Fowler Museum at UCLA

In a specially commissioned edition of new and recent work, San Francisco-based performance and photo-conceptual artist Allan deSouza uses digital manipulation to play with notions of artistic and technological mastery and to blur the boundaries between photography and painting.

The exhibition focuses on two new series—“Rdctns” and “TheThird Eye”—both of which engage critically with the language and visual legacies of Western fine art by reworking primitivist paintings by Paul Gauguin and Henri Rousseau or self-portraits by canonical artists such as Chuck Close, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. The works on display run the gamut from large-scale, gorgeously colored and sensuous abstractions to modestly-sized photographic prints.

DeSouza, who is of South Asian descent, was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1958.

This exhibition is curated by Gemma Rodrigues, curator of African arts, Fowler Museum, and Steven Nelson, associate professor of African and African American art history at UCLA.

Support provided by the Dean’s Office, UCLA Humanities Division; the University of California Humanities Research Institute; and the UCLA Graduate Division.