Fine Arts Gallery

For immediate release:

Cal State L.A.'s Fine Arts Gallery
Presents An Arc, Another, And So On
SEPTEMBER 22 -– OCTOBER 30, 2004

Los Angeles, CA – The Cal State L.A. Fine Arts Gallery announces an upcoming exhibition, titled AN ARC, ANOTHER, AND SO ON, featuring paintings by Brian Fahlstrom, Mark Flores, Stan Kaplan and Laurie Nye. Exhibition dates are September 22 – October 30, 2004. The exhibition is curated by Jan Tumlir, with technical assistance from Kevin Hanley.

AN ARC, ANOTHER, AND SO ON features four emerging painters, all of whom were initially encountered in the context of a recent spate of grad-school studio visits. The original criteria were simple enough: which work could compel conviction from the very first moment, even before any discussion had begun. All four met this preliminary condition and, although these sorts of qualitative determinations are implicitly relative, they all did so with the same degree of success. Through this exhibition, the curator intends to suggest a general measure of equivalence between the works and artists represented, which is remarkable in the light of their very different aesthetic sensibilities. All paint with conviction and convincingly, but in regard to the specific terms of their respective practices and positions on painting, they could not be farther apart. How a shared faith in the enduring viability of this medium could yield such a widely divergent range of expressions, all equally appropriate, is a contemporary paradox that this show means to explore.

Mark Flores and Laurie Nye graduated from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. Stan Kaplan and Brian Fahlstrom are from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Between their diverse bodies of work, a complete historical arc is suggested, leading from realistic figuration (Flores) via gestural abstraction (Kaplan) to color-field (Fahlstrom) and beyond that to a pluralistic hybrid of abstract and representational elements (Nye). Of course, this order could be reconfigured any number of ways to suit any number of historical narratives or arcs – hence the exhibition title. More to the point, though, all of the above take up painting in a moment of simultaneous exhaustion and renewal, and thereby describe a complete arc within their discrete practices. That is, each individual body of work inscribes its historical end as a condition of renewed possibility, a fresh start.

Since this exhibition took shape against an institutional backdrop of critique, it will maintain a discursive tone. The goal is to avoid presenting these works in the way paintings are usually presented: as autonomous objects capable of transcending the context of doubt that brings them into being. Here, that problematic context will be resumed within the design and installation of the show, right alongside its objective solutions.

Exhibition curator Jan Tumlir is an art writer who lives in Los Angeles. He is on the editorial board of Xtra, and his articles appear regularly in Artforum, Frieze and Flash Art. In addition, he has written catalog essays for such artists as Bas Jan Ader, Uta Barth, David Bunn, Jessica Bronson, De Rijke & De Rooij, Jorge Pardo and Pae White. Tumlir teaches art and film theory at Art Center and USC, and is currently compiling lecture notes from a class on the relation between contemporary art and popular music into a full-length book entitled The Magic Circle. His last curatorial effort, Morbid Curiosity, presented at ACME gallery in September 2001 and at I-20 gallery in New York in April 2002, has recently yielded a book of the same title. The current exhibition will be followed by a show that proposes to reexamine the legacy of the “New Topographics” movement in photography via a range of outlying disciplines and discourses. Provisionally titled “Lateral Slip,” this show will take place at the art gallery of UC Riverside in January of next year.

General Information:
Exhibition: Wednesday, September 22 - Saturday, October 30, 2004

Reception: The opening reception is scheduled Saturday, October 2, 6-8:00 p.m.

Location: The Fine Arts Gallery, located in the Fine Arts Building, is on the Cal State L.A. campus at the intersection of the #10 and #710 freeways. Directions may be found at the University Web site: www.calstatela.edu

Parking: Pay parking for the Fine Arts Gallery is in Parking Structure II (permit dispenser - 50¢/hour)

Hours: Mon. – Thur. & Sat., 12 noon – 5:00 p.m.

Admission: Free of charge

Telephone: (323) 343-4040

WORKING FOR CALIFORNIA – California State University, Los Angeles: A comprehensive university at the heart of a major metropolitan city. The 175-acre hilltop campus is located five miles east of Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. Since 1947, Cal State L.A. has been a leader in providing quality higher education. Today, the campus comprises a faculty of internationally recognized scholars and artists, and more than 21,000 students with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds that reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Cal State L.A. is one of 23 campuses in the CSU system.