PRIMARY FORMS: ILLUMINATED AND OPAQUE

MCASD DOWNTOWN, 1001 KETTNER
Opens March 15, 2009

Primary Forms: Illuminated and Opaque features Minimalist and Post-Minimalist works from the MCASD collection.

As squares and cubes are the basis of the modular sculpture by Sol LeWitt, so are circles and spheres the foundation for Keith Sonnier’s 1970s incandescent light reliefs that explore this medium’s reflection and diffusion. Primary forms also echo in Stephen Antonakos’ staked neon light sculpture, as well as in the hanging neon pieces of Las Vegas-based Pasha Rafat—an artist of a later generation whose work is indebted to both the rigor of LeWitt’s form and to Antonakos' use of neon to inform and articulate space.

Two recent acquisitions of theatrical light and glass pane wall reliefs by Sonnier, exhibited for the first time, are presented with another work, their equivalent in neon. A light box by Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar utilizes the same shapes—the square and circle—but now as part of a documentary piece that remains a beautiful exploration of luminosity through colored film. A two-channel video by the Mexico City-based British artist Melanie Smith completes the exhibition’s lighthearted meditation on formal variation, revealing the sheer labor and exertion behind such pure manifestations of light and matter.

MCASD Downtown—Jacobs & Copley Buildings and 1001 Kettner
1100 & 1001 Kettner Blvd. (between Broadway and B Street)
858 454 3541
San Diego, CA 92101
Fully handicapped-accessible

New Hours Effective February 1
11 AM - 5 PM Thursday* through Tuesday
11 AM - 7 PM Third Thursday of the Month
Closed Wednesday

Admission
General Admission $10
Military/Seniors $5
25 and under Free
MCASD Members Free
Admission is valid for 7 days at all MCASD locations.

25 and under free is generously supported by Qualcomm.
Free Museum admission Third Thursday from 5 to 7 PM.

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Cerca Series: Javier Ramírez Limón

MCASD LA JOLLA
JANUARY 18 THROUGH MAY 10, 2009

Tijuana-based photographer Javier Ramírez Limón mines the ground between photography as straight journalistic document and as a source for conceptual and poetic interrogation. He attains this through breaks and alterations in the image’s representational façade that take various forms: textual application, digital manipulation and, as for this Cerca Series, the pairing of two independent bodies of work to create a third.

The exhibition will present two straight-photographic series that document different moments in the process of migration and adaptation of Mexican communities in the Southern United States. Ramírez Limón’s color portraits in the series Mexican Quinceañera capture central characters in real festivities celebrating the 15th-birthday of adolescent women living in San Diego County—the equivalent to “Sweet 16” parties in the United States. These images are brought together with black-and-white landscape photos taken in an area of the Sonoran desert known as Altar—a remote and dangerous region where illegal migrants and drugs are smuggled north.

Ramírez Limón conceptualizes these pairings as a form of infiltration of the social and ethnographic content of one series into the other that makes the new work at once more informative and also more open to interpretation. The landscapes infiltrate or seep into the cultural discourse of the Mexican Quinceañera series, becoming a backdrop to that celebration and its characters, offering a shorthand social history of a community.

Cerca Series: Javier Ramírez Limón is sponsored by The Frame Maker. The exhibition is made possible by a grant from the LLWW Foundation and gifts to MCASD's Annual Fund.

MCASD La Jolla

700 Prospect Street La Jolla, CA 92037-4291
858 454 3541 (24-hour recorded information)
Fax: 858 454 6985
Fully handicapped-accessible

New Hours Effective February 1
11 AM - 5 PM Thursday* through Tuesday
11 AM - 7 PM Third Thursday of the Month
Closed Wednesday

Admission
General Admission $10
Military/Seniors $5
25 and under Free
MCASD Members Free
Admission is valid for 7 days at all MCASD locations.

25 and under free is generously supported by Qualcomm.
Free Museum admission Third Thursday from 5 to 7 PM.

Directions
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Guided Tours
Free public tours are available at all MCASD locations on the third Thursday of the month at 6 PM and weekends at 2 PM. To book a private guided tour, please contact the Education Department at 858 454 3541 x151 or e-mail education@mcasd.org. (Please remember to book your tour at least three weeks in advance.)

Museum Cafe
Try the Cafe for lunch or an early supper before a film or performance. Reservations are not required.
Museum Cafe Hours:
Monday - Friday 11 AM - 3 PM
Saturday and Sunday 9 AM - 3 PM

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www.rickyday.net