The Haunted Word
curated by John Souza

York Chang
Kip Fulbeck
Norm Laich
Joseph Lee
Suzanne Oshinsky
Carter Potter
Evelyn Serrano

July 9 – August 20, 2011
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 9, 5 – 8 p.m.
Artist Panel Discussion: Sunday, July 24, 3 p.m.

Los Angeles, CA—CB1 Gallery is pleased to present The Haunted Word, an exhibition, curated by John Souza, of works by seven California based artists whose wide-ranging interests draw attention to the ways spoken and written words combine with images to carry personal beliefs and social vulnerabilities. The show includes work by York Chang, Kip Fulbeck, Norm Laich, Joseph Lee,Suzanne Oshinsky, Carter Potter, and Evelyn Serrano. The exhibition opens on July 9, 2010 and closes on August 20, 2011. A reception for the artists will be held at the gallery on Saturday, July 9, 2011, 5 – 8 p.m. In addition, a panel discussion featuring the curator and artists in the exhibition will be held on Sunday, July 24 at 3 p.m.

The exhibition will consist of works on paper, paintings, photographs, and videos that reference mental and emotional states running with language inside a framework of socially conditioned reactions. Each artist positions their personal experience in a setting of either real or fictitious social events that are in some way partly expressed through verbal or written language. In each case, the primary subject matter is reduced to a sparse delineation, while placing an emphasis on its complexity and confusion. The work signals the collective dangers we face in daily life, as it points to our former associations, now lost and romanticized, with the supremacy of the natural world as a site for yearning and terror. The artists illuminate the slippage between ideas and the words needed to control and convey them within shared environments that tend to clutter our instincts and emotional intellect.

For more information visit CB1’s website.

January 23-February 21, 2009

Curated by Karla Diaz and Evelyn Serrano

The exhibition brought together a group of Southern California and Tijuana-based artists, art collectives and their accomplices whose practices enact questions and proposals about public space, personal agency, civic engagement, and models of action.

StayBite: Modes of Operation was designed as a “walk-in tool box” for artists, educators, cultural field workers, policy makers and other curious types looking beyond art’s representational paradigm and contemplative value. The exhibition concentrated on context-based and process-focused practices that consider new territories for artistic and collaborative activity. From the direct political action of the clowns of C.I.R.C.A., to the migrant cities of Roberto Romero-Molina, the history plaques of the Pocho Research Society, and Elana Mann’s international performance exchange organized in response to the 2008 US presidential elections, StayBite was an anthology of strategies and a call to action.

As part of this exhibition the curators also organized a screening, an expedition, and a series of lectures and Skype forums. This exhibition was part of Artists for Social Justice, a project founded by Evelyn Serrano at CalArts in 2008.

Participating artists and collectives:

Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (C.I.R.C.A.), San Diego Chapter
Colectivo Bulbo
Fallen Fruit
Vicky Funari and Sergio de la Torre
Ariel Kletzky / Islands of LA
Elana Mann / Exchange Rate
Amitis Motevalli
Pocho Research Society
Roberto Romero-Molina
Selah Artistic Giving Center
Shannon Spanhake
Arnoldo Vargas

2010

In early 2010 I was invited to be a part of an art exhibition curated by Annie Buckley and John Souza entitled “Psychic Outlaws”, at CalState University/Los Angeles’ Luckman Arts Complex. The curators invited a group of artists and writers to create original artwork based on our readings and interpretation of the novel by the same title, written by Buckley a couple of years earlier. Given my interest in the topics of memory, language, and translation, I was immediately drawn to the first section of the book (The Memory) in which we meet the main character, and learn that she “just didn’t have any memories, save the one.” Emily holds onto this single memory of her childhood “like a talisman”.

The Memory Bank Project is an ongoing multimedia work that begun when I started collecting memories and stories sent to me by friends, family as well as complete strangers. The texts and images I received were the seed for a performance piece conceived in collaboration with voice artist and performer Carmina Escobar. We created translations of the texts by having Carmina read some of the texts while recording her vocalizations onto paper. The resulting prints were exhibited together with a video recording of the performance. All the texts and images have been compiled in a book entitled “The Memory bank Project”. 

Click here to purchase a copy of “The Memory Bank Project” book

Project website: http://homeformemories.blogspot.com/

Ongoing

Founded in 2010, NOMAD LAB is a laboratory of creativity, collaboration and community for youth and their families, located in the heart of the Valle del Oro neighborhood in Newhall, Santa Clarita. NOMAD LAB designs and implements free inclusive arts, capacity building and leadership programs to address the rise in criminal activity in the neighborhood, and to offer a safe forum for dialogue, learning and community engagement. NOMAD LAB’s multigenerational and multi-locational programming makes use of vacant apartments available in the community. It moves to different locations throughout the neighborhood as the apartments it occupies become rented, hence the “nomadic” nature of its programs. NOMAD LAB is a truly collaborative project that relies on the passion, commitment and strong partnerships with community youth, parents, teaching artists, property managers, policy makers, and City staff.  Through its inclusive and innovative pedagogical approach and community-based programs, NOMAD LAB aims to be a laboratory for “home-grown” change.

Beyond its impact in the Valle del Oro community, NOMAD LAB plans to continue to work closely with policy makers, City staff, community organizers, and educators to design neighborhood-specific inclusive and integrated alternatives to traditional gang-suppression and graffiti abatement strategies. NOMAD LAB is committed to developing a community organizing and engagement model that can be successfully replicated and implemented in other low and moderate-income rental communities in Los Angeles County dealing with issues of neighborhood violence and intolerance.

Project Partners:

City of Santa Clarita, Community Services Division: Cynthia Llerenas and Hope Horner

GHP Management/The Village Management Staff

Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission

Mc Grath Elementary School

Project website: http://vdonomadlab.blogspot.com/

For more about NOMAD LAB check out the website: http://vdonomadlab.blogspot.com/

2009

The exhibition convened artists working on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border. Their work considers the complex dynamics of border areas and liminal spaces, and engages the experience of displacement and immigration. The works in this art exhibition provide a doorway into cultural, sociological, and geographic spaces marked by hybridity, and their proposals move away from the simple binaries outlined by immigration and foreign policy and by essentialist platforms.

Participating artists and collectives: AjA Project, Boredom Patrol (C.I.R.C.A./San Diego), Colectivo La Linea, Ingrid Hernandez, Esteban Martinez, Juana Meneses, Roberto Romero-Molina, Omar Pimienta and Evelyn Serrano

2008-2009

Using sign spinning as a platform for the reconsideration of urban storytelling and corporate identity, the Spinteraction Tour consisted of a series of highly interactive spinning sessions using 5 double-sided vinyl signs. The 10-verse poem was performed for passersby and drivers by a group of talented sign spinners in several locations throughout California.

Performed in the San Jose Biennial, Museum of Contemporary Art, Phantom Gallery, Armory Center for the Arts, The Manual Archives and their surrounding neighborhoods.

September 10-14, 2007

In times when our country and its institutions are committed to a thorough re-evaluation and re-assessment of “The Other” through military campaigns in the Middle East, the building of walls South of the Border, the rhetoric of presidential hopefuls, landmark Supreme Court rulings, and the re-imagining of immigration policy and FAA standards, this project took on the same preoccupations from the context of a refugee tent on a hill in suburban Valencia, a half hour away from Los Angeles.

The refugee tent, originally designed to provide temporary shelter at emergency sites in Afghanistan and other parts of the world, was set up on one of the hills in FireValley, an un-developed lot adjacent to the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) school buildings. Serrano moved in the tent with her IKEA furniture, her grandmother’s crystal vase and other domestic paraphernalia and inhabited this tent for five days.  During this period, the tent and the surrounding area served as a context for a series of conversations, forums, performances, workshops and readings.  The events involved a wonderful group of inspired visual artists, writers, anthropologists, musicians, performers, community leaders, activists, curators and educators. The formal gesture of bringing together “under the same roof” two contrasting paradigms served to frame the events that took place at the site.

Project website: http://theotherproject.blogspot.com/

May, 2009

The Free Free Market is a forum for sharing and gifting and its intention is to validate giving and exchange models. The FFM is a market of free resources, and a space for non-transactional experiences. Everything in the market is free. Members of the Artists for Social Justice Collective invited the public to share in a wide range of aesthetic gestures, tangible and intangible learning, performative actions, and playful exchange. The Free Free Market is a response to the current socio-economic times and a comment on de-regulated transactional and corporate-driven models perpetuated by free market economies. The FFM is inspired by feminist theory, dialogical artistic practices, the Really Free Market, and Other-oriented gift economies.

Participating Artists: Yanira Cartagena, Carmina Escobar, Carribean Fragoza, Anne Hars, Matt Lucero, Gil Omry, Astra Price and Elizabeth Wild.

This project was part of Performing Economies, an exhibition and series of events curated by Elana Mann

The VDO NOMAD LAB is a program created to support the goals of the Valle del Oro Neighborhood Committee in partnership with the City of Santa Clarita Community Services Department, GHP Management and the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission. NOMAD LAB is devoted to building a better neighborhood through programs and activities for youth and their families that foster collaboration, community and creativity. Follow our progress here!