The Sweeney Art Gallery in Riverside, California will present CROSSED PURPOSES, the first collaboration of internationally recognized wife and husband artists Joyce and Max Kozloff. Though the well-known couple practices in different media -- painting with collage, and color photography, respectively -- their visions reflect a shared theme of cultural awareness and representation. In CROSSED PURPOSES, Joyce exhibits amazingly intricate multi-layered mapping pieces, and Max presents vivid photographs of complex urban streetscapes.

The Kozloffs' collaborative exhibition examines ethnic cultural expression in neighborhoods near and afar. CROSSED PURPOSES plays on the intersection between old urban sites of European civilization and lands to the east with the images and icons of life just around the corner. What underscores these observations and insights is the Kozloffs' acutely self-aware, longtime participation in foreign travel, displayed in subtle, yet compelling, ways.

Joyce Kozloff has distinguished herself as one of the important painters of her generation. Beginning with the Pattern and Decoration movement in the 1970s, her work effectively blurred the boundaries between high art and popular traditions and questioned the preeminence afforded to visual forms of developed cultures over those of pre-industrial. Her recent works retain an overall decorative scheme, but now they are inscribed with "quotes" from books, recipes, images of movies, and popular art. These fragments are, in turn, layered into map mutations that explore the effects of empire, namely British, French, Spanish, and American, upon the conquered. Each of her pieces is complex, witty, packed with thoughtful allusions, and highly visually engaging.

Max Kozloff is perhaps as well known as a distinguished writer, editor, critic, and art and photographic historian, as he is as a photographer. CROSSED PURPOSES features his color photographs that celebrate the rich diversity of urban life, particularly festivals and street fairs in numerous cities across four continents. Beneath their aesthetic framework, however, these photographs are intensely political inasmuch as they link the photographer's intellectual and emotional commitment to social change. Max Kozloff often captures young people in seemingly recreational activities, yet beneath the surface an undercurrent of poignancy is conveyed. His photographs reopen discussions about evidence, perception, and subjective consciousness in the photographic domain. As a street photographer, he explains, "these momentary and chance intimacies take place in a physical territory that we can recognize, but is hard to locate in the mind. They really don't exist anymore, except in the picture."

The exhibition CROSSED PURPOSES is being concurrently shown at the Otis Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, California from April 3 to May 8, 1999. For more information call 310/ 665-6906.

CROSSED PURPOSES was organized by the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio. A beautifully illustrated, 60-page catalog with interviews with the artists conducted by Moira Roth accompanies the exhibition.