Kimberli Meyer: Kimberli Meyer is director of the University Art Museum (UAM) at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). She was previously director of the MAK Centre in West Hollywood.
Rubén Ortiz-Torres (Mexico City, Mexico, 1964) was educated within the utopian models of republican Spanish anarchism and soon confronted the tragedies and cultural clashes of a postcolonial Third World. Despite being the son of a Latin American folk musician, he soon identified more with the noises of urban punk music. After giving up the dream of playing baseball in the major leagues and some architecture training (Harvard Graduate School of Design) he decided to study art. He went first to the oldest and one of the most academic art schools of the Americas (the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City) and later to one of the newest and more experimental (CalArts in Valencia, CA). After enduring Mexico City’s earthquake and pollution he moved to Los Angeles with a Fulbright grant to survive riots, fires, floods, more earthquakes, and Proposition 187. During all this he has been able to produce artwork in the form of paintings, photographs, objects, installations, videos, films, customized machines, and even an opera. He is part of the permanent faculty of the University of California, San Diego. He has participated in several international exhibitions and film festivals. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Artpace, San Antonio; the California Museum of Photography, Riverside; the Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, among others. After showing his work and teaching art around the world, he now realizes that his dad’s music was in fact better than most rock ’n’ roll.
