October 13, 2004

UCSD's University Art Gallery Presents
LoudIMAGE - Photographs By Luis Gispert

By Patricia Quill

LoudIMAGE – Photographs by Luis Gispert will open at UCSD’s University Art Gallery on Oct. 14, 2004 with a walkthrough led by the curators at 5:30 p.m. and an artist’s reception from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Curated by Roberto Tejada, of the University of California, San Diego’s Visual Art Department, and Derrick R. Cartwright, of the Hood Museum of Art, the exhibition will remain on view until Dec.11, 2004.

Examining the excess of contemporary materialism, Luis Gispert makes photographs and sculptures that synthesize hip-hop’s visually baroque aesthetic with art-historical references ranging from Renaissance painting to early modern furniture.

Luis Gispert, Untitled (Dinner Girls), 2002, Cibachrome

Featured in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2002 Biennial, Gispert creates a hybrid environment that fuses the stylized forms of furniture design with the material ethos of hip-hop culture. Gispert engages his audience in an investigation of “high culture” notions through “low culture” references. Through his photographic, time-based, and sculptural works, Gispert prompts a conversation that is radically of the moment. His use of startling images - cheerleaders, objects made of bodyshop machinery or speaker boxes - demonstrates his understanding of what fuels image-making in a contemporary American culture where gender, ethnicity, class, and generation constantly loop into each other.

Gispert's multimedia practice turns urban youth culture into iconography with a critical edge. Posing important questions about the U.S. mainstream, alternate representations, and the art world in an age of multiculturalism, Gispert has struck a sharp social, cultural, and art historical chord. "The part of pop culture that most appeals to me...suggests that change is absolutely essential," he affirms. His work argues that popular culture, social politics, and art world developments are of a stylistic piece. If artistic representation can both empower and undermined, his images compel onlookers to rethink their own pictures of the world from the perspective that any view is at best a partial one.

Born in 1972 in Jersey City, NJ, Gispert received his B.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and M.F.A. from Yale University. He currently lives in New York City and has exhibited his work in solo exhibitions, including Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA, and Kendall Campus Art Gallery, Miami, FL. His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at such venues as Audiello Fine Art, New York, NY; The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY; Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, FL; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; and Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy.

Organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, there is a fully illustrated color catalogue of LoudIMAGE.

UCSD’s University Art Gallery is located at the west end of Mandeville Center on the UCSD campus.

University Art Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Directions to the gallery can be found at www.universityartgallery.ucsd.edu.

Media Contact: Inga Kiderra, (858) 822-0661