SPLIT MOMENT
January 27, 2012 – April 15, 2012
reception: Jan. 27th, 6-8pm

University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach
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PRESS RELEASE (.pdf)

Split Moment examines the modes artists utilize to appropriate and engage performance by contextualizing issues such as viewership, mediation, and presence. Josh Azzarella, Trisha Brown, Jocelyn Foye, Babette Mangolte, Kelly Nipper, Yvonne Rainer, and Flora Weigmann question the importance of witnessing the live event, and explore the division between the recording of the performance and its adaptation into other media. For these artists, performance is composed of a series of split moments—a play between movements and the liminal space between them—potentially as meaningful in their absence as when visible. Split Moment experiments with negative space, bringing focus to what cannot be seen. Movement is performed by way of drawing, film, sculpture and photography—removing the medium’s reliance on the live event and thus readdressing its temporalizing and spatial relationships.

The paradigms in which contemporary artists explore these topics are foregrounded in the work of Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer— founding members of the seminal postmodern collective, the Judson Dance Theatre. Their direct impact on later generations of artists can be found throughout the contemporary work featured in the exhibition. For example, Babette Mangolte’s installation is entirely comprised of documentation of the Judson dancers. Jocelyn Foye uses documental photography to supplement her sculptural relief paintings, her objects often deriving their form from the live event. Also employing photography in this case, Kelly Nipper’s Interval belies documentation as it enacts a performance-like relationship to the viewer. Flora Weigmann emphasizes the gap between frames in her film, Wandering,a dance choreographed from a still photograph depicting expressionist dancer Mary Wigman. Josh Azzarella applies the theoretical tools of postmodern dance when he removed all figures and images from Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video. In its entirety, Split Moment demonstrates contemporary engagements in expanded definitions of dance, art, performance and presence.

Under the direction of Dr. Nizan Shaked, Director of the CSULB Graduate Program in Museum and Curatorial Studies, Split Moment was curated and organized by Mary Coyne, Damaris Leal and Hillary Morimoto in partial requirement for the CSULB Graduate Program in Museum and Curatorial Studies.

Split Moment was made possible by generous funding provided by Instructional Related Activities, California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) and Associated Students, Inc., CSULB. The staff of the University Art Museum deserves special thanks for their support and advice throughout the process.

DANCE, OPERA, DRAW

February 12 – May 12, 2012
Reception: Feb. 11, 7-9pm, performance at 830pm

Curator: Sinéad Finnerty-Pyne
Performance: Saturday, February 11 8:30 p.m.
Location: Armory Center for the Arts, 145 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, CA 91103

Armory Center for the Arts is pleased to present DANCE, OPERA, DRAW, a performance and exhibition by artist Jocelyn Foye, located in Mezzanine East at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena. The exhibition, organized by curator Sinéad Finnerty-Pyne, will commence with a live performance at the opening reception on Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 8:30pm. A subsequent exhibition of work created during the performance will be on display from February 12 – May 13, 2012. In conjunction with the opening of exhibitions by Richard Jackson, Dawn Kasper, and Nicolas Grider, a reception, free and open to the public, will take place on Saturday, February 11, 2012 from 7-9pm.

Jocelyn Foye’s works are defined by an interest in capturing and illustrating how the reoccurrence of every day actions - derived from labor - produce fundamental visual patterns. Many of her performances, in which she acts as producer rather than participant, have combined a sport or action not usually seen in a gallery that results in a static work - a record of the event - cast in clay. Her private and public performances are often heavy with spectacle, and the resulting objects carry the aura of the performance, but function as complete artworks to contemplate unto themselves. Unlike many performance artists who view the spectacle along with the resulting detritus as the work itself, Foye places significance on the end product standing on its own.

In her upcoming performance, DANCE, OPERA, DRAW, Foye has chosen to explore the arena of opera, dance, and art; seeking to create a conversation between the genres. As soprano opera singer Sonia Kazarova robustly resounds Strauss' modern opera Salome, two flanking dancers, Mecca Andrews and Lora Ivanova, will physically interpret the duality of spatial dramatics on a canvas of charcoal. The resulting "drawings" created by the imprints of the dancer's hands, bodies, and feet, will be mounted and displayed for the duration of the exhibition along with audio documentation from the event. For Foye, this performance is not only an opportunity to challenge the stereotype of what an operatic recital is, but also a chance to respond to the conversation that exists between the arts in our current political climate – one that is disconnected and under-supported but ripe for cross pollination.

About the Artist

Jocelyn Foye received her MFA from California State University, Long Beach. She has shown her work nationally and internationally, more prominently throughout Southern California, including the Torrance Art Museum and in a recent solo exhibition at Kristi Engle Gallery. In 2011 she was granted a California Community Fund Fellowship for Visual Artists. She lives and works in Long Beach, CA. 

About the Performers

Mecca Vazie Andrews  is a Los Angeles based dancer whose credits include American Apparel, Bedtime Stories, Rent, "MTV Movie Awards," Hysterica Dance Company, and VH1's "Showgirl Bootcamp." Some of her most recent artistic partnerships have involved Lady Gaga, The Slits, LA Philharmonic, Center Theatre Group, and the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Andrews currently teaches for Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company and Edge Performing Arts Center. Her company mecca v.a and the MOVEMENT movement will be performing at the Armory Center for the Arts in summer 2012.

Lora Ivanova is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis’ schools of Theatre and Film with an independent focus in Directing. She spent the earlier part of her career in Europe as part of the experimental physical theatre ensemble Naked Snail. She is a founding member of the Art Players ensemble in Hollywood and SKIN collaborative. Ivanova is a versatile artist whose work explores issues of identity, behavior patterns, habitual perceptions, conformism, and reality.

Sonia Kazarova is a native of Colorado, who has made her home in Manhattan, and now Los Angeles. Credits include Ensemble Studio Theatre’s production of Strippers, Snakes, and Elvis, Kate in Kiss Me Kate, Aldonza in Man of La Mancha, and Camelot. Her stage combat and martial arts skills led her to pieces like Cola Wars, the action short Fifteen Minutes to Two, and Kabuki theater. Other projects include the feature length film Darling XX (kiss kiss), filming in Tribeca. Kazarova has a B.F.A. in Acting from the University of Illinois.

About the Armory

The Armory Center for the Arts, in Pasadena, California, believes that an understanding and appreciation of the arts is essential for a well-rounded human experience and a civil community.  Founded in 1989, the Armory builds on the power of art to transform lives and communities through presenting, creating, teaching, and discussing contemporary visual art. The organization’s department of exhibitions mounts over 25 visual arts exhibitions each year at its main facility and in locations throughout the City of Pasadena. In addition, the Armory offers studio art classes and a variety of educational outreach programs to more than fifty schools and community sites. 

Also on display at the Armory

In the outdoor spectacle entitled Accidents in Abstract Painting Richard Jackson will fly and crash a radio-controlled, model military plane with a fifteen-foot wingspan, filled with paint, into a twenty-foot wall that reads “accidents in abstract painting.” The spectacle, free and open to the public, will take place on Sunday January 22, 2012 at 4pm at Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco, southeast of the Rose Bowl in Area H. This monumental spectacle is part of the Getty’s Performance Art and Public Art Festival, a program of Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980. 

Jackson’s subsequent solo exhibition, entitled Accidents in Abstract Painting, the Armory, will be on view at the Armory Center for the Arts from February 12 – June 10, 2012 and will feature detritus and video documentation of the event, along with the installation The War Room (2006-‘07), until now exhibited only once, and never in the Los Angeles area.  By exhibiting the two installations side by side, Jackson reflects upon the Pasadena Armory's history as a repository for military accoutrements, confronting its current function as a contemporary arts center.  The spectacle and subsequent exhibition are being organized by Armory Gallery Director Irene Tsatsos and Armory Gallery Manager/Curator Sinéad Finnerty-Pyne.

Jocelyn Foye: DANCE, OPERA, DRAW is on view in Mezzanine East at the Armory at 145 North Raymond Avenue, Pasadena. Gallery hours are Tuesday – Sunday, noon-5pm.  $5 suggested donation. Armory members, students, and seniors are free. The Armory is easily accessible from the Gold Line Memorial Park Station in Pasadena.  For information about Armory exhibitions and events, the public may call 626.792.5101 x122. or visit the Armory website at www.armoryarts.org

IN TANDEM
February 12, 2012 - March 9, 2012
Reception: Feb. 23, 7-9pm
 
El Camino College Art Gallery
Torrance, CA
The In Tandem exhibition at El Camino College Art Gallery, presents the artwork of 5 artist couples, taking a look at  influences, intersections and oppositions. Jeff and Jocelyn Foye present individual video works, screening side by side. Dennis Callwood and Keiko Fukazawa present photographs, clothing and ceramic works. Barbara Jones and Gustavo Leclerc exhibit embroidered images on handkerchiefs. Vilma Mendillo and Laura Stickney exhibit lithographs, handmade books, wooden box constructions and furniture. Richard and Lois Pio show quilts, handmade books and calligraphy.