San Jose Museum of Art

-Entrance of the San Jose Museum of Art


Looking at Dale Chihuly's pieces

The San Jose Museum of Art is a excellent surprise! We enjoyed 4 exhibitions and another one is being installed right now on the occasion of the 2010 01 SJ Biennial which is coming up September 16-19, 2010.


Laurie Long "Dating Surveillance Project" 1998-2005
pinhole video camera footage

Degrees of Separation: Contemporary Photography from the Permanent Collection
July 22, 2010 through March 14, 2011

Vital Signs: New Media from the Permanent Collection
June 12, 2010 through February 6, 2011

In Vital Signs, the pleasure to see a piece I've never seen before by Bill Viola: "Memoria 2000". A ghostly black and white image of a face projected on a suspended piece of silk. Somewhere between an animated version of The Shroud of Turin and the photographic portraits by Charcot. A fascinating installation.

Also on the same show, a piece by Jim Campbell "Wave Modulation and Variation", 2003, (custom electronics, LEDs and treated Plexiglas). Looks like an unfocused movie about ocean waves. In fact, when one looks on the side behind the piece of translucent Plexiglas hanging on the wall, one can see a surface covered with LEDs turning off and on following what looks like a pattern. It is not at all the image of waves but it was generated by Campbell based on a video footage of ocean waves.

New Stories from the Edge of Asia: Plastic Life
March 13, 2010 through September 19, 2010

Retro-Tech
July 22, 2010 through February 6, 2011





In "Retro Tech" we marvelled at a piece by Camille Scherrer (Switzerland): Le Monde des Montagnes. I already posted videos of it on my facebook page but I must re-post them here.
It is about a magic book and I think that that piece was the cherry on the cake of the visit and I decided to take a family membership at the museum!
With the membership we got a free catalog (260 pages) about a selection of the museum's permanent collection. The "Selection" opens with "Five Times for Harvey", portaits of harvey Milk by Robert Arneson in 1982.