Owen Kydd

Artist lecture Tuesday, November 17, 2015 7PM
Timken Lecture Hall, California College of the Arts, San Francisco
Yucca Color Shift, 2012 [Video Still]

Los Angeles-based artist Owen Kydd is perhaps best known for his “durational photographs,” video works that run four to six minutes and present near static segments of time that slowly reveal elements of movement or change. Made with the digital camera’s video function and displayed on high-definition LED monitors typically used for commercial signage, his perpetually-looping photographic videos untether photography’s association with discrete time while taking advantage of the medium’s ability to describe the world with compelling precision. While one typically relies on images and objects for narrative cues, these works only offer up small pieces of information, rendering them as seemingly variegated or endless territories. Borrowing subjects from traditional photographic genre, Kydd’s images function as still lifes that propagate the familiarity and generality of photographs while allowing them to hover in a temporally enigmatic zone.

Kydd was born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1975. He received his Bachelor’s degree in film and art from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, and a Master’s degree from UCLA. His work has been widely exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery in British Columbia, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth, Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Daegu Photo Biennale in Korea, among other venues and institutions.


Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program

Pier 24 Photography is pleased to present the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program in collaboration with California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Each year, the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program brings six photographers, writers, and curators to San Francisco to offer free and open lectures, and to work one-on-one with students at California College of the Arts.


Larry Sultan Photography Award


Jonathan Calm, Double Vision (Recording I), 2018

Jonathan Calm

Fall 2019 Residency
Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA

Click HERE for more information on the Larry Sultan Photography Award

Jonathan Calm is a visual artist who works in photography, video, installation, and performance. A central theme of his work is the relationship between photography and urban architecture, and the powerful role of images in the way architectural constructs shape the lives of individuals and communities.

In his most recent work, Calm explores the complex representation of African-American automobility from a historical and contemporary perspective, focusing and drawing on the importance and resonance of the Negro Motorist Green Book. Of this project, he explains, “the image of the infinite highway and the unbridled freedom to roam the land has always been considered a quintessential expression of the modern American spirit, but the black American experience of travel, which involves heightened subjectivity and exposure, has to this day proven a precarious privilege rather than an inalienable right.”

Calm’s art practice is international in scope and has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Frequency at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2005); Role Play at the Tate Britain (2006); Black Is, Black Ain’t at the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society (2008); Streetwise at the Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid (2008) and the Chelsea Art Museum (2011); deCordova Biennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (2013); and Rooted Movements at LMAKprojects in New York City (2014). Calm currently lives in Palo Alto, CA where he is a faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University.