RCW Lecture Series October 12th @ 7 pm

Ray Beldner

"Trouble in the Bubble: How Cash, Porn and Theft Drove Me to the Laundry Business...."

Like many artists, Ray Beldner makes work from the stuff of everyday life:
clothing, cash, stolen items, porn. His artwork is conceptually driven and
is executed in many media: sculpture, prints, public art, video projects,
and digitally generated photos. Most recently, he worked on a series titled Counterfeit where he selected “signature” artworks by well-known 20th century artists, such as Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol, and re-made them by sewing together US currency. Counterfeit referred to his appropriation of the compositions of those masterpieces, as well as to the conditional nature of the value of art and money.

Ray is now the owner of a laundromat, Bernal Bubbles, in San Francisco. On
the first Saturday of each month he runs the “Soap Box” lecture series.
Adding to the rich cultural community on the hill, these lectures by
various artists, art professionals and cultural critics, living in or
around Bernal Heights, are on a range of subjects of artistic, cultural,
political, and social issues of significance to the community.
Past speakers have included, JoAnne Northrup, senior curator, San Jose
Museum of Art and Philo Northrup, Founder Art Car Fest, Glen Helfand,
critic and curator, Tiffany Shlain, filmmaker, founder of the Webby Awards
and Ken Goldberg, new media artist, professor, UC Berkeley, and Annie
Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, new media and performance artists.
Ray will speak about the taboos inherent in his artwork, he will “come
clean” about how he came to own a laundromat, and he will explain how
Bernal Bubbles has become the “de facto” cultural center of the
neighborhood, built around the simple and everyday task of gathering to
wash clothes.

Bio:

Ray Beldner received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA
from Mills College. He has participated in numerous solo and group
exhibitions both nationally and internationally and his work can be found
in many public and private collections including the Federal Reserve Board,
Washington D.C., the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona, the
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Oakland Museum of California, and
the San Jose Museum of Art.

Beldner has received numerous awards and fellowships and has taught at
California College of the Arts, The San Francisco Art Institute, and UC
Santa Cruz. His work has been reviewed in such publications as Arte, Wired,
Art On Paper, Visions, Art Issues, Artweek, The Los Angeles Times, and The
New York Times. Most recently, his artwork has been exhibited in "Living
With Duchamp," Tang Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, "Argent
et Valeur, Le Dernier Tabou," Exposition Nationale Suisse, Biel-Bienne,
Switzerland, and in "Greetings From the American Dream," Riverside Art
Museum, San Francisco, CA