FEBRUARY, 2012   
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E V E N T S 

MEET OUR NEW SENIOR CURATOR, AARON MOULTON   

FRI, FEB 24, 2012
PUBLIC ART TALK: 7:00 
- 8:00 PM 

 

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Meet our new Senior Curator, Aaron Moulton, and learn more about his vision for the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. Join us on Friday, Feb. 24 at 7:00 PM, for an Art Talk with Moulton as he discusses his practice as a curator, and, in particular, the ways in which we establish notions of value in contemporary art. 

 

Moulton received his Masters in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art in London.  Thereafter he served as Editor of Flash Art International in Milan, followed by a five-year stint operating Feinkost, an exhibition venue located on one of the former sites of the Berlin Wall.    

OUR NEXT FIRST FRIDAY IS IN MARCH!  

FRI, MAR 2, 2011, 8:00 - 10:00 PM 

 

UMOCA Party white-bar-spacerThank you to everyone who came out to help us celebrate New Frontier last week!  Due to our heavy event schedule during Sundance Film Festival, we will not have a First Friday celebration in February (though we will be open as normal).

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oin us for our next First Friday on March 2.  Our monthly celebration of the contemporary art world features five amazing exhibitions at UMOCA, DJ, food, and cash bar.  

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P E R F O R M A N C E   A R T

JORGE ROJAS: TORTILLA ORACLE

SAT, FEB 25, 2012, 6:30 - 10:00 PM 

 

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In his performance, Tortilla Oracle, artist Jorge Rojas takes inspiration from traditional forms of divination such as Tarot cards and tea leaf readings, to explore myths and legends surrounding maize and its uses in ancient Mayan and Aztec mystical practices. Twelve to fifteen members of the audience will be selected to receive a tortilla reading by Rojas at the event.  

 

Admission is $100 and includes a selection of fine food and beverage, with all proceeds benefitting UMOCA's exhibition programs.  Tickets may be purchased on our website or by calling Kristin at 801.328.4201. The event will be held at a private residence in the Avenues/University area of downtown Salt Lake.  

 

You won't want to miss this amazing one-of-a-kind party.

 

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F I L M 

I AM SECRETLY AN IMPORTANT MAN    

FRI, FEB 10, 2012, 7:00 PM 

 

white-bar-spacerI AM SECRETLY AN IMPORTANT MAN is a feature length documentary film portrait of Steven J. Bernstein (aka Jesse Bernstein), one of Seattle's most celebrated voices. His angry, surprisingly fresh, lyrical writings are about sensitive souls, drifters and drug addicts; people alienated by a society that refuses to understand them. He peeled back the ugliness and the darkness of life on the fringe to expose tender and not so tender human feeling. His unique rhythms, filled with humor and pain, were especially exciting when read in his own gravely voice. People packed into theaters, bars and cafes to hear him read and sing. Unfortunately much of Jesse's work has not yet found the audience it deserves outside the Pacific Northwest. Directed by Peter Sillen.

Presented in collaboration with Utah Film Center. 

 

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E X H I B I T I O N  O P E N I N G S 

KARL HAENDEL AND PETTER RINGBOM: QUESTIONS FOR MY FATHER

JAN 31 - MAY 19, 2012 

 

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Made in collaboration between  Karl Haendel and New York-based filmmaker Petter Ringbom, Questions for My Father is a document of the inquiries, doubts and reservations of a generation of men who came of age in the late 20th century.

Arranged like a series of portraits on a black, studio backdrop, the subjects of the film face the camera and, with a direct, even delivery that belies the emotional topics, ask things they always wanted to know about their fathers but never voiced. Some of the men have already lost their fathers; others rarely, if ever, knew them; and for many, their questions were just too hard to ask. 

 

Writing in The New York Times, Roberta Smith called this important video "one of the genuine sleepers" of the Chelsea fall season.  Don't miss it.

  

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Haendel and Ringbom, Questions for My Father, 2011, 11:17 minutes, Still from video.  Courtesy Harris Lieberman Gallery 

FAX

MAR 2 - JUN 16, 2012

 

white spaceFAX invites a multigenerational group of artists, architects, designers, scientists, filmmakers and writers to reconceive of the fax machine as a thinking and drawing tool. Participants transmit their fax-based work via the venues' working fax lines through the duration of the exhibition's tour. Faxes by nearly 100 participants sent to the initial showing of FAX at The Drawing Center form the core of the exhibition, with each institution inviting additional participants to submit works, which will then be archived with The Drawing Center's collection to create an evolving document of all participants. The accumulation of information--received in real time, in the exhibition space--includes drawings and texts, and the inevitable junk faxes and errors of transmission, creating an ongoing cumulative project.

 
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E X H I B I T I O N S   

2012 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL NEW FRONTIER   

JAN 20 - MAY 19, 2012

 

white spaceHighlighting work that pushes the boundaries and the moving image, New Frontier at UMOCA celebrates the convergence of film, art, and new media technologies as a hotbed for cinematic innovation. As part of Sundance Film Festival, New Frontier at UMOCA presents ongoing media installations as well as multimedia performances, transmedia experiences, artist lectures, and more. 

 

Featured artists include: Paul Abacus/Early Morning Opera/Lars Jan; Jeremy Mendes & Leanne Allison; Marco Brambilla; Nonny de la Pe�a; Eva & Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.org; Hank Willis Thomas & Chris Johnson in collaboration with Bayet� Ross Smith & Kamal Sinclair; Molleindustria; and Gingger Shankar, Mridu Chandra & The Shanghai Restoration Project.

 

Writing in The Salt Lake Tribune, Glen Warchol called New Frontier "one of the coolest things at the Sundance Festival!"  And you can still see it at UMOCA through May 19, 2012!

 

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JOSHUA LUTHER: MEANING

JAN 6 - APR 21, 2012

 

JOHN LUTHER BIG BANG GENESIS white spaceJoshua Luther's multi-media exhibition is an exciting invitation for visitors to take a step back from the language that we all too often take for granted, and instead contemplate why it is that we are prepared to argue, fight, and sometimes die over various combinations of letter and syllables. 

 

Luther received his BFA at Utah State University and his MFA from University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  Luther's work is deeply influenced by his studies of epistemology and linguistics.

 
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Joshua Luther, Big Bang Genesis, Courtesy of the artist.

SPY HOP PRODUCTIONS: SONIC SQUEEZE    

JAN 24- MAR 24, 2012  

 

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Cooperate. Communicate. Collaborate. Buzz words of the 21st Century. In theory, it's what we're all doing, but in the lightning fast world we live in, these ideas often get left by the wayside in the effort to "just get it done."

 

At Spy Hop Productions, collaborate is a word students often get sick of hearing, but it's an idea so ingrained in the way Spy Hop works, that staff and students can't imagine a day without it. Film needs music, game design needs sound, musicians need recording. Art is interdependent.

 

In that spirit, consider SONIC SQUEEZE a collaboration test, a 21st century mash-up of video games, drum machines and tone makers. Play the game to create sounds from one of three stations - but work together with other participants to get all three games to create your own song. A digital media experiment, SONIC SQUEEZE invites visitors to play an interactive game that celebrates the collaborative nature of everything Spy Hop does.

 

Created by Interactive Design Mentor Chris Manfre, Musical Arts Mentor Jeremy Chatelain and Audio Program Mentor Alain Koffi Sessi with help from their students.

 


KEHINDE WILEY: SMILE

LAST CHANCE: CLOSES FEB 25, 2012 

 

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Kehinde Wiley's Smile, a video created while a student at Yale University, challenges four men, each in a separate quadrant of the screen, to smile directly into the camera's lens for one full hour. As the minutes pass, the smile gradually contorts; the "smile"muscles spasm and each model's performance becomes a strenuous test of endurance.

 

Wiley received his MFA from Yale University in 2001 and is a recipient of the prestigious Young Artist Award for Artistic Excellence from Americans for the Arts.

 

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Kehinde Wiley, Smile, 2001, 1 hour 30minutes, Still from video.  Courtesy Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, CA

KIM SCHOENSTADT: RECIPIENT OF THE CATHERINE DOCTOROW PRIZE FOR CONTEMPORARY PAINTING   

LAST CHANCE: CLOSING FEB 18, 2012  

 

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The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation are pleased to announce the inaugural recipient of the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting:  Kim Schoenstadt.


Schoenstadt's artwork embodies the spirit of the Doctorow Prize through her passionate dedication to a practice in contemporary painting.  Her painterly, site-specific projects, which frequently include elements of audience participation, incorporate complex urban views, themes of modernist and utopian architecture, and historically informed explorations of image and society.


Writing in the Los Angeles Times, art critic Christopher Knight notes that Ms. Schoenstadt's creations are those of "a view painter. Her work records complex urban landscapes. Unlike her 18th century forebears, however, who lived in a world where visual perception was being elastically stretched by telescopes, microscopes, and other ground-glass lenses meant to aid the limited range of a human eye, the Los Angeles artist surveys very different terrain. Her knotty work charts the intersection between the bricks and mortar of actual city streets and the effervescent elements of virtual reality. That's where we live now."

 

Ms. Schoenstadt has exhibited at: the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum, Hartford; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; National Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic; San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art; the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands; as well as locations in New York, Paris, Munich and Istanbul. Her work has been reviewed in ArtForum, the Los Angeles Times, Artweek Magazine, and Art in America.

 


Kim Schoenstadt, Lake Powell Series:Site plan 5 (Yellow,Green, Orange), 2011 Acrylic paint, ink and pen on wall, Courtesy of the artist.

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WHERE ARE THEY NOW?  

 

UMOCA is fortunate to work with incredibly creative artists whose careers continue to grow after their work is shown here. Here's the latest on some UMOCA alums:

 

Pascual Sisto:

Sisto recently received a Center for Cultural Innovation Grant (Looped).

 

Julie Orser:

Orser's film, The Ground We Stand On, will premiere at MoMA on Feb. 19, 2012 (Doublespeak).

 

John Preus:

Preus is the new Creative Director of the Rebuild Foundation, where he will be working with Theaster Gates to create a series of tents that highlight economic and social inequality for the Rainbow PUSH Coalition  (Contemporary Masters).

 

Rebecca Campbell: Campbell recently received the Eben Demarest Award (Doublespeak).

 

Brion Nuda Rosch:  Rosch's work is featured in the current edition of Juxtapoz (Go West). 

 

Emilie Halpern:

Halpern is featured in this month's Flaunt magazine (Looped).

 

Brian Bress:

Bress's Status Report will be featured at the New Museum as part of its Stowaways series (Brian Bress).

 

Hank Willis Thomas and Kehinde Wiley:

Thomas (New Frontier) and Wiley (Kehinde Wiley) both have work on display at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C. through Feb. 12th.

 

Mungo Thomson:

Thomson recently participated in Pacific Standard Time with an orchestral performance in the gardens of the Greystone Mansion based on recordings of crickets (Go West).

 

 


FAMILY ART SATURDAY: VALENTINE DECLARATIONS  

FEB 11, 2 - 4 PM 

 

Make your own Valentine cards Barbara Kruger style.  Share the love with creative text and image combos that are sure to have heart.

 

Family Art Saturday is free, and provides a great opportunity for kids and their adults to make an innovative piece of art while learning about the exhibitions at UMOCA.

    

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THE ART SHOP ARTIST OF THE MONTH

 

February's Art Shop featured artist is Elizabeth Miklavcic with her E-Scape prints and cards.  Miklavcic has been studying, investigating and experimenting with digital painting for eleven years. Her E-Scape prints were a top seller this Fall.  Come check out her work along with other fantastic local artists in UMOCA's Art Shop.

 

Also, don't miss our Winter Book Sale with selected items from $1-$5!

 


 

CRAFT LAKE ARTIST WORKSHOP SERIES: CHANDALIERS

FEB 6, 6:30 - 9 PM 
     

Craft Lake City is hosting its next Artist Series Workshop at UMOCA. Come in and make papercraft chandaliers with artist Holly Jones. Craft Lake City invites the public to attend this workshop.   

 

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NOT IN OUR TOWN: CLASS ACTIONS

FEB 8, 7 PM
   

KUED, the Inclusion Center, and the Community of Caring are hosting a preview screening at UMOCA of the new PBS film followed by a provocative dialogue on bullying in schools.  KUED invites the public to attend this screening.  

 

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UTAH MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART | 20 South West Temple | 801. 328. 4201
www.utahmoca.org
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