2014-07-30

U.S.A. - BRATTLEBORO-VERMONT - A World Transformed: The Art of Jessica Park - 27.06.2014-26.10.2014

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Jessica Park, "The Great Stained Glass Doors #9, in Summer Near Sunset" (1988), acrylic on paper



With a rainbow-colored palette, artist Jessica Park transforms her meticulously drawn architectural monuments into compositions of decorative brilliance. Lights of all sorts radiate from the atmospheric heavens surrounding her houses, bridges, and skyscrapers. Day-lit features and nighttime skies appear in the same painting. Intricate details highlighted by carefully applied hues mark her pictures. Park is an artist with an unusual ability. Her visionary world of imagination and creativity has emerged from a combination of artistry and her lifelong struggle with autism.
Jessica Hilary Park was born in 1958 in North Adams, Massachusetts, near Williamstown, where she currently resides. Although early manifestations of autism threatened to shut down her life, she was fortunate to have a family of resourceful parents and siblings determined to bring her into the world of thinking and acting.

Art was a way for Park to connect, and her mother, Clara Claiborne Park—whose two books about her remarkable daughter are considered seminal biographies on a life with autism—began to draw with her when she was very young. Jessica, who did not speak until age eight, responded well to drawing, easily recognizing shapes and colors. As her drawing evolved, stick figures and elementary scenes comprising short narratives became a means for her to acquire language, through labeling and storytelling.

As Park became more adept at language, she attended school and continued to draw. In high school (which she entered at age twelve), given the opportunity to further explore the rudiments of drawing and color, she focused her keen observational skills by creating accurate, lively line compositions.

After Park graduated, in 1979, her art career took off, initially with colorful renderings of her favorite household objects, such as heaters and blanket controls. Introduced by her mother to receptive audiences, these pictures were greatly appreciated and sold well. Over the next several years, Park completed a series of paintings featuring doors, railroad crossings, and houses, which were sought after by clients who commissioned her work. She began loading the skies in her works with astronomical objects, fireworks, and inventions of her own, such as “horizontal” rainbows. By age thirty Park was an accomplished artist. But continuing her evolution, she introduced a creative mix of her signature buildings, skyscrapers, and bridges rendered with surprising originality.

Largely self-taught, Park has an exceptional ability to articulate balance, volume, and depth through meticulous application of color combinations in finely detailed patterns. She has combined the drafting skills honed during her high school years and the acrylic paints that became her chosen medium with her “enthusiasms” and carefully developed principles of order to become an accomplished artist.

In 1995, at the urging of patron/client and Williams College professor of art history S. Lane Faison, Park’s work was recognized with a retrospective exhibition at the Williams College Museum of Art. Her work has been in individual and group shows at western Massachusetts galleries and is in the permanent collection of the Bennington Museum in southwestern Vermont. Park received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) in 2003. In 2008 the Jessica Park Project at MCLA created a traveling show of her work accompanied by a catalog, Exploring Nirvana: The Art of Jessica Park, with a foreword by the distinguished neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, who made a documentary video about the artist titled Rage for Order. This exhibit, A World Transformed, draws its title from an art biography on Park by Tony Gengarelly, published in February 2014.

In Jessica Park, autism has found art. Through the imagination of the artist, both have become engines of transformation, bringing to life an unprecedented world of visionary beauty. Ultimately, Park’s singular life suggests a new way to approach and appreciate difference and diversity. Her extraordinary art, and that of other artists on the autism spectrum, invites altered perceptions toward those with so-called disabilities. Their work is a profound witness to another way of seeing art, and it awakens our sense of value for the lives it represents so compellingly.

Tony Gengarelly, PhD, Curator




 Brattleboro Museum & Art Center      27.06.2014 - 26.10.2014  




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2014-07-23

U.S.A. - BRUNSWICK-MAINE - Richard Tuttle: A Print Retrospective - 28.06.2014-19.10.2014

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"When Pressure Exceeds Weight VI," 2012 by Richard Tuttle. Paper elements with embossment in 3 colors. © Richard Tuttle/Universal Limited Art Editions
 
 
 
Offering new insight into his artistic practice, and organized in close collaboration with the artist, Richard Tuttle: A Print Retrospective is the first-ever comprehensive examination of the prints of Richard Tuttle. In exploiting the unique possibilities of multiple printmaking processes, Tuttle reveals his deep interest in the relationship between medium, tools, actions, and collaboration. Through a selection of more than 100 works from the 1970s to today, many of which have never been exhibited by a museum, the exhibition demonstrates how Tuttle reinvents printmaking with his experimental approach, raising intriguing questions about technique, materiality, and the nature of art itself.
Bowdoin College Students will give tours of the exhibition through August 15 on Tuesday through Friday at 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. and on Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. Free and open to the public.
Major support for this exhibition has been provided by the Devonwood Foundation, Eric ’85 and Svetlana Silverman, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Coco Kim and Richard Schetman P’13, halley k. harrisburg ’90 and Michael Rosenfeld, Thomas A. McKinley ’06, and the Elizabeth B. G. Hamlin Fund at Bowdoin College. Additional support has been provided by Agnes Gund, Mary G. O’Connell ’76 and Peter J. Grua ’76, an anonymous donor, and the membership of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

The publication has been generously supported by Annemarie Verna Galerie, Zurich; C. G. Boerner LLC, New York/Düsseldorf; Crown Point Press, San Francisco, CA; Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund; Gemini G.E.L. LLC, Los Angeles, CA; Pace Gallery, New York; Universal Limited Art Editions, Bay Shore, NY; as well as by private collectors and supporters, in particular Barbara Egli and Ursula Hodel.



 
Bowdoin College Museum of Art       28.06.2014 - 19.10.2014
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

2014-07-16

U.S.A. - BUFFALO-NEW YORK - Anselm Kiefer: Beyond Landscape - 17.11.2013-05.10.2014

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Anselm Kiefer (German, born 1945). Der Morgenthau Plan (The Morgenthau Plan), 2012. Emulsion and acrylic on photograph on canvas, 110 x 224 inches (279.4 x 569 cm). Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Pending Acquisition Funds, 2013, and Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Image courtesy the Gagosian Gallery. Photograph by Charles Duprat.



Anselm Kiefer: Beyond Landscape explores the interplay of history, identity, and landscape in the work of one of the most important artists of our time. Several major works by Kiefer (German, born 1945) form the core of the exhibition. These include the Albright-Knox’s newly acquired der Morgenthau Plan (The Morgenthau Plan), 2012, a monumental panorama inundated with wildflowers that proliferate in the landscape surrounding the artist’s studio complex in Barjac, France; die Milchstrasse (The Milky Way), 1985­–87, an iconic depiction of a desolate, barren field; and Von der Maas bis an die Memel, von der Etsch bis an den Belt (From the Maas to the Memel, from the Etsch to the Belt), 2011–12, a seascape of epic proportions on loan to the museum. These works, in their layered and complex iconographies, exemplify the artist’s career-long explorations of nationalism, identity, and cultural memory. As an ensemble, they invoke the politics of landscape—the precarious relationship between nature, history, and aesthetics.

Complementing Kiefer’s works is an installation of paintings and works on paper from the Albright-Knox’s Collection that likewise feature landscape as a means of exploring a multiplicity of subjects and significations. The works in this section of the exhibition, by Bernd and Hilla Becher, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Sandra Cinto, Gustave Courbet, Willie Doherty, George Inness, Emil Nolde, Sophie Ristelhueber, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Vincent van Gogh, and others, provide a context for exploring two salient themes in Kiefer’s practice that also reflect the modern landscape tradition: The Romantic's Landscape and The Political Landscape.

The museum invites the community to play an important role in the exhibition by participating in a dual forum for expression and exchange that will result in an accompanying book scheduled for publication in 2014. Content for the book is being developed in two ways: online, the Beyond Landscape blog offers audiences a means of sharing observations, questions, and ruminations in text, image, video, and audio formats. Within the exhibition, a room dedicated to further learning, contemplation, and expression is equipped with reading materials, drawing and writing supplies, and computers to provide visitors with immediate access to the Beyond Landscape blog as well as video and audio content about the artist and his subject matter. Albright-Knox staff members are reviewing on-site and online responses and will continue to share selected submissions on the blog throughout the run of the exhibition. All submissions through February 14, 2014, will be considered for possible inclusion in the book.

This exhibition is conceived and initiated by Director Janne Sirén and organized by Chief Curator Douglas Dreishpoon and Curator for the Collection Holly E. Hughes.
This exhibition has been made possible, in part, through the generous support of The Margaret L. Wendt Foundation and M&T Bank.




Albright-Knox Art Gallery       17.11.2013 - 05.10.2014




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Website : Buffalo


2014-07-09

U.S.A. - BERKELEY- CALIFORNIA - Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible - 11.06.2014-14.09.2014

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Forrest Bess: Untitled (The Spider), 1970; oil on canvas, 13 ¾ x 16 1/8 in.; collection of Christian Zacharias.


Forrest Bess (1911–1977) described himself as a visionary artist. His small but powerful abstract paintings, with their thick paint and handmade rough-hewn frames, are deeply personal. They draw on a vocabulary of simple biomorphic shapes and symbols the artist developed over the course of years from his recurring visions; when he awoke each morning, he would sketch the shapes he had seen on the inside of his eyelids in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness. While resonant with Modernist abstraction, Bess’s beautiful and mysterious pictures suggest a spirituality akin to indigenous religious icons.

For most of his career, Bess lived an isolated existence in a fishing camp outside of Bay City, Texas. He made a meager living fishing and selling bait. However, by night and during the off-season, Bess read, wrote, and painted prolifically. He taught himself to paint by copying the still lifes and landscapes of artists he admired, including Vincent van Gogh and Albert Pinkham Ryder. He was also interested in Symbolism, the exploration of universal truths, and particularly the writings of Carl Jung. Despite his isolation, Bess developed an underground following and was known to a number of other artists and art historians, including Meyer Schapiro, who collected his work. In 1949, he traveled to New York and met the prominent dealer Betty Parsons, who between 1950 and 1967 organized several solo exhibitions of his work at her gallery in New York, one of the most avant-garde of its time.

Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible pairs Bess’s paintings, dating from 1946 to 1970, with an installation of archival materials curated by sculptor Robert Gober, titled The Man That Got Away, which illuminates Bess’s art and life. The exhibition of this piece at the 2012 Whitney Biennial renewed interest in the magnetic, compelling paintings of Forrest Bess, whose reputation had waned, along with his health, in the 1970s. 

Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible is organized by the Menil Collection, Houston, curated by Assistant Curator Clare Elliott, and coordinated at BAM/PFA by Lucinda Barnes, chief curator and director of programs and collections. At the Menil Collection, this exhibition was realized through the generous support of The John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation; The Eleanor and Frank Freed Foundation; Ann and Henry Hamman; Bérengère Primat; Michael Zilkha; Baker Botts LLP; Bank of America; Peter J. Fluor/K.C. Weiner; Christy and Lou Cushman; and the City of Houston. Support for the BAM/PFA presentation is provided in part by Rena Bransten; Kate and Adam Clammer; Patricia W. Fitzpatrick; Beth Rudin DeWoody and the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Inc.; Charles Kremer; Tecoah and Tom Bruce; the Robert Lehman Foundation; and Laura and David Perry.




 Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive    11.06.2014 - 14.09.2014




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2014-07-02

U.S.A. - ATHENS-GEORGIA - Women, Art and Social Change: The Newcomb Pottery Enterprise - 17.05.2014-31.08.2014

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George-Ann and Boone Knox I, Rachel Cosby Conway, Alfred Heber Holbrook, Charles B. Presley Family and Lamar Dodd Galleries

Organized by the Newcomb Art Gallery and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, "Women, Art and Social Change: The Newcomb Pottery Enterprise" is the largest presentation of Newcomb arts and crafts in more than 25 years. Works from various periods examine the role that the enterprise played in promoting art for the betterment of women, and in turn, New Orleans’ business and cultural communities, still struggling from the effects of the Civil War. The exhibition features significant examples of the iconic pottery, including a daffodil motif vase by Harriet Joor, as well as lesser known textiles, metalwork, jewelry, bookbinding and historical artifacts. The exhibition offers new insights into the Newcomb community—the philosophy, the friendships, the craftsmanship, and the women who made an enduring mark on American art and industry.

Produced by one of the most significant American art potteries of the 20th century, Newcomb works are a graceful union of form and decoration inspired by the flora and fauna of the Gulf South. Each piece is one of a kind—and collectively they create a distinctive southern art form. In 1895, the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, Tulane University’s women’s coordinate college, established the Newcomb Pottery in New Orleans, and conceived it as part artist collective, part social experiment and part business enterprise initiative under the auspices of an educational program. The art school faculty incorporated the philosophies and tenets of the English Arts and Crafts movement into their curriculum to teach southern women self-reliance by way of an education and gain financial independence through the sale of their wares. The Pottery thrived until 1940.

Today these remarkable, distinctive art objects continue to be critically acclaimed and highly sought-after, and the Newcomb program is a rich mine for academic research. "Women, Art and Social Change: The Newcomb Pottery Enterprise" showcases a striking collection of Newcomb pottery, metalwork, bookbinding and textiles with text that draws from new scholarship to explore the history of the Pottery and its importance as a social and artistic experiment.

Dale L. Couch, curator of decorative arts, and Annelies Mondi, deputy director



Georgia Museum of Art       17.05.2014 - 31.08.2014



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