Ben Maltz Gallery

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

BMG Metic Brace 2

April 28– July 7, 2012
Meticulosity
Curators: Meg Linton and John David O'Brien
Poets selected by Graduate Writing Chair Paul Vangelisti
Press Release (pdf)
LA Times Review

EVENTS
Public reception: Saturday, April 28, 4-6pm, with live music by MUSE
Tour: Saturday, June 9, 11am - with Co-curators Meg Linton and John David O'Brien and the artists
Reading: Saturday, June 16, 2pm - with poets Guy Bennett, Dennis Phillips, and Martha Ronk

WORKSHOPS
Offered through Continuing Education, more info at www.otis.edu/ce
Introduction to Woodcarving with Ross Rudel / Saturdays, June 2-August 2, 2-6pm
Paper-Cutting with Samira Yamin / Sunday, June 3, 10am-4pm
Writing for Artists with Samira Yamin / Saturdays, June 2-August 4, 10am-1pm

Meticulosity features the work of 11 Southern California based artists and 3 poets who work in genres ranging from painting to installation and ceramica and digital formats. Artists: Tanya Batura, Hilary Brace, Eileen Cowin, Linda Hudson (faculty member), Gegam Kacherian, Sandeep Mukherjee ('96), Ross Rudel, Linda Stark, Arthur Taussig, Elizabeth Turk, Samira Yamin. Poets: Guy Bennett, Dennis Phillips, Martha Ronk.

The title Meticulosity references both the technical/formal approach of the artists and the spiritual focus of their creative efforts -- their tenacity and continuity. The premise for Meticulosity is that these artworks are created in a meditative mode or through a trance-like process, and that the painstaking exactitude expressed by these works is intended for the viewer to perceive along with the work's conceptual values. We connect that visual meticulousness to a sense of the ineffable or that which is beyond words, and to the meaning of beauty.

Our interest is in bridging the way in which the conceptual and the visual seem to have diverged. The thoughtfulness (a conceptual dimension) of the geometric underpinnings in a Piero della Francesca painting such as "The Flagellation" are not in any way contradicted by the meticulously beautiful surfaces he has painted (a purely visual dimension). As curators, our self-appointed task was to avoid preclusions on either side of this divide. We are presenting exceptionally thoughtful artwork where the visual acuity is as important as the originating idea, and have selected a variety of genres to underscore the plurality of our point of view.
- Co-curators Meg Linton and John David O'Brien

This project is sponsored in part by the Otis Board of Governors, and supported in part by the Pasadena Art Alliance
BMG Metic Hudson BMG Metic Batura 2

BMG Metic Stark BMG Metic Gegam

Top to bottom: Hilary Brace, Untitled (#09i), 2010: Linda Hudson, rorschach, 2011; Tanya Batura, Achromic B, 2011; Linda Stark, Stigmata, 2011; Gegam Kacherian, It Hasn't Happened Yet, 2011

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

August 18 – November 17, 2012
Alison Saar: STILL . . .
Curator: Meg Linton
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 15, 4-6pm

BMG Saar

This is a solo exhibition of new work by Alison Saar. Saar's sculptures explore the role of women, African-American history, and African religious traditions. Her sculpture uses the history and associations of her materials, everyday experience, African art and practice, Greek mythology, and the stark sculptural tradition of German Expressionism to create work that has a primal intensity that abounds in cultural and historic references, but doesn't depend on them for blunt visual power.

Saar was born in Los Angeles and raised in the Laurel Canyon area. She received her B.A. in studio art and art history in 1978 from Scripps College, Claremont, California and her MFA from Otis-Parsons Institute, now known as Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. Saar has held a number of distinguished artist residencies including Studio Museum, New York,1983; Roswell Museum of Art, New Mexico,1985; Washington Project for the Arts, Washington D.C.,1986; Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, 2003. Saar has received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1984 and 1988. She was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1989, and the Flintridge Foundation Award for Visual Artists in 2000.

Saar's work is included in numerous public collections, including the High Museum, Atlanta, Georgia; Walker Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Santa Barabra Museum of Art, Ca, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; and in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art where she was included in the 1993 Whitney Biennial. She has done numerous public commissions including: York for Lewis and Clark College a Harriet Tubman Memorial "Swing Low" for the City of New York, Conjure for the California Endowment in Los Angeles, Califia for the Capital East End Complex in Sacramento, Nocturne Navigator for the Columbus Ohio Museum of Art, Monument to the Great Northern Migration in Bronxville, NY. MTA 125th St. Station.

Alison Saar profile and images at LA Louver Gallery http://www.lalouver.com/html/saar_bio.html