Sponsored by the Department of Art and the College of Creative
Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The Art Symposium
Lectures will be held in the Isla Vista Theatre, Wednesdays at 5pm.

04.07.04
Dinh Q Lê
Since he was an art student at UCSB over fifteen years ago, Dinh Q. Lê has
been producing hand-woven photographic works using a technique he learned
while weaving grass mats with his aunt in Vietnam. Lê?s works blend
photographs shot by the artist with images found in old master paintings,
thrift store portraits, mug shots, and Hollywood films. These unique
montages address issues of identity, history, war, conflict, and mythology
drawn from the complex interactions of his two homelands?Vietnam and the
United States. Lê is creating a new work entitled "Homecoming" that focuses
on the journey driven by economic necessity and Buddhist spirituality that
has guided Vietnam away from the painful past of the Vietnam War. The title
of the exhibition is also a reference to Lê?s homecoming to UCSB. For more
information see:
http://www.shoshanawayne.com

04.14.04
La Reina de la Noche / Queen of the Night by Arturo Ripstein
Co-sposored by the Latino CineMedia Festival ,Center for Film, Television
and New Media, Latin American and Iberin Studies Program, Center for
Chicano Studies, Spanish and Portuguese Department
Of the filmmakers currently working in Mexico, Arturo Ripstein is among the
very few whose works have international impact. In more than 30 years of
filmmaking, he has created as consistently satisfying a body of work as can
be found in the Spanish language. He will be presenting his film, LA REINA
DE LA NOCHE (Queen of the Night), based on the tortured life of cabaret
singer Lucha Reyes. The ascent, stasis and downfall of the her musical
career is seen in the film through a series of real and fictional people
and situations that make up an imagined biography of the famed singer's
life. The 35mm film is in Spanish with English Subtitles. Approx. 117 min.
For more information see:
http://www.arturoripstein.com

04.21.04
Dana Sperry
Sperry is the Associate Curator at the School of Fine Arts Gallery at
Indiana University. Recently, he curated a show that was reviewed in
Dialogue magazine. He is also an artist who has shown in Chicago, Kansas
City, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Buffalo, and Indianapolis. Sperry has a
collaborative piece in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art
in NY and also the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

04.28.04
Charles Gaines
Charles Gaines is a Los Angeles-based conceptual artist whose works
provocatively navigate the relationship between systems and nature. Also an
accomplished instructor and writer, Gaines is described by writer Franklin
Sirmans as ?? a part of the 1970s generation of artists for whom the
crossover between studio and the seminar is a crucial facet of their work,
one that can be slowly gleaned and understood through the philosophical
nature of his art, which always prompts more questions than answers. Like
(Robert) Smithson, Gaines is interested in a kaleidoscopic between-ness
with enough room for cosmic perspectives and the sublimities of doubt
delivered ironically and with uncanny clarity... However, unlike many of
the solipsistic artists associated with 1970s Conceptualism, who expounded
on discourse with further discourse, sans objet, Gaines? work always
evinces a penchant for visualizing ideas with actual objects. Not only does
this set him apart from earlier conceptualists?but his work defies
categorization by its insistent provocation of questions of beauty and
universals as aesthetic ideals over an easily digestible form of political
social critique.?
Recently his work has been seen in yearlong exhibition "Fade (1990-2003),"
which takes a unique historical view of work by African American Los
Angeles artists from the 1990s to the present.

05.05.04
TBA

05.12.04
John Nava
Figurative painter John Nava was selected to create the tapestries for The
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. This demanding, intense, and
reverential assignment took two years of his life to complete. The site
specific project reflects Nava's drawing and painting skills combined with
the latest advanced technology. With the help of Don Farnsworth
(artist/printmaker/computer expert), Nava created a digital software
program that took his paintings, fed their images into complex weaving
machines, and transformed them into tapestries. Beginning with his
conceptual drawings, then moving through phases that include liturgical
research, oil studies, digital images, and weaving tests. John Nava writes
that he made a special effort to depict his figures realistically and
"completely without irony." Stating that the best figurative painters of
the 20th-century presented a "self-destructive, diseased and decadent" view
of the world, he wanted his imagery to convey the opposite, "to be a
message of hope, redemption and meaning."

05.19.04
Michael O'Malley
Michael O'Malley has been drawn to the constructed environment because it
literally and metaphorically manifests the aesthetic, social and political
values of labor. For the past ten years, he has investigated the various
underpinnings of architecture and its relation to everyday objects.
Ordinary features of architecture (such as walls and floors) and familiar
pieces of furniture (chairs, bookshelves, etc.) are reinterpreted as
objectified, sculptural sites. Michael O'Malley is currently teaching
sculpture and installation at Pomona College. For more information see:
http://www.cherrydelosreyes.com
http://www.pomona.edu

05.26.04
Chris Miles
An artist and writer based in Los Angeles, Christopher Miles teaches at
California State University, Long Beach. A contributor to Artforum, Artext,
and Flaunt, he is currently at work on a book of essays and art criticism.

06.02.04
No Symposium