Ramp Project: Ingrid Calame

Exhibition Walkthrough: Friday, January 20, 5-6pm, ICA Members Only, join on-site
Opening Reception: Friday, January 20, 6 - 8pm, free and open to the public

December 21, 2005

A new Ramp Project goes on view this winter at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), University of Pennsylvania: a monumental wall painting by artist Ingrid Calame, based on graffiti taken from the cemement embankments of the Los Angeles River. The eighth in a series of temporary works commissioned for the ramp, Calame’s work can bee seen January 21-March 26, 2006.

Ingrid Calame traces contours of stains that she lifts from the streets and transposes onto white gallery walls into graphic, painterly compositions. Collected from sidewalks, parking lots, roads, and rampways in Los Angeles, New York, Las Vegas, and most recently Seoul, Korea, Calame has developed an extensive archive. Some stains are puddle-like; others bear the force of impact, defined by direction and speed; still others are simply small seepages, drops, natural drip and mechanical drizzles. There are actual paint stains, too: graffiti, the mark of human hands. Once traced, every stain is annotated with the place and date it was recorded, and then filed away for future use in her paintings. Abstract and representational at once, these layered works refer to cartography, forensics, and the gestures of Abstract Expressionism; at the same time they evoke abrasion, erosion, evaporation, erasure, and inscription.

For her installation at ICA, Calame responded to the steep pitch of the ramp space by turning to tracings she had made on the sharp embankment walls of the Los Angeles River. These included a turf war in spray paint between two local graffiti crews from the surrounding "Frog Town" neighborhood-each graffiting over the others" salvo of text. As Calame writes, "I traced the silhouette of the whole, so that words are sometimes visible but mostly are obliterated and changed into one conglomerate shape. It is like I found the constellation of stains that I usually combine in the studio." As rendered by Calame, this urban palimpsest is a microcosm of personal and political disputes in which one point of view wipes out the other thereby creating a new form.

Ingrid Calame (b.1965, lives in Los Angeles) rose to prominence in the late 1990s with her large-scale enamel paintings on Mylar with lyrical titles like Spalunk (1997) and b-b-b,rr-gR-UF!, b-b-b(1999). Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH; James Cohan Gallery, New York; Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, Los Angeles; PKM Gallery, Seoul, Korea; and Galerie Rolf Ricke, Cologne, Germany. Significant group exhibitions include: "Extreme Abstraction," Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; the 2000 Whitney Biennial; "Color Me Blind!," Wurtembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany, and "Abstract Painting Once Removed," Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX. She is currently at work on a large-scale public commission for the San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture which will consist of two ceiling paintings for the entrance of the San Diego New Main Library.

ICA Ramp Project

Since 2000, ICA has commissioned artist installations for its 92-foot ramp, a transitional space that connects the first and second floor galleries. With its striking architecture and soaring windows overlooking 36th Street, the Ramp has been transformed into a dynamic programmed exhibition space, exposing the public to the contemporary art that is central to ICA’s mission.

The opening reception for Ramp Project: Ingrid Calame, which is free and open to the public, is scheduled for Friday, January 20, 2006 from 6pm to 8pm. The reception will be preceded by a gallery walkthrough at 5pm for Members Only.

ICA acknowledges the generous sponsorship of the William Penn Foundation for this project. Additional funding has been provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Dietrich Foundation Inc., the Overseers Board for the Institute of Contemporary Art, friends and members of ICA, and the University of Pennsylvania. ICA is also grateful for in-kind support from Loews Philadelphia Hotel. (Information complete as of 11/28/05.) All programs subject to change.

ICA is located at 118 South 36th Street at the University of Pennsylvania. ICA is open to the public, except during installation, from 12:00pm to 8:00pm on Wednesday through Friday and from 11:00am to 5:00pm on Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $6 for adults; $3 for students over 12, artists, and senior citizens; and free to ICA members, children 12 and under, PENN card holders, and on Sundays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For more information, call 215-898-7108/5911.

ICA
Founded in 1963 as part of the University of Pennsylvania, ICA presents a year-round exhibition schedule that defines, analyzes, and explores the contemporary visual arts. A non-collecting museum, ICA offers one-person, thematic, and group exhibitions, including commissioned works. ICA diversifies its examination of art to include interdisciplinary work such as film, video, performance, architecture, and design. ICA plays a vital role in introducing American audiences to rising international artists and is also committed to the regional arts community. ICA has been at the forefront of contemporary art for 40 years, presenting the first museum solo exhibitions of artists Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, Lisa Yuskavage, Charles LeDray and many others.

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