The Art Department congratulates Liat Yossifor, MFA 2002, on the exhibition of her most recent paintings at Miles McEnery Gallery, opening in New York on Saturday, March 17. The exhibition will run from March 17 - April 14. 

In 2011, Liat Yossifor definitively turned her painting practice toward abstraction, and has since been making works that adhere to a specific formal approach. Limiting herself to three days to complete a painting, the time pressure turns into a kind of psychological pressure. In this way, her work becomes a self-conscious performance. Yossifor chases an elusive composition around the canvas, though she does not seek to achieve a composition that is thoroughly “resolved.” Her struggle to locate something creates contradictory forces that simultaneously push and pull the viewer.

The resulting monochromatic paintings are equally pictorial and physical. Using an alla prima (“at first attempt”) technique, Yossifor works within the durational

James Luna (BA 1977) passed away on March 3. He was a highly influential Native American performance artist with an international reputation.

"Luna has had more than forty solo shows and participated in eighty-five group exhibitions. His work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Native Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario; among other institutions. He was also the recipient of numerous awards, including a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation in 2017; a grant from Art Matters in 2014; an honorary Ph.D. from Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts in 2011; a Distinguished Visiting Faculty Award from the University of California, Davis, in 1994; and a Bessie Creator Award from the New York Dance Theatre Workshop in 1991."

"Not so much the imagery but the title of Daniel Joseph Martinez’s recent exhibition at the Roberts & Tilton gallery (newly renamed Roberts Projects) in Culver City, California, led me to wonder about that sense of identification between a male artist and his female subject that Flaubert and Williams are supposed to exemplify—although in the case of Martinez, the subject is not fictional but a historical personage. The exhibition was called “I am Ulrike Meinhof or (someone once told me time is a flat circle).” Leaving aside for a moment the show’s more obviously riddling subtitle, what could Martinez mean by his “Ulrike Meinhof, c’est moi”? It would be wise not to answer too quickly: Martinez has a history of hanging his work on blunt first-person statements that get more ambiguous the closer you look at them. One of them has kept me pondering for almost 25 years."

Professor Daniel Joseph Martinez will be featured in the upcoming Made in L.A. 2018 of the Hammer's biennial exhibition.

Made in L.A. 2018 is the fourth iteration of the Hammer’s biennial exhibition, continuing to highlight the practices of artists working throughout Los Angeles and the surrounding areas. The exhibition is organized by Hammer curators Anne Ellegood and Erin Christovale. The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue, as well as a full roster of free public programming.