BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA.- The exhibition Matrix 197: Sanford Biggers -- Psychic Windows opens today at the Berkeley Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive, on view until June 2, 2002. The show features new sculpture exploring black history, including a three-dimensional mandala. Buddhist philosophy and African history intersect in the work of Los Angeles-born, New York-based artist Sanford Biggers. Indeed, his work draws from a wide variety of sources, including African American cultural stereotypes, 1970s process art, race politics, hip-hop, and Eastern religions. Biggers's intent is to explore transcendence while examining urban culture, technology, and black history in works that are as beautiful as they are insightful. Psychic Windows, his MATRIX exhibition, consists of new works that provide a comprehensive sensory experience when activated by viewers.

After attending the Maryland Institute College of Art and Skowhegan's School of Painting and Sculpture, Sanford Biggers received an M.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago. He has had residencies at P.S. 1 and The Studio Museum in Harlem. He has been in group shows in Japan, Italy, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Chicago, and New York, including the Freestyle exhibition at the Studio Museum that traveled to the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Hip-Hop Nation exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the 2002 Whitney Biennial. Psychic Windows will be Biggers's first major one-person exhibition and his first solo museum show.