The current exhibition at the University Art Museum at CSULB is “Call and Response, When We Say… You say”. The curators of this exhibition are Karla Diaz and Mario Ybarra, Jr. The collection of pieces comes from many artists such as Kim Abeles, Richard Bosman, Patricio Cabrera, Albert Contreras, Adolph Gottlieb, Graciela Iturbide, Lee Krasner, Piotr Kowalski, Ken Light, Ken Price, Lorna Simpson, and Andy Warhol and guest artists such as Abel Alejandre, Valerie J. Bower, Karla Diaz, Gabriel “Gobs” Fernandez, Alonso Garzon, Rosalie López, Antonio De Jesus Lopez, Aydinaneth Ortiz, Marlene Tafoya, Arnoldo Vargas, and Mario Ybarra, Jr. The exhibition features pieces that stem from the experiences of many different artists.
The exhibition was arranged in a way that was meant to transition smoothly as you walk through the museum. For example, in the entrance, you can find the same jagged lines near the entrance of the walls and a fence with a similar shape when you go further in. There are also repeating colors in the exhibition. The Curator of Education at CSULB, Christina Alegria, says that the curators of this exhibition wanted viewers such as myself to look for many of these patterns. Another example of finding repeating patterns and colors is the the faces that can be found in the piece, “Weirs at Dawn”, and the similar looking masks by Alonso Garzon.
Many of these pieces stem from artists’ experiences or capture their experiences. For example, the pictures taken by Valerie J. Bower depict the lowrider subculture in her community. The masks by Alonso Garzon and the jagged fence play with the idea that, according to Alegria, we’re keeping ourselves in and trying to protect ourselves from the outside. However, doing so hurts us because we’re not allowing ourselves to experience the world and expose ourselves to new ideas, and thus alienating ourselves. In the “Propping Shit Up” piece, the artist, Abel Alejandre, comments that there are antennas on the subject because he feels alienated.
Overall, I liked my experience in the University Art Museum. I liked how the pieces were put together in a way that was supposed to transition smoothly. I also liked the amount of exposure the viewer gets from the paintings from driving around to photos of different people, depicting people and experiences in a community to commentary about society and struggles. I think getting to see all that was a pretty good experience because seeing exhibitions with more variety opens one’s eyes to different perspectives.
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