Whitney Bedford | Santa Barbara Museum of Art

Inside/Outside

Santa Barbara Museum of Art
11 June 2023 - 18 February 2024

When visual artists make an image, they have to bring the inside outside by giving thoughts, fears, dreams, and life stories visible form. In this exhibition, each artwork has external signs telling about an inner world, whether real, fictional, or in-between. Ilana Savdie’s Lágrimas y mocos (exploiting a suitable host) seems to show a parasitic relationship. Rose Salane’s nesting table and ice skates are props in a mysterious drama about air travel. Keith Mayerson paints a puppet peddling to a better life in California, which might be an alter-ego. In a self-portrait, Narsiso Martinez is listening to music on headphones, which partially transports him to another world away from the heat, pesticides, and hard labor of harvesting cherries. Each of these artists negotiates what is seen and unseen, hidden and revealed, inside and outside.

The artists in the exhibition include Whitney Bedford, Narsiso Martinez, Keith Mayerson, Jesse Mockrin, Rose Salane, Shizu Saldamando, Ilana Savdie, and Kon Trubkovich.

All of the artworks have been recently acquired by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art thanks to the generosity of Peter Remes, Dan Aloni and Sarah Brown, The Basil Alkazzi Acquisition Fund, The Museum Contemporaries, and Kandy Budgor, Luria/Budgor Family Foundation.