ORANGE COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART ANNOUNCES SECOND SEASON IN TEMPORARY SPACE, OCMAEXPAND IN SANTA ANA

Santa Ana, CA (March 2019) —After a successful inaugural season in its temporary space in Santa Ana, the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) announced today that it will present six new exhibitions of works by Pacific Rim artists and a seventh show featuring objects from the museum’s collection—on view from April 7 through September 1, 2019. Through a wide range of media including interactive installations, photography, and site-specific interventions, the works touch on notions of value, control and power, and truth and reality, responding to some of today’s most pressing global socio-political concerns.

For this second season at OCMAEXPAND-SANTA ANA, OCMA will continue the strategy of considering its interim location as a laboratory for artistic experimentation, taking the idea of the Pacific Rim as a research question. “The season of exhibitions by artists Diego Berruecos, York Chang, Victoria Fu and Matt Rich, Fritzia Irizar, UuDam Tran Nguyen, and Hiromi Takizawa continues OCMA’s proud history and trajectory as a leader in presenting the freshest art of our time,” says Todd D. Smith, OCMA’s director and CEO. “We look forward to a robust exchange of ideas born out of showing these artists, especially in such a public-facing space.” Located in South Coast Plaza Village, OCMAEXPAND-SANTA ANA is the Museum’s temporary venue while it builds its Thomas Mayne-designed new home at Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

“We are also delighted to have an opportunity to continue exhibiting objects from our permanent collection of more than 4,500 works of modern and contemporary art during this time of change and growth as we prepare for our new home,” says Smith. The new iteration highlights small-scale sculptures and includes works by many artists who are central to the art history of Southern California, including Chris Burden, Vija Celmins, Judy Chicago, Ken Price, and others.

The spring exhibitions are:

Diego Berruecos: Only A Shadow

Known for his biting investigations into power structures in Mexican politics, photographer Diego Berruecos offers two bodies of work that together demonstrate the Mexican artist’s insightful and nuanced take on the effects of globalized economic power on rural or economically disadvantaged communities in Mexico. His series 26 Used To Be Gas Stations in Mexico features former state-run Pemex gas stations and shines a light on the impact of the global oil industry on Mexico. His Red Bull series documents Mexican farmers trying the energy drink for the first time. The images call attention to the implications of multi-national economic power dynamics in the context of this farming community.

York Chang: To Be Wrong with Infinite Precision

Los Angeles-based artist York Chang’s exhibition’s To Be Wrong with Infinite Precision probes how we make sense of the tumult of information we are confronted with today and how we struggle to decipher fact from fiction. The title of the show comes from an essay by Nassim Nicholas Talib, in which he describes our tendency to organize complexity (statistics, data, images, and random events) into invented narratives that reinforce pre-existing beliefs. Through sculpture, photocollage, painting, and performance, Chang sheds light on the fragile nature of truth and reality, especially in today’s media environment. The exhibition reveals how—more often than not—what one might have trusted as true may be inaccurate.

Victoria Fu and Matt Rich: Monster A.

Monster A. joins the artistic practices of San Diego-based artists and collaborators Victoria Fu and Matt Rich. Fu’s screen-like images and textures combine with Rich’s bold palette and painterly surfaces on sewn fabric elements that take the form of aprons. Their installation consists of a series of site-responsive vignettes that draw together the aprons with neon sculptures and vinyl wallpaper-like elements. The theatrical display challenges the traditionally utilitarian nature of the apron and the implications of gender and labor associated with it, while also suggesting the familiar bodily experience of wearing one.

Fritzia Irizar: CaCO3

Mexican artist Fritzia Irizar’s work explores the concept of value relative to precious materials such as diamonds and gold. CaCO3   focuses on the pearl and uncovers its vast, historic web of influence as a commodity for centuries and across civilizations. Through video, sculpture, and ephemera, this exhibition examines the implications that the international trade of this precious material has had on natural resources and labor, with a particular emphasis on the history of pearl production in Mexico.

UuDam Tran Nguyen: TIME BOOMERANG California Edition—From S.E.A. Atolls to the Next Dead Stars

Vietnamese artist UuDam Tran Nguyen’s ongoing Time Boomerang project began in 2013 when he set out to explore China’s historic claim over the islands in the South China Sea, which were also claimed by Vietnam, The Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia. To Nguyen, this declaration was a bold exercise of power on the part of China, confusing the territorial map on an international scale. Nguyen began to consider this somewhat arbitrary and subjective approach to measuring ownership, and recalled as a child how he would use his own hand with fingers outstretched as a unit of measure. He created a bronze cast of his hand, cut off the fingertips, and set out to drop each one in oceans bordering five continents. OCMA’s exhibition documents the stages of this project already completed in Europe, Australia, and Japan. It also includes an interactive element in which visitors are invited to break plaster maps Nguyen has created for different phases of the work. As part of the exhibition, the artist will complete the California phase of Time Boomerang in the Pacific Ocean.

Hiromi Takizawa: Open Air

Born in a small mountain village outside Nagano, Japan and now living in Santa Ana, California, Hiromi Takizawa investigates identity and the immigrant experience through themes of distance, time, space, and longing. Takizawa’s exhibition consists of site-specific glass and light installations and new sculptural works exploring the wonder and phenomena of nature, inspired by contrasting landscapes on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. Takizawa has deftly pushed traditional notions of glassmaking to create delicate glass sculptures and immersive installations of neon lights, blown glass, and natural sunlight.

Closer Look: Intimate-Scale Sculpture from the Permanent Collection

Co-curated with exhibiting artist Hiromi Takizawa and the Orange County Museum of Art, this exhibition provides a focused look at small sculpture in the OCMA permanent collection. Selected for their innovative materials, playfulness in scale and function, and historic importance within the context of significant art movements and artistic careers, each artwork in Closer Look is intended to be viewed at a close distance, providing the viewer with an intimate moment to make slow and careful observations about content and construction. Artists include Libby Black, Chris Burden, Vija Celmins, Judy Chicago, Joel Morrison, and Ken Price, among others.

Admission to and parking at OCMAEXPAND-SANTA ANA are free.

About the Orange County Museum of Art
Along with its predecessor institution, the Newport Harbor Art Museum, OCMA has an established reputation as an innovative art museum with a history of actively discovering and engaging with living artists at pivotal points in their careers. The museum has organized and presented critically praised exhibitions that have traveled nationally and internationally to more than 35 museums. The museum’s collection of more than 4,500 works of art includes important examples by artists from Southern California including John Baldessari, Chris Burden, Vija Celmins, Bruce Conner, Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Irwin, Catherine Opie, Charles Ray, and Ed Ruscha. Recognizing the growing influence of the Pacific Region within Southern California and the art world in general, in recent years the museum has broadened its focus to include artists of the Pacific Rim, transforming its biennial series into the California-Pacific Triennial, the first in the world to examine the totality of contemporary art from Pacific Rim. In the last five years, OCMA has featured works by artists from 23 Pacific Rim countries, including Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China, Colombia, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam. As the preeminent visual arts organization in Orange County, OCMA is committed to making the arts accessible to all and offers a host of programs that engage the community with modern and contemporary art and artists.

In May 2018, OCMA unveiled the design for the museum’s new home at Segerstrom Center for the Arts by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis. The museum will break ground in 2019, with a projected opening in 2021. With nearly 25,000 square feet of exhibition galleries, the new 52,000-square-foot museum will allow OCMA to organize major special exhibitions alongside spacious installations from its world-traveled collection. It will also feature an additional 10,000 square-feet for education programs, performances, and public gatherings, and will include administrative offices, a gift shop, and a café. The move from Newport Beach to Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa will provide the museum with a central location, expanded gallery space, and inviting public areas, further enabling the museum to engage the public through art.

Media Inquiries: Emma Jacobson-Sive
emma@ejs-media.com, 323-842-2064

Admission is free.
Hours: Thursday 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. and Friday – Sunday 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Location: South Coast Plaza Village, 1661 W. Sunflower Avenue, Santa Ana, CA 92704
Website: www.ocmaexpand.org