SECOND WAVE: Aesthetics of the 80s in Today’s Contemporary Art
Sweeney Art Gallery, UCR ARTS, November 14, 2015 – March 19, 2016
Curated by Jennifer Frias with curatorial assistance by Russel Altamirano and Joseph Daniel Valencia
SECOND WAVE: Aesthetics of the 80s in Today’s Contemporary Art explores the influences of the artistic styles and subject matter from the artists in the 1980s on a new generation of artists, who were born or raised in the 80s, and have expressed the importance of this decade from nearly thirty years ago on their own work.
The art world of the 1980s was a decade that saw the resurgence of painting, exploration of authenticity, the employment of appropriation, an embrace and critique of consumerism, along with the rise of graffiti art, gay activism, and multiculturalism. While not an exhaustive list, some of the more familiar artists associated with this time include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ross Bleckner, Eric Fischl, Jack Goldstein, Gran Fury, Guerilla Girls, Peter Halley, Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, David Salle, Julian Schnabel, Cindy Sherman, and Mark Tansey.
From a grand narrative perspective, much of the spirit behind their work could be viewed as a reaction to the prior decade of the 1970s that saw a rise of “anti-aesthetic” work with conceptual art, process art, earth art, and performance. The rising profile of the artist’s voice that occurred in the 1980s might be best symbolized by the “culture wars” that happened at the end of the decade when senator Jesse Helms attacked the National Endowment for the Arts for supporting work that made visible what had been repressed socially: sexuality, desire, power, and more. In other words, the artist’s voice was having such an impact that it attracted the attention of a senator, although negatively, and was underscored by the political atmosphere emboldened by Reaganomic deregulation.
While the exhibition will not include works by the artists from the 1980s, it will feature works by contemporary artists who have expressed how the 1980s has impacted their own work. The exhibition is organized loosely around aesthetic trajectories that are identified with the 1980s, such as Appropriation, Feminism, Graffiti Art, Neo-Expressionism, Neo-Geo, Mass Media, and Multiculturalism.
Artists in the exhibition include: Mark Batongmalaque, Brian Bress, Jordan Christian, Gregory Eberhardt, Chet Glaze, Valerie Green, D Hill, Pearl C. Hsiung, Lisa Lapinski, Ryan Perez, Conrad Ruiz, Shizu Saldamando, Emilio Santoyo, Kristofferson San Pablo, and Devon Tsuno.
