ON VIEW
Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson: Infinite Space, Sublime Horizons
On View February 17 – June 2, 2024
Born and raised in Iceland, Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson (b. 1963) has spent the last 30 years developing a unique practice that melds the disciplines of painting, weaving, and drawing, creating an innovative and labor-intensive body of work that blurs the boundaries between abstraction and representation, and fine art and craft. Based on the captivating landscape and skies of Iceland, her work is deeply rooted in environmental subjects and concerns while also contributing to art historical discourses on landscape painting and postwar abstraction. Organized by the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University, this exhibition will feature large-scale paintings created on a loom and more intimate watercolors and drawings.
On the Horizon:
Landscapes from the Collection
On View February 17 – June 2, 2024
This exhibition features work by nearly twenty artists from the museum's collection that explore diverse approaches to depicting landscapes. Artists like Isabel Quintanilla, Markus Raetz, and Italo Valenti portray idyllic scenes; in contrast, Paul Harcharik explores the grim impact of industrialization. Other artists including Nicolas de Staël, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, and Zao Wou-Ki push the boundaries of traditional landscapes with wholly abstract compositions. With works spanning over fifty years, On the Horizon: Landscapes from the Collection delves into artists' varied engagements with the natural world and evolving environments.
Eduardo Chillida: 100 Years
December 9, 2023 – August 9, 2024
Eduardo Chillida: 100 Years commemorates the centenary of the influential Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida (1924–2002). Presenting a selection of sculptures and works on paper from the Bechtler Museum’s permanent collection, this intimate exhibition offers a focused look at the artist’s pioneering and varied practice. Renowned for his monumental sculptures, Chillida also created domestically-scaled sculptures, drawings, collages, and prints, examples of which will be on view. Together these works illustrate the great influence that Chillida’s upbringing in the Basque region of Spain and his early training in architecture had on his unique artistic vision, and demonstrate his enduring exploration of space, light, form, and material.
Alyson Shotz: Coalescence
December 9, 2023 – August 9, 2024
Blurring the boundaries between art and science, American artist Alyson Shotz (born 1964) is widely acclaimed for her sculptures and installations that use synthetic materials such as glass, mirrors, plastic, and stainless steel to harness intangible forces of the natural world like gravity, space, and light. On loan from the Bank of America Collection, this single-work installation is a dazzling sculpture made of glass beads and wire that hangs from the ceiling, Coalescence (2006) resembles a hovering cloud, a massive spider web glistening with morning dew, or a cluster of atoms magnified to monumental scale. Its open form challenges traditional notions of sculpture as grounded, solid, or weighty, and reveals Shotz’s abiding interest in perception: calling attention to the relationship between an artwork, the viewer, and the space they share.