Transformative Currents: Art And Action In The Pacific Ocean at Oceanside Museum of Art

 by Patricia Frischer

Isabelle Beavers’ Tomb Keepers (Rise)

This two-part exhibition Transformative Currents: Art And Action In The Pacific Ocean is actually two of 4 parts of a PST project funded by the Getty Foundation. The other two parts are at the Orange County Museum of Art  and the Crystal Cove Conservancy on the Newport coast. There are about 20 artists or  artist teams participating in just the OMA part of the exhibition. The curators Cassandra Coblentz with assistant curators Aaron Katzeman and Ziying Duan sites the artists in the museum and the displays are outstanding. They convert the space in a most dramatic way, especially upstairs which is intended to represent the underwater parts of the explorations. Downstairs is above the water, which is a bit counter intuitive, but  both parts are full of screens…hopefully that OMA can keep for future exhibitions.

Officially Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean looks at the harm both culturally and environmentally that has affected the Pacific Ocean, while trying to enact some positive change.   

I am not great at reading titles that are long, small and displayed in a darkened environment. So I took pictures and read about what I was seeing once I got home. And my suggestion is to come prepared to spend time exploring, or do the same.

Upstairs, for example, Isabelle Beavers’ Tomb Keepers (Rise) in the first display that caught my eyes, the subject was polymetallic nodules. I had to look that up to find out that in 2019, the average value of a polymetallic nodule was estimated to be $484 per ton. So the reason for the arrangement was to stop mining of these amazing very old collections of mineral deposits. Imagined reproductions of those nodules were cast in glass, the video showed the mining and symbolic arrangement of Ctenophora which have 8 levels of combs and are vaguely related to jelly fish.

Beatriz Jaramillo’s Connect 27,000 dots represents 27,000 to ½ million barrels of DDT that rest on the ocean floor. The word Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane is spelled out in holes bunched in the images on display.

Alex Monteith and Maree Sheehan in Whiri iwi Tuna: Underwater Worlds of the Tuna (eels) in Te Whanganui share images of the eels in a multiscreen flowing recording of this space that is a confluence of river and ocean. The eels have developed ways to survive the pollution.

SeanConnelly’s Gut Technics demonstrates how the ocean has become a dumping ground for old equipment used to explore those same waters. This constructed display with its reflective surfaces and video was strangely alluring.

Paul Rosero Contreras  shows a sound film Dark Paradise Lost 2 but alongside are intriguing sculptures that represent a combination of natural and plastic element in a new coral configuration. The 3-d printed  forms are actually made from that same combination of plastic and ground coral.

Going downstairs, the large format composition by Genevieve Robertson is Bull Kelp which actually using kelp as one of the mediums.

L. Frank and Jane Chang Mi created a nenvironment interpretation of the Cave of the Whales on San Nicolas Island (off the coast of Southern California) to enter and ponder in She Will Dreams Many Things. This Island was used by the US Navy and to this day is off limited.

Ohan Breiding and Shoghig Halajian (a grad student at UCSD) in Rafters document some of the many object found in the waters after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. They carried wild life along with them, much of which survived because of their attachment. This is rather like trash immagrants!

You can check out all of the artists on the OMA website which has links to the artists sites.  

The Refusion Pop -Up Shop will be part of the OMA Museum Store during Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean.  Refusion, created by Julie Ellis, is a non-profit that teams up with artists who turn single-use plastics into creative, sustainable art

Remember: ART AFTER DARK. The big OMA celebration is October 26,  6:00–10:00pm

From November 1 - 30, OMA and Birch Aquarium Members will receive reciprocal membership access to PST ART: Art & Science Collide Exhibitions OMA's ‘Transformative Currents’ and  Birch Aquarium's ‘Embodied Pacific’ .

Transformative Currents: Art And Action In The Pacific Ocean
Curated by Cassandra Coblentz with assistant curators Aaron Katzeman and Ziying Duan
August 17, 2024–January 19, 2025
704 Pier View Way, Oceanside, CA 92054
(760) 435-3720
HOURS: Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday11:00am–5:00pm
Friday 11:00am–8:00pm