Return to accessibility navigation at the top of the page.

"Desert Initiative: Looking Across the Border" at PCC Bernal Gallery

August 2, 2012

  • What: PCC Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery – DESERT INITIATIVE: Looking across the border. INICIATIVA DEL DESIERTO: Mirando a través de la frontera.
  • Where: PCC Center for the Arts, Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery, West Campus, 2202 West Anklam Road, Tucson, AZ 85709
  • When: August 27-October 5
  • Gallery hours: Mon./Wed. 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Tue./Thu. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Friday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., and before most evening performances in the Center for the Arts theatres.
  • Cost: The gallery and its programs are free and open to the public.
  • Information: Call David Andres at 520-206-6942 or www.pima.edu/cfa

Tucson, AZ -- PCC Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery announces its first exhibition of the 2012-2013season—DESERT INITIATIVE: Looking across the border. INICIATIVA DEL DESIERTO: Mirando a través de la frontera. The exhibition features the works of David Taylor, Alejandro Cartagena and Paul Turounet and runs Aug. 27 through Oct. 5. A gallery talk is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 13, 1:30-2:30 p.m.; followed by a reception from 5–7 p.m. Video and performances, Arizona Between Nosotros: Throwing up Clouds, will also be held on Sept. 13 at 6 p.m. in the Recital Hall featuring “Logos-Mitos” by Logan Phillips, “Constructed Encounter” by Laura Milkins and Heather Gray, and “Aqui No Pasa Nada/Teratology” by Paco Velez.

The Bernal Gallery exhibition is part of the Desert Initiative: Desert One (DID1), a creative collaboration that brings together more than 30 leading museums,cultural centers and organizations, universities and public agencies connecting the Chihuahuan, Sonoran, Mojave and Great Basin Deserts to present innovative interdisciplinary investigations of the desert including exhibitions, lectures and commissions. DI:D1 events and programs take place throughout the region between Sept. 2012 through April 2013, and engages diverse local, regional and international audiences in consideration of desert issues and cultures.

Taylor earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University. His photographs, multimedia installations and artist's books have been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions at venues that include the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, The New Mexico Museum of Art and the El Paso Museum of Art. Taylor's work is in the permanent collections of, Fidelity Investments, the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), the Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Palace of the Governors/New Mexico History Museum among others. His images have been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Orion Magazine, Prefix Photo, Fraction Magazine and the Mexico/Latin America Edition of Esquire Magazine. Taylor's ongoing examination of the U.S. Mexico border was supported by a 2008 Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Taylor recently joined the faculty at the University of Arizona School of Art. 

Cartagena lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. His projects employ landscape and portraiture as a means to examine social, urban and environmental issues. Cartagena’s work has been exhibited internationally and has been widely published in print media including Domus, Wallpaper, Financial Times, LeMonde, Newsweek, Stern, PDN (Photo District News) and the New Yorker. His work is in several public and private collections in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Italy and the United States including the San Francisco MOMA, the Chicago MOCP and the Portland Museum of Art. Cartagena won the Photolucida Critical Mass Book Award, the Lente Latino Award in Chile, the Salon de la Fotografia Award in Monterrey, the International Street Photography Award of the London Photography Festival and was named one of PDN´s 30 Emerging Photographers.  

Turounet received his MFA in photography from the Yale University School of Art. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to photograph along the border in Mexico and has received grants from the Trans-Border Institute for his continued work on the U.S.-Mexico border. His photographic works have been featured in various solo and group exhibitions in both the United States and Mexico, including the California Center for the Arts, University of San Diego, University of Texas (El Paso), Centro Cultural Tijuana, and the Museo de Arte El Chamizal in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, as well as a site-specific installation at various locations along the border wall in Tijuana, Mexico. Turounet is the chair of the visual arts and humanities department and an associate professor of photography and art at Grossmont College in El Cajon, California. He previously taught at the University of San Diego and the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente in Guadalajara, Mexico for the University of San Diego’s Guadalajara Summer Program.

The Pima Community College Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery is located at the Center for the Arts on West Campus, 2202 West Anklam Road, Tucson (just west of downtown). For more information about this exhibition please contact the gallery at 520-206-6942 or centerforthearts@pima.edu.