sculptures and current large-scale light columns.

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Peter Schjeldahl, writer for The New Yorker discusses how West Coast minimalism was influenced by the California culture and analyzes works by Helen Pashgian, Larry Bell, James Turrell, Robert Irwin, and others in the exhibition “Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960-1970,” an exhibition at the David Zwirner Gallery, in New York City.

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Project Series 40: Amanda Ross-Ho
January 23 – April 11, 2010

 

Amanda Ross-Ho

For Project Series 40, Ross-Ho will present a new site-specific installation dealing with the mutability and materiality of context. Amanda Ross-Ho creates paintings, sculpture and installation work that examine the boundaries of presentation space, the direct and indirect products of creative expression, and the connectivity of the visual world. The Project Series is funded in part by the Pasadena Art Alliance.

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Famous For 15
From Andy Warhol to Your Camera-Phone
January 23 – April 11, 2010
Curator’s talk, Wednesday, February 3, 4:15 pm, Lyman Hall, reception at the Museum to follow.

In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.
Andy Warhol

This exhibition examines the phenomenon of photo-based fame through Andy Warhol’s practice and the modern parallel of camera-phone photographs. Warhol’s obsession with going out every night—he called it a social disease—was marked by an equally urgent drive to photograph the celebrities and near celebrities that made up New York’s social scene. His practice is echoed in our modern use of the camera-phone. The ubiquitous camera-phone instant portraits, instant results, and, with the ability to share images via text messages and social networking sites, instant “celebrity.” Technology has made everyone’s allotted fifteen minutes more within reach than ever. And perhaps, as Warhol suggested,made the category of celebrity even more unstable.

Andy Warhol, one of the most influential and celebrated artists of the 20th century, blurred the line between high art and the visual culture of modern consumer society. Fascinated by the concept of celebrity, he explored the framework and conditions of fame in both his work and personal life. His portrait photographs encapsulate his most quoted statement about fame. By posing for Warhol, his subjects became instant celebrities. Yet Warhol undercut the trappings of the celebrity photo-shoot by shooting informally with amateur cameras like the Polaroid Big Shot and the auto-focus Minox . Ultimately, his photographs call into question the concept of fame by highlighting its wide accessibility.

The exhibition features selections from a major gift of photographs by the Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts through the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program.

I invite you to create your own celebrity culture by submitting your camera-phone photographs to FamousFor15.CameraPhone@picasaweb.com ; or view submissions online at http://picasaweb.google.com/FamousFor15.
 

Carrie Dedon (PO ’10),
Kilsby Museum Intern


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