GLENDALE, Calif. — By the time a product makes its way into public life, it often leaves little trace of its former self. Cows are turned into expensive steaks, and cloth and thread are turned into designer pants. This glossy transformation obscures the object's history and weakens its political potential by obscuring the labor required for its production.for mirror, a group exhibition of MFA alumni at ArtCenter, these artists explore, intentionally or not, the potentially radical space between raw material and finished product. Old ways of creating and reproducing images, whether through painting or computer software, are a central concern of these artists' works. Outdated techniques, objects, and technologies are essential to each practice, but they also impede modern pursuits. The resulting artwork feels playfully tentative, like a statement of unfulfilled future creative intent, but no less meaningful.
Omar Ceballos’ installation “La Bicla” (2024) displays vintage Chicanx products like a macabre museum diorama. Serape Overhead, fishing lines tie the tangled knots of a folk art marionette, echoing the upside-down fragments of a 1974 lowrider Schwinn. Shelby Drubman explores the emotion and irony that comes with the modern take on Americana in her style of media in her video work “Red, White, and you, too” (2024). In it she can see part of a 20th century Coke advertisement. Inside the coffin, hand drawn in a cartoon style. The mediation of the past transforms objects and images into dead relics. Alexandra López-Iglesias’ Untitled/Quepo en Diez Bolsas (2024) features a collection of items covered in opaque blue paint, obscuring their original function.
The distance between these ancient objects and the current exhibition weighs heavily on the research group's work. Image reproduction technology seems to have taken on the colors of each era, but some are no longer usable. Megan Sabic's “Multi-Purpose Home Unit” (2024) features a large copier overflowing with printed sheets, and Zengyi Zhao's Photography “Leica” (2024) offers dramatic, high-contrast photos To do. Black and white view of the film camera of the same name. It evokes nostalgia for analog processes while denying access to them. The image is digital and created using an inkjet printer. In Madeline Ludwig-Leone's stylized landscape painting “Green Projection” (2024), DALL-E-esque trees, grass, and sky are geometrically scattered across the canvas, the composition of which was created by a computer. indicates a problem. This excavation of past technologies is bound by their reproduction. Oscar Corona has this phrase engraved on two of his resin casts in “Cursed/descruC” (2023), but the letters are barely legible on his two molds.
“I wanted to make a perfect replica of the lizard keychain, but I couldn't,” says Hannah O'Brian in her recorded performance Restaging the Lizard Keychain (2024). . Nevertheless, she tries. Ceramic beaded lizards sunbathe in a gallery under a pop-up tent. This temporary artwork is now in place at universities across the country, where students have set up impromptu encampments in the shadow of the prestigious, long-standing university to protest university investments in Israel. is being built. If the work remains unfinished, whether in Guttopardo or on campuses across the country, it is not a defeat, but a necessary beginning.
Mirror: ArtCenter MFA Exhibition It runs through May 11 at Guttopardo (918 Ruperta Avenue, Glendale, California). This exhibition was organized by Jan Tumlir.
