Post-Landscape:
Between Nature and Culture
September 4 - October 21

“Post-Landscape” explored ways in which contemporary Southern California artists employ landscape to mediate the interrelationship of nature and culture. Through installation, painting, photography, and video, these artists examine such major issues as land use, urbanization, technology, and globalization, as well as their own relationships with nature. Most focus on the Southern California region—including the urban, ex-urban, desert, and mountain geographies—as the basis for their investigations.

Throughout the history of art, landscape has evoked experiences ranging from the overwhelming and awe-inspiring, to the still and contemplative. Rethinking the vernacular of landscape as a sacred space of purity, tranquility, and beauty, these artists question how meaning is portrayed as well as the role of art and culture in overtly deterministic images of nature.

The exhibition was organized by Colette Dartnall, an independent curator and scholar, and Rebecca McGrew. Artists included Kim Abeles, Sandow Birk, Laurie Brown, Elizabeth Bryant, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Wanda Hammerbeck, Andreas Hessing, Sant Khalsa, Skeet McAuley, Kathryn Miller, and Diana Thater. More...

Project 11: Edgar Arceneaux
September 4 - October 21

Inspired by an interest in meaning and language, Arceneaux creates installations that emphasize the tools and processes employed in drawing. For this exhibition, he presented a new drawing installation entitled The Trivium that loosely links language and logic to improvisational jazz, freestyle hip hop, and Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy. Exploring the relationships between European and American histories and mythologies, Arceneaux links Dante’s Inferno and Socratic philosophy with the music of Thelonious Monk, Pharoahe Monch, and Pharoah Sanders. More...

A Study in Contrasts:
Japanese Paintings from the Sanso Collection
November 3 - December 16

With 40 paintings ranging from the 14th -19th centuries, this exhibition explored various contrasts—in subject matter, format, moods, artistic style and brushwork—employed by Japanese artists to express ideas and emotions. Some of the works were intended for display in temples or palaces, while others were intimate paintings purely for personal viewing. A wide variety of techniques was displayed in works that ranged from lush bird and flower paintings in brilliant colors to austere mountain landscapes rendered in shades of black ink. The Sanso Collection is one of the pre-eminent private collections of Japanese paintings in the United States. This exhibition, selected by Scripps College Professor Bruce Coats, was shown in conjunction with courses on Japanese arts and culture at Pomona and Scripps colleges.

Project 12: Charles LaBelle
November 3 - December 16

For almost ten years, LaBelle has created photographs, drawings, sculptures, and installations that address the interrelationship between cartography, documentary narratives, the built environment, and the individual. Investigating the often overlooked spaces, objects, substructures, and people of contemporary society, LaBelle presented a new video installation that derives from a recent road trip across the United States. Horror of Light addressed the relationship of subjectivity, architecture, and movement. More...