Excavation

Charles Arnoldi, Jedediah Ceasar, Nancy Evans,  Ali Vaughan, and Erica Zamora

August 24 - October 13, 2023

Reception August 24, 6:00-8:00

French poet, critic, and philosopher Paul Valéry wrote, "The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness." This astute observation emphasizes the importance of mystery and unfamiliarity; an underlying theme is Excavation.  Each work is a meditation on the human mind and its marvels of the natural world. By mimicking or inventing natural order, each artist unearths a new system full of mystery and reveals a cosmological understanding conveyed through process and material. These artists blur the line between the physical and the metaphysical using various mediums, including sculpture, painting, drawing, and metalwork, and implementing unique or experimental processes. Despite vast differences between artists, Excavation reveals continuity in an aesthetic bound to articulating the mysteries of nature. 

Artist Info:

Charles Arnoldi's fascination with wood and sculpting raw materials began in the early 1970s when his first Stick Paintings challenged the notion of what a painting could be from a material and spatial perspective. Throughout his five-decade career, his work has continued to evolve in its explorations of formal abstraction. The eruption of Mount Saint Helens informed the work included in this presentation. 

Arnoldi was born in 1946 in Dayton, Ohio. Arnoldi studied at the Chouinard Art Institute, was awarded the LACMA Young Talent Award in 1969, and has long been considered “The Kid” of the Cool School. His work has been the subject of solo shows at Karma International, James Corcoran Gallery, Rico Mizuno Gallery, Fred Hoffman Fine Art, The Arts Club of Chicago, The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art (Malibu), California State University, Long Beach, USC Fisher Museum of Art, and Busan Metropolitan Art Museum. His work was included in the 1981 Whitney Biennial and is in the collections of many major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao), The National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena). Arnoldi works in Venice Beach, CA.

Jedediah Caesar is an artist and curator based in Los Angeles and Berlin. Motivated by material and process, his work focuses on human agency versus observation and natural order. The resulting cultural objects masquerade as geological artifacts. 

Caesar received a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.  He has had solo exhibitions at the Oakland Museum of California Art, Oakland, CA; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; LAXART, Los Angeles, CA, Susanne Vielmetter Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, and D’amelio Terras Gallery, New York, NY. His work is in the collection of the New Museum, New York, NY; the Blanton Museum, Austin, TX; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; and LACMA, among others. Reviews of his work have appeared in publications including art agenda, Frieze, Art Papers, Princeton Architectural Press, Sculpture Magazine, Texte zur Kunst, Art Forum, Mousse, and The Village Voice. He is a lecturer in the Department of Art and Art History at California State University, Bakersfield, and Director of the university’s Todd Madigan Gallery.

Nancy Evans is a multidisciplinary artist engaging in performance, sculpture, painting, and drawing. On display are a series of paintings that take inspiration from the sublime forces of nature, which the artist has experienced throughout her life, beginning with her upbringing in California’s expansive and fertile Central Valley. Evans pours paint directly onto the canvas allowing the pools of color to form the compositions organically rather than preconceiving the landscape herself; saturated highlights are created by screenprinting as the final punctuation. In this process, edges merge and overlap; the resulting scenes are romantic and metaphysical. 

Evans received her BFA from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work has been exhibited at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA; Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA; Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; among others. She has received grants and awards from the Center for Cultural Innovation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has been featured in publications including Artforum, Art in America, Los Angeles Magazine, LA Weekly, and the Los Angeles Times. Nancy Evans lives and works in Venice, CA.  

Ali Vaughan is an artist born in Bakersfield, CA, based in Richmond, CA, and works between sculpture, drawing, and painting. Her work investigates affinities between memory and geology through the lens of the body, landscape, and industry. Vaughan creates two and three-dimensional works in materials such as wood, cardboard, and steel, subverting the materials’ typical practical or industrial applications while excavating their inherent physical properties. The work attempts to collapse the worlds of the internal (body, mind, self) and external (landscape, architecture, industry) through the transfiguration of material. 

Vaughan received a BA with Honors from Stanford University and has been included in group shows at the de Young Museum, the Coulter Art Gallery, and the Stanford Art Gallery. She has participated in residency programs at Radio28 Creative Studios in Mexico City and The Steel Yard in Providence, RI, and has received the Lorenz Eitner Prize in Art and Art History and the Louis Sudler Award in the Creative and Performing Arts.

Erica Zamora is a ceramic artist based in Bakersfield, California. She draws inspiration from her grandmother’s utilitarian work made in Sinaloa, Mexico. However, Zamora's work is purely sculptural, allowing the material and gravity to dictate the forms. Her hand-built sculptures boast a breathtaking array of earthy tones, exquisitely capturing the essence of natural forms with their undulating curves and jagged crests.

Zamora was born in Bakersfield and graduated from Cal State University Bakersfield; she was awarded the George Award, the highest honor in the fine art program.