'Facial Expressionism' exhibit opens in Cerritos Jan. 31

The Cerritos College Art Gallery is pleased to open the year of
2012 with the exhibit Facial Expressionism.

Fifteen contemporary artists participating in Facial Expressionism at
the Cerritos College Art Gallery produce innovative aesthetic
deterritorializations of faces that purposefully over-spill the
limits of any singular signifying system, thereby resisting a simple
complicity between a face and the evolving metrics for 'knowing' it.
Merging baroque vision with haptic thought, the works on display
exist as embodied (de)formations that explore the ontogenesis of a
particular face with its various expressive manifestations, the
gestalt of insular figuration with the nonorganic vitality of ground,
the immanence of representation and materiality, and the entanglement
of emotive gesture and pre-responsive affect.

As gestures migrate from body to body, and from one medium to
another, confusing the etymologically linked concepts of passion and
passage, it is difficult not to be reminded of the individualistic
humanism of the early 20th-century art historical movement of
Expressionism (Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter, etc.).

But while there are certain stylistic similarities to this modernist
namesake, the work on display in Facial Expressionism must also be
repositioned against the unfolding backdrop of recent para-humanist
and object-oriented concepts of expressionism in contemporary
philosophy (for example, theorist Brian Massumi argues that a kick is
as much an expression of the ball as the player).

EXHIBITING ARTISTS: Michael Alvarez, Jeremy Bailey, Maya Bloch,
Justin Bower, Guy Denning, Kim Dorland, Paul Gillis, Annie Lapin,
Gerardo Monterubbio, Buddy Nestor, Rachel Niffenegger, Kambui
Olujimi, Dominic Quagliozzi, Phoebe Unwin, and Eric Yahnker
STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: Galileo Gonzalez

WHEN: January 31st, 2012 to March 15th, 2012
Opening Reception: Tuesday, January 31st, 2012, 5-8PM

WHERE: Cerritos College Art Gallery
11110 Alondra Blvd
Norwalk, CA 90650
A map of the campus is available at
www.cerritos.edu/guide

Daily Parking is available for $2.00 in lot C-10 in the student white
stalls only.

COST: Admission and events are free and open to the public.