Currently on view, Critical Foreground presents a group of international contemporary artists whose works foreground the artificiality of cultural and economic devices that condition the representation and understanding of landscape. These artists approach the subject of landscape not as natural phenomena, but as a way of perceiving urban and rural landscapes as cultural images. The exhibition includes works by French artist Melik Ohanian, Romanian artist Mircea Cantor, Ecuadorian artists María Teresa Ponce and Miguel Alvear, and American artists Matthew Buckingham and Noah Wilson.

Hernán Khourian
b. 1973, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The title of this Khourian film, Puna, refers to the high plateau that covers the extreme north of Argentina along with parts of Bolivia, Peru, and Chile. This visual poem invokes the culture of the plateau, showing the richness of a region that others regard as barren.

Mungo Thomson
b.1969, Davis, California. Based in Los Angeles, CA.
Thomson’s work singles out and appropriates images from popular culture, altering and re-presenting them back to the audience. American Desert (for Chuck Jones) takes Chuck Jones’s classic Road Runner cartoons, digitally erases the action, and shows a sequence of clips, all of them nothing but the drawn desert scenery.

Time Schedule
4:00pm
Lindsay L. Benedict, Turn Back (Home), 2006, 4’5”

Lindsay L. Benedict, You Coated Me With A Layer of Fat, 2006, 3’5”

João Penalva, The White Nightingale, 2005, 42′

5:00pm
Hernan Khourian, Puna, 2007, 43’30”
Miguel Alvear and Patricio Andrade, Blak Mama, film in progress “Blak Chases Bambola” sequence, 10’30″
Miguel Alvear and Patricio Andrade, Wir Könen Es, 2007, 3′
Anonymous, Home Movie, filmed in Bameno River Ecuador, 2005, 13′
Mungo Thomson, The American Desert (for Chuck Jones), 2002, 33’45”

6:45pm
Lindsay L. Benedict, Turn Back (Home), 2006, 4’5”
Lindsay L. Benedict, You Coated Me With A Layer of Fat, 2006, 3’5”
João Penalva, The White Nightingale, 2005, 42′

7:45pm
Hernan Khourian, Puna, 2007, 43’30”
Miguel Alvear and Patricio Andrade, Blak Mama, film in progress “Blak Chases Bambola” sequence, 10’30″
Miguel Alvear and Patricio Andrade, Wir Könen Es, 2007, 3′
Anonymous, Home Movie, filmed in Bameno River Ecuador, 2005, 13′
Mungo Thomson, The American Desert (for Chuck Jones), 2002, 33’45″