IN PLAIN SIGHT

MILLS COLLEGE ART MUSEUM, OAKLAND , CA 2019

castaneda/reiman draw inspiration from their personal collection of found landscape paintings, which they have acquired and added to for more than two decades. They are interested in the conceptual and physical weight of living with and owning works of art, including the movement and rotation of pieces over time from their homes to various studios to storage and back.

For this exhibition, MCAM invited castaneda/reiman to respond to works in its collection. The artists homed in on two landscape paintings by artists unknown, which they borrowed and photographed in their own home environments, essentially considering them alongside the works that they already own. The temporary transfer of these pieces from institutional archives to personal living spaces extends the artists’ concerns with the constant flux of images as physical objects.

Through their research, castaneda/reiman additionally became interested in the museum’s archive and storage systems for housing and managing over 11,000 works of art, especially the grated racks that hold its vast collection of paintings. Pulled out one at a time along tracks on the floor, these racks are filled front and back with canvases arranged to fit the maximum number of paintings per rack.

For the resulting works in the exhibition, castaneda/reiman opted to return the loaned paintings to the museum’s archive rather than putting them on display in the gallery. Those paintings, as well as ones from their personal collection, show up by proxy through photographic images and other references designed to hold the place of the original works.

Digital Catalog available