Latest Events in Riverside County(March Updated)

UCR ARTS: California Museum of Photography is pleased to announce the first ever solo museum presentation of Lenard Smith. Smith is a Ghanaian-American studio-based photographer whose work often depicts still life tableaux. His photographs take inspiration from other artistic media including sculpture and architecture, in particular African Brutalist structures. The contents of his assemblages range from photographic equipment and theory, to found objects and detritus, to signifiers of Black identity and culture. Smith situates himself within the lineage of the “ragpicker” in his pursuit of creating unusual yet productive juxtapositions between found objects. Smith’s depiction of common objects is highly legible, personal, and interwoven with social identity. Employing a commercial aesthetic, his pictures simultaneously manifest in formalist estrangement from these otherwise familiar objects.

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Ansel Adams lost his way. The great American photographer stood at the summit of his life, renowned, celebrated. Then came the 1960s: the civil rights movement, the counterculture, free love, psychedelics, assassinations, Vietnam War protests, marches, and chaos. Even more traumatically for the country’s preeminent photographer, photography itself changed beneath him. The new generation of 1960s photographers didn’t give a damn about rocks and trees. They rejected the pieties of tradition and the shackles of Adams’ “Zone System.” Photo historian Jonathan Green: “The obsessions of sixties photography were ruthless: alienation, deformity, sterility, insanity, sexuality, bestial and mechanical violence, and obscenity.”

In this fourth iteration of Cheech Collects, the exhibition showcases more works from Cheech Marin’s landmark gift to the Riverside Art Museum’s permanent collection, with a focus on pastels and recent acquisitions to The Cheech Center Collection. New additions by Carlos Almaraz, Jaime Guerrero, and Narsiso Martínez are among those joining over 100 pieces by 40+ artists on view.

What roles have sites of cultural display played in reinforcing geopolitical power? How do the stories told through traditional museum collections uphold imperial frameworks—and what happens when those narratives are reimagined? Fariba Hajamadi mines the visual language of cultural institutions through meticulously constructed images that create otherworldly effects and unlikely juxtapositions: a blood-red pool of liquid reflects and distorts the intricate patterns of a centuries-old ornamental tapestry; a mirrored, inverted view—resembling a photographic negative—appears impossibly through twin doorways of the Hagia Sophia. In addition to these tableaux rendered on canvas and lustrous satin, Fariba Hajamadi: History is in the Caption also includes an installation featuring a wallpaper design that draws on the aesthetic traditions of Toile de Jouy, reimagined as a contemporary storytelling device. Enveloping the viewer in a layered narrative that blends myth and history, Hajamadi's pattern depicts scenes from pivotal moments in Iranian history interwoven with fantastical creatures.

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”News from the front” is the unifying theme in Cheech Collects, the cornerstone exhibition at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum designed to be updated annually. The latest iteration of Cheech Collects opens on Saturday, May 27, 2023 with a new selection of about 100 artworks drawn from Cheech Marin’s generous gift of more than 500 works to the Riverside Art Museum and others from his personal collection. The exhibition will be on view in the first floor galleries of The Cheech through Sunday, May 12, 2024. Building upon the foundation of its inaugural edition, the latest iteration of the exhibition features bold and vibrant works, reflecting a wide range of Chicana/o/x experiences. Depicting physical neighborhoods, social gatherings, and critical events, the exhibition reveals a phenomenon that Marin refers to as “news from the front.” In line with the museum’s deep commitment to continue growing the collection, the exhibition features some newly acquired works to The Cheech Center Collection from other donors, while keeping many of the notable, historical works that have drawn people from across the country to The Cheech in its inaugural year. The exhibition also marks the launch of The Cheech’s first research initiative designed to give more insight into the artists, their work, and their invaluable contributions to American Art History. In addition, it is expected to inform Riverside Art Museum on future acquisitions. Overwhelmingly, visitors and supporters of The Cheech have said that the center “feels like home” – a space that embraces the cultural production and contributions of Chicanas/os/x. The Cheech will continue to honor communities that, though rarely represented as such in mainstream museum spaces, are deeply artistically meaningful.