Funding will support its involvement in third regional Pacific Standard Time collaboration
Irvine — The Beall Center for Art + Technology at the University of California, Irvine has received a $200,000 exhibition grant from the Getty Foundation to present “Future Tense: Art, Complexity and Predictability,” a thematic show and artist residency program.
The Beall Center is among more than 45 Southern California awardees participating in the third collaboration of Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative. The landmark regional event, returning in September 2024 with the theme PST Art: Art & Science Collide, will feature exhibitions and programs exploring the intersections of art and science, both past and present.
“This grant will permit our Beall Center for Art + Technology – one of the vital venues for future-forward creativity in Southern California – to bring its most ambitious project ever to full fruition,” said Jesse Colin Jackson, associate dean for research and innovation at UCI’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts. “We’re thrilled to continue to partner with the Getty Foundation, having participated in both previous Pacific Standard Time collaborations.”
In January 2021, Getty awarded the Beall Center a $100,000 research and planning grant for “Future Tense,” which features both emerging and established contemporary artists who utilize the concepts of complex systems in traditional media and new technologies such as computer modeling, robotics and data visualizations. The exhibition is curated by David Familian, artistic director of the Beall Center.
“‘Future Tense: Art, Complexity and Predictability’ includes international artists who examine, represent and reflect on various types of complex systems,” Familian said. “Interrogating issues such as solutions for global warming, the interworkings of cells, global warming effects on evolution, and the dynamics of an increasingly toxic social network, their works reveal both the challenges and the wonder of complex systems.
“The exhibition allows audiences to understand how complexity functions within the individual works, but also to actively experience and appreciate the overarching aesthetic of each system. Ultimately, it demonstrates that the way to solve the vexing problems that plague our world is through collaboration, interdisciplinarity and systems thinking. We can no longer afford to try to control nature but must learn to live within it.”
“Future Tense” includes existing work by Ralf Baecker, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Julie Mehretu, Clare Rojas and Theresa Schubert, as well as new works by Newton Harrison, Chico MacMurtrie, the Lucy HG Solomon and Cesar Baio collective, Laura Splan and Gail Wight that were commissioned by the Beall Center’s Black Box Projects artist residency program.
This exhibition is made possible with support from Getty through its PST Art: Art & Science Collide initiative.
