Organized by Palm Springs Art Museum as part of the multi-institutional Getty Research Institute initiative, Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945-1980. Backyard Oasis examines the Southern California swimming pool as depicted in photographs. The backyard pool, as a private setting, became a space to participate in various sub-cultural rituals and to enact clandestine desires. As a medium, photography became the primary vehicle for the circulation of post-World War II imagery. This exhibition will trace, for the first time, the integrated history of photography and the iconography of the swimming pool, bringing new light to many aspects of this rich interaction. The book will be published by Prestel. http://www.psmuseum.org/exhibitions/upcoming_exhibition.php?id=49

This is a group exhibition that will explore the interrelationship of technology, nature, and culture. The artists in the exhibit explore a territory that falls somewhere between a fear of technology as a product of our own making, and a view towards technology as a path towards progress—one, that for many, leads to a kind of spiritual transcendence. In this light, the cyborg, a hybrid of machine and organism, is used as a metaphor for navigating the boundaries between what is science fiction and what is real, in an effort to reexamine body politics, gender, technology and society.

The installation, Neural Architecture, is based on the structure of the cerebral cortex, and the immersive sculptural environment lights up in response to each viewer’s approach. The installation appears to “synapse” with the gallery’s existing motion sensors and security devices, and quietly highlights the building’s surveillance of its occupants. This installation is part of a series of traveling, mutating, adaptive site-specific installations. Available from www.lagunaartmuseum.org, or www.deborahaschheim.com

In his first survey, Ortiz uses different media—paintings, photographs, altered baseball caps, videos, and installations—to explore and participate in the linguistic, aesthetic, social and cross-cultural influences of Mexico and the U.S. Available from www.track16.com, or www.amazon.com

Domestic Departures features eight contemporary female artists, together with special guest artist William Kentridge, whose works seek to redefine domestic environments, settings and spaces, while leading the viewer into foreign and unexpected territories. The audience is invited to share in a new destination, a contemporary forum within which the artist’s perspective is explored. This escapade is laden with childhood fantasies, household objects and female role-playing, all laced with a bitter sense of irony and nostalgia. Available from www.grandcentralartcenter.com.

Kidd, a Los Angeles-based artist, createss large-scale cityscape photographs composed from a patchwork of hundreds of digital images. Kidd attempts to create a more visceral experience of the landscape through his process. The work also explores both the beauty and the artificiality of our urban environments. Available from www.lagunaartmuseum.org, or www.cmp.ucr.edu

Gabriela León: Sunday Walk to the Zocalo of Oaxaca is a multi-media artistic response to the popular revolt and resistance that has been unfolding in Oaxaca since June 2006. It includes a “barricade dress” and monoprints made from the detritus of the unrest, a video projection of the artist wearing this dress walking among protestors and police, a sound installation that evokes the voices of the crowds, and a site-specific installation of banners inspired by the temporary living structures at the zocalo during the lengthy protest. Bi-lingual catalogue. Available from www.sweeney.ucr.edu

Excerpt from 196-page book

In this new series of painterly drawings Osorio pushes the range of her work in scale, medium, and content; thus transforming the gallery into a delicate room that presents a "feminine aesthetic" through the use of cartoon-like drawings of women, girls, animals, objects, and natural landscapes (some directly on the wall) that grow from tiny thumbnail sketches to large mural-sized narratives. The images within and the design of this book and the limited edition reference the delicacy and preciousness of Osorio's hand and concepts. Available from www.contemporarystl.org

Cuban painter Pedro Álvarez (1967-2004) rose to prominence during Cuba's Special Period, which was an extended period of economic crisis that began in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His paintings not only addresses specific issues important to Cubans and those interested in that work and place; it also engages global concerns including colonialism and ways in which we perpetuate colonialism without even being aware of it. Bi-lingual, hardback book with several essays. Co-published by UCR Sweeney Art Gallery and Smart Art Press, Santa Monica, CA. Available from RAM Publications, www.rampub.com, or www.smartartpress.com

This exhibition examines the history of modern surfboard design from 1900 to the present, linking that history to the development of the Pacific Rim culture and technology. The myths of surfing, put forth through such adjunct activities and products as skateboarding, surf photography, film, clothing, and music are explored for their socio/economic impact. In addition, past, present, and future links between surfing and art are explored through works of art by surfers and artists influenced by surfing, such as Craig Kauffman, Billy Al Bengston, and Robert Irwin, who have achieved prominence and recognition either in the art world or in popular culture. Available from www.gingkopress.com

This exhibition explores how a new generation of artists in California are using photographic prints as the basic medium in the creation of sculptural works, in an effort to expand the use of the media and to examine the nature of the photographic image. Through these works, the artists shake the foundations of the photograph's traditional function as a reliable record of a visual perception. The exhibition follows in the footsteps of earlier generations of artists working in California who, in the 1960's through the late 1980s, began to use the photograph in radically new art contexts, such as John Baldessari, Wallace Berman, Robert Heinecken, Susan Rankaitis, Edward Ruscha, Ilene Segalove, and Alexis Smith. Artists in the exhibition include Elizabeth Bryant, Todd Gray, Katie Grinnan, Brandon Lattu, Srdjan Loncar, Dana Maiden, Tom McGovern, David Meanix, Gina Osterloh, Anthony Pearson, Carter Potter, Christopher Taggart, Mary Younakof, Amir Zaki and Bari Ziperstein. http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/

A group exhibition exploring the identity politics of white culture in the United States. This exhibition approaches whiteness as being less about the color of skin and more about an ideology of power. This is the first museum exhibition to explore the cultural study of whiteness. All of the nearly 80 artworks selected were created between 1990 to the present. This limitation was set to be in accord with a particular development that occurs in the contemporary art world and academia in regard to theories of post-structuralism, post-colonial thought, and multiculturalism, from which the cultural study of whiteness arose in the 1990s. Available from RAM Publications, www.rampub.com