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MOCA ANNOUNCES THE ACQUISITION OF MAJOR WORKS BY RYAN TRECARTIN AND RODNEY MCMILLIAN

MOCA ANNOUNCES THE ACQUISITION OF MAJOR WORKS BY RYAN TRECARTIN AND RODNEY MCMILLIAN / Anything L.A.

Ryan Trecartin, B: Settings, 2010, mixed media installation, dimensions variable, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Rodney McMillian, Representation of a Landscape as a Wall, 2012, Acrylic, latex and ink on paper, 14′ x 48.6′, Courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Photo credit: Robert Wedemeyer

The Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the acquisition of major works by Ryan Trecartin and Rodney McMillian along with additional acquisitions to its collection of more than 6700 works.

The museum has acquired B: Settings (2010) one of the most important groups of works by Ryan Trecartin and his long time collaborator Lizzie Fitch. This unique “sculptural theater,” as the artist describes it, includes four pieces that fuse video and sculpture. B: Settings was presented in the exhibition Any Ever at MOCA in 2010 which was Trecartin’s first major solo museum exhibition in the United States. Other versions of the show were later presented at MoMA PS1 and The Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris. Reviewing the MoMA PS1 presentation of the show, The New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl described Trecartin as “the most consequential artist to have emerged since the nineteen-eighties.”

Ryan Trecartin, who moved to Los Angeles during the time of his MOCA exhibition, is one of the most influential artists of his generation. His work combines painting, sculpture, writing, video, and performance. He is one of the first artists to fully integrate the structure of the internet and social media into his work. In the book Ryan Trecartin: Any Ever that accompanied the exhibition, MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch wrote, “His work looks and feels like life today.”

MOCA’s acquisition will allow four significant elements of Any Ever to stay together. As Kevin McGarry wrote in the introduction of the exhibition, “Taken together, these videos embark on poetic, formal, and structural elaborations of nascent forms of technology, language, narrative, identity, and humanity…The individual videos fit together, block, break, orbit, or attract one another in infinite shifting combinations.”

Trecartin’s B: Settings joins a number of other well-known, large-scale works in MOCA’s collection like Mike Kelley’s Pay for Your Pleasure (1988), Doug Aitken’s Electric Earth (1999), and Urs Fischer’s Portrait of a Single Raindrop (2003), all of which are not just outstanding single pieces but include multiple elements. B: Settings represents several years of the artist’s achievement and is his seminal work of this period. Two major installations by Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch will be featured in the 2013 Venice Biennial. B: Settings was acquired jointly as a gift of Jeffrey Deitch and purchase by the Acquisition and Collection committee.

MOCA has also acquired Los Angeles artist Rodney McMillian’s Representation of a Landscape as a Wall (2012), his most ambitious work to date. McMillian’s work explores subjective narratives, cultural histories, and the politics of the body. In keeping with these themes, this 48 foot painting on paper sculpts the space in which it is exhibited, manipulating the viewer’s experience and encouraging reflection upon the ways we construct our narratives and define our geographies. The museum is deeply committed to collecting McMillian’s work. This is the third work of his to enter the collection. Untitled (flag) (2006-2008) is currently on view at MOCA Grand Avenue as part of Selections from the Permanent Collection. His piece From Asterisks in Dockery (2012) was featured in the exhibition Blues for Smoke at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA last fall. Representation of a Landscape as a Wall was acquired jointly by the Drawings Committee and the Acquisition and Collection Committee.

Ryan Trecartin was born in Webster, Texas in 1981 and received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2004. He has been featured in international group exhibitions, including 10,000 Lives, The Eighth Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju, South Korea; Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, Liverpool, England; The Generational: Younger than Jesus, The New Museum, New York; 100 Years, Julia Stoschek Foundation, Düsseldorf, Germany, and PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City; and Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Lizzie Fitch was born in Bloomington, Indiana in 1981. Fitch received her BFA in 2004 from the Rhode Island School of Design where she met Ryan Trecartin. They have collaborated and exhibited together for many years. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Rodney McMillian was born in 1969 in Columbia, South Carolina. McMillian had recent solo exhibitions at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects and the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions worldwide, including the Whitney Biennial (2008), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Philosophy of Time Travel and Frequency at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and Painting in Tongues, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. McMillian currently lives in Los Angeles, California and is an Assistant Professor at UCLA in the Department of Art.

MOCA is also pleased to announce the acquisition of Diet Piece: Moral Kinship (2013) by Samara Golden, one of the most exciting emerging artists in Los Angeles, which was purchased with funds from the Acquisition and Collection Committee; and a suite of historic photographs by Bob Mizer, a legendary figure in Los Angeles culture whose work helped to create and define contemporary images of masculinity, which was purchased with funds from the Photography Committee.

Samara Golden was born in Michigan in 1973 and received a MFA from Columbia University, New York; a BFA from the MCAD, Minneapolis; and studied at the San Francisco Art Institute. Golden is a multimedia artist who reappropriates discarded and found materials and often scavenges images reassigning their meanings as she uses them in her work.

Bob Mizer (1922-1992) was the founder of the influential studio, the Athletic Model Guild and the ground breaking magazine Physique Pictorial. He was known as a photographer-filmmaker and independent publisher. His erotic work focused on the male body and in retrospect served to chronicle the gay community during a time of censorship and heavy legal penalties for the distribution of what were then deemed “obscene” materials. His fascination with beauty and the male physique found echoes in the work of David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, and other artists. Several of Mizer’s models would go on to become Warhol superstars. As a beefcake photographer he succeeded in attaining commercial success, while artistically and formally he continued to push boundaries and experiment with new technologies and advances in photography. He was acutely aware of color, lighting, and composition, and often took great risks to creatively style a shoot and move away from standard or traditional representations of masculinity.

These recent additions to the MOCA collection continue the museum’s commitment to acquiring major works by historical and emerging Los Angeles-based artists.
Bob Mizer, Catalog Board for SW – page 01 & 02, c. 1965 Double-sided, cardboard with black and white photographs, and mixed media, 21 1/2 x 14 in. (54.61 x 35.56 cm), Courtesy of The Bob Mizer Foundation and INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, New York; Bob Mizer Catalog Board for SW – page 01 & 02, c. 1965 Double-sided; cardboard with black and white photographs, and mixed media 21 1/2 x 14 in. (54.61 x 35.56 cm), Courtesy of The Bob Mizer Foundation and INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, New York Samara Golden, Diet Piece: Moral Kinship, 2013 Wood panel, paper clay, foam, acrylic, Gorilla glue, framed in Red Oak 38 x 38 x 5 in. (96.52 x 96.52 x 12.7 cm), Courtesy of Night Gallery and the artist, Photo credit: Lee Thompson

THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, LOS ANGELES (MOCA)
Founded in 1979, MOCA’s mission is to be one of the defining museums of contemporary art. The institution has achieved astonishing growth in its brief history–with three Los Angeles locations of architectural renown; more than 10,000 members; a world-class permanent collection of more than 6,700 works international in scope and among the finest in the nation; hallmark education programs that are widely emulated; award-winning publications that present original scholarship; and groundbreaking monographic, touring, and thematic exhibitions of international repute that survey the art of our time. MOCA is a private not-for-profit institution supported by its members, corporate and foundation support, government grants, and admission revenues. MOCA Grand Avenue and The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA are open 11am to 5pm on Monday and Friday; 11am to 8pm on Thursday; 11am to 6pm on Saturday and Sunday; and closed on Tuesday and Wednesday. General admission is $12 for adults; $7 for students with I.D. and seniors (65+); and free for MOCA members, children under 12, and everyone on Thursdays from 5pm to 8pm,courtesy of Wells Fargo. MOCA Pacific Design Center is open 11am to 5pm, Tuesday through Friday; 11am to 6pm on Saturday and Sunday; and closed on Monday. Admission to MOCA Pacific Design Center is always free. For 24-hour information on current exhibitions, education programs, and special events, call 213 626 6222 or access MOCA online at moca.org