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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 30, 2011



Please note that dates and exhibition titles listed in this schedule may change. To confirm any information or for image requests, please call the BAM/PFA Communications Office at (510) 642-0365.

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EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

Continuing:
Rome, Naples, Venice: Italian Masterworks from the BAM/PFA Collection
Through December 18, 2011 



Silke Otto-Knapp: A light in the moon / MATRIX 239
Through January 15, 2012




1991: The Oakland-Berkeley Fire Aftermath, Photographs by Richard Misrach
Through February 5, 2012

Richard Misrach: Photographs from the Collection
Through February 5, 2012

Thom Faulders: BAMscape


Through April 15, 2012


Sun Works
Through May 6, 2012

Himalayan Pilgrimage: Journey to the Land of Snows

Through 2013



L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA

Ongoing




Opening:


The Reading Room
January 15 through June 17, 2012

Abstract Expressionisms: Paintings and Drawings from the Collection
January 18 through June 10, 2012

Andy Warhol: Polaroids / MATRIX 240
January 27 through May 20, 2012

Tables of Content: Ray Johnson and Robert Warner Bob Box Archive / MATRIX 241
January 27 through May 20, 2012

State of Mind: New California Art circa 1970

February 29 through June 17, 2012



Barry McGee

August 23 through December 9, 2012



Silence
January 30 through April 21, 2013

Beauty Revealed: Images of Women in Qing Dynasty Chinese Painting
Fall 2013

EXHIBITION DESCRIPTIONS


Continuing:


Rome, Naples, Venice: Italian Masterworks from the BAM/PFA Collection
Through December 18, 2011 



When BAM/PFA was founded in the mid-1960s, among the earliest and most important works acquired were paintings and works on paper by Italian artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These have remained enduring cornerstones of the collection. In celebration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Italian unification, we present Rome, Naples, Venice: Italian Masterworks from the BAM/PFA Collection. The exhibition brings together striking Mannerist and Baroque works by Michelangelo da Caravaggio, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Giambattista Tiepolo, Carlo Maratta, Giovanni Caracciolo, and Guiseppe Cesari (called Il Cavaliere d’Arpino), among others, reflecting a vibrant range of artistic innovation from three of Italy’s great cities.
Silke Otto-Knapp: A light in the moon / MATRIX 239
Through January 15, 2012



The paintings of Silke Otto-Knapp require movement. With layered washes of similarly hued watercolors, the canvases of this London-based German artist seem at first monochromatic, but slight changes in light or a viewer’s position reveal clusters of dancers, a single body pressed up against the edges of the picture plane, or a moonlit landscape. Moving in front of the paintings, we see their potential motion—iconic performances by George Balanchine, Yvonne Rainer, Bronislava Nijinska lie latent within, or a landscape appears: a painted backdrop, awaiting stage directions. Reinterpreting the modernist logic of Ad Reinhardt and Merce Cunningham, Otto-Knapp draws from the vocabulary of abstraction to renew our engagement in the act of seeing.
1991: The Oakland-Berkeley Fire Aftermath, Photographs by Richard Misrach
Through February 5, 2012
In October 1991, immediately following a catastrophic firestorm that struck the Oakland and Berkeley hills, renowned Bay Area photographer Richard Misrach ventured into the fire zone armed with his eight-by-ten-inch view camera. Working alone amidst the ruins, he roamed devastated neighborhoods, recording stark vistas and intimate details of destroyed homes. The resulting images are distinguished by Misrach’s masterful framing of his subjects: the compositions are dramatic without being sensational and incisively reveal a world transformed. To commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the fire, BAM/PFA and the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) each present forty photographs from the series, including fourteen large-format images whose immense scale invites the viewer to enter into Misrach’s quiet elegies.

Richard Misrach: Photographs from the Collection
Through February 5, 2012
Sublimity and decay share the spotlight in this selection of photographs by Richard Misrach. Drawn entirely from BAM/PFA’s collection, these pictures include the artist’s early forays into color photography as well as his large-scale chromogenic prints, a format that Misrach helped to popularize. Shown in its entirety for the first time in BAM/PFA history, Misrach’s Graecism portfolio (1979–82) is a set of twelve vintage dye transfer prints of Greek and Roman ruins. Lit by strobes at night and shot using a long exposure technique, the resulting imagery takes on the quality of a modern Hollywood sound stage. Presented with Graecism are samplings from Misrach’s acclaimed series Golden Gate, Desert Cantos, and Bravo 20 Bombing Range, all part of Misrach’s ongoing visual narrative examining the complex relationship between humans and nature.
Thom Faulders: BAMscape
Through April 15, 2012
BAMscape is a major commissioned work by Thom Faulders, the award-winning architect and founder of Berkeley-based Faulders Studio. Faulders’s BAMscape blurs the boundaries between architecture, art, and furniture design, serving as a site for rest, relaxation, and study, as well as a platform for the experience of live performance and multimedia events via BAM/PFA’s L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA program. This innovative seating-sculpture is a shaped elevation of undulating curves, inviting participants to sit, recline, and lounge in a variety of positions, singularly or in groups. In addition, free wireless Internet allows students and other visitors to enjoy BAMscape as a site for study and social networking during daytime hours. Visually bold, structurally innovative, kinesthetically engaging, Faulders’s design communicates a playful inventiveness resonant with both the museum’s groundbreaking architecture and with BAM/PFA’s dynamic and risk-taking programs.
Sun Works
Through May 6, 2012
The sun’s power to illuminate, yet also to scar, makes itself known in the works of Sarah Charlesworth and Chris McCaw on view in Sun Works. Part of a larger series that explores how current events are represented photographically in the media, Charlesworth’s Arc of Total Eclipse (1979) tracks a solar eclipse across the front pages of multiple newspapers. Like Charlesworth, McCaw is also interested in questioning the role of the photograph as a simple representation of reality. For Sunburned GSP #488 (2011), he used a handmade view-camera to capture the path of the sun on a paper negative, creating an ambiguous, ethereal image.
Himalayan Pilgrimage: Journey to the Land of Snows
Through 2013
Reaching across several centuries and over the highest mountains in the world, Buddhism spread from India through the narrow corridors of Central Asia into Tibet, where it has remained the primary ethical and moral compass of its people. Explore this journey through exceptionally beautiful objects of sculpture and painting dating from the ninth to the eighteenth centuries, drawn from a private collection on long-term loan to BAM/PFA. The central image of a five-foot-tall seated Buddha provides the axis and symbolic core of the exhibition. This sculpture of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni is seen in a gesture of “touching the earth” or bumhisparsa mudra, in which he calls the earth to witness his enlightenment. From this, the central figure and the basic principle of Buddhist thought, the exhibition goes on to explore the cosmic realms of Vajrayana, the Diamond Vehicle of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism.
L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA
Ongoing
L@TE: Friday Night @ BAM/PFA is the museum’s ongoing Friday after-hours performing arts program. Since November 2009, BAM/PFA has kept museum doors open until 9 p.m. or later on most Fridays for innovative, interdisciplinary events incorporating art, literature, film, dance, poetry, and music. To develop content for L@TE, BAM/PFA enlists a rotating cast of in-house and guest programmers with wide-ranging backgrounds. Regular guest programmer and prominent local new music advocate Sarah Cahill focuses on the experimental tradition of American music. BAM/PFA Film and Video Curators Kathy Geritz and Steve Seid program expanded cinema events.

In 2012, the themes of the sun and the moon are explored in a series of events programmed by Land and Sea, a small fine-art publishing house formed by Bay Area artists Chris Duncan and Maria Otero. The moon will be celebrated in a pair of evening L@TE events; while the sun will be honored in the first ever pair of E@RLY events, a companion program to L@TE which features performances on certain Sundays. Also in 2012, BAM/PFA Adjunct Curator Constance Lewallen programs a series of event rooted in themes explored in BAM/PFA’s major spring exhibition State of Mind: New California Art circa 1970.

A new literary series called RE@DS will precede selected L@TE programs throughout winter and spring 2012.

L@TE programs typically begin at 7:30 p.m. in Gallery B, the museum’s dramatic 6,692-square-foot atrium space; doors open at 5:00 p.m. with DJ sets at 6:30 P.M. Admission is $7; free for members and UC Berkeley staff, faculty, and students. Prior to and during the programs, upper galleries are open to visitors.

Opening:

The Reading Room
January 15 through June 17, 2012
The Reading Room is a project dedicated to poetry and experimental fiction offering visitors the chance to take home a free book drawn from the overstock collections of several noted East Bay small presses, including Kelsey Street Press, Atelos Books, and Tuumba Press. Books and catalogs from Small Press Distribution will also be available. In turn, visitors are asked to replace that book with one from their own library. We look forward to seeing how the character of the works on the shelves evolves over the course of the project!

The Reading Room features a comfortable reading area, the opportunity to listen to recordings of selected poets published by these presses, and silkscreen prints and works on paper created by George Schneeman in collaboration with poets Ron Padgett, Bill Berkson, and Lewis MacAdams.

As part of selected Friday night L@TE programs throughout winter and spring, the Reading Room will be the site of a literary series, called RE@DS, co-curated by poet/author David Brazil and Suzanne Stein, poet, publisher, and community producer at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Abstract Expressionisms: Paintings and Drawings from the Collection
January 18 through June 10, 2012
Abstract Expressionisms presents nearly fifty paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from BAM/PFA’s renowned collection of mid-twentieth century works of art. This international array of work in various media reminds us of the broad reach and long-running influence of the movement and of its many radiating branches. Signature works by artists such as Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko stake out groundbreaking parameters of new art in post-World War II America. Powerful works from the 1950s and 1960s by Philip Guston, Theodore Stamos, Conrad Marca-Relli, and William Baziotes indicate the breadth and consistency of achievement of the era. The exhibition also includes bold, color-saturated works by American artists Sam Francis and Norman Bluhm, dating from the late 1950s when both artists were based in Paris. A dominant French expressionist movement Tachisme, leaned toward lyrical abstraction. German-born artist Hans Hartung, who was associated with Tachisme, is represented in the exhibition by a 1954 etching. The CoBrA group, founded in Brussels in 1949, advocated vivid colors, fantastic forms, and interplay of line and color. A monumental work on paper by CoBrA cofounder Pierre Alechinsky demonstrates his dual interest in Japanese calligraphy and expressionist tenets. Works by CoBrA cohorts Asger Jorn and Karel Appel also appear in Abstract Expressionisms. Antonio Saura was one of the leaders of abstract expressionist explorations in Spain. Saura’s Carajaraña is an aggressive black and white composition suggestive of Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning. Abstract Expressionist qualities are also strongly evident in the sculptures of David Smith, Ibram Lassaw, and Peter Voulkos, and shape an early abstract painting by Conceptual artist Robert Irwin.
Andy Warhol: Polaroids / MATRIX 240
January 27 through May 20, 2012
From 1970 to 1987 Andy Warhol took scores of Polaroid photographs, the vast majority of which were never seen by the public. These images often served as the basis for his commissioned portraits, silk-screen paintings, drawings, and prints. In 2007, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts launched the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program, donating over 28,500 of Warhol’s original Polaroids and gelatin silver prints to college and university museums and galleries across the country, including BAM/PFA. We are proud to present selected Polaroids drawn from this extraordinary Warhol Foundation gift.
Tables of Content: Ray Johnson and Robert Warner Bob Box Archive / MATRIX 241
January 27 through May 20, 2012
In 1988, New York–based collagist Robert Warner began a correspondence with the enigmatic artist Ray Johnson. Until Johnson’s death in 1995, Ray and Bob continued their exchange, mostly by mail and telephone, and only occasionally in person. Over the course of their relationship Warner received hundred of pieces of mail art from Johnson, ranging from collages to a hand-delivered piece of driftwood. At one of their rare in-person meetings, Johnson gave Warner thirteen cardboard boxes tied with twine, labeled “Bob Box 1,” “Bob Box 2,” and so on. Tables of Content displays all thirteen boxes and their contents. Warner has selected and arranged the letters, drawings, photocopies, and found objects like t-shirts, tennis balls, and random beach trash—the material of Johnson’s art—on an assembly of thirteen tables and surrounding gallery walls.
State of Mind: New California Art circa 1970 (presented at two venues)
Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA), Newport Beach, CA
Through January 22, 2012
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA), Berkeley, CA
February 29 through June 17, 2012
State of Mind: New California Art circa 1970, co-organized by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) and the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) as part of Pacific Standard Time, is the most comprehensive exhibition to date to focus on Conceptual art and related new genres in both Northern and Southern California during this pivotal period in contemporary art. The more than 150 works of art on display—many rarely seen or newly discovered—are organized by themes, such as the street, the body, politics, private/public space, and language/wordplay, that elucidate this dynamic era in our history and foreshadow the concerns of young artists working today.

Featuring more than 150 works of art, the exhibition includes installations, photographs, works on paper, videos and films, artists’ books, extensive performance documentation, and other ephemera. Many of these are newly discovered works or rarely viewed materials culled from archives for this exhibition.

Some of the highlights of the exhibition include the important early surveillance installation Being Photographed, Looking Out, Looking In, February 4-20, 1971 by Chris Burden, currently in a private collection and not exhibited since the 1970s; the most comprehensive installation of artifacts, photographs, and the original soundtrack from Allen Ruppersberg’s, Al's Grand Hotel (1971); the most complete documentation ever presented in a museum of Bonnie Sherk’s street performances Sitting Still Series (1970); and archival photographs from William Wegman’s studio, recently discovered at BAM/PFA and never before seen in California. Other artists featured in State of Mind whose practices deserve greater attention are Gary Beydler, Nancy Buchanan, Adam II (the late Paul Cotton), Lowell Darling, Stephen Laub, Darryl Sapien, Susan Mogul, Ilene Segalove, Fred Londier, and Robert Kinmont.
Barry McGee
August 23 through December 9, 2012
BAM/PFA’s midcareer survey of influential San Francisco–based artist Barry McGee will provide an opportunity to explore two decades of the artist’s formal and thematic development.
McGee began sharing his work in the 1980s, not in a museum or gallery setting but on the streets of San Francisco, where he developed his skills as a graffiti artist, often using the tag name “Twist.” McGee uses a vocabulary drawn from comics, hobo art, sign painting, and graffiti to address a range of issues, from individual survival to social malaise to alternative forms of community. McGee’s extraordinary skill as a draughtsman and printmaker is balanced by an interest in pushing the boundaries of art: his work can be shockingly informal in the gallery and surprisingly elegant on the street.
Taking over the entire lower level of the museum as well as several outdoor spaces, this chronological survey of McGee’s work from the 1990s to the present includes rarely seen early works on paper; reassembled works from key installations; a tower of video pieces; a large-scale window painting; animatronic taggers; a massive three-dimensional cluster of drawings, paintings, and photographs; as well as other recent works. Organized by BAM/PFA Director Lawrence Rinder with Curatorial Assistant Dena Beard, the exhibition includes a major catalog and extensive public programs.
Silence
January 30 through April 21, 2013
Silence, an exhibition of paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, performances, and sound works, considers the absence of sound as a subject and a medium in contemporary art. Whether a positive source of inspiration, an enigmatic force, or an unsettling limbo zone, silence is a powerful force in art and human experience. It can signify absence, presence, and the passing of time, and it can inspire calming meditation or unsettling anxiety. Organized by the Menil Collection in Houston, the art objects in the exhibition will not all be without sound, but they all investigate the experience and idea of silence to inspire a range of physical and psychic states.

Some notable works under consideration for inclusion in the exhibition include iconic paintings by Yves Klein and René Magritte; sculptures by Marcel Duchamp, Robert Morris, and Joseph Beuys; John Cage’s famous musical composition 4’33”, a score for piano performance involving no notes or actual playing for the time specified in its title; neon works by Bruce Nauman; film by Marcel Broodthaers; and documentation of Tehching Hsieh’s One Year Performance 1978–1979 (Cage Piece), in which the artist spent a year in a cage without speaking, reading, writing, or listening to radio or TV.
Beauty Revealed: Images of Women in Qing Dynasty Chinese Painting
Fall 2013
Beauty Revealed: Images of Women in Qing Dynasty Chinese Painting investigates a relatively unexamined area of Chinese art history: meiren (beautiful women) paintings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The exhibition brings together approximately sixty paintings from public and private collections in the United States, Europe, and China in order to present a broad selection of this genre for the first time, using as a foundation BAM/PFA’s own collection, which includes works by Gu Jianlong (1606–87) and a number of other recently acquired paintings. Beauty Revealed not only brings together some of the world’s finest examples of the meiren genre, but also strives to interpret and contextualize the works in ways not previously attempted. Unlike most historical portraits of great and famous men, the images of women found in many paintings of this period seem to be iconic or generic representations, leading to questions of their intent. Often dismissed as decorative or misinterpreted as highbrow portraits of ladies, these enigmatic works will, through this project, become the subject of much more scholarly scrutiny. Organized by BAM/PFA Senior Curator for Asian Art Julia M. White, in collaboration with UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus James F. Cahill, one of the world’s leading scholars of Chinese painting, the exhibition will tour to additional museums in the United States.

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