The Culver Center will host an exhibition featuring photography submitted by the community in conjunction with installations by Xavier Cázares Cortéz.
Riverside, Calif. – A new exhibition opening June 30 at the UC Riverside’s Culver Center will feature photography submitted by the public displayed alongside a two-part exhibition that opens the same day.
“Random Acts of Content” is a collaborative project that asks the community to partake in a dialogue about art making and storytelling. Those interested are invited to submit a photo via email for consideration until June 12. Each photo in the exhibition will feature a single object of a single color that carries significance to the photographer.
The included photos, chosen by a panel and curated by the museum’s curatorial and education team, will be presented with an exhibition of artwork by Southern California-based artist Xavier Cázares Cortéz. Mimicking Cortéz’s work, the photos will be arranged by color and displayed on a wall adjacent to one of Cortéz’s installations, which draws upon tendencies found in color field paintings — a style of abstract painting characterized by large fields of flat, solid color spread across a canvas.
Cortez’s artwork, “FINGERS ARE CROSSED just in case,” will be on display in the Sweeney Art Gallery adjacent to the Culver Center. The sprawling, mixed media installation examines the proliferation of objects and texts. This series of wild and spontaneous structural arrangements — consisting of both two-dimensional wall-based works and three-dimensional constructions, which Cortéz refers to as “feralscapes” — is made up of several thousand pieces from his personal archive of objects and arranged thematically by color, size, classification, or meaning. The various configurations invite viewers to evaluate the taxonomy of things they may have possessed, and their personal association to them.
“Random Acts of Content” will run through August 12. The work of Xavier Cázares Cortéz will be on display until August 19. A free opening reception for both exhibitions, as well as several exhibitions in the adjacent California Museum of Photography, will be held July 7 from 6-8 p.m.
Cortéz will be on site Saturday, July 7 from 5-6 p.m. to conduct a free artist walkthrough of the exhibition. A conversation with Cortéz will be held August 2 from 6-7 p.m. during the free monthly Riverside Arts Walk.
Find more information about these and other exhibitions on the ARTSblock website.
