Lifelines: A Retrospective Exhibition
of Performance, Installation, Sculpture, Painting and Drawing by John M. White
March 27 – June 5, 2011
Betty Ann Brown, Curator
John M. White has made a significant contribution to California art for more than four decades. An innovative and highly respected performance artist, inspirational teacher, and accomplished painter/sculptor/installation artist, White has exhibited consistently to overwhelmingly positive reviews. In spite of his remarkable accomplishments, White’s groundbreaking oeuvre is not as well known as that of many of his contemporaries. This retrospective exhibition seeks to situate White’s work in the place of prominence it deserves. Throughout his career, White has transformed his lived experience into compelling aesthetic forms that are always profoundly intellectual and often engagingly humorous. White mines his personal environment—his first performance literally involved mining—then merges the treasure and dross of existence into intriguing visuals that hint at but never fully resolve into contained narratives. He alludes to the birth of his daughter (Rachel in the Vault) but does not deliver a medical timeline; he references the game of golf (Sand Traps) then springs to philosophical considerations.
At the Armory, Caldwell Gallery

City Site: Street Photography and Southern California Neo Urbanism 1945 – 1980
June 26 - September 4, 2011
Tim Wride, Curator
City Site will explore the post World War II period shift in Southern California-based photography from imagery that was picturesque, image-oriented, and existential in nature, to a more conceptually motivated style of representation that was decisively suburban, process-oriented, and experiential. Additionally, the exhibition will look at how the city-based, neo-urban photography of the time on the West Coast differed from concurrent activity on the East Coast. Artists include John Baldessari, Lewis Baltz, Lori Brown, Jerry Burchfield, Jack Butler, Darryl Curran, Joe Deal, John Divola, Robert Fichter, Judy Fiskin, Robbert Flick, Tony Friedkin, Harry Gamboa, Robert Heinecken, Tony Hernandez, Dennis Hopper, Graham Howe, Barbara Kasten, Joe Lewis, Gary Leonard, Grant Mudford, Virgil Murano, Arthur Olman, Ed Ruscha, and Hank Wessel.
At the Armory, Caldwell Gallery

Speaking in Tongues: The Art of Wallace Berman and Robert Heinecken
September 25 – December 31, 2011
Sam Mellon and Claudia Bohn-Spector, Curators
Speaking in Tongues brings, for the first time, two seminal yet under-studied Los Angeles artists into close conversation. The exhibition examines how Berman and Heinecken bridged modernist and emerging post-modernist trends by ushering in the use of photography as a key element of contemporary avant-garde art. Their works are explored within the unique cultural context of 1960s and 1970s Southern California, as it fueled and amplified their highly original creative approaches.
At the Armory, Caldwell Gallery