A three-part exhibition of two poignant and political Southern California artists

The Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design is pleased to present the exhibition 3 Solo Projects: Audrey Chan, Elana Mann, and Chan & Mann on view June 22 – August 30, 2013, with an opening reception taking place Saturday, June 22, 4- 6pm. The exhibition features the poignant and political work of two artists in three parts: Audrey Chan, Elana Mann, and the collaborative artwork they create under the name Chan & Mann. Their multidisciplinary work often incorporates video, performance, public engagement, sound, painting, drawing, photography and installation. This exhibition is the third in a series called 3 Solo Projects that began in 2004 in an effort to highlight and support new work by Southern California based artists.

Audrey Chan & Elana Mann have been collaborating as the entity “Chan & Mann” for the last seven years, pushing boundaries of collaborative practice through role-playing and a performative merging of identities. Chan & Mann are creating a video installation entitled “Chan’s Mannese Theater,” which humorously deconstructs discourse in cultural identity through feminist and ethnic role-play within painted, performative, and animated realities. Based on Hollywood’s landmark movie house, TCL Theater (previously known as Grauman’s Chinese Theater and briefly Mann’s Chinese Theater), they are hybridizing their Chinese and Jewish identities and iconography into one setting. The theater will host the world premiere of “Chan & Mann’s New Fantasy (The Video),” a short movie that depicts a not-so-ordinary day in the studio with Chan & Mann. They bring to life their collaborative painting, “Chan & Mann’s New Fantasy" (2012), inspired by the French Renaissance painting, “Gabrielle d’Estrées et une des ses soeurs.” In the video Chan & Mann converse with a coven of familiars depicted in still-life, while wrestling with the legacy of Second Wave Feminism, Jewish- and Chinese- American identities in the 21st century, and the nature of codependency.

Audrey Chan is creating a large-scale printed vinyl mural: Center of the Universe, Ahma (detail). The mural is a visual response to heroic populist representations of the immigrant’s journey and the feminist maxim of “the personal is political.” In the tableau, the artist’s grandmother is a matriarchal protagonist who appears and reappears within a landscape that is both peaceable and plagued. Scenes are distilled from the 24-hour news cycle, family lore, and personal obsessions into a graphic narrative “herstory” that spans one wall of the gallery. Chan’s mundane and fantastical vignettes are influenced by the artwork of Saul Steinberg and Öyvind Fahlström, Richard Scarry’s Busytown books, Chinese landscape painting, and the imaginative play between figure and space in Gothic and Renaissance narrative cycles.

Elana Mann’s new body of work investigates active listening, the politics of the voice, and sounds of resistance through video, photography, and sculpture. Over the past year, Mann visited historical spaces of listening in Southern California, from both WWI and the Cold War era, to perform acts of radical receptivity. The resulting videos and photographs, created alone and with frequent collaborator, musician Juliana Snapper, explore what listening looks like while questioning art historical depictions of gender and intimacy. Mann’s sculptures, inspired by pre-radar WWI listening devices, provocatively tune into the sonic arenas of the gallery space and beyond by probing the ways architecture transmits sound through the body. These recent artworks continue Mann’s inquiry of how active listening can create deep bonds between people and foster political and social change.

Artists’ websites: www.audreychan.net, www.elanamann.com, http://hyperallergic.com/50141/chann- mhann-retrospective/, http://artpulsemagazine.com/putting-the-words-back-into-the-f-word-an- interview-with-audrey-chan-and-elana-mann

Public Programs
Saturday, June 22, 4pm-6pm, Free Opening reception

Saturday, July 20, 9am-3pm, $25
Chan & Mann lead a personal exploration of Chinese and Jewish culture with a tour of Jews in the Los Angeles Mosaic at the Autry Museum, Chinatown, and Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Tour includes transportation, lunch and entry to museum. Non-Credit (#25449). Register: (310) 665 6950 or www.otis.edu/ce

Saturday, August 24, 11am, Free
Gallery tour with artists Audrey Chan, Elana Mann, and director Meg Linton.

Location: Otis College of Art and Design, 9045 Lincoln Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90045 Parking & Admission: Free.Visitor parking in structure on La Tijera.
Hours: Tue-Fri 10-5 / Thu 10-9 / Sat-Sun, 12-4. Closed Mondays and major holidays. Gallery Tours: 310.665.6909 to schedule tours for school, museum or other groups Gallery Info: 310.665.6905, galleryinfo@otis.edu,www.otis.edu/benmaltzgallery

About Otis: Founded in Los Angeles in 1918, Otis College of Art and Design prepares diverse students of art and design to enrich the world through their creativity, their skill, and their vision. The College offers an interdisciplinary education for 1200 full-time students, awarding BFA degrees in Advertising, Architecture/Landscape/Interiors, Digital Media, Fashion Design, Illustration, Graphic Design, Product Design, Painting, Photography, Sculpture/New Genres, and Toy Design; and MFA degrees in Fine Arts, Graphic Design, Public Practice, and Writing. Continuing Education offers certificate programs as well as personal and professional development courses. Additional information is available at http://www.otis.edu.