Artist Panel Moderated by Sam Vernon
Sunday, August 18, 2019 | 2 to 3:30 PM
On the occasion of our current exhibition Natani Notah / Mitzi Pederson / Lisa Williamson / Brenna Youngblood, / is pleased to host an artist panel with the exhibiting artists, moderated by San Francisco-based artist and professor Sam Vernon.
Experience is the guiding spirit of sculpture in the sense that the physical movement of the viewer is essential to its understanding. This necessity differentiates sculpture from all other forms of art-making and centers it formally within a phenomenological framework. As such, the social function of sculpture – real objects in real space – allows it to evade the culture of the image and situate itself as the strongest argument for a collective spirit; a communal understanding founded in the language of space between bodies.
But is this language neutral, concrete? Or is it inflected by translation, history, personality, and identity? How might a communal spirit of difference situate itself when everyone is fighting to win? Might the language of occupied space lend itself to an ontology of objects that finds room for the harmonic motion of bodies and the minds that ghost those shells?
Sam Vernon earned her MFA in Painting/Printmaking from Yale University in 2015 and her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2009. Her installations combine xeroxed drawings, photographs, paintings and sculptural components in an exploration of personal narrative and identity. She uses installation and performance to honor the past while revising historical memory. Vernon has most recently exhibited with Ashara Ekundayo Gallery, We Buy Gold, Interstitial Gallery, Coney Art Walls curated by Jeffrey Deitch, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Fowler Museum at UCLA and Seattle Art Museum. Sam lives in Oakland, CA and teaches printmaking as an Assistant Professor at California College of the Arts.
Natani Notah was born in San Bernardino, California and currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has been exhibited at galleries and institutions including The Holland Project, Reno, Edwin Zoller Gallery, Penn State University, Mana Contemporary, Chicago, Stanford University Art Gallery, and Root Division, San Francisco. She has been published in As/Us: A Space for Women of the World, Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought, Sculpture Magazine, and is forthcoming in the second edition of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism. She is the recipient of the 2018-2019 Headlands Center for the Arts Graduate Fellowship and is a 2019-2020 Headlands Center for the Arts Affiliate Artist.
Mitzi Pederson was born in Stuart, Florida, and currently lives and works in San Francisco. Her work has been exhibited at galleries and institutions including Ratio 3, San Francisco, Nicole Klagsbrun, New York, White Columns, New York, World Class Boxing, Miami, The Approach, London, Fused Space, San Francisco, White Flag Projects, St. Louis, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, New Langton Arts, San Francisco, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Oakland Museum of California, The Aspen Art Museum, The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, The University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and The MCA, Chicago. Her work was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial.
Lisa Williamson was born in Chicago, Illinois, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She has exhibited at galleries and institutions including LAXART, West Hollywood, Tif Sigfrids, Los Angeles, The Finley, Los Angeles, The Box, Los Angeles, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and CCA Andratx Kunsthalle, Mallorca. Her work was included in the 2010 California Biennial at The Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach and in the 2012 edition of Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
Brenna Youngblood was born in Riverside, California and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She has exhibited at galleries and institutions including Honor Fraser, Los Angeles, The Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, The Wignall Museum, Rancho Cucamonga, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, The California African American Museum, Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale. Her work was included in the 2008 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach and in the 2012 edition of Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.