Design Loves Art at the Pacific Design Center Presents Lita Albuquerque and Stephen Kaltenbach. Opening March 25, 5-8PM

Design Loves Art at the Pacific Design Center presents:

LITA ALBUQUERQUE AND STEPHEN KALTENBACH

Pacific Design Center

Green and Blue Lobbies
8687 Melrose Ave, West Hollywood
March 25 - May 21
Opening: March 25, 5-8PM

(Green Lobby)

Lita Albuquerque led an expedition to the farthest reaches of Antarctica, to the Ross Ice Shelf, 800 miles north of the South Pole in December 2006 to create Stellar Axis: Antarctica, the first installment of her global project Stellar Axis (which includes 90 Degrees North at the North Pole). The Stellar Axis Expedition included a team of experts, researchers and artists with Albuquerque at the helm. Aided by the National Science Foundation, their purpose was to create an environmental artwork and ephemeral event on a scale and in a place that was completely unprecedented.

The Southern Cross installation at the Pacific Design Center consists of five of the 99 ultra-marine spheres that made up Albuquerque's Stellar Axis on the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica on the Summer Solstice December 22, 2006. When Stellar Axis: Antarctica was completed, it served as a sweepingly powerful, poetic and concrete gesture that materialized our often-unseen relationship to our planet, our universe and ourselves. The project has since sparked related performances, films, and a sight and sound design installation by acclaimed composer Sussan Deyhim.

Lita Albuquerque is the recipient of the esteemed National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Program Grant, alongside famed film director Werner Herzog with his project "Encounters at the End of the World." Lita Albuquerque emerged on the California art scene in the mid-seventies with her large ephemeral pigment pieces in desert sites and has since won numerous grants and awards including: three N.E.A. Art in Public Places awards; N.E.A. individual fellowship; the Cairo Biennale prize; and an Arts International award. Her work is included in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian, the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, M.O.C.A. Los Angeles, the Weisman Foundation, the Getty Trust, L.A.C.M.A., and the Orange County Museum of Art, as well as numerous collections around the world. Stellar Axis: Antarctica will premiere at the Nevada Museum of Art. Work courtesy Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA with thanks to Jeff Phillips, the Art Art Project.

TALK: Lita Albuquerque will give a lecture about her pioneering installation on Thursday, May 20, 2010 in the Blue Conference Center, PDC (please check time at www.pacificdesigncenter.com).

STEPHEN KALTENBACH

(Blue Lobby)

Matter Contemplates Spirit and Brazen by Stephen Kaltenbach are part of a series that utilizes the destruction and repair and reconstruction of Kaltenbach’s favorite sculpture from the history of art as metaphor for the temporal aspect of both civilization and human experience. Kaltenbach states: The appreciation of the beauty of the interaction between the purposeful carved forms and the random broken stone surfaces became conscious after experiencing the same thing in action painting; the observation that those painters were combining the natural occurrences of the liquid character of paint with the brushed, purposeful form to create composition.  This line of investigation has extended to the construction of large forms using fragments of figure sculpture - a stone wall, a broken barricade, a dam.

Stephen Kaltenbach’s work is the subject of recent critical rediscovery. At Jack Hanley gallery, New York in 2009 his exhibition received critical attention in the New York Times by Roberta Smith who recalled his 1967 installation at the Whitney Museum of Art as well as the artist’s anonymous non sequitur ads he ran in Artforum in 1968-69, where the words “Tell a lie,” You are me,” and “Smoke,” presaged the tone of much advertising.  Kaltenbach was also recently included in The Quick and the Dead, at the Walker Art Center in 2009 and in 2011 his work will be exhibited at the Orange County Museum and in 2012 at the Berkeley Museum. Stephen Kaltenbach opens with a solo exhibition at Andrew Kreps gallery in New York entitled Quid Pro Quo on March 27.

Works by Stephen Kaltenbach courtesy Another Year in LA gallery, Los Angeles, directed by Cathy and David Stone. Another Year in LA represents conceptually-based art by LA artists and artists who have not exhibited in Los Angeles.

Hours: Monday - Friday, 9-5 PM

Members of the press may reserve complimentary parking by calling the PDC at 310 360-6409.