CATHERINE OPIE: IN & AROUND L.A.

Exhibition information:

February 16, 2013 – March 24, 2013

WUHO (Woodbury University Hollywood Space), 6518 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028

Public Opening and Reception for the Artist: Saturday, March 2

Curated by Emily Bills and Karin Higa

The 4th annual Julius Shulman Institute Excellence in Photography Award will be presented to Catherine Opie at the opening of the exhibition Catherine Opie: In & Around L.A. on March 2, 2013 from 6-8 p.m. The exhibition is at the Woodbury University Hollywood gallery (WUHO). It is free and open to the public. http://architecture.woodbury.edu/wuho/

Exhibition description:

For over twenty-five years, Opie has photographed people, places, and buildings in and around Los Angeles. Her lens captures Bel Air facades decorated with intricate iron gates, West Adams shopkeepers with direct gazes, and undersides of overpasses. Taken as a whole, these works create a portrait of Los Angeles as a singular built environment.

Opie is the 2013 recipient Julius Shulman Excellence in Photography Award. Her work is characterized by formal rigor and exquisite prints, yet she maintains a commitment to the social function of photography—its power to comment on and transform everyday life.

Catherine Opie: In & Around L.A. features work from five distinct series that highlight Opie’s engagement with the city: Freeways (1994-95), Houses (1995-96), Landscapes (1996), In and Around Home (2004-05), and Shopkeepers (2011).

Shopkeepers, a series that document small businesses in Opie’s West Adams neighborhood, will be shown in Los Angeles for the first time. It was recently featured in Art21, the Peabody Award-winning series for PBS.

Learn more about Art21 at http://www.pbs.org/art21/

Gallery hours:

Thurs – 1pm to 8pm

Fri, Sat, Sun – 1pm to 6pm

Parking is available behind the gallery on Wilcox Ave.

http://architecture.woodbury.edu/wuho/

Catherine Opie lives and works in Los Angeles.  She was born in Sandusky, Ohio in 1961.  She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1985, and an MFA from CalArts in 1988.  In 2000, Opie was appointed Professor of Fine Art at Yale University, and in 2001 she accepted the position of Professor of Photography at UCLA.

Catherine Opie’s photographs include series of portraits and American urban landscapes, ranging in format from large-scale color works to smaller black and white prints.  Moving from the territory of the body to the framework of the city, Opie’s various photographic series are linked together by a conceptual framework of cultural portraiture.

Catherine Opie has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. In 2008, a mid-career survey of her work, entitled, “Catherine Opie: American Photographer,” was on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Recent solo exhibitions have been organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, CT, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, The Saint Louis Art Museum, the Photographers’ Gallery in London, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and the Long Beach Museum of Art. Opie has also exhibited at Regen Projects in Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, SITE Santa Fe, the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva, Switzerland and the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in Germany.

In 2009, Catherine Opie received the Women’s Caucus for Art: President’s Award for Lifetime Achievement, and in 2006 she was the recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship.  In 2004, she received the Larry Aldrich Award, in 1999 she was the recipient of the Washington University Freund Fellowship, and in 1997 she received the Citibank Private Bank Emerging Artist Award.  Opie’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; the Walker Art Center; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.