Andrea Chung in Davis Enterprise 6.19.18
Manetti Shrem Museum’s summer season features Susan Swartz and Andrea Chung
The Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, launches its summer season on Saturday, June 30.
“Breaking Away: 2006-2018,” Susan Swartz’s museum debut on the West Coast, features new work straight from the artist’s studio. “You broke the ocean in half to be here,” San Diego artist Andrea Chung’s first traveling museum exhibition, highlights her inventive use of collage, printmaking and photography to explore legacies of colonialism and migration. Both artists will speak about their work at an opening celebration from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, July 15, at the museum. The exhibit runs through Sept. 2.
Swartz’s exhibit, curated by Rachel Teagle, the museum founding director, showcases Swartz’s development of a painterly style that results in, as the artist describes, “lush surfaces sculpted from the subtle accretion of color.” It comprises a survey of recent work that demonstrates a breakthrough for the artist — centered around a newfound synthesis and complexity in her approach to abstracting the natural landscape.
“Swartz’s painting is as personal as her journey. A lifelong painter, she began focused work in the studio only after raising her family” Teagle said. “Her work has progressed rapidly and this exhibition follows a series of solo exhibitions in major U.S. and European art museums.”
Chung’s practice finds unexpected intersections among materials, processes and places that often investigate the histories of Caribbean island nations. “You broke the ocean in half to be here,” a traveling exhibit of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, includes collages, prints, videos, sculpture and an installation of cyanotype prints of the nonnative predatory lion fish, designed to present a potent allegory of colonization.
Recently, Chung was featured in Southern California public television outlet KCET’s film, “Artist and Mother,” a documentary about the timely question of what it means to be a woman, an artist and a mother.
The Manetti Shrem Museum’s summer season follows the acclaimed Wayne Thiebaud: 1958-1968 exhibition.
“At the Manetti Shrem Museum we’re delighted to mount a summer season highlighting two women artists whose work takes risks, explores nature and celebrates new voices,” Teagle said. “We’re excited for students, faculty and the broader community to join us to explore the ways these artists bring focus to how the world is seen.”
The museum will feature art studio drop-in programs and artist-led workshops in conjunction with the summer season of exhibitions in July and August. The museum will be closed for installation June 18-29.
More information on summer programs can be found at http://manettishremmuseum.ucdavis.edu.