SAN DIEGO, CA — (July 25, 2023) Beginning in September, artists Sasha Koozel Reibstein, Taylor Chapin, and Danielle Dean will headline new exhibitions for the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego's (ICA San Diego) North campus in Encinitas. ICA San Diego is also pleased to announce the first commissioned sculpture for the garden at ICA San Diego / North in Encinitas–a site specific work by New York-based artist Letha Wilson. The exhibitions are a continuation of ICA San Diego’s “Limitless Growth, Limited World” art season which examines consumption in our society. Also premiering this Fall, ICA San Diego / Central in Balboa Park will showcase NextGen 2023, a juried exhibition of graduating artists from across San Diego County and Northern Baja California. As always, attendance to our exhibitions and events is free to the public, including our special monthly C You Saturday! events where visitors of all ages can meet the artists and discover more about their artistic practices.

Sasha Koozel Reibstein
The End is Near the Beginning
September 9 to October 8, 2023
ICA San Diego/North:
Opening reception: Sat 9/9 12-2 PM
Images of the exhibition are available by request.

Sasha Koozel Reibstein’s ceramic sculpture gives form to the mysterious and often chaotic processes of creation. Reibstein recognizes the parallels between the intense collisions of heat, energy, and pressure that ultimately form galaxies, living organisms, as well as ceramic objects, and illuminates the transformative potential of such extraordinary occurrences. For her exhibition at ICA San Diego, Reibstien will present her largest works to date, the results of residences at San Diego State University and Cal State University Long Beach completed earlier this year.

The End is Near the Beginning, which takes its title from the largest work in the show, will be Reibstein’s first solo museum exhibition in San Diego. “The End is Near the Beginning” offers a meditation on the ICA’s ongoing exploration of consumption, inviting us to consider the metaphorical and physical aspects of the concept.  

Sasha Koozel Reibstein was born in Boston, MA and raised in Philadelphia, PA, she currently resides in San Diego, CA where she is a professor of ceramics at Palomar College. Her work has been included in over 80 national and international exhibitions including at The Zentrum fur Keramik, Berlin, Germany; Guldagergaard, Skaelskor, Denmark; ArtSpace 1 Beijing, China; Quint Gallery in La Jolla, CA; The Morris Graves Museum, Eureka, CA; The Attelboro Museum, Attelboro, MA; The American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the San Diego International Airport; and Mingei Museum in San Diego, CA. Press includes Hyperallergic, HereIn Journal, Maake Magazine, Art Ltd, Ceramics: Art and Perception, Ceramics Monthly, the San Diego Union Tribune, Glasstire, Simayspace and NY Arts Magazine, among others.

Taylor Chapin
Tell Me About Yourself
September 23 - December 30, 2023
ICA San Diego/North
C You Saturday! Exhibition Celebration October 21st, 2023, 4 - 8pm
Images of the exhibition are available by request

Beginning September 23 and running through December 30, 2023 at ICA San Diego/North, Oceanside resident Taylor Chapin will show Tell Me About Yourself, a series of paintings using bold color, swirling patterns, and enigmatically camouflaged figures to reflect a consumerist society that treats beauty and goods as social currency. In this new body of work, Chapin employs the visual strategies of advertising to reflect on this current moment in which our identity has become our brand. Chapin’s paintings are deliberately overstimulating, almost hallucinogenic, translating the sensation of consumer culture’s oversaturation into visual form.

Taylor Chapin was born and raised in Encinitas, California. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from San Francisco Art Institute in 2016, and she graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art from University of California San Diego in 2022. She has shown her work throughout southern California including a solo show with Oceanside Museum of Art, a showing with Quint ONE, and group exhibitions with Oolong Gallery, False Cast Gallery, and the San Diego Central Library. She has also recently created public-facing murals in both Leucadia and Oceanside. She lives and works in Oceanside, California.

During the exhibition there will be Engagement Guide led tours every Sunday at 12 pm. Free to the public. Open hours Thurday to Sunday, 12 pm - 5 pm.

Danielle Dean
Bazar
October 21 - December 30, 2023
ICA San Diego/North
Artist in Residence November 12 - 19, 2023
C You Saturday! Exhibition Celebration October 21st, 2023, 4- 8pm
Images of the exhibition are available by request

Also at ICA San Diego/North, British-American artist Danielle Dean will present her installation “Bazar” (2018). Dean’s exhibition exposes the deeply entangled histories of colonialism, capitalism, and consumer culture. Drawing on imagery from nearly 150 years of retail catalogs produced by the legendary Parisian department store Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville (BHV), Bazar is comprised of a four-channel video accompanied by a series of life-size diorama-like vignettes.

Dean draws from the aesthetics and history of advertising, and from her multinational background—born to a Nigerian father and an English mother in Alabama, and brought up in a suburb of London. She received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts and is an alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. “The way Danielle combines historical research with the visuals and tactics of contemporary advertising–and of course, wit–makes Bazar a powerful vehicle for ICA San Diego’s continued exploration of systems of consumption and social value” says ICA curator, Jordan Karney Chaim.

ICA San Diego is pleased to announce it was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Grants for Arts Projects award to support Danielle Dean’s forthcoming exhibition and residency. Dean, an Assistant Professor at the University of California San Diego, will be the ICA’s first San Diego-based resident artist. Dean has been celebrated for her research-based installations incorporating video, painting, and performance that investigate legacies of colonialism and their effects on cultural production and capital accumulation. Incorporating the visual language and history of advertising, Dean sheds light on the ways technology, architecture, and media can function as tools of both oppression and resistance. Dean has exhibited extensively at institutions worldwide, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; SFMOMA; the Tate Britain; and was included in the 2022 Whitney Biennial.

During the exhibition there will be Engagement Guide led tours every Sunday at 12 pm. Free to the public. Open hours Thurday to Sunday, 12 pm - 5 pm.

Letha Wilson
California View Holes Steel (La Orilla Trail), 2023
C You Saturday! In Celebration of Letha Wilson, Art of Elan with Danielle Dean, & Art Night Encinitas, November 18th, 2023, 4- 8pm
Images of the exhibition are available by request

During November’s C You Saturday! ICA San Diego’s monthly celebration, ICA will unveil its first commissioned sculpture for the garden at ICA San Diego / North in Encinitas–a site specific work by New York-based artist Letha Wilson. California View Holes Steel (La Orilla Trail), consists of three intersecting panels of corten steel, the tallest of which measures nearly eight feet. Holes cut in the steel panels will allow sunbeams and shadows to alter the experience of the piece over the course of the day. The work will sit on a partially raised concrete pad and is designed to be experienced from all angles.

“I am delighted to work with ICA San Diego to create a new large-scale outdoor sculpture in response to the courtyard site at ICA San Diego / North,” says Wilson. “I was able to spend some time in the Encinitas area shooting photographs along the coast, on local trails, and in the San Diego Botanic Garden. I was happy to include a photograph of wild grasses taken during a walk along the La Orilla Trail into this new sculpture. The contrast of photographic images of the landscape alongside the raw steel material, and in combination with the garden setting of the courtyard, will hopefully create an engaging conversation about the balance between natural landscapes and constructed spaces.”

Letha Wilson (b. 1976 in Honolulu, HI,) was raised in Greeley, CO. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and Hudson, NY. She earned her BFA from Syracuse University, NY (US) in 1998, and an MFA from Hunter College, NY (US) in 2003. Wilson's work has been featured in recent solo exhibitions at The Richard and Dolly Maass Gallery, SUNY Purchase, NY (US); GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL) and New York, NY (US); Higher Pictures Generation, Brooklyn, NY (US); Anderson Ranch, Aspen, CO (US); the Center for Contemporary Art and Culture, Portland, OR (US); the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA (US), and Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paris (FR).

This project is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Sahm Family Foundation.

NextGen 2023
September 9 - January 28, 2024
ICA San Diego/Central
C You Saturday! Exhibition celebration September 16, 2023 , 6-8pm
Images of the exhibition are available by request

NextGen 2023, an annual juried exhibition of graduating artists from across San Diego County and Northern Baja California will open September 9 and run through January 28, 2023 at ICA San Diego/Central.

This year’s seven selected artists are: Leila Khalilzadeh Aghdami, MFA, San Diego State University; Matthew John Bacher, MFA, San Diego State University; Cat Gunn, MFA, University of California San Diego; Hazel Katz, MFA, University of California San Diego; Heige Kim, MFA, University of California San Diego; Arlene Mejorado, MFA, University of California San Diego; Lorena Ochoa, MFA, University of California San Diego.

NextGen celebrates emerging artistic voices and highlights the innovative work being produced across the San Diego region. Through NextGen, ICA San Diego provides local emerging artists with both exhibition opportunities and professional development, while highlighting the strength of our creative community.

The 2023 NextGen Award winner will be announced during the ICA’s C You Saturday! event on September 16, 2023. This award recognizes the artist who received the highest total ranking across the jury panel. Many thanks to this year's jury: Dinah Poellnitz, Co-founder, Curator, and Director of Development of The Hill Street Country Club, Oceanside, CA; julia elizabeth neal, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Marie Sarré, Curator, Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; and Ryan Campbell Garrett, Founder, RCG Art Advisory, San Diego.

About the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego

ICA San Diego is a platform for experimental art and learning with a mission to question everything. Founded in 2021, yet built on over 100 years of combined experience, our programming is cutting edge yet accessible; daring and thoughtful; challenging and inviting. Our exhibitions, installations, commissions, classes, and workshops reflect ICA San Diego’s commitment to engage the issues of the moment and provide a space for the community to come together and consider the world in which we live. ICA San Diego welcomes everyone to gather, learn, question, and experience the new. ICA San Diego is always free and open to the public. ICA San Diego / Central is located at 1439 El Prado in Balboa Park, and ICA San Diego / North is located at 1550 S. El Camino Real in Encinitas.

Contact:
Christine Martinez, 858-663-7887
(Press@icasandiego.org)
icasandiego.org // @icasandiego