Pacific Standard Time Performance & Public Art Festival Kicks Off at ALAC Opening

September 26, 2011

Los Angeles, CA (September 26, 2011) – Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC), the international contemporary art fair of the west coast, which takes place from January 19-22, 2012 at The Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, CA, celebrates Pacific Standard Time, Art in L.A.: 1945-1980, an initiative of the Getty with arts institutions across Southern California, by kicking off the first 11 day Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival. Together, 44 years after the initial launch of Disappearing Environments, they will unveil the re-imagined public art installation originally performed by Judy Chicago, Eric Orr and Lloyd Hamrol in 1968. The Disappearing Environments premiering at opening night of Art Los Angeles Contemporary will be constructed out of 25 tons of dry ice that will serve as the entrance to Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2012 and will evaporate over the duration of the four-day international contemporary art fair. The installation will be re-imagined and reactivated by Los Angeles based Materials & Applications, a non-profit research and exhibition center, in collaboration with Judy Chicago and a team of 40 Los Angeles-based artists. The illumination of the installation at dusk on Thursday, January 19, during opening night of Art Los Angeles Contemporary, also marks the official opening of the Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival.

"The Festival aims to present key works from the history of performance art and public art in Southern California, often reinventing them for the radically different context of art-making in Los Angeles today. ALAC and Barker Hanger present a perfect site for the fully re-imagined spectacle of the Disappearing Environments," said the festival’s director Glenn Phillips, Principal Project Specialist and Consulting Curator at the Getty Research Institute.

“We are thrilled and honored to host the kick off of the monumental Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival with the recreation of the timeless installation, Disappearing Environments.” said Tim Fleming, founder and director, Art Los Angeles Contemporary. “Working closely with renowned artists like Judy Chicago and the team of LA-based artists who will re-envision and build this installation, is consistent with the art and featured programming at ALAC that differentiates Art Los Angeles Contemporary from any other international art fair,” he continued. “With partnerships like this, we continue to deliver the best in what contemporary art has to offer on a worldwide scale, while paying homage to the Los Angeles contemporary arts community," Fleming said.

In 1968, Judy Chicago, Eric Orr, and Lloyd Hamrol constructed two publicly sited dry ice environments in Century City, California. The Disappearing Environments were as much performances in their creation as they were temporary sculptural interventions into the consumer landscape rising around it. The installation served as a poignant conceptual commentary on the rapid commercial development that was transpiring citywide, demanding a critique of the rise in consumerism, and the monumentality of the architecture that ensued. The critical feminist underpinnings of Chicago’s practice emerged in Disappearing Environments, providing an impetus for dialogue on the potential for a disappearing patriarchal society. The piece’s illumination at dusk on Thursday, January 19 will echo the road-flare illuminations that Chicago performed in the original Disappearing Environments.