an invite to my groupies and stalkers

I’m one of sev­eral artists in town who’ve been nom­i­nated for the San Diego Art Prize, an annual oppor­tu­nity for long-established local artists to part­ner with newer emerg­ing tal­ent and hold a joint exhi­bi­tion that will rocket every­one to fame and fortune–or at least that’s the idea behind it.

Even though I’ve been around town for a few years, I’ll be show­ing as “emerg­ing tal­ent” along with a dozen oth­ers who’ve been nom­i­nated by var­i­ous artists and art pro­fes­sion­als around town. The show is the speed dat­ing exhi­bi­tion, where the estab­lished artist can get to know the nom­i­nated artists and select their choice of the per­son they’d like to exhibit with. It’s also a chance for folks in town to take a look at our work.

I’ll be show­ing part of a photography-based instal­la­tion that looks at the names peo­ple have given to fea­tures in the land­scape, par­tic­u­larly to fea­tures that bear a resem­blance to humans. Some of the names are fan­ci­ful and fun, oth­ers march pretty quickly into ter­ri­tory that’s pretty rude or offen­sive. Land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy that takes on issues of racism? Well, why not? (My recent blog post on cul­tur­ally offen­sive plant names comes from the same place in my brain and deals with some of the same issues.)

James SOE NYUN. CADP1001: The Face in the Rock, Dana Point, Cal­i­for­nia. Pig­ment print on board, 10 x 12 1/2 inches.

Here’s a recent image that’ll be in the show, one of the more fun ones, a for­ma­tion up the coast at Dana Point.

James SOE NYUN. AZCNM0802: China Boy, Chir­ic­ahua National Mon­u­ment, Ari­zona. Pig­ment print on board, 12 1/2 x 10 inches.

And then there’s this one from Arizona’s Chir­ic­ahua Moun­tains, one of the poten­tially more offen­sive ones. Although the name prob­a­bly dates from the 1930s, when peo­ple thought a name like this was okay to use, the name still appears on sig­nage to this day.

I did a post on this body of work a cou­ple year ago [ here ] but this is the first time it will be exhibited.

The scoop:

New Con­tem­po­raries III runs Sat., April 24 – Sat., May 22, 2010
at Project X: Art, 320 S. Cedros Ave. Ste. 500 , Solana Beach, 92075
Exhi­bi­tion hours: Tue — Fri­day 10 — 5, Sat­ur­day 11 – 4 pm
Open­ing Recep­tion: Sat. April 24, 6 – 10 pm
Panel Dis­cus­sion: Sat­ur­day, May 15 at 6 to 8 pm

Drop on by to the open­ing and intro­duce your­self if an Ice­landic vol­cano isn’t get­ting in the way of your air travel!

April 18 2010 | Categories: art • photography | Tags: | 7 Comments »