Media Arts Preview: L.A. Artists Featured
Los Angeles artists in particular shine this week with screenings and installations across the city.
Thursday, February 10
UCLA'sArt|Sci Center hosts Fulbright visiting artist Oksana Chepelyk and showcases her video and photography installation titled Genesis at UCLA starting at 6:00 p.m.USC's Cinematheque 108 series presents Cinematic and Geographic Traces: An Evening with Thom Andersen, featuring the local filmmaker and CalArts faculty member. The show, which starts at 7:00 p.m., will present Andersen's 1974 Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer, a careful and intriguing portrait of the man whose photographic studies were a precursor to movies. The film was dubbed by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum "one of the best essay films ever made on a cinematic subject." The screening also presents Andersen's more recent film, Get Out of the Car, a kind of "city symphony" devoted to Los Angeles. The screening takes place in the George Lucas Building, Room 108, and is free and open to the public.
Suprasensorial Screening: Program II expands on the MOCA exhibit titled Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color and Space, with screenings of Hélio Oiticica's The Invention of Color, Nevill D'Almeida's Verde Moreno, and Julio Le Parc's Le Parc Lumiere. The screening starts at 6:30 in MOCA's Ahmanson Auditorium on Grand Avenue.
Saturday, February 12
LA-based media artist Jennifer Steinkamp will present new work at ACME Gallery in a show opening tonight. Steinkamp is known for her large-scale immersive installations that reconfigure space. Steinkamp's work is also currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, which features Steinkamp's gorgeous installation called Madame Curie. James Benning's Two Faces is a video installation opening tonight at the Steve Turner Gallery with a reception from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. The piece is described as being "comprised of two three second shots of 16mm film digitally transferred and extended to twelve and a half minutes each" with changes so subtle that it's difficult to tell if the image
is still or moving. The show will also feature a "listening event" on Thursday, February 24, a screening and artist talk on Tuesday, March 1, and an excursion on Sunday, March 13, building on Benning's teaching technique from CalArts in which he would lead students to various locations to encourage more attuned habits of seeing and hearing.Sunday, February 13
LA Filmforum presents New Urban Observations, a show dedicated to the city and "its people and spaces, rhythms and hustle, and the life cycles of buildings and places." Included in the line-up are Eva Weber's The Solitary Life of Cranes and Laura Kraning's Vineland. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Spielberg Theater at the Egyptian.
Tuesday, February 15
The chemist and documentary filmmaker Alfred Vendl will speak about material science and visualization today at 2:00 p.m. at UCLA in the continuing series of events about science and the visual at UCLA's Art|Sci program. Later in the day, media artist and designer Diane Gromala will talk about work related to easing chronic pain through new media and interaction design at the Broad Arts Center at UCLA, 6:00 p.m.Trevor Paglen is perhaps best known for his work as a "military geographer" exploring the activities of the CIA and others that often ironically take place in plain sight. He has studied extraordinary rendition and secret operations, and recently published a series of photographs titled Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes. Paglen will lecture tonight at the Hammer Museum at 7:00 p.m.