In a planet crowded with polarizing paradigms, is it possible to contribute aesthetically to larger conversations about culture and existence? Life by Design, a group show currently at the Gresham Gallery at San Bernardino Valley College (SBVC), masterfully interrogates this possibility. Life by Design curator and SBVC art instructor C. Ian White democratizes access to contemporary gallery and museum practice. The son of Charles White—one of the 20th century’s foremost and prolific figurative art masters— curator White’s curatorial vision assembles a collage of internationally accomplished blue-chip artists from the previous century into a cohesive visual statement relevant for our current period.

Life by Design installation view, 2022. Courtesy of Gresham Gallery at SBVC.

Prescient issues such as isolation, emptiness, and environmental anxiety are addressed in three-dimensional works by Kirsten Stingle Stephen Braun and Seiji Kunishima. Relatedly, two-dimensional works by Thelma Johnson Street, Romare Bearden, Kerry James Marshall, Andy Warhol and Ben Sakoguchi seep messages about culture, commodification, and consumerism.

Two works in particular hit the curatorial bullseye. First, is Virgil Abloh’s Receipt Rug, IKEA Collaboration (2019). Abloh’s vanilla colored textile work addresses the hegemonic belief systems exerted by the capitalistic ruling class over what it truly means to furnish a space. His piece asks how a first-world, filthy rich nation can allow rampant houselessness to flourish so much it is nearly a country within a country — the wealthy elite being a sovereign body engaged in economic voyeurism of the so-called have-nots.

Life by Design installation view, 2022. Courtesy of Gresham Gallery at SBVC.

The second stand-out work is Shepherd Fairey’s Make Art Not War (2017), which mirrors the message of Edwin Starr’s 1970 Motown hit song War. A bold lithograph on paper, Fairey’s Make Art Not War upsets the Western imperialistic narrative popularized through disinformation campaigns. By celebrating the creation of art Fairey empowers the unfiltered and unplugged.

Ultimately, Life by Design asks to be consumed by those who in the, words of saxophone great Charlie Parker, “Hear with their eyes and see with their ears.”

 

Life by Design
Gresham Gallery at San Bernadino Valley College
April 11, 2022 – July 28, 2022
701 South Mt. Vernon Avenue
San Bernadino, CA 92410