November 2008 Archives

The Visiting Artist Lecture Series welcomed New York-based artist Carter to the UC Irvine campus the week of May 15th. Carter gave a guest lecture on his work, and lead a three day workshop in graduate studies. He met individually with graduate students with an emphasis on sculpture, painting and photography to discuss their past and current projects and later engaged in group critique. The final day was spent at the Getty Center discussing selections from the video program, California Video. The first comprehensive survey of video art from 1968 to the present, the program featured a day long screening of works by Bruce Yonemoto, Chair of Studio Art.

Carter has come to prominence recently with a varied yet cohesive range of work that suggests Oliver Sacks-like themes of real versus fictional identities, both mental and corporeal. His quasi-figurative landscapes, combining pen and ink with collaged elements, are dominated by rock-like human heads. His videos and Polaroids feature mannequins and prosthetic limbs appearing to do the work of the artist--drawing and arranging papers. His glossy sculpted busts, enlivened with little moustaches and spare coverings of hair, bear teasingly autobiographical titles such as 1949, Self Portrait as a Homosexual, 1965, 1970.

Born in Norwich, Connecticut in 1970, Carter received his BFA in 1992 from The Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore and his MFA from UC, Davis in 1997. He also attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1994.

He has been widely exhibited internationally, including The Saatchi Gallery in the USA Today exhibition and The Royal Academy of Arts, both in London, the Whitney Museum of Art, 2006 Whitney Biennial, New York and the Wheatherspoon Art Museum, Biennial Exhibition, North Carolina.

Carter is represented by Jack Hanley, Los Angeles/San Francisco, Salon 94, New York, Hotel Gallery, London and Yvon Lambert, Paris--where he will have a solo exhibition in October.

He is also recognized for his work as a writer--earlier this year, he received the 2008 Art Journal Award from the College Art Association for his essay "The Look of Law," a theoretical introduction he published to accompany an exhibition of the same name he curated at the University Art Gallery in 2006. Leung's Guggenheim fellowship will take place during the 2009 calendar year, during which he plans to work on several projects, including a group of essays based on his meditation on the legacy of Marcel Duchamp as an ethical discourse, and a new opera in collaboration with British composer Luke Stoneham, for which Leung will spend part of the year abroad in London and Berlin.