Thater applied for the CCF fellowship with this work entitled Chernobyl, 2011

For over two decades, Grad Art chair Diana Thater’s groundbreaking film, video and installation work exploring the tension between humans and the natural world has been widely discussed and admired. But the spotlight on Thater’s role as a leader in the global art world seems to have gotten even brighter over the past few months. In April, she named chair of the Art Center department from which she graduated in 1990 and where she’s taught for many years. In June, Thater was honored in a major gala by the Orange County Museum of Art. And earlier this month, she was awarded a 2014 California Community Foundation Fellowship.

Additionally, Thater has already begun placing her creative stamp on Grad Art by making some exciting additions to its adjunct faculty roster. She announced an impressive lineup of new fall adjunct faculty, including Philippe Vergne, director of MOCA, and Bennett Simpson, senior curator at MOCA and artist Harry Dodge. Her adjunct faculty additions for the spring are equally exciting: Getty Scholar and curator for the National Gallery in Washington Lynne Cooke, artist and Getty Scholar Tacita Dean and curator Charlotte Cotton.

To honor Thater’s accomplishments and better understand the ideas informing her creative practice, we’ve included the artist’s statement that compelled the foundation to grant her the award. Consider this a behind-the-scenes snapshot of what it takes to be a successful working artist.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT SUBMITTED TO CCF BY DIANA THATER:

I have been an exhibiting artist for twenty-four years. During that time, film, video, artificial and natural light and the architecture with which my installations interact have been my materials. I explore the abstract qualities of my medium. My work is about the paths through time and space that are neither sequential and relative, nor purely aesthetic and subjective. Somewhere between classical narrative and experimental filmmaking is a place where relativity and subjectivity are in the process of being formed. My installation work is about that forming.

I explore ideas of abstraction in terms of film/video and space. One of the great innovations in 20th Century art is abstraction in painting and sculpture. The other great innovation is the moving image. Film and video have much to offer to the discourse on abstraction. The relationship of the moving image to abstraction is categorically different from that of painting. Video is, above all things, a representation of the progression of time. My work, writing and thinking are about the abstraction of moving-image time. I try to expand on this idea with each new work.