Brave New Worlds: Explorations of Space
101 North Museum Drive, Palm Springs, CA 92262
Saturday, June 1 at 10:00 AM 5:00 PM
Ends Dec 15, 2019
Brave New Worlds: Exploration of Space invites you to enter the creative universes of five contemporary artists through sculpturally immersive installations. Motivated by the legacies of Southern California as a place of artistic experimentation, a site for self-fulfillment, and a geographic zone of light and natural resources, these artists use their distinctive spatial languages to construct worlds that both challenge convention and ignite our senses. Projects include those by Kelly Akashi, Gisela Colon, Victoria Fu, Karen Lofgren, and Adee Roberson, with works that represent each artist’s understanding of our bodily connection to the world that surrounds us. The museum’s grand galleries are divided into discrete installations, each with a constellation of tactile textures, vivid colors, and soundscapes comprising a creative cosmology. Akashi composes installations from glass, metal, and wood with surprising contrasts that emphasize the visual magic of natural forms. Colon has developed a vocabulary of organic minimalism, breathing life-like and light-filled qualities into reductive forms. Fu uses film and video to create colorfully textured installations that expand the narrowness of contemporary vision into physical space. Lofgren’s sculptures represent human relationships between cultural systems, medicine and wellness, and nature. Roberson weaves archival images, sonic elements, and the aesthetics of Afro-Caribbean diaspora into her sculptural paintings and performances. Each artist approaches three-dimensional space with a bold anti-monumentality that presses against the modernist and predominantly masculine art histories that have established our understanding of 20th and 21st century abstraction. Rooted in a commitment to exploring contemporary ritual and spirit, these five artists embrace a resolutely phenomenological approach to the making of sculptural objects today. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, to be released fall 2019. Brave New Worlds: Explorations of Space is organized by Mara Gladstone, Associate Curator.