Exhibitions

Ruben Ochoa

September 23 to November 1, 2009

Exhibition curated by Cate Rimmer
Opening Reception: Tuesday September 22, 2009 at 7:30pm

The Charles H. Scott Gallery is pleased to present the first Canadian exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist Ruben Ochoa.

Working with a variety of media, Ruben Ochoa investigates the ways in which walls and barriers impact the communities that are demarcated by them. Culturally and economically diverse communities are separated by the dividing walls of urban development such as those formed by the freeways and roadways of urban sprawl. In Ochoa's words, "Walls may mean protection, as in a retaining wall. But they also indicate borders, keeping something out of the way".

The work on exhibition at the Charles H. Scott is based on a public intervention that Ochoa produced in 2006 with funding by Creative Capital Foundation where he attached vinyl wallpaper to the concrete barrier wall on Interstate 10, a major arterial route running through Los Angeles. The wallpaper depicted the kind of greenery beyond the barrier, thereby giving the appearance that a portion of the wall had been extracted and the barrier between communities breached. A remnant of the original wallpaper and a series of related lenticular photo works are presented in the exhibition along with a series of propositional drawings.

Ruben Ochoa's work has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions including recent solo exhibitions at Site Santa Fe, Susanne Vielmetter Berlin Projects, and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY. He was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and Phantom Sightings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and his work is in a number of prestigious museum collections. Ochoa is represented by Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects.