Richard Allen Morris: Retrospective 1958-2005
May 5 - August 28, 2005
MCASD Downtown
1001 Kettner Blvd.
San Diego, California
Every day (except Wednesday) 11am to 5pm. Closed Wednesdays.
Threshold: Byron Kim 1990 - 2004
May 27 - September 4, 2005
MCASD La Jolla
700 Prospect Street
La Jolla, California
Weekdays 11am to 5pm; Thursdays until 7pm; weekends 11am to 5pm. Closed Wednesdays.
For additional information, please visit www.mcasd.org or call 858-454-3541.
The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is one museum with two distinctive, complementary venues La Jolla and downtown San Diego. Founded in 1941, MCASD has an active program of changing exhibitions, a permanent collection of over 3,000 works, and an innovative program of education and outreach. An expansion of the downtown site is currently underway in a renovated 1915 railway warehouse building, designed by architect Richard Gluckman; it is scheduled to open in early 2007.
On view at MCASD Downtown, beginning on May 5, 2005, is Richard Allen Morris: Retrospective 1958-2005, an exhibition that includes 150 paintings made over the course of a fifty-year career. Morris is a painters painter, who creates works that passionately explore the potential of painting as an artistic practice. John Baldessari said about Morris: Richard taught me what it takes to be an artist. He was and still is one of my role models. He can do things with paint that takes my breath away and I am left in awe. Beginning with early works in which Morris honed his skill by borrowing motifs from contemporary and old masters, the retrospective will include examples of his work from the many different styles he has adopted throughout his career. Steeped in the spirit of experimentation and always questioning academic rules, Morriss oeuvre is an iconoclastic tour de force that has quietly inspired several generations of Southern California artists. Also on view this summer at MCASD Downtown is Cerca Series: Jaime Ruiz Otis (May 5-June 26, 2005), followed by Cerca Series: Yunhee Min (July 3-August 21, 2005).
Opening May 27 at MCASD La Jolla is Threshold: Byron Kim 1990 2004. This is the first solo museum exhibition of Kims work, and offers an overview of the artists career, focusing on his significant body of easel paintings, presenting four major bodies of paintings produced since 1989. For the past decade, he has maintained a steadfast commitment to exploring the potential content of abstract painting, drawing on post-war traditions of monochrome painting exemplified by Ad Reinhardts black paintings and Brice Mardens waxy fields of color, as well as by Mark Rothko and other New York School painters of the abstract sublime. Also on view at MCASD La Jolla through the summer are Location, Location, Location; and In the Café: Barry Bell.
Richard Allen Morris: Retrospective 1958-2005 is organized by Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany. The San Diego presentation of Richard Allen Morris: Retrospective 1958-2005 is made possible thanks to the generous participation of the patrons at the MCASD Art Auction 2004. Special thanks to John Baldessari and David Reed for their contributions. Additional support has been provided by the Mandell Weiss Charitable Trust, Clark Tess Properties, and Dr. Charles G. and Monica Cochrane.
Threshold: Byron Kim 19902004 was conceived by independent curator Eugenie Tsai and organized by Constance Lewallen, Senior Curator for Exhibitions at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The exhibition has been supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Peter Norton Family Foundation. Support for the Berkeley presentation has also been provided by RBC Dain Rauscher and Consortium for the Arts at UC Berkeley. The San Diego presentation of Threshold: Byron Kim 19902004 is made possible in part by a gift from Gad and Suzan Shaanan.