State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970 is a thorough investigation of seminal conceptual and related avant-garde activities among California artists in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the critical interchange between them. While these artists emerged concurrently with those in other parts of the world, many still remain lesser known than their East Coast and European counterparts. State of Mind identifies and investigates California artists' significant contributions in Conceptual art, video, performance and installation. The exhibition demonstrates the significant changes in artistic practice that coincided with the burgeoning number of art schools and university art departments, nonprofit art spaces, alternative galleries and artist-run spaces and publications that not only provided exhibition opportunities but, in the relative absence of commercial support, also created a community that fostered an exchange of radical forms and ideas.
Organized around central themes, State of Mind features approximately 150 works by 60 artists, ranging from those who became major international figures to lesser-known artists who nonetheless made important contributions. The exhibition consists of video, film, photography, installation, artist's books, drawing and paintings. Additionally there is extensive performance documentation and ephemera.
State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970 is curated by Constance Lewallen and Karen Moss and co-organized by the Orange County Museum of Art and the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The tour is organized by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, and is made possible, in part, by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Video Data Bank, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), and with the generous support of Robert Redd, LLC, and the ICI Board of Trustees.