TORRANCE ART MUSEUM PRESENTS

SEMBLANCE | SUNSHINE

Music to my eyes / newmediafest 2020

AVAILABLE ONLINE July 25 - August 29

Alex Israel, The Bigg Chill

Alex Israel, The Bigg Chill

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jason Jenn, Outreach Specialist
310-781-7163
JJenn@TorranceCA.gov

TORRANCE, CA – Torrance Art Museum (TAM) is excited to announce new exhibitions for the summer that will be available to view via a series of ongoing online resources starting July 25, with eventual physical opening once LA county protocols allow for public safety. As Always TAM is free and accessible to the public, but now with some new procedures in place to keep all visitors to the museum safe and secure. For full program details, visit www.TorranceArtMuseum.com.

Main Gallery: Semblance | Sunshine traces the material and aesthetic influence of post-war Los Angeles on minimalist art within Southern California from the 1960s to today, co-curated by Josh Hashemzadeh and Torrance Art Museum.

Civic projects, like the development of roads, freeways, bridges, and housing, not only helped shape Los Angeles’s unique urban landscape, but also aided to accommodate the mass of workers continuing to migrate or return home after WWII. Ubiquitous signifiers such as run-away tract-housing, fashionable consumer goods, and glistening high-rise office spaces all contributed to a romanticized view of Southern California as a destination for wellness, new-age style, and financial prosperity.

Artworks in this exhibition play to these familiar tropes as they draw on industrial materials to depict an aesthetic lineage and ideological approach to art-making within Los Angeles. The unconventional practices used here break away from regimented notions of “painting” and “sculpture” and instead present reductive objects that are informed by local environments, indigenous sub-cultures, and various interpretations of a Southern Californian lifestyle. From utilitarian products once intended for mid-century living to sleek surfaces that are reflective of the landscape itself, the objects here challenge enigmatic definitions that often surround LA’s artistic traditions while also, reconciling the fluidity that comes with the city’s perpetual social and economic transformation.

Gallery Two – Music to my Eyes: James van Arsdale and Rob Grab are artists who transform their passion for music into vibrant visual works. For James van Arsdale the elements of Rock subculture fashion (denim, leather, pinback buttons, patches, etc) and a fascination for nostalgia provide him with ample amounts of inspiration. Rob Grad assembles shapes, colors, and images as if they were components of a song composition to create a harmonious whole, likening the process to a rhythmic performance.  

Dark Room: Online TAM’s video exhibition space goes online, providing video artworks to view from home and via smart phone. NewMediaFest 2020 is a retrospective of video art curated from around the world during the past 20 years. The Seven Memorials for Humanity, curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne draws on the conceptual structures of “social and networked media” to present a kind of multi-dimensional virtual sculpture. NewMediaFest 2020 will have a new video program each week available on the TAM website from July 18 - September 5.

For more information, please visit:
TorranceArtMuseum.com

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