Adrian Clutario - Vincent Chong - Kim Ye

Kim Ye is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice encompasses performance, video, installation, text, object-making, and social engagement. Appropriating forms in circulation within popular culture to embed with content from personal archives, Ye interrogates the gendered constructs shaping perceptions of power, labor, and taboo. Her work negotiates the body as both a site of domination and a source of dominance and describes the entanglement between private desire and fantasy, and public discourse and ideology. Activating artist/viewer dynamics through shifting performance contexts, Ye reinterprets the forces that enforce and reproduce normativity. 

From 2023-2024, she was a Mellon Arts Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and a California Arts Council Creative Corps Fellow. Her work has been funded by the California Arts Council (USA), The National Endowment for the Arts (USA), Foundation for Contemporary Art (USA), Mellon Foundation (USA), and The Australia Council for the Arts (Australia). Her work has been featured nationally and internationally at institutions such as The Getty, MOCA, Guggenheim Gallery, Wattis Institute, Hammer Museum, Banff Center for Arts, Material Art Fair, and Frieze Film Seoul, among others. Ye received her MFA from UCLA in 2012, has worked professionally as a dominatrix since 2011, and has been on the board of Sex Workers Outreach Project Los Angeles (SWOPLA) since 2019. She is currently visiting faculty in the Photography & Media program at CalArts.

Adrian Clutario (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist and designer based in Oakland, CA since 2014. Their practice involves a variety of techniques — sculpture, installation, furniture, performance, and fashion. Clutario’s queer Filipinx-American identity informs their work, imagining and creating different possibilities of our heteronormative and colonized surroundings. Deeply utilizing drag and craft sensibilities, Clutario exaggerates and blurs the lines of design, space, and familial lineage - striving to heal around diasporic generational trauma. Adrian Clutario’s work has been exhibited nationally, and has received their BFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2012.

Vincent Chong (莊志明) is a Queer mixed-race Chinese-American artist working in Chinese calligraphy, seal carving, painting, drawing, and performance. They will receive their MFA in Art Practice from Stanford University in 2026, and they hold a BFA in Fine Art and a BA in Mathematics from Cornell University. They are a student of Taipei-based calligrapher Wu Wensheng. After studying with Teacher Wu in Taipei from 2015-2017, Chong moved to New York city, where they developed their work alongside Bushwick’s Queer and drag nightlife performers in addition to New York’s dance community. They have shown work at Seizan NYC, Co-Prosperity, Armature Projects, Lehman College, La MaMa, SoMad, Skånes Konstförening, Center for Book arts, The Museum of Chinese in America, Site Brooklyn, and PAAM. Performances include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 100 Hinsdale, Hole Pics NYC, Columbus Park, Center for Performance Research, QNA, Inter Arts Center, Skånes Konstförening, MoMA PS1, Abrons Art Center, Movement Research at Judson Church, and Center for Book Arts, and Abrons Art Center. Residencies include ISCP, Gallim, the WOW Project Storefront Residency, Center for Book Arts Book Artist Residency, and Fire Island Artist Residency. Awards include Stanford Graduate East Asian Summer Grant, Brooklyn Arts Council Creative Equations Fund, BAC Su-Casa, NYFA/NYSCA fellowship, City Artist Corp Grant, and Huayu Enrichment Scholarship. Chong will spend the summer studying at National Taiwan University’s prestigious International Chinese Language Program (ICLP) to deepen the Chinese literary research that underlines their practice. They currently reside in the Bay Area in California. 

An exhibit that reflects on our relationship with animals and nature, and speaks to the power of compassion humans hold to make a difference.

Opening reception Saturday June 14th 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM.
Runs through July 6th.

Featuring the work of over 20 local LGBTQ+ Artists!

Art Explorers is pleased to present A PROGRESSIVE ENSEMBLE, a group exhibition highlighting artwork from eight progressive art studios at the historic Mendocino Art Center.

Co-curated by the studio artists at Art Explorers, this exhibition is a celebration of the vibrant communities of artists participating in progressive art studios throughout the country and the contributions these individuals are making to the contemporary art world. It is a pleasure to share this world of creativity with Mendocino County on the 25th anniversary year of the Art Explorers studio art program.

This exhibition is made possible through a partnership with our friends at the Mendocino Art Center, and features artwork across mediums including painting, weaving, sculpture, and mixed media.

We invite you to join us to celebrate this amazing group of artists at the Mendocino Art Center. A PROGRESSIVE ENSEMBLE is an opportunity to come together in joy and broaden our community, and to stand united with progressive art studios across the country in the fight for social visibility, inclusion, and respect.

Participating studios include Alchemia (Petaluma, CA); Art Explorers (Fort Bragg, CA); Cedars Art Studios (Ross, CA); Center for Creative Works (Wynnewood, PA); Elbow Room (Portland, OR); Fresh Eye Arts (Twin Cities, MN); Make Studio (Baltimore, MD); Neighborhood Center of the Arts (Grass Valley, CA).