TRIO OF SHOWS SET AT MOCA

Exhibitions presenting the work of James Turrell and Manny Farber and an acoustic sculptural environment by Michael Brewster open at MOCA’s Temporary Contemporary Nov. 13 to continue through Feb. 9.

One of the most significant figures to emerge on the West Coast, Turrell has worked with light, space and perception since the 1960s. Although his installations have received national and international attention, this is Turrell’s first major exhibition in Los Angeles since 1967.

The survey features five major installations, including a number of works new to Los Angeles and three Projector Pieces designed in the 1960s and realized at MOCA for the first time. His medium is light in space manipulated to create visual illusions.

Turrell comments: “Light is a powerful substance. We have a primal connection to it. But, for something so powerful, situations for its felt presence are fragile. . . . I like to work with it so that you feel it physically; so you feel the presence of light inhabiting space.” The exhibition also incorporates a section on the artist’s massive ongoing project involving an extinct volcano in Arizona described through drawings, stereo photographs, and a large model of the crater. It is located in an area of exposed geology in the Painted Desert and called Roden Crater.

According to Turrell, his goal there is to “make spaces that will engage celestial events in a series of chambers on the surface of the Earth, that are empowered by light from the sun, moon and stars, in such a manner as to make that energy seem to inhabit the space of the chambers.”

Manny Farber will be seen in representational paintings made since 1973. One of the artist’s primary concerns is the investigation of illusionistic space and narrative collage, influenced by his extensive background as a film critic. Both the Turrell and Farber exhibitions were organized by senior curator Julia Brown with assistant curators Judith Crist and Elizabeth Smith.

The specially designed acoustic sculptural environment by L. A. sound artist Michael Brewster, presented by MOCA on behalf of the 1985 New Music America Festival, projects sound waves through a two-level space on the east side of the Temporary Contemporary.

A sound installation by composer and violinist Michael Galasso, titled “Sound Magnet,” is being housed under Temporary Contemporary’s canopy through Nov. 10, denoting MOCA’s participation in the New Music America Festival.

Galasso has worked with Robert Wilson on compositions for “The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin,” “A Letter for Queen Victoria and a portion of “the CIVIL warS.”

“Contemporary Prints-Contemporary Visions,” an exhibition of graphic works by three internationally known artists--Jiri Anderle, Edward Ruscha and Rufino Tamayo--opens at USC’s Fisher Gallery on Saturday and runs through Dec. 10.

Approximately 80 screenprints, lithographs, etchings and works in mixed graphic processes are featured.

Dr. Selma Holo, the director of USC’s Fisher Gallery, originated the exhibition. Bruce Davis, associate curator of prints and drawings at the County Museum of Art and Fritz Frauchiger, former director of the ARCO Center for Visual Arts, were guest curators.

Writings by Harold Joachim, the late curator of prints and drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, are included in the exhibition publication. Joachim was the first art historian to accord recognition to Anderle’s work, in this country. Anderle, born in Pavlikov, Czechoslovakia in 1936, is considered to be among the world’s foremost printmakers though he little known here. Ruscha, born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1937, is nationally and internationally known as one of the outstanding artists who emerged in the 1960’s. His works are in the permanent collections of major European and American Museums.

Tamayo, born in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 1899, received an honorary doctorate in fine arts at USC in May of this year. His first U.S. exhibition took place in 1937 at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City. The Guggenheim Museum mounted an exhibition of his works in 1979. The Museo Rufino Tamayo opened at Chapultepec Park in Mexico City in 1981. (For further information, call (213) 743-2799.)

David R. Brown, vice-president of communications for Champion International Corp. (a Fortune 100 company based in Connecticut), will take over as president of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, effective Dec. 2. Brown served as president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts from 1981 to 1984.

A design for the expansion of New York’s Guggenheim Museum (still subject to municipal approvals) was recently made public by the museum’s management.

The $9 million, seven-story addition, (extending over the existing four-story annex located east of the original structure) was described by Guggenheim President Peter Lawson Johnston as “a simple, elegant design which is sympathetic to the Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece and meets the museum’s pressing space requirements. . . .”