Rebecca McGrew – författare

Photographic critiques of colonialism’s legacies, from a leading interrogator of cultural iconographyThis is the most comprehensive publication to date of the multimedia works of American artist Todd Gray (born 1954). Superbly produced, with a two-piece foil-stamped cover, beautiful endpapers and an insert documenting a yearlong series of events inspired by Gray’s work, Euclidean Gris Gris features a selection of recent photographic works derived from his exploration of the legacies of colonialism in Africa and several other seminal works.Based in Los Angeles and Ghana, Gray is best known for photography, performance and sculpture that address histories of power in relationship to the African Diaspora. In the new works featured in the catalog, Gray combines photographs from his archive, which he has assembled over decades, including his pictures of individuals and rural scenes in South Africa and Ghana, formal gardens of imperial Europe, constellations and galaxies, and images of musicians, such as Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. The volume also includes a conversation between Gray and the artist Carrie Mae Weems.

Creating a discourse between Eastern "otherness” and Western concepts of beautyLos Angeles–based artist Hayv Kahraman (born 1981) creates exquisite paintings and other wall works that address diasporic cultural memory, feminine collectivity and gender identity through her personal history as an Iraqi émigré first to Europe, then to the US. This artist's book explores how her visual language merges her biography as an immigrant in a multiplicity of styles—including Persian miniatures, Japanese illustrations and Italian Renaissance paintings—creating a discourse between Eastern “otherness” and Western concepts of beauty. The key figure in the paintings represents Kahraman as a colonized woman; the repetitive nature of her work and the act of shredding and mending presents a history of displacement, loss and trauma. The book includes never-before-published images of the artist's work and her performance texts, plus new essays and poetry.

Jose Clemente Orozco's 1930 mural, Prometheus, created for the Pomona College campus, is a dramatic and gripping examination of heroism. This thoughtful exhibition catalogue examines the multiple ways Orozco's vision resonates with four artists working in Mexico today. Isa Carrillo, Adela Goldbard, Rita Ponce de Leo n, and Naomi Rinco n-Gallardo share Orozco's interest in history, justice, social protest, storytelling, and power, yet approach these topics from their own twenty-first- century sensibilities. These artists activate Orozco's mural by reinvigorating Prometheus for a contemporary audience.This gorgeous volume presents substantial new scholarship connecting Mexican muralism with contemporary art practices. Three new essays address different aspects of Orozco, Prometheus, and the connections between Los Angeles and Mexico. The contributors take on a broad range of topics, from murals as public art to how Orozco's work fits into contemporary frameworks of aesthetic theory. The book also includes a chronology, vibrant reproductions, and critical essays focused on the contemporary artists.

From 1969 to 1973, a series of radical art projects took place at the far eastern edge of Los Angeles County at the Pomona College Museum of Art, in Claremont, California. Here, Hal Glicksman, a pioneering curator in Light and Space art and former assistant to Walter Hopps, and Helene Winer, later the director of Artists Space and founder of Metro Pictures gallery in New York, curated landmark exhibitions by young local artists who bridged the gap between postminimalism and Conceptual art and presaged the development of postminimalism in the late 1970s. Among these artists were Bas Jan Ader, Michael Asher, Mowry Baden, Lewis Baltz, Chris Burden, Judy Chicago, Ger van Elk, Jack Goldstein, Robert Irwin, William Leavitt, John McCracken, Allen Ruppersberg, James Turrell and William Wegman. Providing unprecedented and revelatory insight into the art history of postwar Los Angeles, It Happened at Pomona chronicles the activities of artists, scholars, students and faculty associated with the College during this period. The book provides new insight into the relationship between postminimalism, Light and Space art and various strands of Conceptual art, performance art and photography in California, while contributing substantial new information about interconnections between artistic developments in Los Angeles and New York.