John Divola

„I have always considered photographs to be artifacts of a physical, intellectual, technological, and experimental engagement. I have come to consider groups of my photographs produced in this manner as archives, and to consider the archive itself as the core of these projects. From these archives, any number of manifestations of a project can emerge; from exhibitions, to books, to online manifestations.

Some of the photographs in this project are conventionally observational, often atmospheric observation, material observation, or direct documentation. Other images are more self-consciously engaging directly, or tangentially, with the discourse of contemporary art, often with an emphasis on gesture and abstraction. My interest in gesture is not limited to my own marks and activity but also architectural gesture, the gestures of individuals ripping open the walls stealing copper wire, or the gestures of military trainees spraying the walls with paint ball impacts during war game exercises. Or, on the exteriors, the gestures of someone recklessly driving a bull dozer clearing foliage from between the buildings.

At George, we have the site of multiple engagements. The engagement of the massive and deadly momentum of the cold war. The engagement of the fictive battlefield for war games after its decommission. And the site of my own engagement of medium, sensibility, and multiple histories: Histories both cultural and personal. I am presenting on these pages some of the loose groupings of works which I have preliminarily described by format and material. I have come to see the results of these engagements as allowing a wide range of approaches from sinister, formal, social, humorous, and personal.”

John Divola BA, 1971 California State University, Northridge; MA 1973: MFA 1974, University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1975 he has taught photography and art at numerous institutions including California Institute of the Arts (1978-1988), and since 1988 he has been a Professor of Art at the University of California, Riverside. John Divola works primarily with photography and digital imaging. While he has approached a broad range of subjects he is currently moving through the landscape looking for the oscillating edge between the abstract and the specific. Since 1975, Divola’s work has been featured in more than seventy solo exhibitions in the United States, Japan, Europe, Mexico, and Australia, including Galerie Marquardt, Paris (1990); Seibu Gallery, Tokyo (1987); the University of New Mexico Art Museum (1982); The Patricia Faure Gallery, Los Angeles (2000); and Janet Borden Gallery, New York (2001). Since 1973 his work has been included in more than two hundred group exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Japan, recent exhibitions include: Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity 1900-2000, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, (2000); Architecture Hot and Cold, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2000), and Los Angeles 1955-85, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2006), The Conspiracy, Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland (2009), Surface Conditons: The Photographs of John Divola, Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany, Whitney Biennial 2017, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2017).