CCC Day Trip to Pomona and Claremont

In earlier April of this year, the Contemporary Collectors Council took a day trip to Pomona to visit the Andi Campognone Projects exhibition, Curiosities of the Curio, along with his and Alex Couwenberg's private collection of works, and also a visit to the Pomona College Museum of Art and the studio of Karl Benjamin.

Contemporary Collectors Council listen in on a lecture

The group started the day by exploring the Curiosities of the Curio, which celebrates the collecting of ktischy objects we hold with sentimental value. The small works that resemble curio, the bizarre objects, are inspired by personal momentos ranging from family heirlooms to random objects one finds at a thrift store. Throughout the exhibition, the works continuously provoked a sense of curiousity among the group as they encountered pieces such as Laurie Hogin's peculiar portraits of odd spotted bunnies and pink and green monkey-people banging on drums that resembled human skulls. Moira Hahn's Japanese prints portraying parrot-headed geishas as opposed to beautiful women emphasized the strangeness of these curios.

Next up, the group visited the private collection of Andi Campognone. This private rendevous for the CCC not only included works of Campognone, but also incorporated the paintings of Alex Couwenberg, which are similar to the works of Karl Benjamin.

After Lunch, they visited the Pomona College Museum of Art which held three different exhibitions. The first exhibition was Helen Pashgian's Working in Light. As a pioneer light and space artist, her use of industrial materials offer a various range of optical and color possibilites. In these works Pashgian brings together small scultpures from the past and current larger-sized light columns as she continues her work to portray the spatial qualities of color in light.

The Project Series 40: Amanda Ross-Ho exhibition was next the list. Ross-Ho's site specific installation concentrated on the mutability and materiality of context. She incorporates paintings, sculpture and installation pieces that observe the boundaries of exhibition space, the direct and indirect products of creative expression, and the connectivity of the visual world.

Finally, the group visited Famous for 15: From Andy Warhol to your Camera-Phone. As Warhol stated "In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes," this exhibition circles around the idea of that statement. The exhibition observes the curiosities of instantaneous fame based on the modernization of technology, primarily photography, and the connection of that fame to camera-phones photos.

In addition to the exhibitions, the group also visted two mural sites: Rico Lebrun's Genisis and Jose Clemente Orozco's Prometheus. LeBrun's mural serves to portray a visual and symbolic center through the display of Noah sheltering a child. Surrounding Noah are also represenations of other significant places and people of the Bible; the Deluge, Job, Sodom and Gomorrah, Cain and Abel, and Adam and Eve. Orozco, who is also known as one of "los tres grandes," the three great Mexican muralists, painted Prometheus as his first work in America and also the first Mexican mural in North America, and thus began the Mexican Mural Movement.

The shallow pool from Dividing the Light

James Turrell's metal canopy shading the seating area

The group made one last stop at Pomona College at James Turrell's Skyspace: Dividing the Light. In a piece that incoporates the use of lighting elements, a floating metal canopy, and a transparent courtyard, Turrell's installation helps to heightens the audience's awareness of light, sky and space.

Karl Benjamin showing pieces of his work

Finally, at the end of the day, the Contemporary Collectors Council visited the studio of Karl Benjamin. The group was given the opportunity to talk to the artist about how he created the genesis of geometric abstraction. As a self taught artist, he started his career as a grade school teacher. His intesity in art evolved and eventually he became a member of the "Four Abstract Classicists," which started with an exhibition in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. As a leading member of the "Hard Edge" movement, Benjamin focused on saturated and sunny colors that resonates with one another in the environment of his geometric designs and gave way to an assortment of shapes and patterns.