Spring exhibitions

Lisa Yuskavage: The Brood
Lisa Yuskavage: The Brood surveys 25 years of the acclaimed artist’s work, presenting her bold vision for contemporary figurative painting. Yuskavage’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States in over 15 years, The Brood is not so much a comprehensive survey as an account of her development and identity as a painter. Merging the grand tradition of portraiture with the expansive vocabulary of female transgression and empowerment, Yuskavage’s boisterous palette and confrontational subject matter provoke the imagination and create a sometimes polarizing space: the artist presents the female body as a site of defiance and decadence.

Arcangelo Sassolino: Not Human
Not Human is the Italian sculptor’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States, featuring his kinetic sculptures that breathe, explode, punch, and crush. Elegantly fabricated with the help of experts and engineers, each work mimics a human experience: taking a breath, biting down. But these anthropomorphic references are complicated by the fact that the objects can be menacing as well as captivating; while some are poetic, others confront viewers with seemingly dangerous and violent acts.

Tala Madani: First Light
For more than a decade, Tehran-born, Los Angeles-based artist Tala Madani has developed a practice centered on playful yet provocative representations of men. Her deadpan paintings, drawings, and stop-motion animations satirize conventional notions of masculinity and encourage a larger consideration of issues related to authority, desire, and shame. First Light—Madani’s first solo exhibition in an American museum—presents an animation and premieres a new series of paintings. 

Peter Sutherland: Forests and Fires
Forests and Fires is Michigan-born, New York-based artist Peter Sutherland’s first solo museum exhibition, featuring new site-specific work for CAM and highlighting the conflict between industrial progress and the natural sublime. CAM’s Project Wall features two tetraptychs depicting dense wooded landscapes, while in the adjacent courtyard, large boulders are sliced in cross-section and affixed with images of a raging fire. The flames encroach upon the forest’s sensation of calm, a harbinger of environmental destruction.  

Arlene Shechet: Urgent Matter
Across plaster, clay, porcelain, and paper, New York-based artist Arlene Shechet’s intensive, playful practice consistently pushes the boundaries of what sculpture can be. Over the last decade, she has worked extensively in ceramics, crafting a visual language that breaks many of the medium’s conventions. For her exhibition at CAM, Shechet premieres a series of free-standing sculptures alongside several cast paper sculptures. 

Ned Vena: Paintings Without Borders 2
New York-based artist Ned Vena’s austere monochrome paintings and abstract compositions evoke a myriad of 20th-century influences from Kazmir Malevich to Frank Stella. Paintings Without Borders 2 is Vena’s first solo museum exhibition, featuring paintings that use the letter “G” as their point of departure. Whereas earlier iterations of Vena’s “G” paintings presented the works as separate, recognizable letters, here the letter is repeated so that it fuses into a shape evocative of a chain link fence. Although Vena’s act of replication suggests an assembly line and mechanical reproduction, closer inspection reveals distinct marks, demonstrating individuality within seeming repetition. 

The Propeller Group: Fusion (After a Universe of Collisions)
The multidisciplinary collective, comprising Ho Chi Minh City and Los Angeles-based artists Phunam Thuc Ha, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and Matt Lucero, uses sophisticated digital tools to create powerful and seductive images that explore cultural and political phenomena. At CAM, the group presents a video depicting the moment of impact when bullets from a Russian AK-47 and an American M16 collide mid-air. Captured on high-speed cameras, the footage is slowed down to a meditative pace. Appearing almost as an abstract cosmos, the lingering debris acts as a poetic metaphor for the larger history of war, gun violence, and political ideology.