La Jolla Light, “Edgy Multimedia Exhibition opens at Art Institute,” by Lonnie Burstein Hewitt, October 23, 2014.

San Diego Art Institute (SDAI) in Balboa Park has a whole new look this month with the October 4 opening of “Beyond Limits: Postglobal Mediations,” an exhilarating multi-media exhibition that features more than 30 local and international artists showing a broad range of imaginative, thought-provoking and often interactive works. It’s a spinoff of the International Mediations Biennale that began four years ago in Poland as a “borderless circuit of experimentation” to create dialogues between artists from varied cultures, with simultaneous happenings taking places in cities around the world.

Other countries involved this year include Germany, Uruguay, Israel, Japan and China, and Beyond Limits features artists from both sides of our border, as well as places much further away. Many of the artists spent a week before the opening in SDAI’s gallery, assembling their pieces and sometimes adding local elements. The exhibition was co-curated by Ginger Shulick Porcella, SDAI’s new executive director, and Brazilian born Denise Carvalho, curator of the 2012 Biennale in Poland, who brought the concept and many of the artists here.

Porcella, a forward thinking arts consultant who facilitated special exhibitions in New York City as Executive Director of Art Connects, is bringing a burst of fresh air to SDAI, which was founded as an art club in 1941 and has traditionally shown the work of its members and other local artists.

“We still want to support local artists, but with a broader concept of ‘local’ from Tijuana to Los Angeles,” she said. “And we want to expose local artists two more international viewpoints, give them a chance to share ideas with artists from different parts of the world.”

Among the featured locals in Beyond Limits” are San Diego Art Prize winners Debby and Larry Kline, whose multimedia installation, “The Post-Apocalyptic Coffee House,” is a sandbag structure originally created for a show of “Apocalyptic Visions” at the Torrance Art Museum last March. Inside, visitors can sit in semi-darkness sipping coffee while watching (and perhaps discussing) a video loop of people sharing their thoughts about the end of the world. “It’s up to viewers to decide if the structure is a bunker, a sanctuary or a monument,” say The Klines.

Local viewers who would like to be part of the loop are invited to contact the artists at info@jugglingklines.com

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