A Sea of Possibilities:  Paintings by Merion Estes 1971 to 2006
September 10 - October 29, 2006

Opening reception: Sunday, September 10, 5 - 7 p.m.

Artist's talk: Wednesday, October 4, 4:15 p.m. in the Museum

Screening of the documentary: Agnes Martin: With My Back to the World, followed by a conversation with filmmaker Mary Lance.
Wednesday, October 25 at 4:15 p.m. in the Museum

	Toxic Depths, 2004 Fabric, oil, acrylic on panel 80 x 60²

The retrospective of Merion Estes, a Southern California artist, presents an overview of her work through 2006 and includes never before seen drawings, collages, vinyl paintings, and new panel paintings. Since her earliest vinyl paintings of the 1970s, Estes has rigorously investigated painting's potential for beauty, exploring the decorative impulse in abstraction and nature-based imagery.

A full-color catalogue accompanies the exhibition and will include essays by artist and critic Constance Mallinson and curator Rebecca McGrew. For more information on Merion Estes, view www.merionestes.com.   More...

Project Series 30
Ken Gonzales-Day: Hang Trees
September 10 - October 22, 2006

Opening reception: Sunday, September 10, 5 - 7 p.m.

Artist's talk: Wednesday, October 19, 4:15 p.m. in the Museum

Nightfall, 2006 Chromogenic print 60 x 75 inches

Ken Gonzales-Day will exhibit new photographs exploring the history of lynchings in California. The exhibition will also include work from his “Erased Lynchings” series. Both bodies of work extend Gonzales-Day’s interest in reconstructing issues of race and gender.

Ken Gonzales-Day will talk and read from his new book: “Lynching in the West 1850-1935” (Duke University Press). Thursday, October 19, 4:15 p.m. Presented in conjunction with: Chicano/Latino Student Affairs Center, as part of the Latino Heritage Month celebration.

Wide Angle: Recent Photography Acquisitions
November 5 - December 17, 2006

Opening Reception: Sunday, November 5, 5 – 7 p.m.

The range of photographs acquired by Pomona College since 2004 parallels the range of the medium itself. This exhibition presents a sample of the more than 300 photographs acquired in the last two years. It includes nineteenth-century portraiture and World War II photo-journalism; New York street photography and European pictorialism; and Modernism and post-modern inventions. It includes the work of Joel-Peter Witkin, Robert Capa, Gustave Legray, and Garry Winogrand, among others.
 

	Tower Story, 2005 Detail Mixed media

Project Series 31: Katie Grinnan
November 5 - December 17, 2006

Opening Reception: Sunday, November 5, 5 – 7 p.m.

Artist's talk: Wednesday, November 8, 4:15 p.m. in the Museum

Grinnan will present a new installation based on her investigations into architecture, memory, ecology, and space. Grinnan uses photographs as material for sculpture, and deconstructs and complicates both mediums by collapsing, folding, and mirroring photographic images into and around wooden and metallic forms, merging interior and exterior form and space.  More...

LA Freewaves: New Videos by Oliver Ressler
November 5 - December 17, 2006

Opening reception: Sunday, November 5, 5 - 7 p.m.

“LA Freewaves: New Videos by Oliver Ressler” will present two recent films by Oliver Ressler—the United States premiere of Ressler’s newest film, The Fittest Survive, and 5 Factories: Worker Control in Venezuela, a 2006 collaboration between Ressler and Dario Azzellini that will represent the film’s second United States showing.

Oliver Ressler is an internationally exhibiting video artist. Since 1994 he has been concerned with theme specific exhibitions, projects in public spaces, and issues of racism, migration, genetic engineering, economics, forms of resistance, and social alternatives. Many of Ressler’s works are realized as collaborations: the ongoing project Boom! with the U.S.-artist David Thorne, the videos Venezuela from Below and Disobbedienti with the political analyst Dario Azzellini, and numerous projects on racism and migration with artist Martin Krenn. Oliver Ressler was born in Knittelfeld, Austria, in 1970, and lives and works in Vienna.

The Fittest Survive, 2006 Video still

The Fittest Survive consists of footage filmed during a five-day “Surviving Hostile Regions” training course by the AKE Group in January 2006 in Wales, Great Britain. The course instructors are British ex-special force soldiers and the participants are mainly business people, government officials, and mainstream journalists who are preparing for work in Iraq and other dangerous regions. Primarily filmed by hand camera, the video follows the survival-course participants as they experience the staged reality of live shell bombardments, an assault by armed guerrillas, the rescue of accident victims, and moving through mine fields. Above this training camp in Wales, low-flying British fighter planes hold maneuvers and foreshadow the real war theatres the class participants may soon encounter.

5 Factories: Worker Control in Venezuela documents the changes in Venezuela’s productive sphere as demonstrated by five large companies in various regions: a textile company, aluminum works, a tomato factory, a cocoa factory, and a paper factory. In all, the workers are struggling for different forms of co- or self-management supported in part by the government. The protagonists portrayed at the five production locations present insights into ways of alternative organizing and models of workers’ control. The film examines mechanisms and difficulties of self-organization and strategies of different production processes.

LA Freewaves facilitates cross-cultural dialogues by inventing dynamic new media exhibition forms at experimental and established venues throughout Los Angeles. With its 10th biennial festival of film, video, and experimental new media art, Freewaves launches "Too Much Freedom?" in early November at venues across Los Angeles. The festival, of which Pomona College is part, presents over 150 artists, selected by 10 international curators, and opens officially at the UCLA Hammer Museum on November 3. LA Freewaves is building one of the largest online archives and Internet new media resources and also presents local workshops and develops educational material, advocating creation and access to ground breaking alternative media.

This exhibition at Pomona College is organized by Rebecca McGrew, Curator of Pomona College Museum of Art, and Leah Emkin, LA Freewaves assistant and Claremont Graduate University student.

Artist’s website: http://www.ressler.at/

www.freewaves.org