Hey Man, You're Saved

November 21- December 6, 2009                                                                                               OPENING November 22, 2009, 5–8 pm

Public Dialogue - Wednesday, December 2, 7-9:30 pm

Monte Vista is proud to present Hey Man, You’re Saved, a group exhibition of new work by nine insightful and diverse artists from the USC Roski School of Fine Arts. Operating between the ideal world of the concept and the structured site of the gallery, the work of these artists manifests through different mediums to explore appropriated sound and imagery, photographic process, fantastical and constructed landscapes, and the flux of identity. Hey Man, You’re Saved. So come in and be rescued from the monotony of visual consumption. Let’s get saved!    

Please join artist Sydney Mills and American media scholar Henry Jenkins, for Whiz, Bang, Shimmer, Pop: The Rise, The Fall and The Future of The Video Game Arcade. Together with audience members, Mills and Jenkins will examine the transformation from epicenters of the vibrant, budding gaming subculture of the early 1980’s into modest communities struggling to keep their doors open.

Refreshments 8-8:30

Henry Huang, a long term Jesus People member and his artist / engineer daughter, Hannah Huang, will discuss Birth and Rebirth: The Jesus People in Community. The Jesus People USA is one of the few intentional Christian communities remaining today, situated near uptown Chicago. Topics include street witnessing, sustainable communal living, and the deep rooted subculture that results from this dynamic existence.

The Peninsula

October 3 – October 31, 2009                    OPENING October 3, 2009, 7 – 10pm

Antoni Wojtyra

Monte Vista is pleased to announce Polish/Canadian artist Antoni Wojtyra’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.Wojtyra’s work is elusive, defiant, and humorous. Operating at times like an itinerant worker,Wojtyra moves fluidly from subject to subject, with a varied practice emphasizing concisenessand utility. Wojtyra uses books, discussions, photographs, line drawings, paintings, text, etc. tounhinge conventions and stereotypes—creating spaces for the reimagination of alternatives.Wojtyra’s exhibition at Monte Vista promises to surprise yet again as he proposes that artconform to an ecologically-sound, sustainable ecosystem. While material culture strivestowards a clean, green, and biodegradable ideal, art continues towards an art that is timeless,classic, reverent, and archival. For this exhibition, Wojtyra was inspired by a migrant strategyof condensing material wealth into diamonds, sewn into the hemlines of clothes, smuggledacross borders, only to be sold and converted back into a new life, and possessions, in a new settlement. Using this pragmatic, light, and supremely wise “immigrant logic,” Wojtyra reimaginesthe gallery space as a peninsula, commingling and testing Art’s effect and power in relation to*terra firma*, the street.

Game Night at Monte Vista

Where: Monte Vista, 5442 Monte Vista St., Los Angeles, CA 90042                                          When: Thursday, September 17, at 8:00pm

Why: FREE SNACKS! And GAMES!

CORPORATE LADDER is a strategic game of stacking blocks for 4 to 6 players. The object of the game is to take up the most space.

GIVE AND TAKE is a game of scrimmage for 2 players. Think checkers meets Chinese finger trap.You can find out more about Corporate Ladder at:

http://hadto.net/category/projects/corporate-ladder

Until We Come to One that Reminds Us

Opening Reception August 8, 7–10 pm

Until we come to one that reminds us

Paintings and sculpture

Kristina Faragher, Christine Frerichs, Amy Green, and Curt LeMieux

Until we come to one that reminds us is an exhibition of four artists whose works reflect an

engagement with materials in a landscape of personal and political trouble. Kristina Faragher, Curt

LeMieux, Amy Green, and Christine Frerichs use materials as surrogates for body, place, psyche,

and the gap between emotion and language.

The paintings and sculptures in this exhibition suggest a substratum of guilt and loss in American

psychology, the unease of belonging to a nation engaged in imperialist wars that have not

ceased despite popular objection. The works subtly couple a domestic sensibility of the brutal

landscape of war in a queasy interplay of long-time American themes.

Kristina Faragher’s hundreds of small, craft-store balsawood “keepsake” boxes are strategically

smashed, reconstructed, and enameled with painstaking attention to detail. The pieces are then

forced back into the boxes, no longer able to contain sentiment. Faragher’s work suggests the

violence inherent in frustration at the limits of knowledge, cycles of violence and creation, and the

potential recuperation of those who have been disfigured and forced back into a cultural system

that must contend with them.

Christine Frerichs uses charged materials—active carbon, cement, dirty turpenoid—in order to call

up the penetrable split between the conscious and unconscious and the personal and cultural

impact of repression. Images are cultivated on the surface of her paintings to be immediately

rejected and wiped out. Some images are barely allowed to form, while others have been

laboriously plied. Frerichs rehearses the connection between personal and cultural conflicts,

between what is spoken and what is denied. The incompatibility of materials echoes the way in

which emotion and language disengage at the height of tension, neither being enough for the

other, both resonating apart.

Amy Green’s felt paintings delicately try the relationship between craft and abstraction. The

paintings recall metaphors of stain and place, of an uneasy bargain between surface and

support, and of the liminal space of the 70’s household, wherein women understood the murky

possibilities between liberation and reduction in the tight confinements of the physical world.

Green’s tentative placement of the frayed felt surfaces against the hard edges of the stretcher

bars belies a hesitation in the juxtaposition of craft against its heavy modernist counterpart.

Curt LeMieux’s sculptures and mixed media drawings allude to the witnessing of bodily trauma

within the tragedy of mediated warfare, linking barbarity to everyday cultural referents--remnants

of curtains, socks, pencils, and shoes. Materials are handled with a delicate aesthetic that opens

up a place into which the sense of both the disjunction and union of violence and security can

flow. Surveying LeMieux’s small drawings and sculptures, one has the sense of the viewer

as mute witness to a concatenation of banal and terrible events that have been reviewed,

acknowledged, and dismissed.

ARTIST AND CURATOR BIOS

Kristina Faragher, Artist

Kristina Faragher has exhibited works of art individually and collaboratively in a host of media

including video, installation, film, and performance. Selected venues and festivals include: The

Oakland Museum, Oakland, California; The Autry National Center, Los Angeles; The REDCAT

Theater, Los Angeles; Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica; Track 16 Gallery, Santa Monica;

SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico; LA Freewaves Ninth Annual International Media Festival,

Los Angeles; The Fifth Festival International de la Image in Colombia, South America; and

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Minsk, Belarus. Publications include: The Smithsonian

Institution’s Archives of American Art, Yosemite Art Of an American Icon (UC Berkeley Press), and

Extensions: Online Journal of Embodied Technology at UCLA.

Christine Frerichs, Artist

After receiving her B.F.A. from University of Arizona, Christine Frerichs lived in Brooklyn, then

moved to California to complete her M.F.A. at UC Riverside. She also attended the intensive

residency, Painting’s Edge. Her work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Riverside,

Tucson, Boston, Chicago, and New York and has been published in the 2005 Northeastern

Edition of New American Paintings. Exhibitions include “New Work: Christine Frerichs,” Sweeney

Art Gallery, Riverside; Painting’s Edge, Riverside Art Museum; Works on Loan from the 21st

Century, Riverside Art Museum; and My Buddy at UCLA New Wight Gallery.

Amy Green, Artist, Curator

Amy Green received her B.F.A. in Painting from the University of Tennessee in 1995 and an M.F.A.

in Studio Arts from CalArts in 1997. Her paintings have been shown nationally and internationally

and appear in numerous private collections. Exhibitions include Rolf Ricke Galerie in Cologne;

the Neues Museum in Nurnberg; Galerie Monika Reitz, Frankfurt; Kunstverein St. Gallen in

Switzerland; Evelyne Canus Gallery, Paris; Cirrus Gallery, Susanne Vielmetter, Sea and Space

Explorations in Los Angeles; and Cohan Leslie and Browne in New York, among other venues.

Reviews include: New York Arts Magazine, Art Issues, the Basel Art Fair Catalogue, and Neues

Museum Catalog Essays. Recent exhibitions include “New Works” at 24Hr Gallery, “Let the trees

decide”, at Glendale College Art Gallery, and “Cosmos Factory” at Cirrus Gallery. Amy Green is

represented by Galerie Schmidt Maczollek in Cologne, Germany.

Curt LeMieux, Artist

Curt LeMieux received his B.F.A. in Painting in 1998 and his M.A. in Sculpture in 1999 from

the University of Wisconsin at Superior. He received his M.F.A. in Drawing and Installation in

2001 from the Claremont Graduate University. His works have been shown nationally and

internationally and appear in numerous private collections. Exhibitions venues and events include

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Minsk, Belarus; The Sixth Festival of International Images in

Manizales, Colombia; The Berkeley Video and Film Festival in Berkeley; The Santa Monica

Museum of Art in Santa Monica; Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica; Los Angeles Contemporary

Exhibitions in Los Angeles; and Sea and Space Explorations in Los Angeles.

Asher Hartman, Curator

Asher Hartman is a painter, performance installation artist, and filmmaker. Hartman’s work

has been exhibited extensively in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Venues include the Whitney

Biennial in collaboration with Charles Long and Wilderness, the Cultural Center of the Philippines,

The Images Festival (Toronto), Recontres International (Paris/Berlin), and The Beijing Open

International Performance Festival. Solo and collaborative works in Los Angles include exhibitions

at Track 16, LACE, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Highways Performance Space, Sea

and Space Explorations, and New Image Art. Hartman served as co-director of Crazy Space, a

gallery for experimental art and durational performance at the 18th St. Arts Center in Santa Monica (2000-2005) and teaches at the University of California, Riverside. He received a B.A. in Theater

from UCLA and an M.F.A. in Studio Art from CalArts.

Historical Vernacular

June 27–July 25, 2009

Opening Reception June 27, 7–10 pm

Melanie Nakaue and Wendy Red Star

Monte Vista Projects presents, “Historical Vernacular”, a two-person show by the artists Melanie

Nakaue and Wendy Red Star that investigates American cultural history, language and traditional

folk crafts.

Melanie Nakaue’s “Folklore” series is comprised of two single-channel animated videos and one

three-dimensional quilt block sculpture. The artist connects the dual role of physical and aesthetic

labor in her maternal and paternal grandmother’s lives, and examines how family histories are

preserved through folklore and folk crafts that reflect the daily histories and lives of working

women.

By juxtaposing analog (folk crafts) and digital (animation/video) forms the artist attempts to create

a discourse between representation, alternative narrative, history and aesthetic and personal

experience though animation, sound and sculpture.

Exhibitions of her sculptures, installations and video screenings include: Beloit College, Beliot, WI,

Portland Documentary and eXperimental Film festival, Portland, OR, Searching for Gold Mountain

Series, Alexander Gallery, Oregon City, OR, Un/Common, Pacific NW College of Art, Portland, OR,

The Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; Supersonic, The Windtunnel, Art Center College

of Art and Design, Pasadena, CA; Gallery 4F, Los Angeles, CA, San Francisco Art Institute, San

Francisco, CA. Melanie was also selected for a public arts commission, Newhall Art Walk, in

Newhall, CA.

Wendy Red Star’s “The Crow Language Project” is both a website and series of non-web

presentations comprised of work made by Wendy Red Star in collaboration with Crow language

speakers. The project is geared towards creative ways to learn how to speak Crow. By using a

creative series of engaging exercises, videos, and interviews with Crow speakers Wendy Red Star

teaches herself and her two year old daughter how to speak Crow.

Wendy Red Star was born in Billings, Montana just outside of the Crow Indian reservation where

she was raised. She grew up in a multi-cultural family. Her mother is of Irish decent, her father a

full blood Crow Indian and her older sister is Korean. Wendy left the Crow Indian reservation when

she was eighteen to attend Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana where she studied

sculpture. She then went on to earning her MFA in sculpture at UCLA. Wendy currently lives in

Portland, Oregon where she is an adjunct professor of art at Portland State University.

Wendy Red Star’s work explores the intersection between life on the Crow Indian reservation and

the world outside of that environment. She thinks of herself as a Crow Indian cultural archivist

speaking sincerely about the experience of being a Crow Indian in contemporary society.

Her work has been shown at Helen E. Copeland gallery, Bozeman, MT, The Fondation

Cartier L’Art Contemporain, Paris, France, The CSULB gallery, Long Beach, CA, Research &

Development, Chicago, IL, The Museum Tower at MOCA, Los Angeles, CA, And/Or gallery,

Dallas, TX, The UCLA New Wight gallery, Los Angeles, CA, The L.A. Municipal Art gallery, Los

Angeles, CA, The Domaine De Kerguehennc, Brittany, France, The Hudson D. Walker gallery,

Provincetown, MA, The Plush Gallery, Dallas TX, The Laura Bartlett Gallery, London, England, The

Luckman gallery, Los Angeles, CA, and The Volitant gallery, Austin, Texas.

Amass curated by Dana Turkovic

. 

May 9 June 6, 2009
opening reception May 9, 7 10 pm

Brandon Anschultz (St. Louis)
Sarah Baker (London)
Fantastic Nobodies (Brooklyn)
Iain forsyth and Jane Pollard (London) Robert Goetz (St. Louis)

Wendy Mason (Los Angeles) Erick Michaud (Austin)
Brandon Morse (Washington d.C.) John Watson (St. Louis)

Curated by dana Turkovic

Amass is an exhibition with multiple intentions and various definitions. First realized at Boots Contemporary Art in St. Louis, the exhibition’s second incarnation will respond directly to the space and mission of Monte Vista but will also maintain its original curatorial premise. The title is a reference in its most direct translation a metaphor for curating an exhibition; to gather artwork, to assemble ideas, to group, and to collect. The exhibition at Monte Vista will bring together

new video work from a selection of national and international artists. Under this headline, Amass is also blurring the boundaries between, art, design, and information by questioning the conventional configurations of how we view video art. By commissioning two artists to design “sculptural support” that invites, and in some ways, compels the audience to assemble and come together as viewers, the exhibition will aim to provide a series of smaller encounters within one collective social experience, thereby highlighting the existence of a ‘closed temporal loop’ between creation, interpretation and reception. This approach touches on Nicolas Bourriaud’s observations on what he coined “relational art”: “the audience is envisaged as a community. Rather than the artwork being an encounter between a viewer and an object, relational art produces inter-subjective encounters. Through these encounters, meaning is elaborated collectively, rather than in the space of individual consumption.” These experimental display interventions also set up a system for response and conversation within the work, providing
a complimentary transference between the space, the curator, the artists, and ultimately the viewer to develop through a sustained professional critique. By tweaking the dynamic, the challenge of this installation will aim to illustrate the possibility of complex associations that come together in one space, where video art and display connect, ultimately pinpointing and exploiting the meeting place between these art forms, the gallery space as social environment and collective spectatorship. 

 

Tucker Stilley's The Permanent Record of Newjack Rasputin

April 10 April 25, 2009
opening reception April 10, 7 10 pm

Tucker Stilley

Walking the tenuous line between a “virtual residency” and an unsuccessful artificial intelligence test, multi-media artist Tucker Stilley pops the hood on his syncretic art-making process. Walking the tenuous line between a “virtual residency” and an unsuccessful artificial intelligence test, multi-media artist Tucker Stilley pops the hood on his syncretic art-making process. In a marathon 2 week session hosted at the Monte Vista Projects - Stilley, almost completely paralyzed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), demonstrates via live webcast & installation the method behind the creation of his on-going hyper-sigil artwork The Permanent Record of Newjack_Rasputin.

“I feel it is logical, my own nervous system failing, that I would spontaneously generate an alter- ego, tear a hole-in-space and try to escape. My situation warrants immediate and drastically uncompromising self-metamorphosis. An exquisite new aesthetic unfolds when you are standing on the deck of a burning ship. Being paralyzed amplifies the uneasy link between intent and action and brings into question the true meaning of this place and time that we occupy and of what our ultimate audience might prove to be.”

An artist for over thirty years, in as many media, Tucker Stilley 48, attended Studio for Interrelated Media, at the Massachusetts College of Art. He has worked in Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles as a media artist, sound designer and film editor. Previous exhibitions include ART, Cambridge, REDCAT & Octopus Garden Salon, LA.

This exhibition was curated by Sam Durant. 

 

The Permanent Record of Newjack Rasputin

April 10 – April 25, 2009

Opening Reception April 10, 7–10 pm

Tucker Stilley

Walking the tenuous line between a “virtual residency” and an unsuccessful artificial intelligence

test, multi-media artist Tucker Stilley pops the hood on his syncretic art-making process. Walking

the tenuous line between a “virtual residency” and an unsuccessful artificial intelligence test,

multi-media artist Tucker Stilley pops the hood on his syncretic art-making process. In a marathon

2 week session hosted at the Monte Vista Projects - Stilley, almost completely paralyzed with

ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), demonstrates via live webcast & installation the method behind the

creation of his on-going hyper-sigil artwork The Permanent Record of Newjack_Rasputin.

“I feel it is logical, my own nervous system failing, that I would spontaneously generate an alterego,

tear a hole-in-space and try to escape. My situation warrants immediate and drastically

uncompromising self-metamorphosis. An exquisite new aesthetic unfolds when you are

standing on the deck of a burning ship. Being paralyzed amplifies the uneasy link between intent

and action and brings into question the true meaning of this place and time that we occupy…and

of what our ultimate audience might prove to be.”

An artist for over thirty years, in as many media, Tucker Stilley 48, attended Studio for Interrelated

Media, at the Massachusetts College of Art. He has worked in Boston, San Francisco, and Los

Angeles as a media artist, sound designer and film editor. Previous exhibitions include ART,

Cambridge, REDCAT & Octopus Garden Salon, LA.

This exhibition was curated by Sam Durant.

La Haine (Screening)

March 15, 2009

5 pm

Monte Vista presents a screening of Mathieu Kassovitz’s 1995 film

Film synopsis: When he was just twenty-nine years old, Mathieu Kassovitz took the international film world by storm with La Haine (Hate), a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically in the low-income banlieue districts on Paris’s outskirts. Aimlessly whiling away their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui)—a Jew, an African, and an Arab—give human faces to France’s immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their social marginalization slowly simmering until they reach a climactic boiling point. A work of tough beauty, La Haine is a landmark of contemporary French cinema and a gripping reflection of itscountry’s ongoing identity crisis.

Katie Lewis' Drawling Room

February 21 March 21, 2009
opening reception February 21, 7 10 pm

An installation by Katie Lewis

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to announce the opening of Drawling Room, an installation by Katie Lewis. After working with borrowed text for the last few years, Lewis has now turned her attention from noun to verb, focusing on the acting of writing rather than words themselves. The result is an installation of swooping, looping marks painted directly on the walls that suggest communication but refuse to make sense. One might wonder if galleries walls could talk, is

this what they would say? Punning off of the drawing room as a space of casual conversation and drawl as a relaxed, even stuttering form of speech, Drawling Room offers a wry appraisal
of contemporary information exchange. Ropey garlands of lazy language take their time with articulation and suggest that our continual quest for instant information gratification might in fact produce nothing more than nonsense. And maybe that really isn’t so bad.

Katie Lewis studied art and art history at Dartmouth College and NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts before completing her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts in 2005. She has exhibited her work at numerous venues in Los Angeles, such as 507 Rose, Harvey Levine Gallery, and JAIL. Her paintings were also included in the 2005 Greater L.A. exhibition at Cal State Long Beach and featured in an episode of the hit HBO series Entourage in the fall of 2008. In addition to painting, Lewis also writes about art occasionally and teaches in the art program at CalArts. 

 

Phillip Maysles The Comfort of Enlightenment

January 10 February 7, 2009
opening reception January 10, 7 10 pm

Phillip Maysles

Monte Vista presents new works on paper by Philip Maysles. “The Comfort of Enlightenment” completes his engagement with Norman Rockwell’s iconic painting about desegregation, “The Problem We All Live With” (1964). Using the photographs Rockwell made of studio models for this painting as source material for new work, Maysles addresses the failure of white artists to undermine America’s racial hierarchy through a conventional studio practice. Maysles interprets and re-imagines the history of White artists’ relations to Black life and culture in order to articulate the way in which White masculinity is both affirmed and challenged through contradictory feelings towards its perceived Black other. Inspired by W.E.B. Dubois’ remark that, “White artists

. . . cry for freedom in dealing with Negroes because they have so little freedom in dealing with whites,” Maysles takes creative liberties with the master narrative of American art history to reveal the inability of Euro-American liberals to recognize how they are both complicit with and subject to violence perpetrated in maintaining White supremacy. By filtering this history through an artistic lens shaped by lived experience, personal feeling and an understanding of critical race theory, Maysles makes the racial dynamic of his own subject position visible.

Philip Maysles was born in and currently lives and works in New York City. He received his BA with honors from Brown University (2002) and MFA in Art from The California Institute of Arts (2005). Maysles has exhibited painting, drawing and installation at P.S. 1 Museum of Contemporary Art (Long Island City), Artists Space (New York), Project Row Houses (Houston), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and The Amistad Center for Art and Culture at the Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, CT). His writing on art and music has appeared in Small Axe: A Journal of Caribbean Thought (Indiana University Press, 2001) and The CORE Journal (MFA Houston, 2006). He has been a lecturer in Art at Rice University and the University of Houston (2005-2007). He currently teaches documentary filmmaking and runs a non-profit cinema in Harlem, New York. This is his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles

 

Free Fall Perspective, Online and Perception

November 8 December 7, 2008 Opening Reception November 8, 7 10 pm

Ricardo Alzati, Diego Toledo and Alejandro Pintado

“Free fall perspective, on line and perception” is an exhibition that reflects upon the influence of systems in everyday day life, in particular it focuses on perspective. It analyzes the rational and logical way this system has to represent the three- dimensional space. Perspective is known as a system used to create the illusion of three-dimensional images and spatial relationships on

a two-dimensional surface. To accomplish this, there are a set of rules that should be followed. The vanishing point is the center from which the order should be placed; everything that is set out of this order is excluded from perspective. By having this apparently simple rule, all other possibilities are shot down. We tend to think that the system of perspective is only used for representation in a flat surface, on a two-dimensional flat object. The truth, is that the influence of this system has not stayed 2D, it has moved to the three-dimensional space. More than
ever two-dimensional images describe our experience of the world, this expressions affect the way we perceive our individual experience of the three-dimensional world. Perspective gives preference to the rational and logical order over the abstract and perceptual experience. Free fall perspective on line and perception questions the retinal experience and pushes the boundaries of what is expected to be seen. In the shape of light, shadow, line, paintings and drawings is that the artists Ricardo Alzati, Diego Toledo and Alejandro Pintado invite the viewer to move further away the expected rules enhancing his experience of abstraction of the physical space.

-Alejandro Pintado

This exhibition was made possible by ART2102

Ricardo Alzati was born in Mexico City in 1974. He received his education in History and Visual Arts at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and in Photography and Visual Arts at
the Centro de la Imagen and Centro Nacional de las Artes. In 2001-2002 he also attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Alzati’s photography, video, installations, paintings, and drawings have been exhibited in Mexico and the United States, including solo exhibitions at the Museo del la Ciudad de México (Mexico City), Casa Vecina (Mexico City), Fototeca de Veracruz (Verazcruz, Mexico), 111 projects (Mexico City), and group exhibitions, such as the 2001 Visions: Contemporary Mexican Photography show at the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, and
the 2008 Proyectos para descontrucción at the Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Artes MUCA Roma in Mexico City. In 2007, Alzati was recipient of the Jóvenes Creadores art production grant. In 2008, he was selected as part of the core group participants at United Nations Plaza Mexico City and was also awarded artist residencies at the Triangle Artist’s Workshop (New York), and the 26th International Symposium of Contemporary Art, Baie St. Paul (Quebec, Canada). Alzati also writes for Rim Magazine (Los Angeles), and Arte MX (Mexico City). He currently lives and works in Mexico City.

Alejandro Pintado was born in Mexico City in 1973. He received his MFA at Goldsmiths (London), and his BFA at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura. Pintado has exhibited widely nationally and internationally. He has had numerous solo shows, including Galeria O (Mexico City), Galeria Emma Molina (Monterrey), the Museum Ciudad de Querétaro, Vaknin Schwartz Gallery (Atlanta), and Haus der Kunst Gallery (Guadalajara). Pintado was also included in the 2008 Moscow Bienale for young art, the 2007 Bienal de Artes de Yucatán, the 2005 Bienale de Monterrey at the Centro Navional de las Artes, and Declaraciones, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid (2005).

From 1994-1999, Pintado co-founded the artist run space, Tallería espacio cultural, and has since curated several international exhibitions including Speedy González is German: Playing with Stereotypes (2003) and Landscape Interventions at the Moscow Bienale (2008). In 2007, he was awarded an artist residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and was also honored with a Pollock-Krasner Grant. He currently lives and works in London.

Diego Toledo was born in Mexico City in 1964. He graduated as a painter from the National University School of Arts, San Carlos, UNAM (1983-87). As co-founder in 1988 of the alternative and independent space called “La Quiñonera” in Mexico City, he experimented with different materials and other technologies, and began to show his work. Toledo’s work has evolved
from painting to the use of a great variety of materials and processes, creating pieces of a site-specific and conceptual nature. Toledo’s work has dealt with elements and forms that concerned information design, advertisement and public art, and recently has produced objects and installation dealing with problems of how we experience and understand space through architecture and its representation from a phenomenological point of view. Toledo has exhibited widely in Mexico and internationally. He has had solo shows at many galleries and museums, including the Carrillo Gil Museum, Mexico City (1993), Contemporary Art Museum, Oaxaca City, Mexico (1995), Radio House Gallery, New York (2002), and OMR Gallery, Mexico City (2003). In 2000, Toledo was awarded artist residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada) and the “Laboratory Mexico-Cuba” (Cuba). He currently lives and works in Berlin. 

Psychogeometry

September 27 October 25, 2008 Opening Reception September 27, 7 10 pm

David Hatcher, Laura Riboli, Brian Sharp Curated by Matthew Thompson

Various recent group exhibitions have articulated a preoccupation with more primary elements
of artistic production. Whether iterated as formalism, objecthood, “thingness,” or sculptural assemblage, these exhibitions attempt to frame a renewed interest in visual exuberance
and focus on materiality. The relationship of primary elements to psychology is often under- examined. Psychogeometry picks up on another primary construct geometry and presents three artists whose work exists in the peculiar personal, cultural, and historical intersections between psychology and geometry.

Including work in a variety of media by David Hatcher, Laura Riboli, and Brian Sharp, the exhibition takes a nod from Guy Debord’s notion of psychogeography especially his focus on its effect “on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” Instead of closing off or articulating a distinct relationship between geometry and psychology, Psychogeometry will function more as a drift through possibilities.

David Hatcher creates hallucinatory prints on perforated blotter paper by re-purposing diagrams from Western philosophical texts. In Laura Riboli’s videos, objects take on totemic, science-fiction qualities through their suggestive geometry and re-animation. Brian Sharp’s abstract paintings take the notion of abstraction as language to its logical extreme, oscillating between recreational linguistics and formalism.

The exhibition will also feature a rotating selection of research materials, visual references, and other ephemera.

Psychogeometry is organized by Matthew Thompson, Associate Curator, Aspen Art Museum. 

Welcome Wilmington

August 16 September 17, 2008 Opening Reception August 16, 7 10 pm

Arnoldo Vargas

Wilmington California is synonymous with Industry. Home to more oil refineries than any other US city and gateway to the third largest port in the world, Wilmington is also synonymous with skyrocketing levels of pollution, cancer, asthma, and other ill effects of industry. “Welcome Wilmington” is a photographic exhibition by Arnoldo Vargas chronicling not only the glare of Wilmington’s oil refineries but also the complex political relationship with the thriving community who live within it. Documenting altars of victims of police shootings or participants in this year’s Peace and Dignity Run, Vargas examines the ways various instances of spiritual reflection continue to manifest within this structure.

Arnoldo Vargas received his BA from UCLA in fine art in 1999 and will be attending Calarts for his MFA in the fall. He has exhibited through out California, with his most recent exhibition “Stardust” at Space 47 in San Jose. He is a native of Wilmington, California, where he currently teaches art at Banning High School. 

Coastal States

July 12 August 2, 2008
Opening Saturday July 12, 7 10 pm

Gilda Davidian, Ignacio Genzon, Rena Kosnett, Jeff McLane, Katie Shapiro

“Coastal States” is a 5 person photography and video exhibition. The works are varied--some are landscape, some are portraits, some are arachnid. But all 5 projects are about existing on the periphery-- of family, in your social outlets, and in your neighborhoods--and the changes that occur when you come up for air after realizing you’ve been coasting on auto-pilot, without taking immediate surroundings into account.

The artists are Gilda Davidian, Ignacio Genzon, Rena Kosnett, Jeff McLane, and Katie Shapiro, who are graduates of CalArts currently working in Los Angeles and contributing to the From Here To There art collective. 

Sew (A) Piece A Collaborative Flag Rearrangement

July 6, 2008 12 noon - ?

Jade Thacker

In March 2008, at the War Protest in Hollywood, Jade Thacker performed a rearrangement of Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece wearing an American flag as her dress. Sitting in the street, Jade invited anyone to cut a piece from her dress/flag and offered them the choice to either keep it or put their piece in a cup she had for use in a later attempted reconstruction.

With many cut pieces remaining and one very disheveled American flag, Jade invites anyone and everyone to collaborate in a Flag Rearrangement. This all day extravaganza will take place at Monte Vista Projects in Highland Park, July 6, 2008 beginning at 12 noon and carrying on! There will be a working table with the remainder of the flag from back in March and various sewing materials where attendees will be able to take turns altering and revamping the flag. Participants may choose to sew back a flag remnant or cut a piece from their own clothes to add to the new flag. Everyone isencouraged to wear or bring clothes or cloths to cut and insert. There will also be an afternoon BBQ, musical talents, and a non-traditional flag raising!

This is Jade Thacker’s first solo exhibition. She is currently a BFA4 at California Institute of the Arts, living in the mysterious Val Verde, CA. 

Hey, You Never Know

May 31 - June 28, 2008 Annie Shaw

Monte Vista is proud to present “Hey, You Never Know.,” an absurd exploration into the geographical distribution of luck and money, faith and fate starting in the east and ending in the west by Annie Shaw.

“Hey, You Never Know.” is the promotional slogan for the New York lottery, including Mega Millions. A multi-state lottery, Mega Millions draws its capital from twelve states, two of which are New York and California. Since migrating to the east coast three years ago, Annie has found herself living next to the Mega Millions billboards in Manhattan and in Brooklyn. Twice a week, as the number indicating the jackpot would change from low to high, she imagined anticipation rising and falling at each transition. And then once in a blue moon, the number would drop drastically, and she knew someone’s life had changed.

For the duration of the exhibition, Annie will dedicate her time at Monte Vista as an artist-in- residence, and a Mega Millions participant. Each day, she will purchase one Mega Millions ticket at one location in one zip code in Greater Los Angeles. Visitors to the installation are invited to join the lottery pool. Each additional dollar will bring her to purchase one more ticket in a different location. Any winnings will be evenly divided amongst all the participants who contribute to the pool. A series of images video, photograph and sculpture, will be developed and displayed throughout this process.

Please join us for the following events:

Saturday, June 7 at 7 pm : “How to Win the Lottery” : a lecture by Melissa Brown
Based in New York, Melissa has spent the past few years fascinated with the Powerball
games and how to measure and capitalize on their idiosyncrasies. She has incorporated this numerological science into both her drawings and her purchases in the New York State Lotto. Serving as the official spiritual guide of “Hey, You Never Know,” Melissa has provided Annie with a set of numbers, calculated from the formula, in order to test their probability of winning against QuikPick. She will be at Monte Vista in person to share the intricacies of her system for beating the lottery.

Friday, June 27, 7pm : Final Drawing and Closing Party
Celebrate the closing of the exhibition and watch the live broadcast of the Mega Millions drawing with Annie on site. Witness the fate of the last ticket purchased by the lottery pool and view all the materials developed during the four-week project.

Annie Shaw is the founder of Leefahsalung at the New China Town Barber Shop, a site-specific, curatorial and collaborative project series challenging the role of art production and its relationship to local identities. A catalog detailing its five-year history is currently in production, to be published this coming fall. She moved to New York in 2005 to study at Columbia University, where she completed her MFA in 2007. We are thrilled that she has returned to present her first solo project in the Southland. 

An Evening With Martha Ronk, Kate Wolf, and Jibade-Khalil Huffman

May 23, 2008     6 pm

An Evening With Martha Ronk, Kate Wolf, and Jibade-Khalil Huffman A celebration of new work by poets and fiction writers at Monte Vista

*Martha Ronk* has published 8 books of poetry, most recently “In a landscape of having
to repeat” (Omnidawn), winner of the PEN USA Best Poetry Book 2005, and “Vertigo” (Coffee House), a National Poetry Series selection. She is a 2007 NEA recipient and teaches Renaissance Literature and Creative Writing at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

*Kate Wolf* is an MFA candidate in writing at the California Institute of the Arts. Her work has appeared in the LA Weekly and Swingset Magazine. She lives in Los Angeles.

*Jibade-Khalil Huffman* was born in Detroit and raised in Florida. He is the author of “19 Names For Our Band” (Fence Books, 2008). His poetry, fiction and photography have appeared in Boston Review, Court Green, Canarium, NOON and Encyclopedia among others. His awards include the 2004 Grolier Poetry Prize as well as fellowships from the Millay Colony for the Arts and the Ucross Foundation. 

The Mystical, Scatological and the Occult

April 12 - May 10, 2008
Opening Reception 7-10 pm, April 12, 2008

George Kuchar, Alice Cattaneo, Elizabeth DiGiovanni, Michael Decker, Candice Lin, and Loren Hartman

“Any structure of ideas is vulnerable at its margins.” Mary Douglas

The Mystical, Scatological, and the Occult is an immersive exhibition of film, video, and sculpture. Inspired by anthropologist Mary Douglas’s idea that all margins are imbued with transgressive power, this exhibition explores the liminal territories between the living and the dead, the sexes, and the bodily interior and exterior, as metaphors for the marginal at large.

Participating artists include legendary underground filmmaker George Kuchar, who began his career at the age of twelve “making a transvestite movie on the roof,” for which he was “brutally beaten by [his] mother for having disgraced her and also for soiling her nightgown.” With a sly sense of humor, startlingly raw vision, and celebration of the vulgar, Kuchar’s films and videos embrace subjects ranging from the scatological to the sublime.

Quite different in sensibility, but equally powerful in personal vision, Italian artist Alice Cattaneo transforms simple materials such as paper, toothpicks, tape, thread, and felt into abstracted sculptures and installations that evoke ephemeral and elusive things like “falling hair”, “droplets of blood”, “flames”, “the perfect formula”. Her videos and animations use a similar strategy of simplified action to create a sense of anecdotal metaphor and sparse drama.

Elizabeth DiGiovanni’s videos, sculptures, installations, and drawings evoke the miasma of cultish private spaces. Somewhere between the poster-coated walls of sullen teenagers, and an old decrepit woman’s collection of snow globes and chandeliers, DiGiovanni’s work offers us a glimpse into a very personal construction of fantasy and longing. With an aesthetic that slides between camp and sincerity, DiGiovanni’s work circles around fantastical visions of grandeur and excess.

Michael Decker’s sculptures recreate and abstract objects that unveil or remove one’s subjective pain or trauma body pillows, massage tools, mortars and pestles. The everyday becomes archetypal, creating narratives that elicit an immediate enjoyment compounded by perplexed wonder. Using an aesthetic of muppetry, Decker’s sculpture Emperor’s Scroll stages an intimate printing device for rendering the invisible visible. The muppet figure is at once a cultural symbol, an educational device, and a mythical sage. In this conflation, the domestic vernacular of embossed toilet paper becomes a spiritual ground for communicating artistic insight.

Candice Lin’s drawings, animations, and sculptures focus on the blurry and ever-changing boundaries between longing and disturbance, sexuality and violence, history and memory. The allegorical and imaginative characters inhabiting her work rogue girls, witch doctors, and animalistic gnomes create a provocative ritual-laden world that is as visually captivating as it is puzzling to understand.

Loren Hartman is a painter, performance installation artist, and short filmmaker whose works often pivot around the construction of identity, with an aesthetic that is informed by vaudeville and folk drama. Phant explores the porous borders between self and non-self in a narrative that is elusively meditative, hauntingly beautiful, and absurdly comical. Kafka-esque in tone, the film traces a psychological, abstract, disintegrating story about a boy who lives in a hole until he dissolves. 

The Coffeehole

March 1-30, 2008
Opening Reception 6-9 pm, March 1, 2008 Special Events During The Coffeehole

Colin Roberts

March 14, 8:00 pm - Backgammon with Ryan Taber
March 15, noon - Daytime Nightclub by Pentii Monkonnen                                                      March 29, 7-10 pm- Folk Music night presented by Jeff Cain

In The Coffeehole, Colin Roberts pokes fun at the caffeine bombarded society we live in today by creating his own version of a coffee shop. The gallery space is transformed into something the average caffeine addicted consumer would never expect. Coffee pours from the ceiling in a stream when a button is pushed, slightly reminiscent in an oddly humorous way to Charles Ray’s ink line piece. One can also not help but think of what the future has in store for coffeehouses when standing in the space. In true coffee shop fashion, this installation will include art and music performances that are scheduled throughout the month that The Coffeehole is installed. 

Daytime nightclub 

ELECTRIC FOLK MUSIC