FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Margaret Crane
+1 (661) 222-2787, mcrane@muse.calarts.edu (do not publish)

MARGARET KILGALLEN
June 16 to August 21, 2005
Opening Reception: Wednesday, June 15, 7:00 pm to midnight
8pm -- Live sets by The Hallflowers and Tommy Guerrero
10pm -- Screening of Bill Daniel's new film, Who is Bozo Texino?

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This exhibition presents a survey of the works of the highly influential Bay Area painter, Margaret Kilgallen. The exhibition will feature over 50 individual works and groupings of paintings and drawings from private collections and the artist's estate. These works will be punctuated by one or two recreations of Kilgallen's wall paintings.

The exhibition will be the first survey of Kilgallen's work and will be accompanied by a catalogue designed by Michael Worthington that documents and contextualizes the hundreds of works the artist produced during her prolific career. The catalogue will include an essay by Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art curator Alex Baker, who organized East Meets West at the ICA Philadelphia in 2001, Kilgallen's last and arguably most profound installation (later recreated for the 2002 Whitney Biennial). It will also feature excerpts from Susan Sollins' interview with the artist from the PBS television program, website and book Art21.

Kilgallen devoured old-time sources with an insatiable ear and respectful eye: Appalachian music, hand-painted signage, letterpress printing, hobo train writing and all host of religious and decorative arts. With an elegant hand, she meticulously copied letterforms and numbers in long forgotten scripts, revisiting the now forgotten pace of craftsmanship and the personal tales buried beneath official history. Kilgallen's unique re-sourcing of sweetly familiar and non-hierarchical everyday places, markings and people found throughout California was in large part inspired by the wandering culture of immigrants, railway workers and dreamers. She was especially interested in evidence of a maker's hand--in seeing traces of the maker in her work. The artist explained:

I like things that are handmade and I like to see people's hand in the world, anywhere in the world; it doesn't matter to me where it is. And in my own work, I do everything by hand. I don't project or use anything mechanical, because even though I do spend a lot of time trying to perfect my line work and my hand, my hand will always be imperfect because it's human. And I think it's the part that's off that's interesting, that even if I'm doing really big letters and I spend a lot of time going over the line and over the line and trying to make it straight, I'll never be able to make it straight. From a distance it might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that's where the beauty is. (from Art 21: Art in the Twenty-First Century

Kilgallen was born in 1967 in Washington, D.C. She received a BA in printmaking from Colorado College in 1989 and her MFA from Stanford University in 2001. Kilgallen's work has been exhibited at The UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Drawing Center, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. Kilgallen died in 2001.

Margaret Kilgallen: In the Sweet Bye & Bye is made possible by the generous support of The Judith Rothschild Foundation, The DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, The Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and an Anonymous donor. Additional funding for the exhibition publication provided by Everloving and Feal Mor, Eve Steele and Peter Gelles, Jeffrey Deitch, 2K by Gingham, Giant Robot, and Stuart Shave.

MARGARET KILGALLEN
Opening reception: Wednesday, June 15, 2005, 7 p.m. to midnight
Exhibition dates: June 16 - August 21, 2005
Gallery hours: noon to 6 pm or curtain, closed Mondays

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS at REDCAT

KARA E. WALKER'S SONG OF THE SOUTH
SEPTEMBER 3 to OCTOBER 23, 2005
Opening Reception: Fri, September 2, 6-9 pm
Closing reception: Sun, October 23, 6-9 pm
With gallery performances by the artist at 7 pm at the opening and closing receptions

Kara Walker's "historical" shadow dramas depict unseemly acts of sex, birth and play that remind us of the slippery separation between dominance and desire. The black paper cut outs for which she is perhaps best known reduce representation to its base -- the silhouette as stereotype -- rejecting our insatiable appetite for predigested meanings. For her exhibition at REDCAT, the New York-based artist will expand upon her recent experiments into projected light and shadow, performance and video.

DAMIÁN ORTEGA: THE BEETLE TRILOGY AND OTHER WORKS
NOVEMBER 6, 2005 to JANUARY 16, 2006
Opening Reception: Fri, November 5, 6-9pm

For this project, Damián Ortega will present The Beetle Trilogy as well as develop a new work that expands on his fascination with conceptual practice, social organization, and humor. In collaboration with the exhibition at REDCAT, MOCA will present The Cosmic Thing, the first episode of The Beetle Trilogy, created in 2002 and featured in the Venice Biennale that same year. In addition to new work, REDCAT will present documentation of the two remaining components of the trilogy: Moby Dick, a heroic action involving the artist's Beetle, a live band, ropes and pulleys, and Beetle '83 Escarabajo, a ritual return to the vehicle's place of birth.

AN IMAGE BANK FOR EVERYDAY REVOLUTIONARY LIFE
FEBRUARY 4 to APRIL 3, 2006
Opening Reception: Fri, February 3, 6-9
Guest curators: Lauri Firstenberg and Anton Vidokle

This exhibition presents contemporary artists' responses to a virtually unknown aspect of the artistic practice of David Alfaro Siqueiros--his massive photographic archive. Well known for his activism and politically charged public murals both in and out of Mexico, Siqueiros had a special interest in photography's critical impact on both painting and politics. For this project, the archive, housed at the Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros in Mexico City, has been digitized and for direct access by commissioned artists. Participating artists include Carlos Amorales, John Baldessari, Daniel Buren, Mircea Cantor, Minerva Cuevas, Daniel J. Martinez, Ruben Ochoa, Martha Rosler, and Anri Sala,

These upcoming REDCAT gallery programs are made possible by the generous support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Etant Donnés, the French-American Fund for Contemporary Art, CONACULTA, kurimanzutto, The Puffin Foundation, Viacom Outdoor and e-flux.

Admission to the gallery is always free

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