PERFORMANCE, POP, AND VIDEO ART IN
ART SINCE THE 1960S: CALIFORNIA EXPERIMENTS
AT OCMA The Orange County Museum of Art, California
(organized by Karen Moss, curator of collections and director of education and public programs)
15 July 2007 – 14 September 2008
Check out the framework for scholarship about these artists and groundbreaking moments in art since the 1960s that will be elucidated in interpretive materials in the museum's galleries and the collection section of the museum’s web site www.ocma.net

The Exhibition

The exhibition explores the origins of West Coast contemporary art since the 60ies by showing pop art, assemblage, conceptual art, video, performance, installation, and neoconceptual practices from the Orange County Museum of Art’s permanent collection with works by artists such as Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Wallace Berman, Chris Burden, Vija Celmins, Charles Ray, Ed Ruscha, Alexis Smith, James Turrell, William Wegman, ....

Many of the presented artists were taught in the region’s art schools, such as the California Institute of the Arts of San Francisco Art Institute, or in art departments at the University of California campuses at Davis, Irvine, San Diego, and Los Angeles. These campuses and the burgeoning artist-run or alternative spaces of Northern and Southern California became incubators that showcased installations, performance, and video art. During this period, the Newport Harbor Museum (now the Orange County Museum of Art) was one of the few arts institutions on the West Coast presenting these more experimental and experiential artistic practices.

The Four Galleries

• ONE presents pop art, assemblage and conceptual art
• TWO focuses on performance-based work, video and feminist art
• THREE presents installations and documentation of light and space and sound works
• FOUR features artists interested in “neo” conceptual practices and issues of identity such as Lorna Simpson’s wall-size, felt prints, Wigs Portfolio (1994)

The Artists

Kim Abeles, Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Billy Al Bengston, Mark Bennett, Wallace Berman, Vija Celmins, Chris Burden, Bruce Conner, Llyn Foulkes, Joe Goode, George Herms, Lynn Hershman, Margaret Honda, Dennis Hopper, Robert Irwin, Ed Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, Rachel Lachowicz, Tom Marioni, Daniel Martinez, Paul McCarthy, Claes Oldenburg, Catherine Opie', Raymond Pettibon, Charles Ray, Martha Rosler, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha, Betye Saar, Lorna Simpson, Alexis Smith, Barbara Smith, James Turrell, Andy Warhol, Kim Yasuda, William Wegman, and Millie Wilson.

more foto >>>

fig.: Lorna Simpson "Wigs" (Portfolio), 1994
Waterless lithographs on felt, Collection of the Orange County Museum of Art

In the mid-80s Lorna Simpson became well known with large-scale photograph and text confronting and challenging conventional views of gender, identity, culture, history, and memory. In the mid-90s Simpson began to create large multi-panel photographs printed on felt that depict the site of public, yet unseen, sexual encounters. In the last years she focused on identity and desire presented on moving images.

Lorna Simpson, born 1960 in Brooklyn, New York, received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. Today, Lorna Simpson is one of the leading artists working in the United States.