Curated by Dan Cameron

Replacing the California Biennial (rendered redundant by the Hammer Museum’s “Made in LA” series), the Orange County Museum of Art’s new triennial organizes itself around the vast, rising, tsunami-prone waters of the Pacific Rim, suggesting a curatorial approach calibrated by the global currents of climate change and cross-cultural dialogue. Tracking the contours of that region north to Vancouver; south to Santiago, Chile, and Sydney; and west to Beijing and Chiang Mai, Thailand, the inaugural installment of the California-Pacific Triennial—organized by OCMA chief curator Dan Cameron—brings together a diverse, intergenerational group of thirty-two artists from fifteen countries spanning four continents. Catalogue essays by Cameron, Yukie Kamiya, and Gilbert Vicario should prove helpful in pondering what cohesion, if any, the ocean’s tide may net—an impetus that is, at the very least, a stranger and more challenging one than most ethnoculturally prescribed regional surveys can claim.

— Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer