Food - Water - Life / Lucy + Jorge Orta Open this Saturday, August 16, at the Ben Maltz Gallery! The exhibition runs August 16 - December 6, 2014. Please note there will be no opening reception on August 16, but a Conversation and Reception with the artists and curators on October 25, 3-6pm. Visit our website for more information, otis.edu/ben-maltz-gallery. The sculptures, drawings, installations and video that make up Food - Water - Life by Paris-based wife and husband duo Lucy + Jorge Orta collectively explore major concerns that define the 21st century: biodiversity, environmental conditions, climate change and exchange among cultures. As heirs to the practice of social sculpture, formulated by Joseph Beuys in the 1960s, the Ortas works are relics of their own function-beguiling assemblages that are the platform for the preparation of food, mechanisms that actually purify water, and elements created for a 2007 expedition to Antarctica that are part of an effort to amend the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The works in this exhibition are metaphors-in-action, constructions that perform the tasks of which they are emblematic. Working in partnership since 2005, Lucy + Jorge Orta create, produce, and assemble their artworks and large installations together with a team of artists, designers, architects, and craftspeople. They stage on-location workshops, ephemeral interventions, residencies, and master classes, which explore the crucial themes of the contemporary world: the community, autonomy, dwelling, migration, sustainable development, and recycling. Organized by the Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, MA; curated by Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox (c2 | curator squared), this traveling exhibition is the US premiere of the Ortas work, and Ben Maltz Gallery is the only West Coast venue.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 18:44:48 +0000