Annuale 1998
9 August through 20 September
front gallery exhibition
Curated by Franklin Sirmans
The Annuale
was conceived thirteen years ago as a means to showcase young local
artists and expose them to a noted curator from outside the Los
Angeles area for the purpose of broadening the artist's prospective
audiences and the curator's pool of artistic resources. In a departure
from tradition, the artists in Annuale 1998 were not announced
until the week before the show. This change was the result of a
compressed selection process that allowed this year's curator to
not only select artists for inclusion but to oversee the installation
of the exhibition itself. It was meant to involve the curator more
fully and to add a heightened element of anticipation to Annuale
1998.
This year's curator,
Franklin Sirmans, is also a critic and writer. He is head of the
U.S. Editorial Desk of Flash Art International and is Consulting
Editor of Nka, Journal of Contemporary African Art. He coedited
the catalogue Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean
Artists in Britain, 1966-1996 (Caribbean Cultural Center, Bronx
Museum of the Arts and The Studio Museum in Harlem; University of
Chicago Press, 1997) and is currently at work on a travelling exhibition
for the not-for-profit organization Umbra. He was the curator of
"Acting Out: European Photo Project" at the Silverstein Gallery,
New York, and was a contributor to the book of essays Arte Multietnica
(Modena, Italy, 1998).