The New Normal
August 25 – October 18, 2009
Reception: Saturday, September 12, 5-7 pm

 

	Kota Ezawa, Home Video II, 2007 (video still)

Panel Discussion: The Public and Private in Media
Wednesday, September 23, 4:15pm; Lyman Hall
Co-sponsored by the Intercollegiate Media Studies of the Claremont Colleges

Artist Lecture: Trevor Paglen
Wednesday, October 14, 4:15 pm; Lyman Hall
Co-sponsored by the Scripps College Humanities Institute
Reception following hosted by the Intercollegiate Media Studies of the Claremont Colleges

The Pomona College Museum of Art presents the traveling exhibition “The New Normal” from August 25 to October 18, 2009. The exhibition brings together thirteen recent artworks that use private information as raw material and subject matter. Although the concept of privacy is widely invoked, it is difficult to define. The private sphere encompasses domestic spaces, bodies, thoughts, communications, and behaviors—contexts that are usually rendered inaccessible to the public eye by legal, social, and physical boundaries. The practices that demarcate the private sphere are so much a part of the fabric of everyday life—wearing clothing, politely pretending not to overhear a cell-phone conversation—that they only become noticeable when they shift, making the private sphere visible to the public eye. Privacy, to put it bluntly, captures our attention only when it is under threat.

Each of the works in “The New Normal”—video, Web sites, sculpture, artist’s books, found objects, and photographs—grants access to the private sphere of the artists themselves, of strangers, and of public officials. Overall, the exhibition creates a sense that access to private information is a kind of currency, the exchange of which is growing and evolving in bewildering ways. We may find it frightening or fascinating, but we are all inescapably complicit in it.

The New Normal is a traveling exhibition co-organized by iCI (Independent Curators International), New York, and Artists Space, New York, and circulated by iCI. The guest curator for the exhibition is Michael Connor. The exhibition, tour, and catalogue are made possible, in part, with funding to iCI from The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the iCI independents, The Cowles Charitable Trust, and The Overbrook Foundation; and to Artists Space from the Starry Night Fund of the Tides Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the David S. Howe Foundation, the John S. Johnson and Susan R. Short Foundation, Yvon Lambert, the supporters of the Artists Space Publications Program, and the British Council.

For more information on iCI (Independent Curators International), visit www.ici-exhibitions.org
For more information on "The New Normal", visit the-new-normal.net
For curator Michael Connor's blog visit michael-connor.com/blog/category/the-new-normal


 

Project Series 38: Constance Mallinson
August 25- October 18, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, September, 12, 5-7 pm


 

	Constance Mallinson "Severed Limbs," 2009 Oil on paper 52 1/2 x 60 /2 inches

Artist Lecture: Constance Mallinson
Wednesday, September 16, 2 pm ; Pomona College Museum of Art


Project Series 38 presents Mallinson’s new still life paintings, in a richly detailed, trompe l’oeil style, combine the beautiful and the grotesque in equally unsettling and intriguing measure. In this work, she paints her observations directly from nature, using collaged constructions of decomposed materials. The Project Series in funded in part by the Pasadena Art Alliance.

The Project Series
Now in its eleventh year, the Project Series is the Museum's program of focused exhibitions of work by Southern California artists. Its purpose is to bring to the Pomona College community art that is experimental and that introduces new forms, techniques, and concepts. Organized by Rebecca McGrew, this series is supported in part by the Pasadena Art Alliance. A catalogue accompanies each exhibition. 


Project Series 38: Constance Mallinson Home Page

Private Life: Selections from the Permanent Collection
August 25 - October 18, 2009
Opening reception: Saturday, September 12, 5-7 pm

	Diego Rivera "Self Portrait", 1920 Lithograph on Paper 20th c Mexican Prints

 

 

 

Private Life, designed to compliment The New Normal, presents works from the permanent collection that take as their subjects the private, the personal, and the intimate. Through traditional forms—painting, sculpture, photography, and printmaking—the artists in this exhibition mine the empathetic and critical. Whether exploring the vanity and the close scrutiny of self-portraiture, the peering eye of voyeurism, or a person’s most intimate moments, these artists offer their vision of private life.