“Visions From the New California” - Exhibition and Opening Reception

“Visions From the New California” - Exhibition and Opening Reception
Exhibition dates: May 18-June 30, 2012
Artists' Reception: Friday, May 18, 2012, 6-8P
Kala Gallery - 2990 San Pablo Av, Berkeley, CA 94702

Kala Gallery is proud to present Visions from the New California, as part of a two-venue exhibition series shared with 18th Street Art Center in Santa Monica. The combined exhibition series features eighteen Visions from the New California awardees from 2010, 2011 and 2012.

The Visions from the New California award is an initiative of the Alliance of Artists Communities and is generously supported by the James Irvine Foundation. Each year the awards program celebrates six outstanding California visual artists from diverse communities. The awardees are artists whose work may as yet be unfamiliar to a wide audience, but whose compelling visions help define California. Since 2004, the program has awarded funded residencies to forty-three artists working in a wide array of media and processes. Participating California residency programs include Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Exploratorium, Headlands Center for the Arts, Montalvo Arts Center, 18th Street Art Center and Kala.


The artists included in the Kala Gallery exhibition are Iris Charabi-Berggren (San Francisco); Asad Faulwell (Newport Beach); Marnia Johnston (Concord); Justin Lowman (Northridge); Rebecca Lowry (Los Angeles); crystal am nelson (Los Angeles); Anja Ulfeldt (Oakland); Meeson Pae Yang (Torrance) and Michiko Yao (Los Angeles). The nine artists in Kala Gallery's exhibition address a broad range of issues including gender and cultural identity; the built environm
ent and mediated nature; and the physical experience of sound and light in sculpture, video, painting, drawing and installation.

Artists presented at 18th Street Art Center in Santa Monica are Ala Ebtekar (Stanford); Joanne Hashitani (Oakland); Prajakti Jayavant (San Francisco); Bessma Khalaf (Oakland); Matthew Mullins (Santa Fe, NM); John Ruszel (Benicia); Ethan Turpin (Santa Barbara); Suné Woods (Los Angeles) and Andre Woodward (Los Angeles).

This two-venue exhibition series marks the conclusion of Visions from the New California awards program. The exhibitions were co-curated by Mark Greenfield, an independent curator and educator based in Los Angeles and Lauren Davies, Kala’s Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs.

Contact: Lauren Davies, Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs, Lauren@kala.org, (510) 841-7000
www.kala.org
www.18thstreet.org