Nancy Chunn

Opening Reception, November 3, 5-7pm Nancy Chunn in Conversation with Barry Glassner, author of Culture of Fear and The Gospel of Food, Sunday, November 11, 2:30pm, Forum

For her Los Angeles debut, the Ben Maltz Gallery has brought together a selection of Nancy Chunn’s politically charged paintings for a dynamic solo exhibition. Nancy Chunn: Media Madness opens at Ben Maltz Gallery November 3, 2007 and is on view through January 18, 2008. It is curated by Meg Linton, Director of Gallery and Public Programs. A catalogue documenting the exhibition will be available in Spring 2008.

Nancy Chunn is the Fall 2007 Jennifer Howard Coleman Distinguished Lecturer and Resident (JHCDLR) in the Fine Arts Department at Otis from September 23 to November 17, 2007. She is teaching a master painting class, conducting one-on-one critiques with senior and graduate level painting students, and presenting two free public lectures about her work in the Otis Forum during her residency.

Born in Los Angeles in 1941, Nancy Chunn received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts in 1969. She began her career in Los Angeles before moving to New York City in the late seventies. Consistently concerning the political arena, her work exposes geopolitical themes and the power of the media to define and control public opinion. A self-proclaimed “political junkie,” she achieved critical success with her early maplike paintings of tyrannized nations and has continued her commitment to documenting world events and the repeating cycle of history in paintings produced in the last 25 years. She is largely recognized for the yearlong Front Pages project, where she applied images and text to provide commentary on every cover of The New York Times from January 1 to December 31, 1996. Her recent painting series, 9/11 and Chicken Little and the Culture of Fear, focus on the terrorism crisis in America and the panic it perpetuates. (continued)

Nancy Chunn has exhibited internationally and has been represented by the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York for 20 years. She has twice received a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship. In a September 2004 Art Price article, Park Sung Hee states, “During her 25-year career, Nancy Chunn’s consistent subject matter and stylistic diversity conveys a full maturity in her artistic vision. Her works clearly display integration of unique painting techniques, and, through a delicate, modern aesthetic, reveal a complex social conscience, which one can only rarely experience today.”

Otis College of Art and Design created the JHCDLR with the support of the Samuel Goldwyn Foundation, to honor the memory of Jennifer Howard Coleman, a talented artist and an Otis alumna. It acknowledges leading contemporary painters by awarding an annual residency and lectureship hosted at Otis in the fall semester. Otis students have an opportunity to engage with a professional artist who is pursuing an active and viable studio practice, about aesthetic, economic, and technical issues that artists face today.

Nancy Chunn: Media Madness