| Okay Mountain Meditations #3, 2015 Digital C Print 32 x 32 inches each Collection of The Crocker Art Museum |
Mark Moore Fine Art is proud to announce that the CROCKER ART MUSEUM has acquired a set of photo-based works by artist collective OKAY MOUNTAIN for its permanent collection. Okay Mountain is a nine member artist collective based in Austin, Texas. Formed in 2006 as an artist-run alternative gallery space, the group has exhibited their drawing, video, sound, and performance projects throughout the United States and in Mexico City, and has been widely recognized for its “inventive construction, loving attention to detail and keen-eyed connoisseurship.” Okay Mountain repackages, reconstitutes, and rekindles our consumerist desires with a sardonic edge. Their installations and multi-media assemblage works mimic the stock vernacular of our communal materialism, yet tweak them just enough to reveal our superficial insecurities and convictions. In the MEDITATIONS Series, the group plays on the iconography of the Zen Garden, as seen through the eyes of western popular culture. Creating a purposely-mediated experience of “Zen,” the installation poses as a pre-packaged version of what could have been a meaningful experience, if the consumer had bothered to leave the house. Like the screensaver images of peaceful monuments floating across a laptop, the imagery plays on a desire for escape, but also immediacy—one desire ruling out the other. The result is a razor sharp wit interpretation of a very American mixture of banality and good intentions — an eagerness for a respite from the mundane, without the will to see it through. While most artists are alumni of the University of Texas at Austin (TX), others are graduates of University of California Los Angeles (CA), Rhode Island School of Design (RI), and the University of Kansas (KS). Institutional exhibitions have included those at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston (TX), Austin Museum of Art (TX), McNay Art Museum (TX), Arthouse (TX), University of Tennessee, Chattanooga (TN), and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (MA). Their work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Art Houston (TX), Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (CT), McNay Museum of Art (TX), Orange County Museum of Art (CA), Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (CA), Santa Barabara Museum of Art (CA), Vanderbilt University (TN); Museum of Fine Art Houston, Houston, TX. The Crocker Art Museum features the world’s foremost display of California art and is renowned for its holdings of European master drawings and international ceramics. The Crocker also holds permanent collections of Asian, African, and Oceanic art, ceramics, and photography. The Museum offers a diverse spectrum of exhibitions, events, and programs to augment its collections, including films, concerts, studio classes, lectures, children’s activities, and more. The Museum has also dedicated the historic building’s entire first floor as an education center, which includes four classrooms, space for student and community exhibitions, the Gerald Hansen Library, and Tot Land. Discover it all at crockerart.org. |
For more information on this artist, go to: https://www.markmoorefineart.com/artists/okay-mountain
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