LAND Launches A Series Of Temporary Public Projects Around LA

Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), announces its first endeavor, Via, a series of temporary public projects in and around Los Angeles. LAND is a non-profit public art organization committed to commissioning site- and situation-specific projects with national and International Artists. For this exhibition, LAND Director Shamim M. Momin is selecting and commissioning new work by several acclaimed Mexican artists. Reflective of the artists' cutting-edge projects in Mexico and Europe, each commission will have a unique and distinct relationship to both the artist's individual practice and the dynamic site of the Los Angeles location - historically, culturally, functionally, or otherwise.

The first four of these projects will debut in January 2010, concurrent with Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC) and acting as anchor points to the fair's VIP programming. January is also the official Los Angeles Arts Month, which, along with other important citywide art and cultural programming, presents LAND as a highlight. These projects will be followed by the staggered launch of new commissions throughout the year, which, structurally, will further emphasize the conceptual basis of Via (as in 'by way of'), by spreading it not only across space, but time as well. Opening in concert with the civic and institutional programming already planned around the Mexican bicentennial, Via will serve LAND's mission to function as a contemporary, public constellation linking disparate spaces, activities and artists.

About Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND)
LAND supports dynamic and unconventional artist practices, and navigates the complex terrain and process of seeing a public project to fruition, while still remaining free from the constraints of any particular institutional infrastructure, architectural space or time frame. As its name implies, LAND's activities are built toward the notion of decentralization, its nomadic endeavors integrated into the city's eclectic cultural ecology as well as sites beyond Los Angeles. LAND was founded in 2009 by Shamim M. Momin, former contemporary curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and board member Christine Y. Kim, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art (LACMA).

Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) Launch Exhibitions Include the Following:

Tuesday, January 26th - March 9th, 2010
Via: Gonzalo Lebrija

Two Locations:
Sunset Videotron (2 Screens) Key Club Video Screen
8410 Sunset Boulevard 9039 Sunset Boulevard
West Hollywood, CA 90069 West Hollywood, CA 90069
sunsetvideotron.com keyclub.com

Guadalajara-based artist Gonzalo Lebrija will exhibit three recently realized black-and-white films on three Videotrons, high-resolutions LED monitors generally used for advertisement, on Sunset Boulevard. Collected under the title The Distance Between You and Me (2009), each film depicts the artist fleeing from the camera in one of three California locales: Joshua Tree, Death Valley, and Yosemite. The elegiac feel of Lebrija's films, in opposition to their visually saturated, kinetic context, speaks to notions of urban-induced psychosis - a plaintive, self-critical "advertisement" that encourages its viewer to seek escape by any means necessary.

Each film will play approximately every six-minutes throughout the exhibition.

SPECIAL PRESENTATION: Lebrija's films will be shown on the Videotrons for a full hour on January 27th from 7:00 - 8:00 PM.

This project made possible with the generous support of Catharine and Jeffrey Soros.
Special thanks to City of West Hollywood Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission.

Thursday, January 28th - 31st, 2010
Via: Artemio

Pacific Design Center
Green Building Lobby
8687 Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood, CA 90069
310 657 0800
pacificdesigncenter.com

Monday - Friday
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Mexico City-based artist Artemio, concurrent with a solo-show at LA><ART, will produce a site-specific installation at Art Los Angeles Contemporary: a "carpet" of custom ceramic tiles installed in the Green Building Lobby at the Pacific Design Center. Invoking familiar icons of urban violence, specifically the guns used in much of the drug related violence happening throughout Mexico and the United States, the tiles are employed in a repetitive and decorative manner, undermining their individual symbolism and synthesizing a number of social critiques in their placement and design - for example, the sterility of exchangeable iconography functioning to insulate its signifier from gritty realities.

Come meet Artemio and LAND's Shamim M. Momin as they present the installation on Friday, January 29th at 4:00 PM.

Support for this project provided by Ceramica Suro.

Saturday, January 30th - March 28th, 2010
Via: José León Cerrillo

R.M. Schindler's Fitzpatrick-Leland House
makcenter.org

Mexico City-based artist José León Cerrillo will take up residency for a course of two months at R.M. Schindler's Fitzpatrick-Leland House, in collaboration with the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, L.A. On site, Cerrillo will produce a series of posters riffing on the graphic programs of a variety of sources - from the familiar Art and Architecture portfolio of "lifestyle" modernism, to Schindler's and other LA-based architects' body of work, to the present-day print material offered by the MAK Center itself. This on-going production, culminating in a limited edition publication with art press Paper Chase Press, will be activated by a series of evening events, each thematically addressing or reanimating a specific aspect of the "total lifestyle" architectural program.

Visitation is available by appointment. Please email info@nomadicdivision.org to make a reservation.

This project made possible by Grants for New Projects (GNP). GNP is a non-profit, charitable entity that provides funding for curators and emerging artists to produce contemporary art projects.

Saturday, January 30th - April 30th, 2010
Via: Moris

The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
152 North Central Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90013
213 626 6222
moca.org

Monday: 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Tuesday, Wednesday: CLOSED
Thursday: 11:00 AM - 8:00 PM
Friday: 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Saturday, Sunday: 11:00 AM - 6:00 PM

Mexico City-based artist Moris (a.k.a. Israel Meza Moreno) will present a series of conceptually linked vinyl texts and digital prints to be installed at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA)'s little Tokyo venue, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Under the title Mi casa es tu casa (2010), each element will be activated by varying degrees of outside intervention: an enlarged copy of the artist's recent visa denial letter will be installed on the museum's façade, the text only readable after dark; select phrases of text will be attached to the canopy support beams, disappearing and reappearing contingent on light levels; and finally, the building's entryway will contain a series of initially hidden images arranged in a grid on the floor, collecting dirt as spectators enter the museum to reveal a group portrait. With this project, Moris evokes individual histories as subject to lived experiences of "invisibility" or "disappearance," literally and conceptually. Its position at the immediate exterior and entrance of Collection: MOCA's First Thirty Years, the largest-ever installation of the museum's renowned Permanent Collection, enhances Moris's exploration, further contextualizing the notion of inclusion and exclusion.
This project made possible with the generous support of Nancy and Howard Marks.

LEAD NOMAD SUPPORT provided by Calvin Klein Collection.

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