This Basic Asymmetry, a group exhibition featuring works by artists Patricia Ayres, Simone Forti, Miguel Angel Payano Jr., Paul Mpagi Sepuya and Gabriela Ruiz, is on view through Sunday, April 17 at Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB), in the Paseo Nuevo shopping center.
Through internal sensation, emotion and cognition, humans develop a fluid but strong sense of self that allows them to perceive the complexities and nuances of their personal experience.
By contrast, it is only through external sensation, especially vision and observation, that people find the ability to develop an understanding of others, splitting the experience of self from others into an asymmetrical paradigm.
This Basic Asymmetry presents the work of five artists whose practices make available their personal processes of creating a space for the viewer to reflect on their own relationship to their bodies and how that informs one’s perception of others.
Addressing the dissonance in the reckoning between self and other, the works exhibited accommodate space for mutual exploration. Through vulnerability, observation, recognition and recollection, the artwork in This Basic Asymmetry explores new opportunities for perceptions that are inclusive of both self and other.
This Basic Asymmetry is curated by Alexandra Terry, chief curator, MCASB.
Ayres, who was born in New York, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She received an MFA from Hunter College, BFA from Brooklyn College, and an A.A.S degree in fashion design from The Fashion Institute of Technology.
Her work has been exhibited at Fragment Gallery, Moscow; Matthew Brown Gallery, Los Angeles; Kornfeld Gallery, Berlin; and Koenig & Clinton Gallery, New York.
She was an artist-in-residence at Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. Lower Manhattan Cultural Center, The Studios at MASS MoCA, and Sculpture Space (forthcoming). Ayres was a recipient of the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Sculpture/Craft in 2020.
Forti, born in Florence, Italy, is a dancer/choreographer/artist/writer based in Los Angeles. In 1955 she began dancing with Anna Halprin, who was doing pioneering work in dance improvisation. After studying and performing with Halprin in the Bay Area for four years, Forti moved to New York, where she studied composition at Merce Cunningham Studio with educator/musicologist Robert Dunn.
In these classes, which focused on the work of John Cage, Forti met and began working informally with choreographers including Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer and Steve Paxton. This was a time of rich dialogue between visual artists, dancers, poets and musicians.
Over the years, Forti returned to improvisation, including extensive collaborations with musicians like Charlemagne Palestine and Peter Van Riper. Since the early 1980s she has been practicing a form wherein movement and words spontaneously weave together.
Payano Jr., born New York, is an Afro-Caribbean American artist working between Beijing and New York. With a visual vernacular informed by American, Caribbean and Chinese cultures, he creates works that oscillate between painting and sculpture that investigate class, identity formation/socialization and storytelling.
His transcultural surrealist sensibilities bind aesthetics with humor and the grotesque, with his works often translating and transgressing different artistic forms. Payano received a dual degree in studio art and Chinese language from Williams College in Massachusetts in 2003 then moved to China and attended the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, graduating with an MFA in 2008.
In 2020, Payano received a second MFA from New York’s Hunter College. Payano’s work has been shown at the LDX Contemporary Art Center, Beijing; Williams College Wilde Gallery in Williamstown, Massachusetts; and Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China.
Ruiz, born in the San Fernando Valley, has presented her work in art institutions, nightlife venues, and through public interventions.
Group exhibitions include: You don’t control the witness at ltd los angeles and Ecdysis at ltd los angeles and Museum aan de Stroom (Antwerp, Belgium); Liberate the Bar! Queer Nightlife, Activism, and Spacemaking at ONE Gallery in West Hollywood; Pasado Mañana at Commonwealth and Council in Los Angeles; and Building Bridges in Times of Walls: Chicano/Mexican Art from Los Angeles to Mexico at Gran Galería de Acapulco, Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños,
Sepuya, born in San Bernardino, California, received his BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2004 and MFA from UCLA in 2016. Sepuya’s work highlights the constructed nature of the photographic document and the performative space of the photographic studio, embracing the medium’s potentials for fragmentation and connection.
Sepuya has had solo shows at Franklin Art Works, Minneapolis; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York; Team Gallery, New York and Los Angeles; Document Gallery, Chicago; and Fotomuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Admission to all exhibitions at MCASB is free. Hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, with extended hours until 8 p.m. Thursday; and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. Closed Mondays, Tuesdays, and national holidays.
For more information on upcoming events, visit www.mcasantabarbara.org/events/upcoming-events.
Admission to all exhibitions at MCASB is free. Hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, with extended hours until 8 p.m. Thursday, and noon-5 p.m. Sunday 12-5 p,m. Closed Mondays, Tuesdays, and national holidays.