Rough Play

Rough Play curatorial group was born out of a dialogue that began with a debate on the increasing demand in contemporary art for the artist to combine artistic practice with academic research. Kathrin Busch stated, “Art and theory, in effect, are nothing more than two different forms of practice interrelated through a system of interaction and transferences.” Challenging the artist to function in this reciprocal practice enables a constant examination of one’s own work and the need for an exchange of ideas, perceptions, and results. Inevitably, this process lends itself to collaborative exploration. We began with the understanding that for us to have viable opportunities in today’s art world we needed to create a new path, one that leads us to pursue options outside of the traditional exhibition venue. In order to be effective in our pursuit we found ourselves embracing the role of curator, which in theory perhaps contained an inherent conflict with our artistic practice. This conversation led us to examine traditional curatorial practices. By removing ourselves as participating artists and functioning solely as curators we delve into a unique opportunity for creating new models and transformative exhibitions. Rough Play is made up of three women artists working in Los Angeles. Collectively, the members of this group – Ashley Hagen, Emily Sudd, and Elizabeth Tinglof—have been involved in a multitude of exhibitions in curatorial, administrative, and academic capacities, as well as participating as exhibiting artists. Previous curatorial projects include Without Design or Sketch: The Story of The Room, an exhibition at LAUNCH L.A. in September, 2016, that approached the context of the Peacock Room as a platform from which to address a series of issues related to contemporary art practices such as the boundary between art space and living space, the perceptions of decorative and fine art, the value of art and patronage, and art’s engagement with social and moral issues versus its purely visual components; Go Big or Go Home, an exhibition organized for the Brand Library & Art Center in February, 2016, of artists that rise to the challenge by producing work through a physically demanding work process, extensive research, mastery of new disciplines, or by exposure to psychological or emotional vulnerability; Shelf Perception, an exhibition of work reconsidering the traditional art object by negotiating the spaces between painting, sculpture, photography, and domestic and architectural elements, organized by Elizabeth Tinglof for Santa Monica Cultural Affairs in 2014; and Triangulation, an exhibition curated by Elizabeth Tinglof for California State University, Northridge in 2011, featuring artists such as Michael C. McMillian, Jeffrey Vallance, and Lynn Aldrich.

Members: Ashley Hagen, Emily Sudd, Elizabeth Tinglof

Website: None

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FAR Bazaar Project

HOLD

Description: The word “vessel” connects to wide-ranging associations. From a hand-held object of daily use to a ship transferring cargo across an ocean, the vessel serves to hold something transitory so that it might be digested or preserved, grounding the ephemeral to an earthly collection point. The human body, as mere empty flesh, can be seen as a vessel for the immaterial elements of humanity—the “soul”, “spirit”, or “consciousness”. Organized by artist collective, Rough Play, to be on view in the old ceramics studio at Cerritos College on the occasion of the FAR Bazaar, the work in Hold engages with these ideas through contemporary notions of the literal versus the metaphorical, in some cases referencing the physical form of the vessel; and in others, through metaphorical associations with the location of the “soul”, “spirit”, or “consciousness”. Approaching the vessel as a concept, the art object is considered in its capacity to operate as a vessel for ideas, emotions, and memories.

Location: FA33/FA35

Participating Artists: Kim Abeles, Jonathan Apgar, Adam Berg, Patricia Burns, Ashley Hagen, Ben Jackel, Bessie Kunath, Erin Gerardo Monterrubio, Morrison, Thomas Muller, Thinh Nguyen, Emily Sudd, Elizabeth Tinglof, and Kim Truong

Kim Abeles' art cross disciplines and media to explore biography, geography and environment. Abeles received the 2013 Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and fellowships from J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, California Community Foundation, and Pollack-Krasner Foundation. She has created projects with California Science Center, air pollution control agencies, health and mental health departments, and natural history museums. In 1987, she innovated a method to create images from the polluted air, and Smog Collectors brought her work to international attention. She has exhibited in 22 countries, and Kim Abeles: Encyclopedia Persona A-Z toured the U.S., and South America sponsored by United States Information Agency. She received her MFA from the University of California Irvine. Her work is in public collections including MOCA, LACMA, Berkeley Art Museum, and National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Abeles’ journals and process documents are archived at the Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art.

Jonathan Apgar was born in San Diego, California in 1977 and currently lives in LosAngeles, California. He received an MFA in Painting and Drawing at the University ofCalifornia Los Angeles in 2013. He received a BFA from California State University Long Beach in 2009.His first solo show was at ACME in 2013. He has been included in numerous groupexhibitions in the Los Angeles area.

Adam Berg: Artist, Writer. Lives and works in Los Angeles. Teaches at Otis College of Art and Design and CalArts philosophy and critical theory. Represented by: Edward Cella Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, Pio Monti Arte Contemporanea, Rome, and Inga Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv. Adam Berg attended Accademia de Belle Arti, Rome, Italy; and studied architecture and philosophy at University of Toronto, Canada. His PhD in Philosophy is from University of Haifa, Israel. Berg has had solo exhibitions at Edward Cella Art + Architecture, Los Angeles, CA; Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA; Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence, Italy; Redcat, Los Angeles, CA; Barbur Gallery, Jerusalem, Israel; Inga Contemprary art,Tel Aviv; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Archipelago, Israel; Piomonti arte contemporanea, Rome, Italy; and Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel. Group exhibitions include Museo Revoltella, Trieste, Italy; Ludwig Museum Koblenz, Koblenz, Germany; Barnsdall Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Track 16 Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Whitechapel Gallery, London, England; and Art Museum of Athens, Athens, Greece.

Patricia Burns is a graduate from Claremont Graduate University with an MFA in Studio Art in 2013 and a BFA in Studio Art from Chapman University, with an emphasis in drawing and sculpture in 2009. Born in Orange County, CA she currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Burns has exhibited in Los Angeles, CA, Las Vegas, NV, and Sweden.

Ashley Hagen was born and raised in Ames, IA. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her MFA from California State University Northridge. Play is important in her process of uncovering metaphors of home and self, fantasy and reality. Her work delves into the underlying resonance of childhood: limitlessness, inventiveness, mystery, imagination, adventure and possibility. Her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe, including shows at Western Project, The University Art Museum in Long Beach, Andrew Shire Gallery, The Prospectus, Art Platform, Juried by Ali Subotnick of the Hammer Museum for Boom, The Irvine Fine Arts Center, Deborah Martin gallery, Galerie dei Barri, Cerritos College Art Gallery, Marks Art Center and Palais Ferstel in Vienna, Austria. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

Ben Jackel was born in Aurora, Colorado in 1977.  He received his BFA in 2000 from the University of Colorado, Boulder.  Jackel moved to Los Angeles to attend graduate school at The University of California, Los Angeles, receiving his MFA in 2005.  In 2007 he participated in the show “Rogue Wave 07”at the gallery LA Louver.  LA Louver formally represented the artist following this show.  His first solo show at LA Louver,“Compliance Solutions” in 2009, was followed up by “Zero Percent Contained”  in 2012” and “American Imperium” in 2015. These shows dealt with themes of war, disaster, death and hope. Jackel’s work has recently been shown at the Denver and Phoenix art museums as well as the Venice Biennale.  Jackel continues to live and work in Los Angeles, he teaches advanced ceramics at Cal State Long Beach and volunteers on the historic Battleship Iowa.

Bessie Kunath received her MFA from UC Santa Barbara in 2012. Previous solo exhibitions include "Safety Dance" at Eastside International and "Free Normcore" at Autonomie Projects. Recent group exhibitions include "The Garden" at TSA Los Angeles, "Lazy Susan" at Titanki gallerias in Finland and  “UFOLOGY” at Outpost Projects curated by Kio Griffith, “I know Everything” curated by Iris Hu at Dave Gallery, “From Dust Returns” at Ichibeicho Gallery in Tokyo, Japan, “Demolition Women” curated by Young Chung at Chapman University and “If Memory Serves”, curated by Allyson Unzicker. Kunath is also a member of an artist/ curatorial project called Manual History Machines.

Gerardo Monterrubio lives and works in Los Angeles, California. In 2009, he completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics from the California State University, Long Beach and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2013. Monterrubio has participated in artistic residencies in Guandong Province, China, and at the Long Beach Museum of Art. His work has been exhibited nationally and will be part of the 2017 Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA and the Korean Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale. He currently teaches ceramics at Long Beach City College.  

Erin Morrison received her MFA from University of California, Los Angeles in 2014. The paintings from her debut solo exhibition at Samuel Freeman gallery received much acclaim by David Pagel of the LA Times, stating her "contemplative totems... skip the bells and whistles to get to the good stuff: the intimate inquisitiveness of art-making as a process of open-ended discovery and the equally open-minded attentiveness curious visitors bring to art" Her relief paintings have been included in several recent group exhibitions including The Pit, Los Angeles, C.E.S, Los Angeles, UPFOR, Portland, and James Harris Gallery, Seattle.  Most recently, she has been interviewed in a tri-city survey of MFA graduates in FLAUNT Magazine. 

Thomas Müller is an artist living and working in Los Angeles, California. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa and spent his childhood growing up around the globe. Growing up in disparate locales and cultures has inevitably influenced his work, in particular as it relates to language, time, memory and space. He went on to receive his BFA from the University of Washington and did his graduate studies at the Cranbrook Academy of Art where he received his MFA. Since moving to Los Angeles he has maintained an active studio practice and showing record, showing locally, nationally and internationally, with recent solo shows in Los Angeles, Denver and Washington DC. He has lectured and been a visiting artist at Universities and Art Institutions around the country and is currently teaching at the UCLA and Loyola Marymount University.

Thinh Nguyen, a conceptual blending artist whose work questions the inequity of cultural values to unmask and dismantle its power structures. His work is known for indirectly involving people into his process materially, bodily, spatially, and personally. As a result, they are hybrids of mutabled and obscured individual identities transformed from personal and collective histories. Nguyen recieved his MFA from Claremont Graduate University. Nguyen exhibited and performed at such venues as The Hammer Museum, REDCAT, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibits, Marymount University Art Gallery,  California Lutheran University, Le Couac Contemporary, Themed UCLA Biennial, Whittier College, College Art Association Symposium. He presented interventions at Guggenheim Museum, The New Museum, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others. His work was written in the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, Hyperallergic, Artzealous, and in numerous online forums.

Emily Sudd is a multimedia artist working primarily in ceramic sculpture. Her work engages in conversation with still life, narrative, and abstract painting; postminimalist sculpture; hierarchies of materials and taste; and the role of the kitsch object. Sudd lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, and holds an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); an MA from California State University, Northridge (CSUN); and a BA in from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She has participated in several group exhibitions at notable venues including Roberts & Tilton, Angles Gallery, and Anat Ebgi in Los Angeles; Sargent’s Daughters Gallery in New York; James Harris Gallery in Seattle; and was featured in the "Ceramic Top 40” exhibition in Kansas City, MO, organized by Ferrin Contemporary. Sudd has had recent solo exhibitions at the Weingart Gallery at Occidental College and LAM Gallery in Los Angeles, and she is currently a part-time instructor of ceramics at Cerritos College.

Elizabeth Tinglof is a Los Angeles based artist interested in the exploration of everyday losses, noticed and unnoticed through the process of reconstruction. Tinglof experiments through an alchemist fusion of materials which she reconfigures, builds up, layers and strips away resulting in objects that function first as a deconstructive conversation and evolve to one of reconstruction and reinvention .She is the co-founder of Rough Play, an artist curatorial group based in Los Angeles with their recent exhibitions, Without Design or Sketch: The Story of the Room at the Launch LA Gallery and Go Big or Go Home at The Brand Library Gallery. Her work has been exhibited throughout Southern CA including the group exhibitions, Shelf Perfection for Santa Monica Cultural Affairs and Triangulation at California State University, Northridge as well as solo exhibitions at the Robert Berman Gallery and Berman/Turner Projects, Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, CA and California State University, Northridge Gallery. Tinglof received her BFA from Otis College of Art and Design and her MFA from California State University Northridge.

Kim Truong often explores relationships between aesthetics, content, and language through studies of accumulation of fragmented elements. Her work is characterized by repetition and serialization of ceramic objects. She received her MFA from the UCLA in 2015. She also studied ceramics at CSULB and design at CSULA. Kim Truong currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.