FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LOS ANGELES NOMADIC DIVISION (LAND),
A NEW NON-PROFIT PUBLIC ART ORGANIZATION,
LAUNCHES WITH A SERIES OF TEMPORARY
PUBLIC PROJECTS AROUND LOS ANGELES
The First LAND, Entitled "Via,"
Brings The Work of Contemporary Mexican Artists To The
Public Realm
Curated By Director Shamim M. Momin
Los Angeles, CA. (January 20, 2010) Los Angeles
Nomadic Division (LAND), announces its first endeavor, Via, a series of temporary public projects in and around Los Angeles. LAND is a non-profit public art organization committed to commissioning
site- and situation-specific projects with national and international artists.
For this exhibition, LAND Director Shamim
M. Momin is selecting and commissioning new work by several acclaimed Mexican
artists. Reflective of the artists' cutting-edge projects in Mexico and Europe,
each commission will have a unique and distinct relationship to both the
artist's individual practice and the dynamic site of the Los Angeles location -
historically, culturally, functionally, or otherwise.
The first four of these projects will debut in January 2010, concurrent
with Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC) and acting as anchor points to the
fair's VIP programming. January is also the official Los Angeles Arts Month,
which, along with other important citywide art and cultural programming,
presents LAND as a highlight. These
projects will be followed by the staggered launch of new commissions throughout
the year, which, structurally, will further emphasize the conceptual basis of Via
(as in 'by way of'), by spreading it not only across space, but time as
well. Opening in concert with the civic and institutional programming already
planned around the Mexican bicentennial, Via will serve LAND's mission to function as a contemporary, public constellation
linking disparate spaces, activities and artists.
About Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND)
LAND supports dynamic and
unconventional artist practices, and navigates
the complex terrain and process of seeing a public project to fruition, while
still remaining free from the constraints of any particular institutional
infrastructure, architectural space or time frame. As its name implies, LAND's activities are built toward the
notion of decentralization, its nomadic endeavors integrated into the city's
eclectic cultural ecology as well as sites beyond Los Angeles. LAND was founded in 2009 by Shamim M. Momin, former
contemporary curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and board member
Christine Y. Kim, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles
County Museum of Modern Art (LACMA).
Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) Launch Exhibitions
Include the Following:
Tuesday, January 26th
- March 9th, 2010
Via: Gonzalo Lebrija
Two Locations:
Sunset
Videotron (2 Screens) Key
Club Video Screen
8410
Sunset Boulevard 9039
Sunset Boulevard
West Hollywood, CA 90069 West
Hollywood, CA 90069
sunsetvideotron.com keyclub.com
Guadalajara-based artist Gonzalo Lebrija will exhibit
three recently realized black-and-white films on three Videotrons,
high-resolutions LED monitors generally used for advertisement, on Sunset
Boulevard. Collected under the title The
Distance Between You and Me (2009), each film depicts the artist fleeing
from the camera in one of three California locales: Joshua Tree, Death Valley,
and Yosemite. The elegiac feel of Lebrija's films, in opposition to their
visually saturated, kinetic context, speaks to notions of urban-induced
psychosis - a plaintive, self-critical "advertisement" that encourages its
viewer to seek escape by any means necessary.
Each
film will play approximately every six-minutes throughout the exhibition.
SPECIAL
PRESENTATION: Lebrija's films will be shown on the
Videotrons for a full hour on January 27th from 7:00 - 8:00 PM.
This project made possible with the generous support of
Catharine and Jeffrey Soros.
Special thanks to City of West
Hollywood Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission.
Thursday, January
28th - 31st, 2010
Via: Artemio
Pacific Design Center
Green
Building Lobby
8687
Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood, CA 90069
310 657 0800
pacificdesigncenter.com
Monday
- Friday
9:00
AM - 5:00 PM
Mexico City-based artist Artemio, concurrent with a
solo-show at LA><ART, will produce a site-specific installation at Art
Los Angeles Contemporary: a "carpet" of custom ceramic tiles installed in
the Green Building Lobby at the Pacific Design Center. Invoking familiar icons
of urban violence, specifically the guns used in much of the drug related
violence happening throughout Mexico and the United States, the tiles are
employed in a repetitive and decorative manner, undermining their individual
symbolism and synthesizing a number of social critiques in their placement and
design - for example, the sterility of exchangeable iconography functioning to
insulate its signifier from gritty realities.
Come meet Artemio and LAND's Shamim M. Momin as they present
the installation on Friday, January 29th at 4:00 PM.
Support
for this project provided by Ceramica Suro.
Saturday, January 30th - March 28th, 2010
Via: José León Cerrillo
R.M.
Schindler's Fitzpatrick-Leland House
makcenter.org
Mexico City-based artist José León Cerrillo will take up residency for a course
of two months at R.M. Schindler's Fitzpatrick-Leland House, in collaboration
with the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, L.A. On site, Cerrillo will
produce a series of posters riffing on the graphic programs of a variety of
sources - from the familiar Art and Architecture portfolio of "lifestyle"
modernism, to Schindler's and other LA-based architects' body of work, to the
present-day print material offered by the MAK Center itself. This on-going
production, culminating in a limited edition publication with art press Paper
Chase Press, will be activated by a series of evening events, each thematically
addressing or reanimating a specific aspect of the "total lifestyle"
architectural program.
Visitation
is available by appointment. Please email info@nomadicdivision.org to make a
reservation.
This
project made possible by Grants for New Projects (GNP). GNP is a non-profit,
charitable entity that provides funding for curators and emerging artists to
produce contemporary art projects.
Saturday, January 30th
- April 30th, 2010
Via: Moris
The
Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
152 North Central Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90013
213
626 6222
moca.org
Monday:
11:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Tuesday,
Wednesday: CLOSED
Thursday: 11:00 AM - 8:00 PM
Friday: 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Saturday, Sunday: 11:00 AM - 6:00
PM
Mexico City-based artist Moris (a.k.a. Israel Meza
Moreno) will present a series of conceptually linked vinyl texts and digital
prints to be installed at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA)'s little Tokyo
venue, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Under the title Mi casa es tu casa (2010), each element will be activated by
varying degrees of outside intervention: an enlarged copy of the artist's
recent visa denial letter will be installed on the museum's façade, the text
only readable after dark; select phrases of text will be attached to the canopy
support beams, disappearing and reappearing contingent on light levels; and
finally, the building's entryway will contain a series of initially hidden
images arranged in a grid on the floor, collecting dirt as spectators enter the
museum to reveal a group portrait. With this project, Moris evokes
individual histories as subject to lived experiences of "invisibility" or
"disappearance," literally and conceptually. Its position at the immediate
exterior and entrance of Collection:
MOCA's First Thirty Years, the largest-ever installation of the museum's
renowned permanent collection, enhances Moris's exploration, further
contextualizing the notion of inclusion and exclusion.
This
project made possible with the generous support of Nancy and Howard Marks.
LEAD NOMAD SUPPORT provided by Calvin Klein Collection.
Media Inquiries Contact:
Alanna Navitski / Jennifer Gross
Evolutionary
Media Group
Phone: (323) 658 8700
Email: Alanna@emgpr.com / Jennifer@emgpr.com
