Sezio

Here Not There at MCASD

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego announces the artists participating in the upcoming exhibition, Here Not There: San Diego Art Now, which focuses on the range of individual and collective contemporary art practices in the San Diego region. Opening June 6th, the exhibition will be on view through September 19, 2010 at MCASD La Jolla.

Here Not There will offer a stimulating and provocative view into the variety, strength, and vitality of work being produced by contemporary artists living in San Diego County. The exhibition will focus on emerging artists—serving as the first museum exhibition for many—as well as under-recognized mid-career artists, and will include artworks in a wide range of genres, from painting, drawing, and sculpture to installation, video, new media, conceptual and performance art.

San Diego’s visual arts have developed a critical mass of local talent, including Dave Adey, Kelsey Brookes, and Andy Ralph, remarkable for their commitment to creating practices—studio-based, public, or collaborative—that explore unorthodox, often solitary, forms of production while experimenting with innovative structures for the dissemination of art. Here Not There does not aim to reach definitive conclusions about the nature of artistic production in San Diego County, nor draw a single narrative illustrating notions of identity or regionalism. The main objective is to chart as straight a trajectory as possible: from the artist’s studio to the exhibition space. From this investigation, the exhibition emerges as a site of multiple overlapping thematic lines, encircling around disparate communities with their own gravitational centers, each defining a “here” that nearly touches another.

In the past 25 years, MCASD has organized six survey exhibitions of San Diego artists—notable among them are A San Diego Exhibition: Forty-Two Emerging Artists (1985), which surveyed visual arts, as well as theater, performance art, and fashion design; and Off Broadway: New Art from Downtown San Diego (2000). San Diego artists have participated in numerous group exhibitions organized by MCASD, including the international group exhibitions Weighing and Wanting: Selections from the Collection (2008); Soundwaves: The Art of Sampling (2007); and From Baja to Vancouver (2004).

Come out Saturday, June 5th for the opening reception.  Free to MCASD Members, and $10 for guests.

Fiesta + Roxy + Tocayo

If you haven't heard yet, Ford Motor Company gave Sezio and Holiday Matinee an unreleased Ford Fiesta for 6 months, with a gas card and a ton of free electronics.  Each month, we're tasked on spending their advertising budget on creative events and on our talented network of friends and artists.

For Mission #3, we've teamed up with Tocayo to create an apparel design for ROXY, based on the Fiesta vibe.  Being so close to Mexico, we choose Baja as our theme and let Tocayo do his thing.

To celebrate this recent collaboration, we're hosting a FIESTA of our own Monday, May 24th at Super El Camino in Little Italy.  From 7-8pm there'll be FREE FOOD and $3 beers and margaritas.  We'll also be screen printing the above design on shirts and tote bags.  If you'd like to partake, bring a crisp $20 dollar bill or you can show up with a shirt from home (preferably light in color).

To get in on the free food and cheap drinks, you need to RSVP here.

Say What? on Saturday

Saturday night from 6 - 10pm at Say Lula Salon (955 S. 16th St.) in Barrio Logan: new work by Wes Bruce, Cara Heslip, Miki Iwasaki, Sean Kelley, Christopher Puzio, Dawn Whitmore, & Brandon Zeller.

Music by Black Mamba & WWDJ 

Beer Art! : Beach to Brewery Winners

As usual, we never know quite what to expect from our art contests, but we seem to always be pleasantly surprised by the results.  Our two winners will receive a pair of tickets each to this Saturday's Beach to Brewery  Beer + Music Fest hosted by Karl Strauss. 

Jaime Aoyama, of Studio Aiuto in Encinitas, turned a year long recycling project into an Aztec inspired installation using 237 bottles and 110 pounds of glass.  View a larger photo here. 

Our next winner is titled Sr. Monstro, constructed from two PBR tall cans by Beckri Eguez.  Her email noted that the contest gave her a good excuse to put back a couple beers this week.

Congrats to both of our winners!  If your entry wasn't chosen, or you just heard about the contest now - you can still buy tickets online until 2pm Friday.  Visit Karl Strauss for more details.

Yeller Zine Swap Tomorrow

Tomorrow evening the Yeller folks will be packing the zines they received from over 80 artists to the Subtext courtyard for their Papercuts Zine Swap.  It will be a friendly night of refreshments, flipping through zines, and creative trade.  If you didn't sign up with Yeller to make a zine you can still bring your own to swap, just make sure you have at least 15 copies because there's a lot of people participating and zines go quick.  And if you are hoping to bring home a zine or two but don't have one to trade, pack something else of interest that you can barter with and see if you can strike a deal.  It all starts at 7 and more info is available on the Yeller Website.