Probing patterns of daily life
An exhibition that opened this month at the USC Institute for Genetic Medicine (IGM) Art Gallery looks at how patterns of daily life build upon one another.
Layering: Barbara Strasen/Luisa Mesa probes how each memory contains multiple perceptions, which our brains prioritize. The layers variously obscure or reveal the interpretations that we prefer, need or reject.
“Each of the exhibition’s images is a carrier of different emotional and connotative information, but the images and connotations, all present at the moment the work is first seen, are not all immediately apparent due to their augmented clarity or obscurity,” said artist Barbara Strasen. “Perception of the work unfolds over time, similar to life experience.”
The exhibition opened to the public with a reception on July 7 and will continue through Oct. 30.
Reception guests discussed with the artists the rich complexities of molecular biological patterning, social patterning, and the role of individual and collective memory from prelanguage to the present.
Over the next four months, the exhibition and associated events will build on this discussion and continue to probe how knowledge of structural laws of nature, history and the scientific process can aid in social decision-making and create sustainable systems for local to global prevention and healing of physical and social disease.
Layering is sponsored by the USC IGM Art Gallery Advisory Council and artAngels.org. Community partners who organized the event include Our Parenting Place, Bernard Hoyes Art, Emmy Lu Art, SOSMentor, Los Angeles/Nagoya Sister City Affiliation, Sustainable Promotions, USC Head and Neck Cancer Survivors Group, and members of The International Society for the Arts in Healthcare.
The IGM Art Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and by appointment on weekends. IGM is located at 2250 Alcazar St., 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, Calif., 90033, on the USC Health Sciences Campus.
For more information, contact Lynn Crandall at (310) 479-1817 or lynn.crandall@gmail.com.
From left, artist Barbara Strasen, IGM Art Gallery Director Lynn Crandall and artist Luisa Mesa stand before "Food Groups," the signature work of the Layering exhibition, which continues through Oct. 30. (Photo/Richard Fukuhara)