Emerging Ideas on Art and Society invites an artist, a thinker, or a critic to come and share their doubts, questions, incomplete thoughts, and challenges about what art and society are today. Over dinner, a small group of students and faculty have an informal but intense conversation with the guest. A short text will be shared in advance to inform the conversation.
This conversation's guest is Rubén Ortiz Torres, a Mexican-born artist who has been living and working in Los Angeles since 1990. Ortiz-Torres is widely regarded as one of today's leading Mexican artists and as an innovator in the 1980s of a specifically Mexican form of postmodernism. Over the past ten years, he has produced a body of work in a wide range of media -- extended series of photographs, series of altered readymades, a feature film, several videos (including three in 3D), large scale video installations, major painting series, sculptures, customized cars and machines, photocollages, performances and curated exhibitions. Since 1982, Ortiz-Torres's work has been featured in 25 solo exhibitions, over 100 group shows in the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, and more than 50 screenings of his films and video works.