TOM KRUMPAK "BUILT & PLACED" EXHIBITION OPENING RECEPTION AT EMERITUS COLLEGE

The Santa Monica College Emeritus College Art Gallery is pleased to present the Tom Krumpak: "Built & Placed" Exhibition from July 9 through Sept. 10.

The opening reception for the exhibit will be from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, July 9 in the gallery, located on the first floor of Emeritus College, 1227 Second St., in downtown Santa Monica. Parking is available next door in Santa Monica Public Parking Structure No. 2. Gallery hours are 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. The exhibit and reception are FREE.

Krumpak – a professor of Drawing and Painting at California State University, Long Beach – has established a uniquely expansive, interdisciplinary profile for an exhibiting studio painter. His paintings feature clustered colored shapes and silhouettes that overlap endlessly to produce potent colorfield abstractions, incredibly tight detailed rendering, and obsessive gathering of visual information in mass abundance.

Krumpak's works have been shown in more than 100 exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Korea. He also curates exhibitions of works by emerging and established artists, and leads tours for student groups and collectors to artists' studios, through historical neighborhoods, and to visit architectural sites and music venues both in Los Angeles and New York City.

"My artwork has almost always dealt with Place, past and present," said Krumpak. "I am interested in the real place of intersection between the individual and the crowd, the private and the public. Therefore, while the artwork's composition may be based on plans, elevations, onsite photographs, it is also intermixed with elements of personal history such as poetry, music lyrics, tracings of collected items from travels, spoons and forks used to take liquid color out of paint cans in my studio."

Though known for his paintings, Krumpak recently started creating small-scale sculptures/combines in mixed media. He describes them as "very process-oriented in nature. They mate existing containers with inserted, treasured, and found objects; hand painted scrolls and fitted paintings."

Two of Krumpak's sculptures are included in the exhibition. He describes 'Dim Dim' as "reminiscent of Duchamp's 'Boite-en-Valise' because I have always loved the idea of a portable museum," and says '3516 Centinela' "pays homage to my father's Hardware store as Place."

Emeritus College was founded by SMC in 1975 to serve the lifelong learning interests of older adults. Today, the widely praised program offers more than 120 free classes and special programs, and serves over 3,000 students each year.

For more information, please visit http://www.smc.edu/emeritus or call (310) 434-4306.