For Immediate Release Contact: Becki Gervin, 408.961.

5814
July 21, 2009 bgervin@montalvoarts.org

Artist Connie Samaras Asks You to Enjoy Your Time with Excerpts from Three Projects at Montalvo

SARATOGA, Calif. – Montalvo Arts Center presents the latest exhibition in the Project Space gallery: Enjoy Your
Time: Excerpts from After the American Century (2009), Vast Active Living Intelligence System (2005), Angelic
States-Event Sequence (1998-2003) by Los Angeles-based artist Connie Samaras. The projects, which have been
produced over the last 10 years, focus on built environments, art as historical artifact, and the political and
psychological geographies found in the everyday. After the American Century was partially commissioned by
Montalvo as part of its 2009 arts initiative, AGENCY: The Work of Artists, curated by Julie Lazar.

Enjoy Your Time is on view now through Sept. 6. Gallery hours are Thursday through Sunday, 11:00 a.m. to 3:00
p.m. The exhibition is also open by appointment during regular business hours. Contact Lindsey Kouvaris at
408.961.5813 or lkouvaris@montalvoarts.org .

Enjoy Your Time is a series of photographs taken in three cities noted for their futuristic tendencies – Dubai, Las
Vegas, and the polar station in Antarctica. Growing out of a challenging landscape (desert or ice), they are literally
works in progress, showcasing the latest technological thinking. Ariel Swartley, the resident writer for AGENCY,
noted, “It’s no accident, then, that some photographs have the airy drawing board look of an architect’s rendering,
or the seductively saturated colors of a tourist brochure.”

Born in New Mexico, Samaras currently lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the University of California, Irvine. As an
artist, photographer, activist and professor, Samaras continues to address a broad range of subjects in her work,
often allowing relationships between history and technology to intersect in her pieces. Her interests include,
among other things, charting the variable membrane between fiction and real world, mapping political
geographies and psychological dislocation in the everyday, and approaching the practice of art in relationship to
various methods of cataloguing history.

The three works from Samaras’ collection on view in the Project Space emulate her interest in the space between
fiction and real world as well as the idea of speculative landscape. Of After the American Century Samaras said,
“Produced at the moment of an unprecedented worldwide economic downturn, one is not sure if the images
represent a future that is in a state of becoming or in a state of obsolescence.”

Angelic States – Event Sequence (1998-2003) is a photographic series looking at fin de siècle architecture and the
intersection of police, surveillance, military, and entertainment technologies in U.S. urban landscapes. Shot in Los
Angeles, New York and Las Vegas, these images appear to be digitally manipulated but are not and underscore the
seeming visual bleed of cyberspace onto constructed environments. Additionally, many of the images in this series
were shot in seemingly public spaces where photography is no longer allowed. As a result, Samaras took on various
personae in order to take the image. For example, the image of the Sahara hotel, a Middle Eastern themed casino,
was taken during at the beginning of the current war with Iraq on a “high alert” day. When stopped by guards, she
told them she was sent out by the casino’s insurance company to take pictures of the antiquated video cameras in
the parking structure.

V.A.L.I.S., vast active living intelligence system (2005) is a series of photographs and videos shot in Antarctica.
Awarded a National Science Foundation OPP Artists and Writers Grant, Samaras traveled to the U.S. station at the
South Pole to depict the liminal spaces between life support architecture and extreme environment. Because the
ice covers over any structure built at the Pole within 30-40 years, she also became interested in how the U.S. re-
imagined both its own image and the future of space colonization in the structures built since there since mid-
century. For example, in this exhibition are two images of the Buckminster Fuller (Dymaxion) dome, now
dismantled, built in the ‘70s and conveying Fuller’s environmental ideals that we are all astronauts on “spaceship
earth.” Next to those images is one of the new Amundsen-Scott station, then under construction, that shares,
despite its remote location, the architectural vocabulary of global capitalism.

After the American Century (2009) is the most recent work in the exhibition was partially commissioned by the
Montalvo. Traveling to Dubai, United Arab Emirates in December 2008 and March 2009, one of Samaras’ interests
was to depict the cultural narratives generated by global capitalism and embedded in the architectural projects of
the region, especially those oriented towards tourism and havens for extreme wealth. “Central to the work is a
contrasting of the branding of Dubai as an idealized future where hyper consumerism transcends all matters of
earthly constraints with the such bitter realities of the poverty among the laborers who are building Dubai and the
difficult working conditions of such an extreme climate,” says Samaras. Like Angelic States – Event Sequence, most
of what Samaras recorded was off limits for the camera.

“Throughout AGENCY participating artists have demonstrated that interdependence takes on a multitude of
meanings depending on each person's interpretation of their work,” curator Lazar said. “Connie’s installation
offers us a deceptively simple way of looking at the complexity of how we are connected to present and future
environmental, political and cultural circumstances. It is an honor to have her pivotal photographs – part of a
larger artistic endeavor – incorporated into this series.”

AGENCY is a focused, thematic series of newly commissioned and existing art projects that explore the subject of
interdependence – life's dynamic, reciprocal interplay – from a variety of approaches including family,
immigration, the environment, faith, cultural memory and economic globalism. More than 60 artists were invited
to participate in AGENCY because of their sensitive, compassionate investigations into relationships among people,
places and systems as well as their skillful production of engaging public art, film, sculpture, photography,
literature, performance and architecture. Please note: the following artists are no longer participating in AGENCY:
Allan Sekula and Wang Wei. For the most updated information visit www.montalvoarts.org/agency.

AGENCY: The Work of Artists is funded in part by grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, The
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, Nimoy Foundation, and gifts from Mickie and
Gibson Anderson, Jo and Barry Ariko, L.J. Cella, Wanda Kownacki and John Holton, Sally and Don Lucas, Judy and
George Marcus, Kathie and Robert Maxfield, and Joan and Frederick M. Nicholas.

For more information visit www.montalvoarts.org/agency. To reserve a space for this event, call the Box Office:
408.961.5858. Tickets are also available the day of the event at the registration table in the historic Villa.

About Montalvo Arts Center

Montalvo Arts Center is a nonprofit organization that fosters community engagement through the creation and
presentation of multidisciplinary art. By uniting the broadest possible audiences with a global community of artists,
Montalvo expands the role of arts and culture as an essential community resource. Montalvo’s programming
includes: an annual theme-based arts program; music and performance; education and public programs; new
media and visual arts; and the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency. Located in the Saratoga foothills in the midst
of Silicon Valley, Montalvo Arts Center occupies a Mediterranean-style villa on 175 stunning acres, which Senator
James Phelan left to the people of California for the encouragement of promising students in the areas of art,
music, literature and architecture. In January 2005, the organization changed its name from "Villa Montalvo" to
"Montalvo Arts Center" to better communicate its mission to increasing local, national and international
audiences. Montalvo celebrates its centennial in 2012. For more information about Montalvo Arts Center, call
408.961.5800 or visit www.montalvoarts.org.

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