Dawn Bonker
The exhibition
Altered Appropriations: Making Strange
, curated by Los Angeles artist Jody Zellen, opens Monday, Aug. 30, in
Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery
. The artists in the exhibition seek out new ways of visualizing and representing the familiar. While an obsessive practice and an interest in process links them, their relationship to language, architecture and history is the thread that binds them. They explore how the two-dimensional becomes 3-D, how the photographic surface can be creatively manipulated, and how appropriated texts and images can be combined to form surprising juxtapositions.
The multimedia exhibition features altered photographs of architectural monuments by London artist Abigail Reynolds and collages based on the daily newspaper by Kim Rugg, also based in London. Chicago artist Curtis Mann chemically erodes the surface of photographs downloaded from the internet. Working in Los Angeles, Soo Kim uses an X-acto knife to remove information from photographic images. Peruvian born artist Ishmael Randall Weeks’ purposefully degraded images transform the recognizable into the poetically elusive. Mickey Smith’s photographs of books question the construction and presentation of language. Using maps, paint chips and photography, Berkeley artist Peter Wegner explores the translation of text and image from one system to another.
The exhibit runs through Oct. 8, 2010. The opening reception is Tuesday, Aug. 31 at 5:30 p.m. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, noon to 5 p.m., and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. For further information, please call 714-997-6729.
Sounds like an interesting exhibition, all the best!