MOCA Presents Gala Porras-Kim’s Open House

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (A Corner of Baci), 1990, endless supply of Baci chocolates individually wrapped in silver foil, ideal weight: 42 lbs., dimensions variable. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, purchased with funds provided by the Ruth and Jake Bloom Young Artist Fund.

On Oct. 26, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) on Grand Avenue in Los Angeles opened Open House, the latest solo exhibition by CalArts alum Gala Porras-Kim (Art MFA 09).

Open House features a range of “ephemeral, transitional, malleable” artworks to showcase the roles museums play in conserving, displaying and interpreting the works hanging in their collections.

“Porras-Kim seeks to explore the ways in which museums act as stewards of the art it owns,” states MOCA’s official release for the exhibition. “Her exhibition brings together a diverse set of artworks (and other ephemeral materials) to shed light on the role the museum and its staff of curators, registrars, and conservators play in the life of the works in its permanent collection.”

The artist is a Los Angeles-based painter and sculptor whose practice investigates Mesoamerican art and the adoption of artifacts and cultural heritage into the art world. She is the recipient of the Artadia Award (2017), Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award (2017), Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2016), Creative Capital Grant (2015), Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2015) and the California Community Foundation Fellowship (2013). 

Porras-Kim was recently named among the emerging artists in the 2019 Artsy Vanguard. She currently serves as a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and was recently a CalArts Paul Brach Visiting Artist.

The exhibition is the second iteration of the museum’s Open House series, following Open House: Elliott Hundley, which ran from April to September of this year. Open House: Gala Porras-Kim is organized by the artist and Bryan Barcena, assistant curator and manager of Publications, with Karlyn Olvido, curatorial assistant of MOCA LA. The Open House reception runs concurrently with that of With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972–1985.