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Works by Mitchell Syrop Daily: Monday 04/09/2012 - Wednesday 04/25/2012; 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM 3001 Gallery Graduate Fine Arts Building (IFT) 3001 S. Flower St. Los Angeles CA 90007 Reception: Friday, April 20, 2012, 7:00-9:00 PM 3001 Gallery at USC Roski School of Fine Arts is proud to present an exhibition of works by Mitchell Syrop, from April 9th through 25th, 2012 The ambiguities of language and the visual properties of its presentation have long been central concerns for Mitchell Syrop. This presentation will feature works from the “In the Can” series (1986-90) that have been exhibited at the University Art Museum, Berkeley, the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, and the Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles. Syrop pairs photographs of microscopic organic structures with familiar slogans drawn from the culture at large. Conditioned to the notion that a caption sheds light on the accompanying image, one tries at first to attach meaning. Both the imagery and text in these works remain ambiguous and seemingly interchangeable. The connections expose the many shifting meanings that language and imagery can carry. While apparently confrontational, the works also provoke introspection. Syrop is represented by Thomas Solomon Gallery in Los Angeles. Syrop's work has been widely exhibited in America and throughout Europe, Asia, and Australia. The artist has participated in a number of significant group exhibitions including Forest of Signs, MOCA, Los Angeles (1989). His work is represented in prominent collections, including MOCA, Los Angeles, LACMA, ICP NYC, San Diego Museum of Art, and the Orange County Museum of Art. These Things: An Exhibition by Brandon Wesley Daily: Monday 04/09/2012 - Friday 04/27/2012; 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM STATION Gallery Graduate Fine Arts Building (IFT) 3001 S. Flower Street Los Angeles CA 90007 Reception: Friday, April 20th, 7–9 pm A Statement By Brandon Jardine What these things have in common is that they have all passed through me. I hold no stake in claims of having created anything new. These representations exist apart from me, all made from things that already were. Borrowing heavily from the objects and spaces around me, they are documents of a chance encounter between my subjectivity and the reality of the world in which it exists. “Who is Brandon Wesley?”—a question I inescapably find myself returning to time and time again ever since the day I made him up. Time and time again I think I’ve got it all figured out, but then some time has passed and what I thought I knew proves no longer relevant. I am Brandon Wesley, among so many other things. If asked to answer conclusively, I’d probably say “He’s the gay one,” but these things together form a document which when read bears answer as good as any. Just beneath their material surface lie insights to who he is, or once was, or maybe, rather, who he wants to be. On "These Things" By Santi Vernetti The discursive space These Things creates demands that we abandon our preconceived notions of what constitutes a photographic exhibition. Gestures investigative of duration and light, the very keystone elements of the medium, have produced these things which simultaneously function to occupy the physical space of exhibition but also to intimate a much larger portrait. These things focus our attention to a multiplicity of perceptual and physical points of entry and sites of reception, commanding participation to the very spot from which one chooses to view the work while still allowing the viewer an appropriate freedom with which to explore the material diversity of the exhibition’s components and their respective physical properties. The penetrability of the exhibition’s many works (with regards to light) run the physical gamut—transparent glass, translucent transparencies, opaque items of a seemingly personal nature, digital projections of light itself. Radio Break Daily: Saturday 04/14/2012 - Friday 04/27/2012; All day Off Campus... Union Station, La Serenata Restaurant, MacArthur Park, El Pueblo LACE, 6020 Wilshire Los Angeles CA Radio Break: Two Weekends of Artists’ Low-Power Radio Transmissions & Live Performances Presented by USC Roski School of Fine Art’s MA Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere Program, class of 2012 Radio Break is an exhibition on the air, presenting twelve artworks in locations throughout Los Angeles conveyed through low-power radio transmissions during two weeks and live events held on two consecutive weekends. Radio Break connects participants with the ambient sounds of the city, inviting them to tune in to its history, noise, narratives, and music. A way-finding map and interactive website accompany the exhibition and provide details about the projects and their locations. Listed below is the exhibition schedule; for more information see http://radio-break.com. SATURDAY, APRIL 14th 4–6pm Union Station, 800 N. Alameda Street Alyce Santoro’s Between Stations explores how cities are aurally experienced by turning New York City subway sounds into music that contrasts with the movements of Los Angeles’s transportation hub. 6–9pm OPENING EVENT AND RECEPTION La Serenata Restaurant, 1842 E. 1st Street Brandon LaBelle and collaborators recorded their own versions of conversations overheard on the streets of Santiago de Chile to create The Echo Project. Lincoln Tobier revisits The Orchestra Pit Theory by Roger Ailes, a theatrical work based on a single Fox News transcript exploring the genre of the news broadcast, affect, and subjectivity. Coinciding with the transmissions will be a reception with light refreshments. --- SUNDAY, APRIL 15th 10am–2pm MacArthur Park, Wilshire Boulevard and S. Park View Street Brendan Threadgill reconfigures the Los Angeles Times “Crime Map” with Incident Reports 2007–2011 (MacArthur Park Homicides), using sound to mark the sites of lives lost throughout the city. Arnoldo Vargas’s Triggernometry and the Cartography of Sound gives voice to Wilmington residents by broadcasting their distant concerns to Angelenos and the city at a remove. This is a preview of weeks’ worth of recording to be presented in full at a listening event on Saturday, April 21st at Slanguage Studio in Wilmington. 10am–2pm El Pueblo, 125 Paseo De La Plaza Pedro Reyes sources digital voice messages from Angelenos, making public the private lives of anonymous city residents with the work VMR: Voice Mail Radio. --- SATURDAY, APRIL 21st All events at LACE, 6522 Hollywood Boulevard 1–4pm Lucy Raven presents the audio play Con Air 2, a record of actual events—the artists’ friends at play, communicating via walkie-talkie—exhibited within a fictionalized setting. 1–5pm LIVE PERFORMANCE Vanessa Place reads Full Audio Transcripts, a selection from the logs of the Federal Aviation Administration, North American Aerospace Defense Command, and American Airlines on September 11, 2001, a narrative of the tragedy before comprehension or memorialization. 5 –6pm LIVE PERFORMANCE 2 Headed Dog (Jim Turner, Mark Fite, and Dave "Gruber" Allen) presents Clowntown City Limits, a radio play telling the desperate tale of out-of-work hobo clowns. Viewers can listen to the broadcast and interact with two of the characters. --- SUNDAY, APRIL 22nd *All events at 6020 WILSHIRE* (The new ForYourArt space), 6020 Wilshire Boulevard** 2–6pm Richard T. Walker intervenes into Los Angeles's visual and radiophonic space, telling the absurdist tale of one man’s quest to find the words to speak when language no longer suffices in between distance and a mountain. 3–5 pm Elana Mann asks us to tune into the concerns of Angelenos affected by the financial crisis by listening to the carols of the People’s Microphony Camerata. 6–9pm LIVE PERFORMANCE and RECEPTION David Schafer's Cage Mix: Static Age reconceives a selection of John Cage’s compositions through live electronic and processed improvisation performed alongside an accompanying installation. A reception will follow Schafer's performance. A listening station with all projects will be at 6020 Wilshire through April 27th. Senior Seminar Exhibition: Playhouse Monsoon Daily: Monday 04/16/2012 - Monday 04/30/2012; 8:30 AM - 7:00 PM University Park Campus Helen Lindhurst Fine Arts Gallery Watt Hall, Ground Floor Kara-Leigh Huse, Branden Marcus, Nihura Montiel, Beatrice Poon, Junxian Poon, Edwin Rodriguez, Mariel Williams, Rita Yeung, Hye You Reception: Thursday, April 19th, 5–7 pm SUPERHIGHWAY: Rachelle Bautista-Meeks and Biz Wallace Daily: Monday 04/16/2012 - Monday 04/30/2012; 10:00 AM - 8:00 PM Superhighway 3335 S. Figueroa Street Los Angeles CA 90007 On view in Superhighway from April 16–30 is a loop of student work. Rachelle Bautista-Meeks, Ritual with Hands, 2011 Biz Wallace, Coven, 2011 Superhighway is located just inside the main entrance of the recently completed University Gateway apartment building, at Figueroa and Jefferson. The space is open from 10 am to 8 pm every day. Image: Rachelle Bautista-Meeks, still from Ritual with Hands, 2011