Curatorial Takeover 2019

January 5
 - December 2019
A year-long series of exhibitions at Angels Gate Cultural Center curated by guest emerging curators, featuring conceptually rigorous and diverse projects.
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This upcoming gallery season Angels Gate Cultural Center (AGCC) is proud to present Curatorial Takeover 2019, a conceptually rigorous year of exhibitions by guest emerging curators with national reach. After a careful jury process, AGCC has selected five innovative and engaging projects, which will exhibit in the gallery from January through December 2019. With a focus on creative research and exhibition planning, these shows will contribute to AGCC’s ongoing commitment to diversity and community.

Angels Gate Cultural Center’s Curatorial Takeover 2019’s inaugural show, Shaggy Dog Stories and Other Tales, is presented by the curatorial duo Moyer and Samborska. Opening on January 5, 2019, the team brings together nine predominantly Southern California-based artists in a surreal showcase of absurdly humorous takes on everyday subjects. The exhibition will feature a variety of media, including large-scale sculpture, installation, video, and photography. Through the use of contemporary surrealism the curatorial team beckons us to reexamine the ordinary.

Following our opening exhibition, AGCC will showcase QUE GANAS DE EXISTIR by FA4 Collective, a group of primarily CSULB BFA graduates. Opening on April 13th, this group will showcase work that confronts current issues of anti-immigration and xenophobic policies facing our community. The collective brings opportunities for co-creative spaces to diverse groups of artists that are both relatable and educational, imparting multicultural perspectives along the way. By honoring differing cultures, FA4 Collective deconstructs what it means to be an immigrant in America. This Spring exhibition will include multimedia, video, and interactive artwork through our upstairs galleries. Concurrently, our downstairs gallery will once again showcase artwork from our Artists-in-Classrooms program and the 2019 iteration of SoundPedro.

On July 13th, we will welcome two more curatorial groups lead by Marcia Moore and Jared Baxter. Marcia Moore, an educator and artist, curates On the Brink, a showcase of two powerful artists “on the brink” of their careers. In this juxtaposition, Moore asks what incites the creation of their work and why the personal is so compelling. Their large-scale drawings and installations are a reflection of the artists and their communities, both on the edge of opportunity and as a reflection of Angels Gate Cultural Center’s physical space, overlooking both the ocean and the South Bay.

While On the Brink is featured in AGCC’s upstairs gallery, in the downstairs gallery “Todo en ti fue naufragio,” curated by Jared Baxter, will be a group exhibition organized around the central metaphor of a shipwreck. Taking its title from a Pablo Neruda poem, which literally translates to ‘everything about you was shipwreck,’ the show will examine both literal and figurative vessels in their relationship to rupture, disaster, and remembrance, in which the everyday circulation of images, objects, and language is arrested. Inviting engagement along a range of historical axes, from literary modernism to labor, the exhibition will also address the cataclysm of present-day life, as both a siren song and prophetic mourning.

Closing out Curatorial Takeover 2019 is One Another, a show by curators Amy Marie Slocum, Aaron Levi Garvey, and Brooke Kumar. Opening in October, this exhibition will explore the idea of language and storytelling as a tool. Beyond a chronicling of histories, storytelling is a vessel for memoir, folklore, and propaganda—both fact and fiction. In the words of the curators, “Storytelling becomes confused for fact and fact for tall tales.” The three curators have come together to explore these themes through the artwork of a dozen diverse national and international artists whose works range from video, installation, drawing, sculpture, and more.

Angels Gate Cultural Center is a home for exploration, illuminating artistic visions, and supporting emerging voices in the art world. Curatorial Takeover 2019 is AGCC’s newest endeavor in bringing international art to San Pedro, and bringing the South Bay’s art to the world.

Curatorial Takeover 2019 will open January 5, 2019 and run through December 2019 in AGCC’s galleries in Building A.