Curated by Cassandra Coblentz

“Building as Ever,” OCMA’s second California-Pacific Triennial, is a timely reminder of how globalization shapes our experience of place and community. Ninety works by twenty-five participants in a range of media—including drawing, photography, installation, and performance—engage with issues of dwelling, mobility, and impermanence on a diversity of scales, from that of the domestic object to those of architectural structures. The “making do” ethos popularized in the 1960s informs the participants’ use of the mundane materials that constitute our landscape—plywood, tile, drywall, and reclaimed and found objects. By creating alternative communal experiences, these works illuminate the tension, signaled by the triennial’s title, between building as thing and building as activity. 

— Erica Allen-Kim