Alburquerque
For DesertX, Lita Albuquerque chose to work at The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands Center & Gardens because of its history as a gathering place. An oasis within the desert, Sunnylands perhaps is best known as the Camp David of the West, frequently hosting Presidential vacations, retreats and summits
Read MorePart Kubrickian, part Wilsonian (as in Robert), with a nod to Isadora Duncan, Lita Albuquerque’s “hEARTH,” a performance installation created with her daughter Jasmine Albuquerque and composer Kristen Toedtman, on view at Sunnylands Center and Gardens (the former Annenberg Estate in Rancho Mirage), served as a kind of prequel to outdoor exhibition Desert X 2017.
Read MoreArtist Lita Albuquerque once told an interviewer her approach to art “begins with nature and who we are in relationship to it. I am continually asking questions about who we are in relationship to the environment around us and to the planet itself.”
Read MoreAt one point in the bright, mantric hour-long performance ritual which christened Lita Albuquerque’s current sculptural installation hEARTH at the Sunnylands Center & Gardens in Rancho Mirage, a throaty clarion chant rang out across the great lawn, staccato: Got to, got to, got to, got to listen to the silence. Why did you come here? Why do you listen? What does it say to you? In many ways, these are the foundational questions and the essential directive of the entire Desert X affair.
Read MorePALM SPRINGS, Calif. — Roaming off-road through sandy, rock-studded terrain in view of mountain peaks and windmill farms, a six-wheeled rover about the size of a milk crate backed up and sped away from its creator.
Read MoreWith her gaze turned skyward, Light and Space artist Lita Albuquerque draws inspiration from the cosmos.
Read MoreSo much art wants to move you. Lita Albuquerque’s art, on the other hand, wants to ground you, align you to the cosmos, and connect you to a world bigger and deeper than the one you know.
Read MoreThe desert has long exercised its fascination over the minds of artists, architects, musicians, writers, and other explorers of landscape and soul. From the theological cast of the Biblical desert wilderness to the secular observations of Joan Didions Holy Water, it is a place of scarcity, of stark contrasts, crude survival, mystery and transformation.
Read MoreIn the late 19th century, Southern California attracted misfits, idealists, and entrepreneurs with few ties to anyone or anything. Swamis, spiritualists, and other self-proclaimed religious authorities quickly made their way out West to forge new faiths. Independent book publishers, motivational speakers, and metaphysical-minded artists and writers then became part of the Los Angeles landscape. City of the Seekers examines how creative freedom enables LA-based artists to make spiritual work as part of their practices.
Read MoreLita Albuquerque would like to map the sky. She'd like to stitch together the stars and the sand, sending a blanket of fluid, brightly colored dancers across the open, dusty desert floor.
Read MoreLita Albquerque’s current exhibition 20/20: Accelerando at USC Fisher Museum will be closing on April 10th.
Lita Albuquerque's 20/20: Accelerando is a haunting 3-gallery (26-minute) film installation with its original music score by artist and composer Robbie C. Williamson.
Lita Albuquerque’s career stretches back to the 1960s, when she developed her praxis as part of California’s Light and Space movement. She has always had a propensity toward remote, desolate environments; over the four decades she has been creating, she has installed works at epic locations, including the Antarctic, Death Valley and the Mojave desert, and at the Pyramids at Giza, often completed in collaboration with architects.
Read MoreThe earth’s polar regions are the site of some of the greatest moral, political, and economic conflicts of our time. Though the scale of human activity in these areas is not enormous, the impact of scandalously shortsighted growth is realized most destructively in these remote places. Images of these areas have become increasingly common as they melt away, causing damage across the globe.
Read MoreSusan Sontag argues that "whatever goal is set for art, eventually proves restrictive, matched against the widest goals of consciousness." While Sontag famously defined art as a "form of consciousness," she also insists that "outgrown maps of consciousness are redrawn."
Read MoreToday, I want to talk about a few artists whose art made me stare, think, and wonder. I'm talking about artists whom I got the chance to meet in the last couple of weeks and ask some questions. And all of them are smart, eloquent, and courageous women. That's why I prefer to think about them as "Ladies Who Dare."
Read MoreFebruary 12, 12:00 - 1:00 pm
Join Lita Albuquerque for an informal talk and walkthrough of 20/20: Accelerando
Read MoreThe works in Lita Albuquerque’s exhibition “Embodiment” continues her investigation of space, depth and perception. These new wall pieces are large-scale sculpture/paintings in which lush earth-toned raw pigments are juxtaposed with concave disks covered in gold or silver leaf.
Read More“There was a point in my career in the fall of 1977 when I decided to give up painting as I had known it in order to go back to the history of painting, to its very beginning where the first artists were using the earth to draw upon its surface, as a need to understand it historically.”
Read MoreLongtime L.A. artist Lita Albuquerque’s new show at Kohn Gallery is simple and regal. Her “Embodiment” paintings hang inside, each with a shimmering gold, gridded, indented circle at its center.
Read MoreAlbuquerque is known for her performance art and recently gathered several hundred participants to create a "performative sculpture" titled Spine of the Earth 2012, for the Getty's Pacific Standard Time Performance. She received the Cairo Biennale Prize at the Sixth International Cairo Biennale. Her work is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty Trust, the Whitney Museum of American Art, LACMA, and MOCA, among others.
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