PARADOX AND PRACTICE
Architecture in the Wake of Conceptualism
Tuesday Jan, 9-Saturday Feb. 10, 2007 | UAG

Paradox and Practice: Architecture in the Wake of Conceptualism re-thinks the legacy of Conceptualism vis-á-vis the philosophical operation of paradox. Specifically, the notion of "site," as it exists between art and architecture, is reconsidered. Thinking about paradox and conceptualism is no formal exercise; it is a political imperative. Take, for example, last year's infamous Torture Memo, drafted by Alberto Gonzalez, in which any paradoxical notion of a "state of statelessness" was denied. Within such logic, the Geneva Convention could be dismissed as "irrelevant" to those lacking clear national status. In this cultural context, the curators of Paradox and Practice argue the progressiveness of thinking non-dialectically as an aesthetic and political act. This exhibition brings together practitioners whose work lies at the nexus of architecture and conceptual art. Congregating along this boundary, the artists interrogate conventions of site-specificity, functionality and material presence; and in so doing, complex propositions related to nationalism, identity, and public space are posited. Curated by Juli Carson and Nana Last.  Read Brochure | View Images


Artists Featured: Molly Corey, Fallen Fruit, Gaylen Gerber, An Te Liu, Dorit Margreiter, Florian Pumhösl, Katya Sander

Reception: Tuesday, January 9, 6-9pm
THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION
A Solo Project by Shana Lutker
Tuesday Jan, 9-Saturday Feb. 10, 2007 | ROOM

Room Gallery continues its Emerging Artist Series with Shana Lutker’s latest project The Future of an Illusion.  As Holland Carter of the New York Times notes, when Lutker’s sculptures, based on her dreams, are photographed and exhibited they smudge the line between "document" and "art."  The Future of an Illusion continues Lutker’s neo-surrealist interest in dream analysis in the context of contemporary art.  Named after Freud’s book of 1927, wherein religion is described as an illusion derived from human wishes, Lutker’s Future of an Illusion installation is a meditation on our current desire for (and possible impasse between) religious belief, historical agency, and critical aesthetics. Curated by Juli Carson. Read Brochure | View Images

Reception: Tuesday, January 9, 6-9pm
HAUNTED AGENCIES FILM SERIES
Monday, Nov. 6 - Friday, Nov. 17, 2006 | ROOM

Patrolling is, in fact, my principle occupation. No matter how tight security, I am always somewhere outside giving orders and inside this straight jacket of jelly that gives and stretches but always reforms ahead of every moment, thought, impulse, stamped with the seal of alien inspection. --William S. Burroughs

UCI's Room Gallery continues its film screening series with Haunted Agencies, curated by Jason Keller. The ad hoc series begins with Fanon's impasse: What do we do when interrogation collapses and we are expelled into a haunted realm of agency? Modeled after Burroughs' Agent Lee, the films present the contradictory riddle of an impasse of agency that only produces more active agents. Each of the 20 films manipulates the suspense genre as an alibi that masks this contradiction, while revealing and reveling in its own horrific twist: Only the haunted get anything done. View screening schedule ...
THE LOOK OF LAW
Thursday, Sept. 28- Friday, Oct. 20, 2006 | UAG

The Look of Law, featuring artwork by Silvia Kolbowski, Mary Kelly, The Speculative Archive, Trevor Paglen, Jeff Cain, Claire Fontaine, Lincoln Tobier, Ashley Hunt, Julia Scher, and Susan Silton, addresses the direct and residual effects that state power has on our psyche and how this, in turn, constitutes the force of Law. Comprised of video, audio, photographic, sculptural and installation works, this exhibition confronts such contemporary topics as police surveillance, immigrant incarceration, military operations, public space, globalization and the media, and the constant state of war. All the projects featured in The Look of Law critically engage debates concerning the relationship between "aesthetic form" and "political content," while seriously contemplating the affective ramifications of state/political power. Curated by Simon Leung.  Read More | View Images

Reception: Thursday, September 28, 6-9pm
TRUC TRANG WALLS
A Solo Project by Adrià Julià
Thursday, Sept. 28- Saturday, Oct. 28, 2006 | ROOM

Room Gallery continues its Emerging Artist Series with Adrià Julià's latest project Truc Trang Walls. At once lyrical and factual, Truc Trang Walls "documents" the building of a house in North Vietnam by Diep Nguyen who, for the past 25 years, has lived with his family in the outskirts of Long Beach in Southern California, not far from a neighborhood commonly referred to as Little Saigon. In the tradition of Jean Genet, the situations that Julià constructs and presents in his film/video, photography and installation-based work, as he puts it, "are the result of observing regulated behavior, readapted and re-contextualized through performance - sometimes irrational, uncommon or even antisocial - that simultaneously evoke theatricality and truthfulness." Curated by Juli Carson.   Read Brochure | View Images

This exhibition is supported by the State Corporation for Spanish Cultural Action Abroad www.seacex.es

Reception: Thursday, September 28, 6-9pm.