2015-04-29

2146 - U.S.A. - HOUSON-TEXAS - U.S.A. - Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty - 18.04.2015-02.08.2015

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For over three decades Marilyn Minter has produced lush paintings, photographs, and videos that vividly manifest our culture’s complex and contradictory emotions around the feminine body and beauty. Her unique works—from the oversized paintings of makeup-laden lips and eyes to soiled designer shoes—bring into sharp, critical focus the power of desire. As an artist Minter has always made seductive visual statements that demand our attention while never shirking her equally crucial roles as provocateur, critic, and humorist. Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty features over 25 paintings made between 1976 and 2013, three video works, and several photographs that show Minter’s work in depth. The exhibition was co-organized by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.

Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty begins with the artist’s earliest artworks, a startling photo series titled Coral Ridge Towers. While still in school, the young Minter shot one roll of film of her mother, a drug-addled, darkly glamorous woman who was nonetheless “mom” for the artist. Completed in 1969 when Minter was 21, the works were not shown until decades later by Linda Yablonsky, a lifelong friend of Minter’s who used them as background images for a reading program.  The series’ clear relationship to the artist’s later themes of degraded beauty has made these photographs into classics of the Diane Arbus-like genre. In Pretty/Dirty they are put back into their proper historical sequence as her earliest extant work.

The exhibition includes Little Girls #1 (1986) from Minter’s monumentally-sized series from the mid-1980s titled Big Girls, Little Girls. Minter employed a mechanically applied enamel technique to portray a young girl looking at her distorted reflection in a funhouse mirror. Here Minter focuses on how girls are trained at an early age to look critically at their bodies, only to see themselves as flawed. Also on view from this series is Big Girls (1986), which combines the little girl gazing at her reflection with an appropriated image of Sophia Loren anxiously peering at Jayne Mansfield’s voluptuous figure spilling out of her dress. “These works, like the others from this period, fused a feminist critique of the construction of gender and femininity with other postmodernist hallmarks of the 1980s, including the appropriation of mass-media imagery translated in a cool, detached, style of painting,” says Elissa Auther, co-curator of the exhibition.

In every decade, Minter offers a smart woman’s critical look at issues that are otherwise presented by men for female consumption. The fashion world is full of male fashion house owners, designers, and photographers who create an image of being female. Rather than a blatantly naive critique of fashion, Minter shows the dual nature and slight imperfections of herself and her fellow woman, finding that true allure comes from the sensuality of imperfections. In one of her best-known paintings, Blue Poles (2007), Minter takes what is clearly a beautiful face and reveals flaws: a pimple, errant eyebrow hairs, and freckles. In real life these so called flaws make us human, attractive, and loveable, but in the beauty industry these imperfections need to be eradicated. In the age of Photoshop, where things such as freckles disappear from fashion and entertainment magazines, this painting can be understood as marking a final celebration of the attractiveness of the un-retouched human face.

Minter’s recurring investigation of how the fashion industry expertly creates and manipulates desire led her to depict in many of her paintings an image of a gorgeous accessory looking less than glamorous. In Dirty Heel (2008), viewers are treated to a close up of a woman’s dirty heel accessorized by an expensive looking pink-lined high-heeled shoe. In her 2014 video Smash, large female feet in bejeweled high-heeled shoes appear to be having a hell of a time—dancing, sliding across the floor, and smashing glass—all in Minter’s signature silver liquid. As we become aware of the subject’s tattooed swollen feet, which seem to convey a wealth of experience, viewers might at first feel a wave of aversion, but the joy of her smashing time is impossible to resist.

The exhibition explores in detail the myriad image choices Minter has made as a painter and photographer, the evolution of her style and technique, and her mode of production, including her organization of an unusual studio of assistants trained to create hyper-real, sometimes dizzyingly painted surfaces. Pretty/Dirty illustrates Minter’s progress from a curious youth looking critically at the domestic landscape before her to the media-savvy cultural producer whose images simultaneously define and critique our times.

The exhibition is co-curated by Bill Arning, Director of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and Elissa Auther, Windgate Research Curator, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, and the Bard Graduate Center. The exhibition is on view at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston April 18 – August 2, 2015 and at MCA Denver September 18, 2015 - January 31, 2016. The show will travel to the Orange County Museum of Art, CA, May 15 - August 28, 2016 and the Brooklyn Museum, September 19, 2016- January 22, 2017.


 
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston - Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty - 18.04.2015-02.08.2015



Website & source : Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

Website : Houston

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2141 - U.S.A. - FARGO-NORTH DAKOTA - Bakken Boom! Artists Respond to the North Dakota Oil Rush - 29.01.2015-15.08.2015

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Bakken Boom! provides a striking array of artistic interpretations of North Dakota’s current oil rush, which has catapulted the state to second in the nation in oil production. The show invites you to consider the new realities in western North Dakota, and the profound impact of the energy boom on lives and the land.

Organized by Plains Art Museum, this groundbreaking exhibition curated by Becky Dunham includes 22 individual artists, three artistic collaborations, and selections from the Museum’s collection. Ranging from documentary photos and film, to sculpture, printmaking, paintings, and installations, the show reflects the many ways visual artists are exploring and commenting on the social, political, economic, and environmental dynamics of this hot topic.

Featuring nationally established artists such as Minneapolis photographer Alec Soth, along with emerging young talent like Chicago-area printmaker Elise Forer, the show is composed of an exciting mix of national, regional, and Fargo-Moorhead area artists, including Wayne Gudmundson, Kent Kapplinger, Meredith Lynn, Molly McLain, J. Earl Miller, Eric Syvertson, and Susanne Williams. Bakken Boom! also includes a series of short documentaries by The Cheddar Factory (based in Minneapolis and Williston), and the site-specific installation Road to Williston, as well as works from the Museum’s portfolio Oil and Water.

Bakken Boom! is supported by lead sponsor Doris Slaaten with additional contributions from Yvonne Condell, Linda Olson, Walter Piehl, and B. J. Zander. Funded in part by the North Dakota Humanities Council, a nonprofit, independent state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program/exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the North Dakota Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.



Plains Art Museum - Bakken Boom! Artists Respond to the North Dakota Oil Rush
29.01.2015-15.08.2015



Website & source : Plains Art Museum

Website : Fargo

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2015-04-22

2140 - U.S.A. - ERIE-PENNSYLVANIA - Ian Brill - 30.01.2015-10.01.2016

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Pittsburgh-based multi-media artist Ian Brill’s work combines light, sound, and technology into an interactive experience for the viewer. Brill creates his installations out of polystyrene (corrugated plastic sheeting) and uses light and sound to amplify the experience. Brill’s installations are part of a series called Transmission. Begun in 2010, it explores architectural, interactive, and programmatic technology. His research has led to constructions for gallery exhibitions, festivals and staging contexts.

Storm is built from modular units, cut offsite and constructed at the Museum. Using computers to control colored LED lights and sound cues, Brill programs the experience on site. Storm is designed to mimic the unique shape and architectural elements of the McCain Gallery and transform it.

Ian Brill lives and works in Pittsburgh. He holds a BA in Studio Art from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in New Media from Penn State University. His work has been exhibited at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Unicorn Meat (NYC), the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, The Warhol Museum and in University Park, PA.
You can view videos of his work at ianbrill.drupalgardens.com




Erie Art Museum - Ian Brill - 30.01.2015 - 10.01.2016




Website & source : Erie Art Museum

Website :  Erie

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2015-04-15

2139 - U.S.A. - EASTON-MARYLAND - Ray Turner: Population - 25.04.2015-05.07.2015

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Ray Turner
Brad, 2010
Oil on glass Collection of the artist

Artist Ray Turner lives in Pasadena, CA, where he received his BFA from Art Center College of Design. Post graduation, he became a professor of painting at his alma mater. Turner's work has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States. Turner began painting portraits for the current body of work and traveling museum exhibition called Population in 2007. The idea was to paint portraits of the uncelebrated to the celebrated people from a cross section of the populace in communities across America. The subjects would then become part of the growing body of work that represented their communities and respective museums.

The exhibition is which currently touring the United States and abroad, and began at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. It has shown in eight museums and Turner’s work is in many permanent and private collections. Still growing in number the body of work has currently has over 500 portraits. Population is an installation based body of work, painted on 12 inch squares of sapphire glass, which are then displayed on a color field grid that becomes their back ground.

Described recently by acclaimed writer and critic Michael Duncan, “Applied like slathered tattoos, Turner's portraits reside on slick square skins that are transparent, with the fields behind the figures left empty of paint. The blank glass fields reveal various colored wall panels that set off the images and enhance their floating spectral presence.” Like Lucien Freud, there is an “Overturning the spontaneity of abstract expressionism, Turner creates slow boiled stews of troweled paint, bringing the aesthetic decision-making process to a crawl so that a composition gradually reveals itself.” The transparent thickness of the glass causes the figures' silhouettes to form thin shadows that seem to shimmer. The slight distance from the wallemphasizes the film of paint that embodies each human image. Close likeness of his subjects is for Turner, as he calls it, only a "byproduct;" indulging his own emotional response to a painting as he makes it, he explains that a kind of "capturing can't not happen." But always the independent life of the painting takes precedence over the capturing. This is Ray Turner’s first exhibition in Maryland.



Academy Art Museum - Ray Turner: Population - 25.04.2015 - 05.07.2015



Website & source : Academy Art Museum

Website : Easton

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2015-04-08

2138 - U.S.A. - DURHAM-NORTH CAROLINA - Colour Correction: British and American Screenprints, 1967-75 - 02.04.2015-30.08.2015

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Liliane Lijn, Koan – Cuts III, 1971. Screenprint with collage on paper, 22 x 31 1/2 inches (55.9 x 80 cm). Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Gift of Mr. Kenneth Dorman, 1980.104.3. © Liliane Lijn. All Rights Reserved, DACS, London and ARS, New York, New York. Photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion.


Drawn primarily from the Nasher Museum’s vast collection of prints, Colour Correction examines a moment when artists adopted, and adapted, the screenprint technique during an extremely fertile period of experimentation and productivity in the United States and Great Britain. Coinciding with a confluence of social upheaval, political turmoil and artistic change and exchange, Colour Correction illustrates what many art historians consider to be the “golden age” of screenprinting. The exhibition includes more than 100 works by 40 artists─from the playful Pop art of Andy Warhol and Eduardo Paolozzi to the scathing political critiques of May Stevens to the minimalist abstractions and optical exercises in visual perception by artists such as Richard Anuszkiewicz, William T. Williams and Liliane Lijn.



Nasher Museum - Colour Correction: British and American Screenprints, 1967-75
02.04.2015 - 30.08.2015
 
 
 
 
 


2015-04-01

2137 - U.S.A. - DOYLESTOWN-PENNSYLVANIA - Rodin: The Human Experience — Selections from the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Collections - 28.02.2015-14.06.2015

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Auguste Rodin, Balzac in Dominican Robe, modeled 1893; Musée Rodin cast 9 in an edition of unknown size in 1981, bronze; Georges Rudier Foundry, lent by Iris Cantor

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) is one of the greatest sculptors of the late nineteenth century. This stunning installation of bronzes features work spanning the artist's long career, and is especially rich in portraiture. Included are his famous depictions of writer Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac; the musician Gustav Mahler; the artist Claude Lorraine; one of his favorite dancers, Hanako; and his portrayal of God, which is also a self-portrait.

The selected bronzes in the show represent the major achievements of Rodin's career. They include the powerful Burghers of Calais, as well as works derived from his masterpiece, The Gates of Hell. Others, such as The Night (Double Figure), demonstrate his experimentation with assemblage. Also featured are sculptures, such as Monumental Torso of the Walking Man, which demonstrate his admiration for Michelangelo, and Dance Movement D, which speaks to his interest in creating an illusion of movement.

Rodin’s ability to use bronze to represent living flesh and his interest in expressing extreme psychological states were highly influential upon younger artists, both in Europe and America. Rodin: The Human Experience reveals why the artist is considered the crucial link between traditional and modern sculpture.

Rodin: The Human Experience - Selections from the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Collections is generously supported by Visit Bucks County and Jon Paton.

This exhibition has been organized and made possible by the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation.




James A. Michener Art Museum - Rodin: The Human Experience — Selections from the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Collections - 28.02.2015 - 14.06.2015



Website & souirce : James A. Michener Art Museum

Website : Doylestown

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