California Bloodlines:

Jesse Sugarmann

August 24 - November 18, 2023

Reception: August 24, 6:00-9:00

RAM is pleased to present California Bloodlines, a solo exhibition by Bakersfield-based interdisciplinary artist Jesse Sugarmann, opening on August 24 and running through October 8, 2023. Sugarmann uses video, sculpture, and photography to engage the automotive industry as a manufacturer of human identity, accessing automotive history as an index of both cultural progress and social development.

In this presentation, various bodies of work made between 2013 and 2019 hang alongside the duel-screened video installation California Bloodlines (Parts 1 and 2). The video focuses on California City, a meticulously planned community erected in the Mojave Desert during the 1960s with the hope of receiving water from the California Aqueduct. Unfortunately, the water never arrived, so the city is now a deteriorating area with a population of 15,000 residents. In a portion of the film, Sugarmann creates two-dimensional objects (which hang alongside the video) using napalm on the acrylic that is then theatrically lit to unveil obsolete navigational patterns from the original Califonia City planning grid. The city's ongoing confusion and dislocation serve as a metaphor for Alzheimer's disease, which Sugarmann's mother suffered from.

As part of The Way Forward series, Sugarmann created sculptural automotive pile-ups based on Ford Motor Corporation's 2005 restructuring plan. The Way Forward was a successful combination of strategy and sacrifice, enabling Ford to avoid bankruptcy during the 2008 federal bailout of the automotive industry. Large format photographs from the series are on display.

In an Artforum review, Stephanie Snyder states, "For Sugarmann, whose work has long investigated the masculine sensuality of American automobile culture, [his work] is arduously gritty yet turns a tender eye toward a more reparative and considered future.”  

Jesse Sugarmann has exhibited work in venues such as the Getty Institute, Los Angeles; el Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Oregon; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Michael Strogoff, Marfa; el Museo de Arte Moderno de Santander, Spain; High Desert Test Sites, Joshua Tree; and Southern Exposure, San Francisco. His work has been written about in publications including Artforum, Art Papers, The Atlantic, Hyperallergic, Frieze Magazine, the Huffington Post, and The New York Times. Sugarmann lives and works in Bakersfield, California, where he serves as Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at California State University, Bakersfield.