See Work Now by Otis College Artists in Several Solo, Group, and PST Shows
Four generations of Otis alumni, students, and faculty have exhibitions throughout Southern California
This fall, Otis College alumni, students, and faculty are featured in solo and group exhibitions across Greater Los Angeles and beyond, including a few not-to-be-missed PST ART shows. At exhibitions in Chinatown and Pasadena to Santa Monica and Long Beach, you’ll find paintings, sculptures, collage, multimedia works, and large-scale installations by artists stretching across four generations of Otis College.
PST ART: Art & Science Collide
Otis alumni are featured in several exhibitions presented in conjunction with PST ART: Art & Science Collide, the Getty’s sprawling program of more than 70 thematically linked exhibitions throughout Southern California.
Crossing Over: Art and Science at Caltech, 1920–2020
September 27–December 15, 2024
CalTech, Pasadena
An expansive public exhibition that weaves together the history of science with historical and contemporary art, Crossing Over features work by Shana Mabari (’98 BFA Fine Arts) and Lita Albuquerque (’72 Fine Arts), among several other artists. The first artwork visitors encounter are Mabari’s Spectrum Petals, a series of seven sculptures, which guide visitors along the architecturally ornate Bechtel Mall and to the first section of the exhibition. This Moment in Time, a monumental site-specific installation, turns a bridge at the center of Caltech’s campus into an icon of connection between art and science, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Albuquerque’s first exhibition at Caltech’s Baxter Art Gallery.
Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific
September 15, 2024–January 19, 2025
Chapman University, Orange
Energy Fields examines approaches to vibration, sound, and kinetic energy shared by an international group of contemporary artists and scientists working in the Pacific region across the 20th century to the present day. The exhibition features a newly fabricated version of ear(th), an artwork originally constructed in 2004 by the late artist Steve Roden (’86 BFA Fine Arts) that uses seismic data as a score, prompting electronic arms to strike single xylophone bars that sit aloft an enormous custom-made hollow wood structure.
Particles and Waves: Southern California Abstraction and Science, 1945-1990
September 14, 2024–February 24, 2025
Palm Springs Art Museum
The exhibition unites several generations of artists working in diverse materials and styles to examine how subfields of scientific investigation inspired a range of non-figurative artworks by practitioners concerned with light, energy, motion, and time. The show includes Lita Albuquerque (’72 Fine Arts), who also has a solo show, Earth Skin, at Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles, which closes with a reception from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 19, 2024.
An Earth Twin at the Digital Dawn: Tom Van Sant’s GeoSphere Project
September 7, 2024–February 1, 2025
18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica
GeoSphere Project is a groundbreaking work of art, science, and technology that represents the late Tom Van Sant’s (’57 MFA Fine Arts) dedication to the natural world, materials innovation, and public service. It provided the first border-free global map for scientists, activists, and decision-makers to visualize the unity of Earth's ecosystems; and it laid the foundation for Google Earth, an application that has transformed users’ spatial experience of the planet. Over the course of four years leading up to the exhibition, students in Otis’s Creative Action program focused on researching, proposing, and creating assets for the show, including an installation at the entrance and augmented reality throughout the exhibition.
Blended Worlds: Experiments In Interplanetary Imagination
September 21, 2024–January 4, 2025
Brand Library & Art Center, Glendale
Darel Carey (’16 BFA Fine Arts) is among 10 artists—collaborating with a team of Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists and engineers—who present a vision of the future that invites us to consider the impact of greater connectedness with nature, and its ability to foster a renewed sense of wonder and curiosity with our planet and the cosmos.
Life on Earth: Art and Ecofeminism
September 15–December 21, 2024
The Brick, Los Angeles
Inspired by four decades of ecofeminist thought and action in art, Life on Earth uses ecofeminism as both a lens and departure point, bringing together 18 international artists and collectives who present new methodologies for thinking-with our natural environment in the twenty-first century. Leslie Labowitz-Starus (’72 MFA Fine Arts) is included in this inaugural exhibition in the new permanent location of The Brick (formerly LAXART).
Gallery Exhibitions
Several Otis community members present new works in solo and group shows, with a few taking on curatorial duties for thematic exhibitions.
The Perez Bros: Firme and Sick Ass Foos
September 21–October 26, 2024
Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles
Firme is an exhibition of new paintings by The Perez Bros (’16 BFA Fine Arts), a Los Angeles-based duo whose work celebrates and embodies the lowriders and car clubs of L.A.’s Chicano community. The monochromatic, tone-on-tone acrylic paintings in this show take their color directly from the candied gloss color palette of lowriders. Concurrently at Charlie James Gallery, the brothers have curated Sick Ass Foos, a group exhibition of 34 artists, including Otis alumni Mynor Chinchilla (’17 BFA Fine Arts), Ivett Godoy (’16 BFA Fine Arts), Larry Li (’22 MFA Fine Arts), Nikkolos Mohammed (’13 BFA Fine Arts), Edgar Ramirez (’18 BFA Fine Arts), and Mike Reesé (’13 Communication Arts).
September 21, 2024–May 11, 2025
Barrett Art Gallery, Santa Monica College
Planned by Santa Monica College students under the leadership of interdisciplinary artist and guest curator Cole James, who is also Otis faculty, this 12-person group exhibition includes Otis student Cass Everage (’25 Fine Arts) and alumni Lavialle Campbell (’85 Environmental Design) and Michael Massenburg (‘91 BFA Graphic Design). Tip: Take a short trip down to Inglewood, where Massenburg’s massive mural Cultural Playground (2024) was recently unveiled at the Intuit Dome.
The MFAs of LA: All Things Equal
October 19–November 16, 2024
Good Mother Gallery, Los Angeles
Curated by Leslie Fram, this group exhibition brings together a selection of emerging artists from the top fine arts graduate programs in greater Los Angeles. Four MFA candidates from Otis College—Kader Amkpa, Olivier Arsene Ganthier, Alexandria Lee Bevilacqua, and Jessica Wilcox—are featured alongside graduate students from ArtCenter, CalArts, Laguna College of Art and Design, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Riverside, USC Roski, Claremont Graduate University, UC Santa Barbara, and UC San Diego. The opening will be held Saturday, October 19, 5:00–8:00 p.m.
Larry Johnson and Hedi El Kholti
September 7–October 19, 2024
Gaga & Reena Spaulings, Los Angeles
Five new works by Fine Arts faculty Larry Johnson are on display opposite works by artist Hedi El Kholti. For his new works, Johnson uses collage—more specifically, an analog graphic design technique called “pasteup” to perform a sort of aesthetic surgery on specific bodies of text, “copy” and typographic material, all related to Hollywood and its layered, conflicting histories.
THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD, AND IT IS IN THIS ONE
September 19–October 20, 2024
Compound, Long Beach
An installation by Tofer Chin (’02 BFA Fine Arts) interrogates conventional notions
of space, security, and identity. It will be on view concurrent with When the Veil Thins, a group exhibition curated by Chin and mindfulness educator and writer Mari Orkenyi.
On view through January 12, 2025, the exhibition features a selection of works in
painting, sculpture, photography, textiles, and film, exploring the relationship between
art-making and the psyche, including memories, traumas, and experiences.
October 5–27, 2024
Ace Tiger, Torrance
Michael Brunswick (’04 BFA Fine Arts, ’07 MFA Fine Arts) and Adam Mars (’07 MFA Fine Arts) present an exhibition of captivating abstract paintings. Mars’ hard-edge compositions and Brunswick’s large-scale gestural works evolved out of their time in Otis’s MFA Fine Arts program, where they bonded over their love for rebellious painting and rock and roll music. A thorough selection of their work will be on display alongside previously unseen preparatory works and a limited-edition tour poster.
On Campus
Visit the Otis campus in the Westchester neighborhood of Los Angeles to see works by BFA Fine Arts students as well as a monumental sculpture by an alumni and faculty member.
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