Máximo González: Playful
January 28 - May 6, 2012

Máximo González: Playful is the first major solo exhibition in Los Angeles of Mexico City-based Argentinean artist Máximo González. Though González is best known for creating art objects out of devalued currency from Mexico, this exhibition is a journey through a decade of González’s playful investigations into contemporary politics, popular culture, and the reutilization of material. Witty, poetic and slightly subversive, González puts a fresh face on craft.

Consisting of installations, murals and weavings made from global currencies, videos, symbolic objects, and performance, González’s work demonstrates a range of materials and messages. Infusing ordinary, everyday items with a handmade delicacy, González’s work generates new and unexpected reflections on the relevance of utility and value. He turns the mundane into precious and beautiful objects that become symbols of the moment we are living in. By marrying traditional processes such as loom weaving and paper cutting with the politics of contemporary social history, González uses craft to generate new narratives out of historic events and collective memory. The exhibition is curated by Alma Ruiz, senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles.

Read the press release HERE.

Deconstructing Perestroika
January 28 - May 6, 2012

In collaboration with The Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War, CAFAM will present Deconstructing Perestroika, the first major exhibition in the United States of hand-painted Soviet-era political posters that were inspired by a new government policy of transparency in the former Soviet Union. Organized to mark the 20th anniversary of the former Soviet Union's demise in December 1991, this exhibition highlights some of the key political and cultural shifts that defined the era and ultimately led to the fall of the former superpower, namely Mikhail Gorbachev’s transformative policies of Glasnost and Perestroika in the late-1980s and early-1990s. These posters illustrates the tradition of hand-painted poster design, known in Russian as avtorskii plakat, which is an outgrowth of traditional Soviet agitprop. The exhibition is curated by Dr. Ljiljana Grubisic, Director of Collections and Public Programs at The Wende Museum.

Read the press release HERE.

Exhibition Tours

For information about booking group and school tours, contact Holly Jerger at 323.937.4230 x28 or holly@cafam.org.

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To sponsor one of these important exhibits, please contact Edward Escarsega at 323.937.4230 x31 or edward@cafam.org.

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