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STRANGE NEW WORLD: ART & DESIGN FROM TIJUANA
EXTRAÑO NUEVO MUNDO: ARTE Y DISEÑO DESDE TIJUANA

Cultural Institute of Mexico, Washington DC
February 16 - April 24, 2006

Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
May 20 - September 3, 2006

Santa Monica Museum of Art
opening late 2006 or early 2007, TBD

Van Cleve Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening of Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana/Extraño Nuevo Mundo: Arte y Diseño Desde Tijuana. This group show, organized by the curators from the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, will premier at the Cultural Institute of Mexico in Washington DC on February 16, 2006 and will then travel to San Diego and Santa Monica. While in San Diego, the exhibition will be on view at both Museum of Contemporary Art locations, downtown at Kettner and Broadway and in La Jolla on Prospect Street. Following the exhibition's tenure in United States, the show will then travel to one or two museums in Mexico.

Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana/Extraño Nuevo Mundo: Arte y diseño desde Tijuana will present the work of 41 artists from Baja California. The majority of work shown will be from the years 1990 to present, with a few of the artist's work from the 1970s and 80s.

In 2005 the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego purchased a large drawing by Hugo Crosthwaite, entitled Linea - Escaparates de Tijuana 1-4 (Line - Tijuana Cityscapes 1-4). This work, completed in 2003, is a four-panel cityscape, measuring 2 feet by 16 feet (24 x 192 inches), depicts the urban landscape constructs of Tijuana's colonias - the suburban communities perched precariously on the hillsides of the border city. This large drawing on wood panel will be included in Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana/Extraño Nuevo Mundo: Arte y diseño desde Tijuana.

With Linea, Hugo Crosthwaite has created a panorama of unidentifiable cement buildings. He says, "I wanted to create the general impression of an impoverished city, where windows, buildings and doors have been put up out of necessity." The artist's depiction of this haphazard construction is a tribute to Tijuana's improvisation, paying homage to the ways that the US-Mexico border, known colloquially as la linea, has impacted the development of Tijuana as a place. Crosthwaite captures the aesthetic of Tijuana by depicting the inventive construction and the chaos that it brings. People migrating north to cross the border into the United States often end up staying in Tijuana where they build homes out of what they find (discarded refrigerator door and tires) and where they can (on hillsides, behind stores), which has led Raúl Cárdenas Osuna, founder of the design collective Torolab, to call the city's dominate style "emergency architecture," where "the ephemeral becomes permanent."

With each new wave of arrivals, this northern border city is reborn and because people have not stopped coming since the 1970s, Tijuana is a city that never settles into itself - it is a city in constant motion. It is this aesthetic of transient and temporary construction that Crosthwaite has chronicled in his panoramic drawing. The artist depicts the always-transforming Tijuana with austere right angles and forceful straight lines, all the while creating a romantically human local, tinged with political and social nuances.

Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana/Extraño Nuevo Mundo: Arte y diseño desde Tijuana explores the art and design in a city that is consistently transformed by issues of globalization, migration and identity; focusing on documenting the oft-dismissed creative vitality of Tijuana and neighboring cities. Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana/Extraño Nuevo Mundo: Arte y diseño desde Tijuana also investigates the border experience as well as artists whose work has been influenced by the fast-paced urban development of Baja California. The museum exhibition will present a host of works in a wide variety of media. It is surely a show not to be missed.

For more information on the exhibition please contact the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego at 858-454-3541.

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