Season Opening (9/1) & Performance Recap (8/24) @ Grand Central Art Center

It’s starting, the kick-off of our 2012-2013 season of exhibitions, programs and engagement at Grand Central Art Center.   With our new Director arriving last September 6, it has been a year in transition.  We have been busy the past 12-months developing a season that kicks-off September 1st from 7-10pm, with a free Season Opening Reception of three new and exciting exhibitions – Tony de los Reyes: Border Theory; Constantin Hartenstein: Event Horizon; and Erin Morrison: Meditative Action.

Actually, we kicked-off the season a little early, with a pre-season performance last Friday, August 24.   Through the generous support of swissnex San Francisco, the  Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, the City and Canton of Geneva, and a collaborative partnership with LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), we presented Yann Marussich’s Bleu Remix, with sound performance by Steve Roden and Glenn Bach.   The evening provided a unique opportunity to experience this Swiss artists intriguing work.

Bleu Remix, Yann Marussich. Photo Credit: Maxwell Rivas

Current CSUF students, LACE Director Carol Stakenas, Allen Moon of David Lieberman Artists’ Representative, UCR Sweeney Art Gallery Associate Curator and ARTSblock educator Jennifer Frias, among many others, attended the performance. Joanna Roche, Professor and Program Coordinator of Art History at California State University, Fullerton, sent, via email to Grand Central Art Center, a wonderful thank you that included an unsolicited text regarding her experience which she has given us permission to share:

“It is with great intention and little pretension that Yann Marussich chooses blue for his performance. In Bleu Remix, Marussich reclines motionless within his heated box, sometimes staring, sometimes with eyes closed, exuding blue. Steve Roden and Glenn Bach’s sound performance Friday night at the Grand Central Art Center was the aural partner to Marussich’s body. Roden and Bach’s sound activates us within the space of the gallery, moving with us around the clear box that contains the artist. But the sound, like the artist’s body, takes us to another place. I’m not sure where it is, but it’s an intense, yet deeply still dimension. I guess it’s a blue place€ ¦

After his 45-minute performance, I asked Yann if his choice of blue was linked to sadness or melancholy (lamentation was a feeling I couldn’t escape watching tears of blue roll from lids to cheeks to chest in two blue streams into the pool of his navel). “No sadness, only presence—just for you [his audience],” he replied with a smile that revealed pale blue teeth. Yann Marussich’s body in Bleu Remix is not the “blue skin of cold,”[1] but a hot blue offering of self and sweat and sincerity.”

Joanna Roche
Professor and Program Coordinator, Art History
California State University, Fullerton
August 24, 2012

[1] For lovers of blue, read William Gass’s On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry (Boston: Godine, 1976), 29.

The evening was capped off with a wonderful dinner at local eatery Memphis at the Santora, where the artist, his family and his team, the sound artists, swissnex San Francisco team, and individuals from LACE, joined us for conversation and talk of future collaborative opportunities.

As you will see from the 2012-2013 Exhibition / Program Schedule, this energy will continue throughout the upcoming year.  We have planned a quality and diverse season that will continue to provide inspiration and engagement for our communities – including CSUF students, faculty and staff; our Santa Ana community; and our contemporary arts communities locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.   We will be collaborating with a wide range of community partners, from the Santa Ana Public Library, the Grain Project, MKE<->LAX, Quinceaí­±era Magazine,  bulbo (Tijuana/Los Angeles), OC Film Fiesta, among many others.

We look forward to seeing you here at Grand Central Art Center throughout the year and especially this Saturday, September 1st, as we invite you to celebrate with us.   It should be a wonderful evening among friends, colleagues, students and community, and a fantastic way to begin the new season!