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COMAIR ROTRON

Mike Eastman unlocks the aesthetic and material potential of electronic waste through a process of discovery and play; transforming discarded television and computer parts into user-activated magnetic sculptures. Eastman’s goal is to engage visitors in the process of artistic discovery and spark their curiosity about the hidden magic of materials.

As part of Eastman’s artistic investigations, he reduces electronic devices down to their component parts, salvaging the material for new purposes. Playing around in his studio, Eastman discovered that he could create an electromagnet out of the copper wire from an old computer fan. Continuing his experimentation, he found that he could create animated formations and patterns in metallic dust by manipulating the current level. The resulting shapes evoke associations ranging from fur to black holes, stimulating the imagination and generating a sense of wonder. Each artwork offers different methods for creating unique dust sculptures, either by controlling the power level or by running a magnet over the glass surface of a dust-filled aquarium. Visitors are invited to mimic the artist’s process and discover new artistic possibilities in the materials through play.

ABOUT MIKE EASTMAN

Mike Eastman earned his BFA from Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, where he received the JM Metcalf Endowed Scholarship for Fine Art. An emerging artist, active in the local arts community, Eastman has exhibited work at the Ideal Hotel, the Keller Gallery at Point Loma Nazarene University, and completed a permanent sculptural installation for Hess Brewing Company. He has also worked as a studio assistant for several prominent San Diego artists, including Lael Corbin and Roman de Salvo. TRASH is Eastman’s first museum exhibition.

Image by Kota Ezawa

STEREO TRASH

Kota Ezawa recreates found images by rendering them with animation software to reduce photographic images to essential shapes and colors. He then presents his altered images in 3D stereoscopic viewers that predate the classic view-master toys, to elevate everyday scenes of trash to a status once reserved for photographs of exotic locales or famous monuments. Ordinary images of street sweepers collecting leaves, or an overflowing dumpster, are made extraordinary through Ezawa’s infusion of color and three dimensions.

Ezawa’s source imagery for Stereo Trash includes representations of staple childhood characters, moments depicting trash in film, and international photographs of both concealed and recognizable aspects of trash processing. Despite the diversity of sources, the images are not intended as a comprehensive representation of the ways individuals live with trash around the world. What Ezawa has done so skillfully, is to create a set of images from which every visitor will discover scenes that are familiar and others that are foreign to their experience of trash. An image of Oscar the Grouch will be an easily identifiable symbol of trash, while a scene taken from an auto-wrecking yard might be unfamiliar, and prompt a child to inquire about what becomes of broken down cars. Similarly, an image of German recycling bins may spark a dialogue among a family about how their recyclables are sorted.

ABOUT KOTA EZAWA

Kota Ezawa received his MFA from Stanford University and BFA from San Francisco Art Institute. He was the recipient of a 2006 SECA Art Award from the SFMOMA and a 2003 Lois Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. Ezawa’s international exhibition history includes solo shows at Matadero in Madrid, Franklin Art Works, Minneapolis, The Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, OH, St. Louis Art Museum, and The Hayward Gallery, London, as well as group shows at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, The Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

THE COMPLEX, SD/TJ HILLSIDE-12 (IMPROVISATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS)

Kianga Ford authors site-specific narratives that she integrates with soundscapes and presents within accompanying environmental installations. In The Complex, SD/TJ Hillside-12 (Improvisational Developments), Ford creates a hybrid space that is part ad hoc hillside settlement and part planned apartment complex. Made of both reused materials and more polished surfaces, Ford’s complex brings questions of class and economy into how we live with, and employ trash. The form and materials of the structure rely on innovative building techniques developed by urban planners working to improve the safety of construction in canyon communities in Tijuana.

Ford introduces perspectives from diverse walks of life through the residents of the 12 units in this fictional community, whose stories are told through interrelated audio narratives played in each unit. Visitors to the unit will meet a varied and fantastic cast of characters; all inspired by Ford’s extensive research and interviews with children from San Diego and Tijuana. The stories reflect the great disparities and parallels in the ways children from both sides of the border conceive of what constitutes trash, the moral imperative to recycle, and trash processing. These stories are not intended to be didactic, nor comprehensive in telling the story of trash at the border; rather, Ford opens a dialogue through her narratives about the complexities of how children comprehend garbage.

ABOUT KIANGA FORD

Kianga Ford received her BA in English from Georgetown University, MFA in Visual Art from UCLA, and is currently pursuing her PhD in the History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz. Ford has been the recipient of grants from the Harpo Foundation, California Community Foundation, and Creative Capital, and has been an artist-in-residence at the USF Verftet in Bergen, Norway; the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada; and Atelier d’Alexandrie in Alexandria, Egypt. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in the US and Canada, including exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, the California African American Museum, the Studio Museum of Harlem, and the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore.

Institute For Figuring, Midden, 2007-2011. Photo ©Philipp Scholz Ritterman 2011

SAN DIEGO MIDDEN

Inspired by their research into the devastating impact of plastic trash on the world’s oceans, Margaret and Christine Wertheim of The Institute For Figuring endeavored to keep and track all of their household plastic trash. After cleaning, bagging and storing their plastic trash for just one week, the sisters were shocked by the amount they had consumed, and were motivated to continue this exercise in ecological awareness for four years. In spite of its scale, the Midden, which contains all of the sisters’ plastic trash from that period, represents a fraction of what the average Western citizen uses, as the sisters worked hard to minimize their intake.

The San Diego Midden is the first time the IFF will have collaborators on the Midden Project. Over the course of the exhibition, the gallery will be filled with San Diego plastic accumulated by NCM visitors. The Wertheim’s aspiration in engaging a larger audience to collect and contribute their trash is to make tangible the amount of waste once individual produces and call attention to growing issue of plastics in the oceans.

Become a San Diego Midden contributor! Start collecting your plastic trash today with the help of the IFF’s How to Make a Midden Guide.

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE FOR FIGURING

The Institute For Figuring is a non-profit educational organization founded by Margaret and Christine Wertheim and based on Los Angeles. Since its inception in 2003, the Institute For Figuring (IFF) has developed exhibitions for art galleries and science museums around the world, including Inventing Kindergarten at Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, 2006) and The Logic Alphabet of Shea Zellweger at the Museum of Jurassic Technology (Los Angeles, 2007-2010). In 2005 IFF directors Margaret and Christine Wertheim created the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, which has been exhibited at the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh, 2007), Chicago Cultural Center (2007), The Hayward Gallery (London, 2008), Track 16 Gallery (Los Angeles, 2009), the Science Gallery (Dublin, 2010), and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (Washington, DC, 2010-2011).

Layer, Three Horned Beast (and Baby Beast), 2011. Commissioned by The New Children’s Museum.

THREE HORNED BEAST (AND BABY BEAST)

Influenced by naturally occurring shapes and forms, Layer experiments with different industrial manufacturing techniques to explore unexpected structural possibilities. Whether working with metal, paper, or plastic, Layer’s projects all have a discernible organic quality. Playfully referencing a fennel bulb, the porous aluminum structure of Three Horned Beast (and Baby Beast) represents Layer’s innovative and economical approach of maximizing volume while minimizing material waste. The design of the Three Horned Beast (and Baby Beast) responds elegantly to the dual challenge of creating a structure which both maximizes material resources and frames the activity taking place in NCM’s Improv Theater. By using aluminum, Layer is able to take advantage of the material’s light weight and structural strength to create a large open lattice with the minimum amount of material required to still create a sense of enclosure. The net-like framework, also allows visitors on the top floors to peer through the skin of the structure and down through the 30 foot “horns” to the improvised play of the visitors on the interior below. Similarly, the visitors inside the “Beast” can look up through the porous openings and watch the activity elsewhere in the Museum.

ABOUT LAYER

Layer is a Los Angeles based architecture practice, founded by Lisa Little and Emily White in 2009. Little holds a Master of Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and BS in electrical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. White holds a Master of Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University.  Layer’s projects have been featured in the 2010 California Design Biennial at the Pasadena Museum of California Art and in exhibitions at the A+D Museum and Materials & Application in Los Angeles.

CASH MACHINE

Machine Project, an informal consortium of artists led by Mark Allen, believes that art offers a unique way to understand the world that privileges curiosity and experimentation. Allen promotes this perspective through workshops, classes, and performances that help participants make connections between art and their everyday life.

When Allen contemplated creative fundraising ideas for his organization, he sought to find a way to make donating fun. His solution came in the form of a pneumatic device reminiscent of an old fashioned drive-up bank teller. When NCM commissioned him to develop a similar donation system, he and engineers Tod Kurt and Carlyn Maw jum ped at the chance to augment his original design to include literal bells and whistles that could be triggered when a donation is made. Thanks to their creation, now when an NCM visitor makes a contribution, the Cash Machine comes to life to thank them with unexpected fanfare! In addition, Machine Project will develop a TRASH event that will allow the collective to take over the galleries and infuse NCM with their quirky, participatory, and always original offerings.

ABOUT MACHINE PROJECT

Machine Project Founder and Director Mark Allen creates opportunities for collaborations between artists, scientists, engineers, poets, and musicians to realize a selection of weekly courses and occasional installations at their storefront in Los Angeles. Given the variety of collaborators, the workshop offerings are equally eclectic, ranging from welding and pickling to sound engineering and bookbinding. Allen founded Machine Project in 2003 in Los Angeles and oversees programming both at their storefront location in Echo Park, and at various cultural institutions throughout the U.S. Machine Project has been in residence at the Hammer Museum and the Walker Art Center, in addition to developing programming and site specific events for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Berkeley Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and SPACES, Cleveland.

FLOAT

Finding complexity in simple material, Jessica McCambly transforms ubiquitous white plastic shopping bags into an ephemeral cloud of light and shadow. Created from bags collected from NCM visitors, the accumulated mass of delicate imperfect rings, floats mist-like overhead, mimicking the dynamic shape of a wave breaking against the shore. The uniformity and intricate alteration of material invites myriad associations to be projected onto the suspended formation. McCambly encourages visitors to slow down and observe the temporal shapes the light draws against the wall and to contemplate the quiet beauty in the subtle shifts the piece makes over time. The simple act of noticing is critical to the experience of this work. As McCambly states, “the fast pace and culture of convenience that necessitates these plastic bags is also the one that interferes with our ability to notice fleeting moments of visual, aesthetic pleasure.” By reducing the pace, McCambly offers an alternative, giving us an opportunity to breathe and find the magic in the mundane.

ABOUT JESSICA MCCAMBLY

San Diego-based artist, Jessica McCambly earned a BFA and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of North Texas, College of Visual Arts and Design. Her work has been shown at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, The Dallas Contemporary, BLOK Gallery in Belgrade, Serbia and was included in the London Biennale. In 2010, McCambly’s work was selected for inclusion in the exhibition Here Not There: San Diego Art Now at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego.

Art © Vik Muniz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

PICTURES OF GARBAGE

Vik Muniz has stated that he wishes for viewers to see more than simply “a representation of something” in his work, by showing them “how it happens.” This makes for a particularly rewarding experience for children, as the magic of one thing transformed into something else entirely can truly change how they perceive the world around them. Muniz’s Pictures of Garbage photographs depict “catadores”—individuals who pick recyclable materials from the largest landfill in the world in Brazil. The photographs elevate the status of the figures by placing them in monumental portraits inspired by classical paintings, which are composed from the very materials the catadores collect. He shows the figures with great dignity and respect this way, commenting on the importance of their overlooked, yet critically important role in Brazil’s effort to cope with seemingly insurmountable issues of waste.

Muniz’s collaboration with NCM features a corresponding hands-on studio project that offers visitors unprecedented access to his creative process. Muniz invites visitors to compose their own “picture of garbage,” using broken plastic toys placed upon light boxes; in a technique that mirrors his own. By revealing the details of his practice he hopes to inspire a greater understanding and appreciation of the artistic process among NCM families. As he argues, “it is by empowering the viewer that art achieves its miraculous force.”

ABOUT VIK MUNIZ

Over the last 15 years, Vik Muniz, who is represented by the gallery Sikkema Jenkins & Co., has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, New York; Centre National pour la Photographie, Paris; and the Biennale di Venezia, as well as group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Gallery, London; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Muniz has received numerous awards including the National Artist Award granted by the Anderson Ranch Arts Center Aspen, CO, 2005; the Ayutamiento de Madrid: Premio Villa de Madrid de Fotografía “Kaulak”, 2005, Spain; and Líderes Latino Americanos para el Nuevo Milenio, CNN Time, NY, 1999. In 2005 Muniz published “Reflex – A Vik Muniz Primer” (2005: Aperture Foundation, New York)and his book Seeing is Believing (Arena Editions, 1998) was rated among the top ten photography books of the year by the New York Times Book Review and the Village Voice.

MEGALITRANSPONDER

Jason Rogenes has explored the possibilities of expanded polystyrene, better known as Styrofoam, for more than ten years. By working with discarded materials, Rogenes continues the long tradition of 20^th century artists who challenged the notion that art-making requires precious or expensive materials. Rogenes is also motivated by environmental concerns, and hopes that viewers will acknowledge that the accumulation in his sculptures reflects only an infinitesimal percentage of the consumer packaging sent to landfills across the globe daily.

One child examining Rogenes’ work described it as a machine that could tell “stories of the future.” Rogenes’ immersive environments appear to be composed of the stuff of science fiction: spacecrafts set within geometric landscapes that evoke unfamiliar planets. To create his futuristic illusion Rogenes has in fact skillfully manipulated the materials of everyday consumer culture—cardboard and polystyrene, made to glow by fluorescent lighting. Rogenes’ skill in seeing possibility where others see waste embodies the aesthetic approach of so many artists working with discarded materials today. His work brings issues of consumer excess into focus, while reminding us that our everyday surroundings offer up endless opportunities for artistic transformation.

ABOUT JASON ROGENES

Rogenes received an MFA degree at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a BA from the University of California, San Diego. He also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Pomona College Museum, at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon, the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, and at the Chicago International Sculpture Exhibition and group exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Maine College of Art, Portland, Maine; the Wilhelm Hack Museum / Kunstverein Ludwigshafen, Germany; The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York and the Whitney Museum at Altria in New York City.

Ed Ruscha Psycho Spaghetti Western #1, 2010 Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 110 inches (121.9 x 279.4 cm) Rusch 2010.0033 Gagosian Gallery

ABOUT ED RUSCHA

Born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska, Edward Ruscha moved to Oklahoma City in 1941 and to Los Angeles in 1956 to attend the Chouinard Art Institute. He had his first solo exhibition in 1963 at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. At the start of the seventies, Ruscha began showing his work with the Leo Castelli in New York. He currently shows with the Gagosian Gallery in New York, Beverly Hills and London. Encompassing photography, drawing, painting, and artist books, Ruscha’s work holds the mirror up to the banality of urban life and gives order to the barrage of mass media-fed images and information that confront us daily. Ruscha’s early career as a graphic artist continues to strongly influence his aesthetic and thematic approach.

Ruscha has been the subject of numerous museum retrospectives, which have traveled worldwide, beginning in 1983 with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1989, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2000. In 2001, Ruscha was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters as a member of the Department of Art. The following year a major exhibition of Ruscha’s entire body of work opened in Spain at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia.

Shinique Smith, Secret Garden, 2011. Image credit: Philipp Scholz Ritterman. ©Shinique Smith, courtesy of the artist and Yvon Lambert Paris.

SECRET GARDEN

Drawn to stories in the things we leave behind, Shinique Smith uses discarded clothing as an artistic medium to explore the complex and accidental connections between individuals. Her installation, The Secret Garden, is an adjustable maze of brightly-colored and textured panels, influenced by the practice in which unwanted used clothing from the United States is baled and sold overseas to third world countries, with the bulk going to Africa. Several hundred tons of clothing, packed into tight bundles, is shipped every year, generating a multi-billion dollar industry. Beyond the economic implications, these bales also provide a tangible connection point to individuals elsewhere in the world through the very clothes on our backs. Smith’s maze provides a metaphor for these complex connections as visitors explore the network of interlocking paths. In navigating the maze, the visitor is mentally and physically making connections in space, and with other visitors. The surface of the maze itself is built up through an accumulation of paint, fabric, found objects, and collaged images. The texture invokes the layers of memory and the history of the individuals passing through.  Exiting the maze, visitors emerge into a room filled with bundles of recycled clothing, providing a space to replicate the artist’s process and contemplate the tangible connection between individuals and their material goods.

ABOUT SHINIQUE SMITH

Shinique Smith earned her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. Her first large-scale museum exhibition, Menagerie, opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Florida, in 2010 and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI in 2011. Her work has also been exhibited at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder CO, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, The New Museum, New York, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, PS1/MoMA, NY, Rubell Family Collection, Margulies Collection, and the Denver Art Museum. She received awards and fellowships from The Joan Mitchell Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Piles of trash, that get up, walk, and sit down again in Downtown San Diego.

PLAY-FILL

Through humorous interventions and performances, Chris Sollars calls attention to the things we throw away.  Rather than telling the viewer what to think about trash, Sollars’s goal is to stimulate curiosity as a way of encouraging us to rethink the everyday world and consider the importance of the invisible and overlooked. In Play-Fill, Sollars creates a situation in which visitors are asked to think about the world from the perspective of a piece of trash.  By refocusing our point of view, Sollars spotlights a critical topic we would rather ignore and makes it personal. Set against the backdrop of a wall size photomural of San Diego’s Miramar Landfill, the installation places the visitor in an empathic position to trash. Visitors play on a dumpster converted into a playground and watch a video of trash falling from above while lying on the dumpster floor. The visitor is further connected to trash through an additional video, Pile Trash San Diego. The video follows a group of anthropomorphic trash bags on a journey between the former landfill at Balboa Park, through downtown San Diego to the Miramar Landfill. By focusing locally on San Diego landfill sites, Sollars challenges us to question our individual connection to trash and what becomes of it once it leaves our sight.

ABOUT CHRIS SOLLARS

Chris Sollars holds a BFA in Sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA from Bard College. Sollars’ work is in the collections of the Berkeley Art Museum, Fogg Art Museum, and Miami Art Museum and was recently included in Bay Area Now 6 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. His documentary feature, C RED BLUE J screened at SFMOMA on Election Day 2008 and was included in Creative Time’s Democracy in America: Convergence Center, at the Park Armory in New York. Awards include 2002 Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Award, 2007 Alternative Exposure Grant, 2007 Eureka Fellowship Award, a 2007 San Francisco Bay Area Artadia Grant, and 2009 Headlands residency.