Film & Video (Film & Video)

This work was filmed on the shores of Jelly Bowl beach in Carpinteria, California, after Jennifer West was taken by the sight of a coastal family home owned by surfer Andy Perry. After conversing with Perry, spending time in the site, and engaging with several other locals, West wanted to produce a film that documented this idyllic Californian lifestyle and that embodied the sense of joy, warmth and nostalgia that multiple generations of surfers and their families had shared in this site. In the footage we see a couple of silhouettes wrapped up in blankets as they watch their beloved ones surfing at dawn—including surfers Andy Perry, and siblings Makela, Alana and Zach Moore.

Photography (Photography)

Blind Spencer is part of the series “Blind Stars” including hundreds of works in which the artist cut out the eyes of Hollywood stars, in a symbolically violent manner. An emptiness (some are burned letting appear a white or mirror background or a mirror) replaces the eyes, giving the impression of a blind eye deprived of all expression. Paradoxically, the work looks at us all the more intensely.

Painting (Painting)

The triptych Black Star Press is part of the series ‘The Black Star Press project’ initiated in 2004 by the American artist Kelley Walker. The images in this series are taken from a photo essay on the struggle for civil rights in Alabama, directed by Charles Moore in 1962 (and published by the magazine ‘Life’) which showed the repression of the black population and persistent inequalities in the southern United States. The title “Black Star Press” is taken from the name of the news agency where Charles Moore worked, and it refers to the young black man shot fighting for the rights of his community.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Yu Honglei’s video and mixed media works riff on familiar motifs from the Western art historical canon and reimagine them through a playful but subversive culture jamming of their original meaning. Life (2013), for example, depicts a tiled backdrop of various images and stills associated with the work of American Pop artist Andy Warhol. Digital reproductions of his silkscreens featuring public figures like Elizabeth Taylor, Chairman Mao, and Debbie Harry form an amalgamation of modern art iconography, while repeated images of Warhol himself serve as a constant reminder that even after his death, the artist is still decidedly present in our art historical consciousness.