'Photos and Phantasy' at The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art

Saturday, 21 October 2006 10:42

Malibu, CA — The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University is pleased to present Photos and Phantasy: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, on view through December 10, 2006.  Over the course of the 20th century, photography came to be seen as an increasingly creative medium which artists could use to alter, as well as capture, reality.  With the rise of digital imagery, photo-based art has evolved into a dynamic means of manipulating, instead of merely documenting, what is real.  This exhibition highlights the many diverse ways that fantasy and photographic technology inform contemporary art.

Featuring photography, painting, sculpture, and installations from the 1950s to the present, it includes works by John Baldessari, Richard Ehrlich, Gilbert and George, David Hockney, Joel Morrison, Robert Rauschenberg, Thomas Ruff, Annelies Strba, Andy Warhol, and John Waters, among others.

California native John Baldessari rose to prominence in the late 1960s by combining elements of Pop Art and Conceptual Art.  He combined mass media imagery with an exploration of language to create a unique body of work that has become a hallmark of postmodern art.  Baldessari’s art typically incorporates photos from advertising and movies.  Through witty edits and juxtapositions, he infuses these recycled images with new narrative significance.  The resulting works are layered in meaning, often humorous, and draw our attention to the coercive power of popular culture.

David Hockney, the British Pop Art painter, has long explored the potential of photography.  Intrigued by the mechanism of vision, he turned to the camera to investigate the way we see the world and began to create photo-collages.  Called “joiners” by the artist, these works combine dozens of separate photos of a subject, taken from different angles and vantage points, into a single composite image.  These fascinating images present vision as an active, creative force.