Press release for "Bruce Yonemoto: Simulations"

              MEDIA RELEASE: JULY, 2009
Media contact: Kathy MacPherson,
galleryinfo@otis.edu, 310.665.6909
The Bolksy Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design is pleased to present
Bruce Yonemoto’s digital projection Simulations on view August 13 - September 3, 2009.
Excerpted from an essay by Carole Ann Klonarides for OMAG 5:
Bruce Yonemoto (’79, OTIS MFA Fine Arts) has long been on a quest to re-present the reality borne out of
a multitude of fictions experienced through the filters and layers of mass media. His single-channel videos,
installations and photographic works consistently explore issues of representation and identity, and the
fabrication of memory. To celebrate its 90th anniversary (in 2008), Otis commissioned Yonemoto to produce
and premiere a new installation titled “Simulations.” The title is a nod to French philosopher/theorist Jean
Baudrillard (1929-2007), and his influential 1983 essay, published by Semiotext(e)’s new Foreign Agents
Series. Yonemoto agrees with Baudrillard that we live in a world where Disneyland exists to make us
believe that outside of the fantasy park is reality, when in fact, America is a Disneyland. In writing about
“Simulations,” Yonemoto describes his desire to recreate a childhood icon as “a hyper-real representation of
Disneyland’s Matterhorn thus finally making Disney’s mountain the allegorical referent, the “real”
Matterhorn of our collective memory.”
Yonemoto most vividly remembers going to Disneyland as a young boy and his awe of the Matterhorn
Mountain, situated between Tomorrowland and Fantasyland, 147 feet tall, exactly 1/100th size replica of the
real mountain in Switzerland (it opened to the public on June 14, 1959). He writes, “thinking back to my
family’s 2 day car trip from Santa Clara to Anaheim before the major freeways, you can imagine the
excitement of seeing the top of the Matterhorn Mountain jutting through the orange groves. It meant that we
had finally reached our destination—Disneyland, a place where all our dreams came true. Now fifty years
later, as an art professor driving down to UC Irvine, I can barely glimpse the once solitary mountain top.
Hotels, shopping malls and freeway overpasses make it almost impossible to see my symbol of arrival.”
Bruce Yonemoto received his Master of Fine Art from Otis in 1979. His body of work explores the
overlapping intersections of the art world and the television screen. He is the recipient of many prestigious
awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, The Rockefeller
Foundation, and the Maya Deren Award for Experimental Film and Video and his work has been featured in
dozens of one-person exhibitions across the globe. Yonemoto is represented by Alexander Gray and
Associates, New York.
Location: Otis College of Art and Design, 9045 Lincoln Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90045
Hours: Tue-Sat 10am-5pm / Thu 10am-7pm. Parking & Admission: Free
Gallery Info and Tours: 310.665.6909, galleryinfo@otis.edu, www.otis.edu/benmaltzgallery
Image: Bruce Yonemoto, Simulations, 2008, video still
##End##