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Photos by Asia Morris.<\/em><\/p>\n The Long Beach Art Hunt, presented by Interactive Cultural Experiences (I.C.E.) and sponsored by the Arts Council for Long Beach, will take place on Saturday, April 4 from 5:00PM to 12:00AM. The public is invited to seek out local artist Jorge Mujica\u2019s<\/a> freestanding paintings, which will be placed within different businesses and locations throughout the East Village Arts District.<\/p>\n Mujica explained, \u201cI think that people will come through the East Village and they\u2019ll be really critical of their surroundings and they\u2019ll start paying attention to the Art Deco buildings and they\u2019ll pay attention to the Mom n\u2019 Pop stores that perhaps they know about, but they\u2019ve never looked inside.\u201d<\/p>\n I.C.E. is the collaborative venture of Megan Lynch and Mujica who, with this Long Beach Art Hunt, aim to give people an opportunity to \u201cexperience everyday adventures through contemporary art.\u201d The Long Beach Art Hunt was organized specifically to encourage participants to view the City of Long Beach with a more discerning eye.<\/p>\n Mujica\u2019s freestanding paintings look like fantastical creatures that might stride away, alarmed by the human touch. They\u2019re colorful, curvy and surprisingly static, drawing attention to their surroundings, as the viewer can see through their cut out, negative spaces to whatever may be present in the background.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea really came from trying to remove myself from a traditional conversation of painting that required a wall,\u201d Mujica explained. \u201cI wanted to consider what it meant to make a painting that didn\u2019t need that. Because in a way, when you\u2019re using a wall you\u2019re also using the structure of the institution or whatever it is that that wall is holding up and there\u2019s always implications in that.\u201d<\/p>\n While Lynch and Mujica hope to organize more art hunts in the future, using work from other artists, Mujica\u2019s thought-provoking paintings, which depend on their placement in the public sphere to make them seem out of place and therefore meaningful, so to speak, are a fantastic grouping to feature for this first East Village Arts District scavenger hunt.<\/p>\n The Long Beach Art Hunt will activate a half mile area with seven site-specific works. Once participants discover each piece, they can photograph the art, upload it to social media with a geo-tag to acquire the necessary points to outline the capital letters \u201cL\u201d and \u201cB\u201d on a map. Participants are encouraged to hashtag the name #LBarthunt to help showcase the East Village Arts District. It\u2019s not just about showcasing the district, however, it\u2019s about enabling people to view contemporary art outside of an institution.<\/p>\n \u201cI think two-fold is also the concept of exposing art or contemporary art more specifically to an unsuspecting audience,\u201d Mujica analyzed. \u201cBecause there\u2019s this association that contemporary art exists, but you have to go and find it and you have to go and look for it in a museum and you have to take a day off to go do it and quite possibly the only day that people can go see contemporary art is the day that the museum is free.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s an elitism in how people internalize contemporary ideas,\u201d Mujica continued, \u201cand so to be able to access this publicly and to be the driving force of something that can instigate creativity is something that really appeals to us.\u201d<\/p>\n The East Village Arts Park, Creme De La Crepe, Utopia, The Solarium at the Lafayette Building, The Breakfast Bar, Broadway and Atlantic Ave. and PJ\u2019S Pet Cafe are the seven spaces that Mujica\u2019s worked will be placed within or nearby, in an effort to get people to look, to observe their surroundings more exactly.<\/p>\n Lynch described the logistics, saying, \u201cThey\u2019ll have to go within the business or street view to actually find the art. And they\u2019re going to be in various sizes, so it\u2019s not all going to be huge pieces that as soon as you walk in you\u2019re going to be able to see. You\u2019re going to have to take your time and really experience looking.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think that there\u2019s maybe one small, kind of kitchiness to it, that we\u2019re working within the arts district. Ideally it would be really great to be able to participate in a community that has a very low interest in art,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n If you are interested in being a volunteer for this event please contact Megan Lynch or Jorge Mujica at InteractiveCulturalExperiences@gmail.com.<\/a> For more information and to RSVP via Facebook, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n {FG_GEOMAP [33.7704943,-118.18768219999998] FG_GEOMAP}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"DSC](\"https:\/\/staging-live.lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/DSC_0907_900x602.jpg\")
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