SAN DIEGO, CA.- The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego opened three new exhibitions at its downtown location: Dimensions of Black: A Collaboration with the San Diego African American Museum of Fine Art, Tristano di Robilant, and Jennifer Steinkamp: Madame Curie.
In collaboration with the San Diego African American Museum of Fine Art (SDAAMFA), MCASD presents Dimensions of Black: A Collaboration with the San Diego African American Museum of Fine Art, on view from December 16, 2016 through April 30, 2017. SDAAMFA is committed to educating residents and visitors of San Diego about the history and artistic contributions of African American culture through exhibitions and interpretive programs. This mission finds resonance in MCASD's own collection, which includes numerous works by leading African American artists of our time. The collaboration also presents a series of accompanying programs throughout the exhibition.
Featuring over 30 pieces from the 1970s to today, Dimensions of Black traverses the many ideas and perspectives that have shaped the landscape of contemporary art. Many works are by artists working with abstraction, whose long careers remained underrecognized until recently. Other artists use figuration in varying ways, whether as a tool within otherwise abstract compositions, or to expressly render Black people or the experience of Black life. Artworks from the 1980s and 1990s often take on identity directly, addressing race, gender, and sexuality through a range of media including sculpture, drawing, and photography. But not every work in the exhibition is explicitly related to Black identity, with some artists actively dismissing racialized readings of their work and others leaving such interpretations to the viewer themselves.
Also on view from December 16, 2016 through April 30, 2017, Tristano di Robilant features glass, metal, and ceramic sculptures that balance geometric forms with light and color. Di Robilant, who works in close collaboration with master artisans in Italy, creates elegant sculptures that highlight the particular qualities of his materials. These works are acutely attuned to the world around them, with translucent surfaces that play with light and reflection. Their irregular shapes are at once surprising and mesmerizing. The sculptures' playful forms are often paired with enigmatic titles that borrow from a range of literary, philosophical, and historical influences.
In the month following the opening of this exhibition, di Robilant will remain in San Diego as an artist in residence at MCASD, as he develops his next body of work.
A local favorite from MCASD's permanent collection, Jennifer Steinkamp: Madame Curie returns to the expansive Farrell gallery, where it will remain on view through August 20, 2017. Inspired by Steinkamp's research into atomic energy, atomic explosions, and the effects of these forces on nature, this immersive installation was commissioned by MCASD in 2011. Marie Curie was the recipient of two Nobel Prizes for creating the theory of radioactivity, and discovering radium and polonium. She was also an avid gardener and lover of flowers. An enveloping panoramic work, this piece activates a field of realistically rendered moving flowers and flowering trees, drawn from a list of over 40 plants mentioned in Marie Curie's biography written by her daughter, Eve Curie.
Steinkamp is one of the most accomplished digital video artists working today. Her video installations of projected animations engage space and architecture to foster moments of intense public intimacy in our age of new media. Physically overwhelming, her animations employ cutting-edge projectors and digital masking applications to enhance or contradict the architectural features they inhabit. Madame Curie proposes a new type of bodily experience, but also exists in time, as shifting flowers and trees undergo momentous seasonal or climatic changes. As powerful environments, Steinkamp's installations ask for a novel reading of architecture and take viewers beyond the physical boundaries of a built space to contemplate their surroundings as a factor of time, desire, and memory.
