Frank Lobdell
Photo credit: M Lee Fatherree, 2004

A large part of the ICA’s mission is to bring public attention to the work of emerging artists and provide support for those artists at the beginning of their careers. In the summer of 2001, the ICA initiated an emerging artists’ series entitled Introductions South. At that time, the ICA collaborated with the San Francisco Art Dealers Association (SFADA) to present the work of artists that the SFADA had chosen as “introduction” artists. In subsequent years, the ICA has culled from the entire region to find their own “introductions” artists. In the four years since the series began, they have exhibited the work of 75 artists, many of whom have gone on to be widely recognized in the Bay Area and beyond.

NextNew marks a transition in the ICA’s annual emerging artists’ exhibition series. In celebration of our 25th anniversary, we asked three of the Bay Area’s most renowned artists to exhibit their work alongside their choice of the “next new” artistic talent on the horizon. We are honored that Frank Lobdell, Hung Liu, and Manuel Neri have all accepted our invitation to provide a visionary look at what the next new trends, movements, and/or ideas will be through the juxtaposition of their work and the work of three emerging artists. Lobdell, Liu and Neri each have important and distinctive perspectives on emerging talent having all taught art on the fertile grounds of university campuses in the Bay Area.

At 83 years of age, Frank Lobdell is widely recognized as one of the premier post-war American abstract painters in the country and was one of the most influential teachers at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) from 1957 – 1965, when he left to join the art department at Stanford University. His most recent works, which will be featured in the NextNew presentation, are saturated with a vibrant palette of cobalt blue, cadmium yellow, lavender, and vibrant reds. Mr. Lobdell has chosen the work of Norm Rosenberger, a Stanford MFA graduate, and an Oakland-based painter and art book maker as his selection for NextNew.

Hung Liu is an American artist of Chinese descent who was born and educated in China. Liu frequently takes her subject matter from her native China, choosing imagery that allows her to raise questions about oppression, feminism, cultural diversity, and assimilation. Liu has taught in the art department of Mills College since 1990 and she is a 1993 recipient of a Eureka Fellowship award. Ms. Liu has chosen the work of recent SECA Award winner Rosana Castrillo Diaz to include in the NextNew exhibition. A 2003 MFA graduate from Mills College, Ms. Diaz’s recent work includes large-scale, labor-intensive “drawings” made entirely of adhesive tape. Diaz also makes traditional works on paper – drawings that explore fragments of visual images such as the printed page or the spiral edge of a notebook.

Manuel Neri has been exploring the human body in his art for more than four decades. He is known primarily for his life-size figurative sculptures in plaster, bronze, and marble. Although his sculptures have a significant material presence, Neri’s interest lies in the ability of the human figure to convey the spiritual. Neri began his teaching career at the California School of Fine Arts where he taught from 1959 – 1965. In 1965, he joined the art department at the University of California at Davis where he taught for 25 years until his retirement in 1990. The work of Mikio Matsuo recently caught the attention of Mr. Neri. Born in Tokyo, Mr. Matsuo studied at the San Francisco Art Institute in the early 1970s, but returned to his native land in 1976, upon graduation from SFAI. Matsuo’s Zen Monk Project, entitled Unsui, is comprised of a series of portraits of 27 Japanese monks. Matsuo made three images of each of the monks – front, back, and left side, cropped at the neck, and heads that nearly fill each frame – each placed in a wash of strong horizontal light that rakes his features. In total, there are 81 images in 27 frames that will be exhibited in the NextNew exhibition.

Since the 1980s, the Bay Area has been an epicenter for art schools, galleries, museums and alternative exhibition spaces that have nurtured emerging artists. These three extremely talented and accomplished artists and teachers have served as mentors to generations of emerging artists, passing on their knowledge, expertise, and contacts to their protégés over the years. Kimball feels that “As we look at the exceptional fusion of influences and multiple stylistic viewpoints that are being created today in the Bay Area, who better to pick the “next new” than Frank Lobdell, Hung Liu, and Manuel Neri”?

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San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art
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