SCoMA: Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art Phoenix Arizona
I’M SORRY BUT IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE / to Sept 10 2017: “This is only a test. Inspired by the spirit of the Fluxus movement, this exhibition experiments with shaping new experiences by provoking unexpected connections between artworks and embracing vulnerability through chance. The juxtaposition of works from the SMoCA collection with one of Nam June Paik’s iconic TV sculptures provides new contexts for interaction and conversation.”
(Art Note: Fluxus was a loosely organized group of artists that spanned the globe, but had an especially strong presence in New York City. George Maciunas is historically considered the primary founder and organizer of the movement, who described Fluxus as, “a fusion of Spike Jones, gags, games, Vaudeville, Cage and Duchamp.” Like the Futurists and Dadaists before them, Fluxus artists did not agree with the authority of museums to determine the value of art, nor did they believe that one must be educated to view and understand a piece of art. Fluxus not only wanted art to be available to the masses, they also wanted everyone to produce art all the time…The persistent goal of most Fluxus artists was to destroy any boundary between art and life. George Maciunas especially wanted to, “purge the world of bourgeoisie sickness….” He stated that Fluxus was “anti-art,” in order to underscore the revolutionary mode of thinking about the practice and process of art.)
OCEAN OF LIGHT: Submergence – A Squidsoup Project / to 24 Sept 2017: “Immerse yourself in an ocean of light. Squidsoup’s installation uses light-based data visualization to create an augmented reality environment that challenges the spatial and the sculptural and provides a context for understanding just how immense data can be. Squidsoup is a U.K.-based collective consisting of Anthony Rowe, Gaz Bushell, Liam Birtles, Chris Bennewith and Oliver Bown.”
RADIATE James Marshall (a.k.a. Dalek) USA born 1968 Latex paint on wall – ongoing: “Working with restricted formal elements—a limited palette of yellows, oranges, fuchsias and deep purple as well as a composition of calculated, repeating forms—artist James Marshall generates a visual pulse in SMoCA Lounge. His energetic painting takes its chromatic cue from the intense heat and light of Arizona and the sharp geometric radiation of that light through the rectangular clerestory window in the northeast corner of the Lounge.”
REPOSITIONING PAOLO SOLERI: The City Is Nature (Oct 14 – Jan 28 2018): “In October 2017, SMoCA will unveil an unprecedented retrospective of seminal American artist and architect Paolo Soleri (1919 – 2013). Over his sixty-year career, Soleri explored thousands of possibilities for the urban built environment in drawings, architectural models, sketchbooks, sculptures, prints and photographs. His pioneering idea “arcology,” or the fusion of architecture and ecology, proved prescient in its ties to current issues about sustainable cities, suburban sprawl, climate change, renewable energy and water shortages… This ground-breaking exhibition represents the largest collection of original works by Soleri presented in North America since 1971. Large scroll drawings—some over 30 feet long—will be presented for the first time since their conservation in 2005… The exhibition also investigates Soleri’s personal engagement with the art and architecture of his time; the widespread recognition of his work by museums, scholars and curators; his relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright; and his influence on the American counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. It will also be the first to contextualize the artisan craft program that continues to underwrite the expenses of maintaining Cosanti and Arcosanti—two experimental communities Soleri built in the Arizona desert.”
https://smoca.org/exhibitions/
