Joe Goode at Texas Gallery, Houston - Surface Paintings

Joe Goode: Surface Paintings
Texas Gallery, Houston
April 24 - May 29, 2004

Texas Gallery presents the work of JOE GOODE whose first show with the gallery was in 1973. This exhibition of new work is titled Surface Paintings - a group of paintings that are purely abstract in nature with layers of patterns of built up brushstrokes and the resulting radiating color. The artist states that he took all of the information that he had accumulated from his work over the last few years and put it into each painting in this series. The overall feel is of shifting atmosphere..like a fog..that obscures and then reveals. Inspiration for the artist has come both from observed nature and from the observed physicality of paint itself…so the works are both associative and self reflective... mysterious and practical at once.

Like many Californian artists, such as James Turrell, Robert Irwin and Doug Wheeler, who choose to use other means to affect a pure visual experience for the viewer, Joe Goode wants to create a similar visible reality but by sticking to the medium of paint. He also recognizes that the perception of light is tied up with nature. From an essay about Joe Goode’s work by Michael Duncan, titled Must See to Appreciate: “Turning the picture making experience in a pervasively more cerebral key, Joe Goode espouses the environmental, visual effects of nature painting without any traces of precise narratives... (recreating) natural ambiences. These artificially induced states of mind result from the masterful manipulation of an inherently illusionistic process of painting. Joe Goode’s work analytically employs the color and textural properties of paint to emulate the most elemental levels of visual reality. In their insistence and repetitions, various series can be seen to equate basic color tones with natural elements.” More recently Joe Goode has been informed by Asian influences such as the modern Gutai group of painters who similarly desired to depict in their work the ineffable qualities of nature.

TEXAS GALLERY
2012 Peden, Houston, TX 77019
www.texgal.com

Auguste Rodin, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY - Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession, Sculpture from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation

Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession, 

Sculpture from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY

April 20 - July 3, 2004

The Albright-Knox is presentis the exhibition Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession, Sculpture from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation. This fascinating exhibition features approximately 60 bronze sculptures from throughout the artist’s career, including many of his best-known and most-loved works: The Thinker, The Kiss, The Cathedral, Monumental Head of Pierre de Wiessant, Monumental Head of Balzac, and The Three Shades.

"Rodin is considered to be 'The Father of Modern Sculpture' because he revolutionized sculpture in the late 19th century," said Ken Wayne, the Gallery's Curator of Modern Art and organizer of the exhibition for its presentation in Buffalo. "He took sculpture in entirely new directions from what he believed it had become – somewhat stale, lifeless, and boring. Instead, Rodin injected passion, feeling and life into sculpture."

The exhibition also features works on paper by Auguste Rodin and a photograph of Rodin by legendary photographer Edward Steichen, plus large-scale documentary photo blow-ups for background. A special educational component will be a three-dimensional display explaining the lost-wax casting process by which bronze sculptures have been produced for centuries.

All of this material will be further supplemented by two Rodin sculptures from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s own collection, Eve and the Age of Bronze, allowing regular gallery visitors an opportunity to see familiar works from the museum’s permanent collection in a fresh, new context.

Auguste Rodin is recognized as the most important sculptor of the modern period. He expanded the range of subjects for sculpture, not limiting it to historical and religious figures or scenes. He consciously sought to reinvigorate the sculpture medium by injecting passion and emotion. Rodin avoided the literalness of academic sculpture by introducing the modernist qualities of ambiguity and open-ended meaning whereby a sculpture could have several meanings instead of just one. An excellent example is his famous work The Thinker. What is he thinking? Who is he? Why is he naked?

Another major contribution to modern sculpture was the fragment or partial figure, which Rodin felt held great power and mystery. He got the idea for making partial figures from the many ancient fragments that were surfacing on the Paris art market in the late 19th century following archaeological digs. Rodin reasoned that if we can admire and revere the many broken and partial ancient figures, such as the Venus de Milo, why can we not make such figures? Indeed, he saw himself as the true heir to Phidias, the ancient sculptor. He wanted to return sculpture to its rightful path after it had lost its way because of academic sculptors. Like the ancients, he wanted to create sculpture that embodied his time.

Born in 1840 to a modest French family, Auguste Rodin in his teens attended the government school for craft and design. Here he learned by drawing plaster casts of ancient sculpture and by modeling in clay, modeling being the basis of sculpture in his day. Although he sought admission to the École des Beaux Arts (the very prestigious government school for fine art), he was rejected three times. Rodin's struggle for recognition dominated his early career. For years he earned a living by producing, as an anonymous member of a workshop, ornamental sculpture for Carrier-Belleuse, a successful decorative sculptor of the period. While his work as a craftsman provided a steady income, Rodin yearned to exhibit his own work under his own name. In the 1860s he submitted his sculpture to the annual juried Paris Salon exhibitions – the most important shows of their day – but suffered a series of rejections. (His work was finally admitted in 1877.)

During Auguste Rodin’s lifetime, the most highly regarded sculptures were projects done for public places because they were thought to have universal rather than personal meaning. These projects were usually commissioned by committees specifically formed to oversee the creation of these works. Rodin received his first public commission in 1880; it was to create a sculptural entrance for a (never-built) museum of decorative arts in Paris. He chose to design the door as a showpiece for Dante’s The Divine Comedy, an epic poem written about 1308, which was very popular in France in the 19th century. The work Rodin created is called The Gates of Hell.

In the years that followed, Rodin was commissioned to create other monuments, including The Burghers of Calais (1884-88), the Monument to Honoré de Balzac (about 1897), and the Monument to Victor Hugo (about 1897-1900). In 1900 Rodin stood at the pinnacle of success: an entire pavilion at the Paris World Exposition was devoted to a retrospective exhibition of his work. In 1908 he moved to the Hôtel Biron, a large home where he lived and worked until he died in 1917. A year before he died, Rodin donated this estate and his studio and its contents to the French government, in exchange for France’s agreement to establish a museum there. Today the Hôtel Biron is home to the Musée Rodin.

B. Gerald Cantor (1916-1996) and his wife, Iris Cantor, built the largest private collection of Rodin works in the world: approximately 750 large- and small-scale sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, and memorabilia. The Cantors have generously shared their collection with others through exhibitions and donations. They have given more than 450 works to more than 70 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Stanford University Museum of Art received 187 of those works.

The Cantors’ support of the arts was recognized in 1995 by President and Mrs. Clinton, who bestowed upon them the National Medal of Arts. The current exhibition has been organized and circulated by the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation, which was established to promote and encourage excellence through the support!of art exhibitions, scholarship, and the endowment of galleries and sculpture gardens at major museums. Since being established in 1978, the Foundation has circulated various Rodin exhibitions to more than 150 venues in the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, and Singapore, attracting a total audience of more than 5 million people. 

ALBRIGHT-KNOX ART GALLERY

1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York 14222

www.albrightknox.org

Dora Maar: Photographer, Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, New York - Retrospective Exhibition Curated by Annabella Johnson and Marcello Marvelli

Dora Maar: Photographer

Curated by Annabella Johnson and Marcello Marvelli

Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, New York

April 25 - June 28, 2004

The exhibition Dora Maar: Photographer presents a concise and balanced selection of approximately sixty Dora Maar photographs, chosen to illustrate the different moments of her career as a photographer. This is the first retrospective of her photographs in the United States.

Dora Maar’s output as a professional photographer lasted less than ten years from the late twenties to 1937, and during that period she produced many accomplished, varied and important pictures. These range from cityscapes to fashion photography for magazines, from iconic surrealist images to inspired portraits, and from experimental prints (collage and photomontage) to architectural studies. For a long time, Dora Maar was acknowledged in art history solely as the muse, model and companion of Pablo Picasso from 1935 to 1943. Dora Maar’s own fascinating, visionary and often radical work as a photographer has only recently started to be investigated through exhibitions and catalogs, primarily in Europe. Through these exhibitions she has emerged as one of the most interesting artists in the history of French photography of the Thirties.

The exhibition highlights the beginning of her professional career in the early thirties when she opened a photographic studio in Paris. These years were particularly rich artistically and socially in Paris: Man Ray was active alongside Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, and Kertesz, and the surrealist movement was gaining momentum against a backdrop of wider European political unrest. Journeys to Spain and London provided Dora Maar with opportunities to explore her fascination for street life, and develop both her sympathetic eye for marginalized people and her instinct for the unusual and uncanny. The surrealist years, 1935-36, represent the culmination of Dora Maar’s photographic achievements. Among the surrealists, Dora Maar had close relationships with Paul and Nusch Eluard, André Breton and his wife Jacqueline Lamba, Man Ray, Georges Hugnet, Meret Oppenheim, Yves Tanguy and Michel Leiris.

The exhibition takes place at Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs in New York, a not-for-profit exhibition space that organizes high profile, independently curated exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. An illustrated, color brochure accompanies the exhibition.

DORSKY GALLERY Curatorial Programs

11-03 45th Avenue, Long Island City, NY 11101

MARVELLI GALLERY

526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001

www.marvelligallery.com

Daan van Golden: Heineken Prize for Art 2004

Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art 2004 awarded to Daan van Golden

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art 2004 (EUR 50,000) to Daan van Golden 'for his versatile output as an artist and his ability to place art in a new context, time and again'.

Daan van Golden has been working as an artist for over forty years, a period of major change in the world of modern art. Van Golden's response to that change has been both exciting and complex. Younger generations of artists particularly appreciate the extraordinary way in which he presents his paintings, photographs and other works in installations and publications, which then become works of art in themselves.

Van Golden's earliest works were abstract-expressionist in nature. In 1963, while in Japan, he embarked on a radical change in style and began a series of painstaking depictions of textile and wrapping paper patterns in enamel paint. His use of existing commercial products betrays the influence of pop art, then in its ascendancy, but in Van Golden's hands such references take on a quality of timeless elegance. His work thereafter uses a highly diverse range of images, drawing on both high and popular culture. Van Golden often sees images within images; in Pollock (1991), for example, he enlarges a detail of an abstract painting by Jackson Pollock to suggest an animal figure. His photographs, frequently taken during his travels, also contain many autobiographical references, for example the series documenting his daughter Diana's life from infant to adult.

In 1968, Van Golden was invited to exhibit at Documenta 4 in Kassel, where he combined existing and new paintings to produce an intriguing installation. He repeated this approach at subsequent exhibitions, but he also produced work in situ. During the Century 87 exhibition in 1987, Van Golden covered the paths of the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam with blue gravel, inspired by Mexico's Agua Azul riverine landscape. In the mid-1990s he redesigned parts of the inner and outer courtyards of the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.

Daan van Golden (born in Rotterdam in 1936) lives and works in Schiedam, the Netherlands. After at-tending technical school, he enrolled at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Technical Sciences, where he specialised in painting and took classes in graphic techniques. He also worked as a window dresser for De Bijenkorf, an exclusive chain of department stores. He spent 1963 to 1965 in Japan and has travelled widely since then, with long sojourns in such places as Morocco, India, Indonesia, and North and South America. His travels have found their expression in his work.

There have been two major solo exhibitions of Daan van Golden's work, one organised by the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in 1982 (Daan van Golden - 1963-1982) and the other by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1991 (Daan van Golden - Works 1962-1991). Van Golden was one of the artists featured in the Dutch pavilion at the 1999 Venice Biennial. Solo exhibitions have been organised in Geneva, Dijon, Paris and Göteborg. Van Golden's work can also be viewed regularly at Galerie Micheline Szwajcer in Antwerp.

The Heineken Prize for Art

The Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art was awarded for the first time in 1988. Previous winners include Aernout Mik for video art (2002), Guido Geelen for ceramics (2000) and Marrie Bot for photography (1990). The jury (Henk van Os, chair, Carel Blotkamp, Ed Taverne and Ilja Veldman) is awarding the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art to Daan van Golden for his entire oeuvre.

Unlike the other Heineken Prizes, the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art is awarded by a jury which is independent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Although a number of jury members are also members of the Academy, they are acting in a private capacity. 

The five Heineken Prizes for science, scholarship and art are presented every other year during a special session of the Academy. This year the presentation will take place on Friday 1 October at the Beurs van Berlage Building in Amsterdam.

KNAW 

Het Trippenhuis, Kloveniersburgwal 29, Amsterdam 

www.knaw.nl 

Giuseppe Penone. Exposition rétrospective 1968-2004, Centre Pompidou, Paris

Giuseppe Penone. Exposition rétrospective 1968-2004
Centre Pompidou, Paris
21 avril - 23 août 2004

Le Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, présente pour la première fois, une exposition rétrospective de plus de 90 oeuvres de Giuseppe Penone, une des figures de la scène artistique internationale.

Il est associé au mouvement de l'Arte Povera, mouvement fondé par le critique d'art Germano Celant à la fin des années 1960, qui prône le retour de l'art à l'essentiel en engageant notamment une réflexion sur la relation entre nature et culture.

Menant une trajectoire singulière au sain de ce mouvemet, Giuseppe Penone a développé une oeuvre sculpturale extrêmement personnelle qui se caractérise à la fois par l'émergence d'une interrogation sur l'homme et la nature, et par la beauté de ses formes et de ses matériaux.

L'exposition s'articule autour d'un ensemble de grandes installations, ponctuées par des salles thématiques qui permettent une confrontation vivante des oeuvres. A l'occasion de cette retrospective, une oeuvre monumentale intitulée Cèdre de Versailles (Cedro di Versailles) prend place dans le Forum.

Par cette rétrospective, le Centre Pompidou réaffirme son engagement envers l'oeuvre de Giuseppe Penone dont il possède un large fonds, enrichi en 2001 de deux oeuvres majeures : Respirer l'ombre et Peau de feuilles.

L'exposition sera ensuite présentée à la CaixaForum à Barcelone du 30 septembre 2004 au 16 janvier 2005.

Galerie Sud, Niveau 1

CATALOGUE : Giuseppe Penone
Catalogue sous la direction de Catherine Grenier, Editions du Centre Pompidou, avril 2004
380 pages, 30 ill. bichromie, 120 couleur, 115 noir et blanc, format 22 x 28 cm

L'exposition est accompagnée d'un ouvrage monographique de référence sur l'ensemble du travail de Giuseppe Penone. Il comprend un essai de Catherine Garnier, une longue interview de l'artiste et un très riche corpus documentaire illustré.

Commissariat de l'exposition :
Catherine  Grenier, Conservateur au Musée national d'art moderne, responsable du Service des Collections Contemporaines
assistée de
Claire Blanchon : coordination et réalisation
Annalisa Rimmaudo : chargée des recherches documentaires
Jasmin Oezcebi : scénographie

Centre Pompidou
www.centrepompidou.fr

Catherine Poncin, Christophe Galatry, C’est quoi ton travail ? au Musée des Pays de Seine-et-Marne et à l’Ecomusée de Fresnes

Exposition réalisée par l'écomusée de Fresnes et le musée des Pays de Seine-et-Marne, sur une idée d'Antoine Laville, ergonome, avec la collaboration scientifique du CREAPT (centre de recherches et d’études sur l’âge et les Populations au Travail)

Catherine Poncin - Christophe Galatry
C'est quoi ton travail ?

Musée des Pays de Seine-et-Marne, 2 mai - 19 septembre 2004 Ecomusée de Fresnes, 6 octobre 2004 - 6 février 2005

Commissariat de l'exposition : Evelyne Baron, conservateur du musée des Pays de Seine-et-Marne ; Alexandre Delarge, conservateur de l’écomusée de Fresnes.

Fragment de la pièce "Expression de travaux 1" - CATHERINE PONCIN - Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire - Paris/Bruxelles - Courtesy de Catherine Poncin et de la Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire

L’exposition : C'est quoi ton travail ?

Certains métiers comme serveur de cafétéria, caissier d'hypermarché, poseurs de voies à la RATP ou ripeurs pour la collecte des déchets… sont souvent considérés comme de simples emplois salariés sans véritable savoir-faire ni compétences. Ce que l'on voit du travail résulte d'ailleurs très souvent d'activités cachées dont les personnes elles-mêmes n'ont pas forcément conscience. L'ergonomie, science pluridisciplinaire qui fait appel à la biologie, la médecine, la psychologie, la sociologie…, permet de mettre en lumière ces aspects invisibles. A partir de l'analyse d'une activité, les ergonomes cherchent à établir des conditions de travail sûres et confortables pour l'ensemble des travailleurs et efficaces pour la production.

Ainsi, née d'une rencontre, en 2001, avec l'ergonome Antoine Laville, alors directeur des études à l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, l'exposition C'est quoi ton travail ? souhaite, à travers ce choix thématique, faire évoluer les représentations habituelles sur le monde du travail, tout en revalorisant certains métiers, en allant au-delà du visible.

Le parcours de l'exposition s'organise autour d'œuvres photographiques et vidéographiques de Catherine Poncin, plasticienne photographe, et de Christophe Galatry, artiste vidéaste qui, à travers leurs regards artistiques inspirés de la démarche ergonomique, présentent 15 situations de travail, issues de métiers de l'industrie, de l'artisanat, des administrations ou d'entreprises de services. Des films, des textes explicatifs, un parcours ludique ponctué de jeux accessibles à partir de 6 ans permettent à tous de mieux comprendre et de partager cette réflexion autour du travail.

Les métiers présentés : Agent d'accueil en mairie - Agent de la DDE - Agent de ménage - Assistante maternelle en crèche - Caissière de supermarché - Chauffeur/livreur - Conducteur de rotative dans une imprimerie - Conseillère agricole - Gardien d'immeuble - Guichetier de la poste - Opérateur en costuming - Poseur de voies - Préparateur de commande en boulangerie industrielle - Ripeur pour la collecte des déchets - Serveuse de cafétéria

Les oeuvres

Christophe Galatry et Catherine Poncin expriment artistiquement un propos scientifique. Par l’usage de la vidéographie, Christophe Galatry crée un vivier d’images dans lequel Catherine Poncin capte des instantanés, des expressions de travail. L’assemblage de ces images attire l’attention sur ce qu’on ne voit pas du travail : postures, gestes, regards, organisation qui  mettent en jeu un savoir-faire.

15 oeuvres photographiques de Catherine Poncin

Expression de Travaux 1 à 15 : Pièces photographiques représentant différents métiers en action. Chaque pièce est composée de plusieurs photographies (voir la photo ci-dessus)

5 Films-vidéo réalisés par Christophe Galatry

Cinq films-vidéo de Christophe Galatry font écho au travail de la photographe :

Disney ou le bouton de manchette (6 mn)

C’est dans les coulisses de l’Hôtel Disney de Disneyland Paris que le personnel se costume.  Il se rend devant l’immense comptoir du "costuming" pour prendre sa tenue. Ce service gère près de 300.000 pièces de vêtements. Les costumes sont envoyés au nettoyage après chaque journée. Quand ils reviennent de la blanchisserie, ils sont déchargés par un système de rails dans un immense entrepôt où ils sont vérifiés et rangés par taille, avant d’être fournis au personnel costumé au début de leur journée de travail.

Réalisation : Christophe Galatry avec le concours de Catherine Poncin

Cent  mille … exemplaires !  (7 mn)

Les techniciens de l’imprimerie font face à une multitude de tâches, parfois délicates, à réaliser sous la contrainte du rendement, ce qui conditionne largement leur rythme de travail. Les machines ne s'arrêtant pas ou le moins possible, ils sont confrontés au temps depuis le chargement du rouleau de papier dans la rotative jusqu’à la vérification de l'imprimé à sa sortie.

Réalisation : Christophe Galatry avec le concours de Catherine Poncin

De la ficelle aux ficelles (6 mn)

Dans cette boulangerie semi-industrielle qui produit plusieurs milliers de pains en 24h, le  travail d’équipe requiert une bonne entente, les étapes de la fabrication étant dépendantes les unes des autres. La pression sur les mitrons est liée à la livraison à une heure donnée du pain dans les différentes boulangeries du secteur. La répartition des commandes constitue une étape très importante de cette chaîne de production.

Réalisation : Christophe Galatry avec le concours de Catherine Poncin

Voix des poseurs de nuit (6 mn)

Activité de nuit, sur les ballasts du métro, la pose des voies demande une force physique qui n’exclut pas une grande attention. La transmission du geste « bien fait » y est primordiale. Dans ce travail, on manipule beaucoup de graisse et de chiffons.

Réalisation : Christophe Galatry avec le concours de Catherine Poncin

Bas comme trois pommes (5 mn)

Veiller sur une quinzaine d’enfants requiert une attention sans relâche de la part des femmes de la crèche familiale. Leur travail est très physique ; il  sollicite notamment le dos  pour se mettre constamment à hauteur des petits.

Réalisation : Christophe Galatry avec le concours de Catherine Poncin

Pourquoi cette exposition ? Par Evelyne Baron et Alexandre Delarge

" Cette exposition vise à faire changer la façon dont nous voyons le monde du travail, en proposant aux visiteurs d’aller au-delà des apparences et du visible. L’ergonomie française et les musées organisateurs de cette exposition ont en commun une même démarche : l’observation sur le terrain et la collecte de données ou de témoignages humains, qui leur donnent matière à analyse et à restitution.

Les quinze métiers présentés ici, ont été choisis parce que les exigences qu’ils comportent, et les compétences qu’ils réclament, sont parfois méconnues. Ils représentent aussi des activités existant sur le territoire de référence des deux musées. Ces deux territoires se complètent ; l’un est en banlieue parisienne et l’autre dans un département d’Ile-de-France encore très rural.

A partir d’études ergonomiques et avec les conseils de chercheurs, nous avons précisé les savoir-faire propres à ces métiers, invisibles aux yeux de la plupart d’entre nous, car nous ne savons généralement ni décrypter, ni analyser le travail. Une fois ces données extraites, nous les avons confiées aux artistes afin qu’ils aillent capter, dans des entreprises les aspects cachés du travail. Ils nous ont ensuite proposé leur vision artistique de ces métiers sous forme de montages photographiques et de vidéos.

A notre tour, nous avons pris œuvres et textes et les avons mis en exposition avec l’aide d’un scénographe, afin de vous les offrir. " -- Evelyne Baron, conservateur du musée des Pays de Seine-et-Marne, Alexandre Delarge, conservateur de l’écomusée de Fresnes

Conseillers scientifiques - Membres du Créapt : Serge Volkoff, Annie Weill-Fassina, Anne-Françoise Molinié, Corinne Gaudart, Valérie Pueyo.

Photographies et vidéographies : Catherine Poncin, plasticienne photographe et Christophe Galatry vidéaste, avec l’assistance de Djamila Mérabet, vidéaste au musée des Pays de Seine-et-Marne.

Scénographie et réalisation : Ateliers Olivier Schimmenti, Gilles Puech

Musée départemental des Pays de Seine-et-Marne
77750 Saint-Cyr-sur-Morin

Ecomusée de Fresnes
Ferme de Cottinville
94260 Fresnes

Medardo Rosso, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas
April 3 - June 20, 2004

The Nasher Sculpture Center presents Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions. This exhibition is the first major survey in the United States in 40 years devoted to the work of Medardo Rosso (1858–1928), whose revolutionary innovations played a key role in the birth of modern sculpture. Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions features 20 sculptures, including 6 works from the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, and offers an intimate exploration of Metardo Rosso’s working process and innovations. 

Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions focuses on multiple versions of five sculptures spanning Medardo Rosso’s mature career. The works are Aetas aurea (The Golden Age), 1886–87; Grande rieuse (Large Laughing Woman), 1891; Bambino ebreo (Jewish Boy), c. 1892–93; Bookmaker, c. 1894; and Ecce puer (Behold the Child), 1906. Each of the works is represented by three or four distinct castings in wax, plaster, and bronze, showcasing Rosso’s pioneering experimentation with materials and casting techniques. Medardo Rosso was intimately involved in creating the various casts of these works at a time when such work was commonly left to foundry technicians.

Medardo Rosso’s extensive exploration of techniques and materials exemplifies how art was transformed on a broad scale during the late 19th century. Medardo Rosso replaced realistic detail with vigorous, sketchy modeling, and he varied media. Rather than cast his original clay models as bronzes to be carefully finished, Rosso arrested the lost-wax method of bronze casting in midcourse, saving the wax shells as finished works. This radical innovation, which elevated wax to the status of bronze, triggered a career-long exploration of sculptural production and reproduction.  Rosso wrung endless variations from his original clay models, casting and recasting them in wax, plaster, and barely finished bronze, leaving the accidents and artifacts of the casting process visible in the final products. Through his experiments, similar to those of Auguste Rodin during the same period, Rosso expanded the conceptual and expressive possibilities of sculpture and influenced the works of such modern sculptors as Umberto Boccioni and Constantin Brancusi.

“With six sculptures by Medardo Rosso in the Nasher Collection, the Nasher Sculpture Center is an ideal venue for this important exhibition,” said Director Steven Nash.  “Like the Picasso exhibition currently on view at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions is a very focused, important exhibition that draws from and complements works in the Nasher Sculpture Center.”

Medardo Rosso’s output comprises fewer than 50 primary sculptures, all of which he created between 1881 and 1906.  For the remaining 22 years of his career, Medardo Rosso devoted himself to recasting these primary sculptures, producing more than 400 variations in plaster, wax, and bronze. Medardo Rosso’s working process and experimentation can be studied in the variations of Bambino ebreo (Jewish Boy), c. 1892–93. Bambino ebreo served as a sort of business card for Medardo Rosso. He made many wax versions of it and gave them as gifts to patrons, critics, curators, and friends. The two wax versions in the exhibition reveal very different degrees of detail. The two bronze versions are even farther apart; one reveals Medardo Rosso’s almost painterly use of the whitish casting material, while the other is traditional in its finish and patina.

The exhibition also includes three versions of one of the largest busts Medardo Rosso ever made, Grande rieuse (Large Laughing Woman), 1891, demonstrating the variety he achieved by casting the same model in different ways. In the bronze version, Medardo Rosso took the unusual step of casting the plaster madreforma, or “mother mold,” as part of the finished work.

MEDARDO ROSSO (1858–1928)

Born in Turin, Italy in 1858, Medardo Rosso moved with his family to Milan when he was 12. After serving in the Italian military, he began studying painting and sculpture at the Brera Academy in Milan in 1882. Medardo Rosso’s artistic breakthrough came in 1883 when he made his first sculptures in wax. In 1889 he settled in Paris, where he developed a friendship with Auguste Rodin. Medardo Rosso exhibited his work widely in Europe and participated in the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris. He also participated in Salons in Paris in 1904 and in London in 1906, where he completed his last sculpture, Ecce puer (Behold the Child).

A fully illustrated catalogue developed by Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum and co-published with Yale University Press accompanies the exhibition. It includes essays by Harry Cooper; Sharon Hecker; Henry Lie, director of the Straus Center for Conservation at Harvard; and Derek Pullen, head of sculpture conservation at the Tate in London.

Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions

164 pages, 8x10 in., 2003

107 color and 5 b&w illustrations

Published by the Harvard University Art Museums

Distributed by Yale University Press

ISBN 1-891771-31-0

Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions is organized by Harry Cooper, curator of modern art for Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum, with Sharon Hecker, an independent scholar based in Milan.

The exhibition was organized by the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums. The Nasher Sculpture Center is the final venue for Medardo Rosso:  Second Impressions, following exhibitions at Harvard’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum (July 19 - October 26, 2003) and the Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri (November 21, 2003 - February 15, 2004).

NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER
2001 Flora Street, Dallas, TX 75201
www.nashersculpturecenter.org

Vivienne Westwood Retrospective, V&A, London

Vivienne Westwood

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1 April - 11 July 2004

Vivienne Westwood

Exhibition Invitation Card

The Victoria and Albert Museum presents a major exhibition of the work of Vivienne Westwood, one of the most influential fashion designers of the last 30 years. 

The exhibition is the largest the V&A has ever dedicated to a British designer and features more than 150 designs mainly selected from the V&A’s collection and Vivienne Westwood’s personal archive. The show examines Westwood’s career from the 1970s to the present day.

 

Vivienne Westwood has been a major influence on fashion design from haute couture to ready-to-wear. Her career has spanned the punk era including outfits worn by the Sex Pistols in the 70s to grand ball-gowns influenced by historical art and dress. 

Vivienne Westwood, said: “It is extremely exciting that the V&A is mounting this exhibition exploring my work over more than 30 years. I am delighted to be able to share with people my archive and ideas. It is very important that the V&A continues to put on fashion exhibitions – fashion is an applied art and it is extremely vital and alive today.”

The curator of the Westwood exhibition, Claire Wilcox, said: “Highly influential and always ahead of her time, Vivienne Westwood encapsulates a particular kind of Britishness, combining fearless non-conformity with a sense of tradition. She has made a major contribution to international fashion over the last 30 years and we are delighted to be holding this retrospective.”

The exhibition celebrates the long-standing relationship between the V&A and Vivienne Westwood. The museum’s first acquisition was an outfit from the 1981 “Pirate” collection. Since then, the V&A has followed her career closely and now has one of the largest public collections of Vivienne Westwood’s designs. 

The exhibition explores how Vivienne Westwood has incorporated historical references from fashion and culture in a unique and inspiring way. She has been influenced by the V&A’s historical collections and is renowned for her interpretation of the corset, crinoline and bustle. Historical garments are included alongside examples of Vivienne Westwood’s creations. An 18th century “sacque-back” dress is displayed, for example, next to a green silk ‘Watteau’ evening dress by Vivienne Westwood, worn by Linda Evangelista in 1996. 

The exhibition looks at Vivienne Westwood’s often subversive adaptation of British traditions and gentle parodies of royalty. 

The exhibition includes sections devoted to tailoring, tartan and accessories. The famous blue mock-croc platform shoes Naomi Campbell wore when she fell on the catwalk in 1993 is on display. 

Film and catwalk footage about the life and career of Vivienne Westwood are shown throughout.

Vivienne Westwood was awarded British Designer of the Year in 1990 and in 1992 she received an OBE for her outstanding contribution to fashion. In 1998 she was given the Queen’s award for Export and in 2003 she was named Export Designer of the Year.

Vivienne Westwood

Exhibition Catalogue

A book, Vivienne Westwood, is published by V&A Publications to coincide with the exhibition. Written by exhibition curator Claire Wilcox, with a Foreword by Vivienne Westwood, this is the first full-length study of her work as a fashion designer and contains over 200 illustrations. Photograph Cover: Rankin

The Vivienne Westwood exhibition will tour to the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra from 5 November 2004 to 23 January 2005.

VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM - V&A

Cromwell Road, London SW7

www.vam.ac.uk

Updated Post (11.09.2022)

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

April 1 - May 23, 2004

"I don't necessarily know how these pieces are best displayed. I don't have all the answers--you decide how you want it done. Whatever you want to do, try it. This is not some Minimalist artwork that has to be exactly two inches to the left and six inches down. Play with it, please. Have fun. Give yourself that freedom. Put my creativity into question, minimize the preciousness of the piece. It is much easier and safer for an artist to just frame something. There is meaning, as we know, in everything we do." -Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Fraenkel Gallery presents a survey of work by the influential Cuban-born American artist FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES (1957-1996). The range of this artist’s poetic touch across several media is evident in his photostats, billboard, candy spill, “stack,” and light-string, several of which have been borrowed from private and institutional collections in the U.S. and Germany.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres was not interested in making art that allowed the viewer to remain a spectator. His work offers the viewer an opportunity to contribute his or her own experiences, and to participate in the meaning of the work. In Untitled (Lover Boys), 1991, (on loan from the Goetz Collection, Munich), an “endless” supply of candy lies shimmering on the gallery floor, gathered together at an ideal weight of 355 pounds – alluding to the combined weight of Gonzalez-Torres and his partner. Without any sign stating so, the viewer is invited to take and eat a piece of candy. Every night the “spill” is replenished and lives on in a constant cycle of loss and regeneration. In Untitled (Republican Years), 1992, (from the collection of the Sprengel Museum, Hannover), a stack of paper, on which only a pair of black lines borders the perfect rectangle, sits on the otherwise empty floor. The viewer has the choice to take a sheet of paper or leave it behind. Gonzalez-Torres understood that the audience’s ability to connect physically to his work gave it additional emotional and seductive force.

The photostat works, four of which are exhibited, consist of two lines of white text, words and associated dates along the bottom of the black surface of the photostat paper. For each viewer, the dates and words will conjure up different reactions or memories. For Gonzalez-Torres, public events became private experiences and vice versa. In Untitled (Tim Hotel), 1992, a single electrical cord holding 42 light bulbs hangs from a nail. One of 24 light-string works made during the artist’s brief career, this piece poetically memorializes one of 24 important events in his life, transforming an otherwise ordinary object into something full of personal meaning.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ work was the focus of several major museum solo exhibitions in his lifetime and after his death. Retrospectives of his work have been organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (1995), the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Germany (1997) and the Serpentine Gallery in London (2000).

FRAENKEL GALLERY

49 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94108

fraenkelgallery.com

The Photography of Russell Lee at Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin - Go Out and Look

Go Out and Look: The Photography of Russell Lee
Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
April 20 - October 17, 2004

The Harry Ransom Center's exhibition "Go Out and Look: The Photography of Russell Lee" is designed to honor Lee's long association with Texas and The University of Texas at Austin and to celebrate his life and career.

Taking place in the Ransom Center Galleries, the exhibition showcases Russell Lee (1903-1986), who earned the largest international and historic reputation of any Austin-based photographer.

Russell Lee's impact as a social documentarian and artist was established when he forsook careers in engineering and painting and became the most prolific and one of the best known photographers for Roy Stryker's now-legendary U.S. Farm Security Administration (FSA) between 1936 and 1942.

After working for the FSA Russell Lee built upon his work with equally impressive photography for the U.S. Army's Air Transport Command during World War II and then with the U.S. Department of the Interior's Survey of Mine Health and Safety in the mid-1940s. Russell Lee had become a well-established and important American photographer by the time he and his wife, Jean, made Austin their home in 1947.

By then Russell Lee was largely able to pick and choose his projects and completed his professional career with pioneering work for Standard Oil of New Jersey, Jones & Laughlin Steel and the "Texas Observer" as well as with documentation of the political and social scene around the state. Among the many friends whom Russell Lee knew and sometimes photographed were such Texas luminaries as John Henry Faulk, Ralph Yarborough, Creekmore Fath, Maury Maverick Jr., William Arrowsmith and Hart Stilwell.

Russell Lee began his association with The University of Texas with the publication of his "Italian Portfolio" -- commissioned by Arrowsmith as a special 1961 edition of "Texas Quarterly." A major 332-piece traveling retrospective of his work was mounted at The University of Texas Art Museum in 1965 before going on to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. It would lead to his appointment to the faculty of The University of Texas Art Department in that same year.

During the next eight years Russell Lee established and developed the first photography program in the Art Department and focused all his photographic activities into teaching. He turned out hundreds of students before he was required to retire in 1973.

Even then, however, he continued to be an active part of the Austin and university photographic communities by remaining accessible to faculty, students, photographers, historians, social reformers, politicians and visitors throughout the remaining years of his life.

The photographs in the exhibition are drawn entirely from the Russell Lee Master Print Collection in the Harry Ransom Center's Photography Department -- a gift of more than 800 photographs printed by the photographer himself and bequeathed to the Ransom Center upon his death.

The exhibition images are presented in a general chronological fashion and feature a broad range of subject matter from most of Russell Lee's subject portfolios made throughout his career, with a special concentration upon his pioneering FSA work. Other general bodies of work include images from such above-named periods as the Air Transport Command, the U.S. Coal Mines Survey, the Standard Oil years, the final decades in Texas and the famous but little-seen body of work that he did in Italy for the university's "Texas Quarterly."

"Unlike a retrospective exhibition, which seeks a thematic approach to essaying critical distinctions within a lifetime of work, this show is intended to be chiefly celebratory, commemorating the richness of Russell Lee's life, career, popularity and continuing influence," said Roy Flukinger, the Ransom Center's senior curator of photography and film and curator of the exhibition.

The title of the show comes from Russell Lee himself. Once, over beer and barbeque with a number of friends and students, he was asked what his legacy would be. He chuckled and replied: "Just say that I made people go out and look!"

HARRY RANSOM HUMANITIES RESEARCH CENTER
The University of Texas at Austin
www.hrc.utexas.edu

Worldscapes: The Art of Erró, Grey Art Gallery, New York University, NYC

Worldscapes: The Art of Erró
Grey Art Gallery, New York University
April 13 - July 17, 2004

The first major American survey of work by Iceland’s most acclaimed contemporary painter will be on view at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery. Worldscapes: The Art of Erró features approximately 80 paintings and collages, as well as props from the artist’s avant-garde films. Concurrently, 10 large paintings from Erró’s series titled Femmes Fatales, 1987–95, will be shown uptown at Goethe-Institut New York while a recent suite of lithographs, Mao’s Last Visit to Venice, will be on view at NYU’s Lillian Vernon Center for International Affairs. Erró, who encountered American Pop art during several extended visits to New York in the 1960s, is best known for his colorful, jam-packed postmodern history paintings that mix and juxtapose styles. Not content simply to blur the boundaries between high and low, Erró deploys a kaleidoscope of cartoon characters, art historical icons, and government leaders to comment on urgent social and political issues.

A firm believer that more is better, Erró moved Pop into—as art critic and philosopher Arthur Danto has noted—its Baroque phase. “We’re pleased to work with the Reykjavik Museum of Art to introduce American audiences to the work of this significant Icelandic artist,” notes Lynn Gumpert, the Grey’s director. “What distinguishes his works from those of his American Pop counterparts is his commitment to create contemporary history paintings.” Erró observes: “By dealing with daily events, I try to interpret the present, a short period of time in the life of the society, before it enters total oblivion.”

Erró, who adopted this alias, was born Gudmundur Gudmundsson in Olafsvik, Iceland, in 1932. An inveterate traveler from early on, Erró studied in Reykjavik, Oslo, and Florence before settling in Paris in 1958. His early tempera-and-ink paintings on paper depict ghoulish grimacing figures entwined in seemingly never-ending struggles, and firmly situate him in the postwar European figurative art scene. An astute observer of art history, Erró incorporated references to works of art in his paintings long before appropriation became synonymous with postmodernism.

From the very beginning, the technique of collage proved essential to Erró’s art. He has amassed an ever-expanding archive of images–comprised of news and magazine clippings, posters, leaflets, postcards, reproductions, and comics–which provide source materials for his collages. Dating from 1956 is the Radioactivity series, in which primordial stick-figures interact with tabloid headlines such as “Flu Covers the World.” In 1958, he created a series of bold, colorful collages derived, in part, from fashion magazines. In them, women’s faces metamorphose into strange, mechanical hybrids, which inspired subsequent paintings in the Meca-Make-up series, such as Madame IBM, 1959–60, a startling portrait where an eye and a rouged mouth emerge out of a geometrical conglomeration surmounted by curls.

Paris in the early 1960s was hotbed of international artistic activity and political protest. Of his Meca-Make-up series, Erró observes: “It consisted of shock images, like insults. Everything at that time was violent. There was the war in Algeria, then the war in Vietnam. Even rock music was violent.” Erró, along with artist and friend Jean-Jacques Lebel, participated in numerous happenings and performances, using his body and those of his collaborators as living grounds for political engagement.  In one 1962 performance, two naked women wearing Kruschev and Kennedy masks wrestled in red paint, dramatizing a Cold War fight-to-the-death.

His first trip to New York in 1962 provided additional fodder and an important discovery, Pop art, which coincided with his interest in popular culture. But while James Rosenquist would juxtapose a woman’s profile, cars, and pasta, Erró’s works from the sixties would combine a political figure with vignettes from a Thomas Hart Benton mural and a Soviet Socialist Realist painting. American Pop thrived on the transformation of everyday reality into art, but Erró adopted this new language to display the contradictions inherent in a world of never-ending consumption. In Pop’s History, a landmark painting from 1967, Erró acknowledges his American colleagues and mocks the notion that Pop could have first surfaced anywhere but the U.S. In this key work, cartoonish, bearded Muscovites in fur hats frolic in the snow while excerpts from Pop classics—a Warhol Marilyn, a Wesselman reclining nude, an Oldenburg hamburger, for example—float above in balloons. In the 1960s, Erró also produced two experimental films, Grimaces and Concerto Mécanique, which will be screened in the exhibition at the Grey alongside the Surrealist-inspired assemblages and props he created for them.

Erró continued to develop his history paintings in the 1970s, including a series on American astronauts and works such as CIA KGB, 1974–75. In Chinese paintings, from 1974–79, another series, he inserts Mao Zedong or figures from Socialist Realist posters into stylized urban backgrounds, for example, New York or Chicago. It is a contemporary reprise of this series produced as lithographs—Mao visiting Venice—that are on view at NYU’s Lillian Vernon Center for International Affairs.

Later, in the 1980s and ’90s, Erró filled every inch of his canvases with brightly colored cartoon and comic-book figures, all vying for our attention. Exemplifying this abundant, horror vacui approach to painting is the Femmes Fatales series. In each painting in this series, female figures abound—nuns, women warriors, television superstars, historical characters, and, most prominently, comic-book super heroines, such as Wonder Woman, Red Sonja, and Tank Girl. Here Erró simultaneously employs and undermines clichés, creating scenarios where women always reign supreme.

Erró has always worked in series, first creating collages that he then projects onto canvases and paints. He observes, “Assembling the collage is the most enjoyable part of the work. It offers the most freedom. It is almost like automatic writing. Here you discover formal solutions to filling the surface. The collage is simultaneously an original and a model. Then it’s just a matter of locking yourself up in the studio, sometimes for 15 hours at a stretch.”

Erró has shown prominently in Europe, including a 1999 solo exhibition at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris.  His work has been included in many exhibitions centering on postwar art in Europe, for example, “Made in France” in 1997 and “Les Années Pop” (The Pop Years), both at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. In 1989, Erró donated over 3,000 works to the city of Reykjavik, and in 2001, a selection from the Erró Collection was featured at the Harbour House, a recently opened branch of the Reykjavik Art Museum. “Erró’s gift to the Reykjavik Art Museum is one of the largest ever given to an Icelandic museum,” notes Eirikur Thorlaksson, director of the museum and co-organizer of the exhibition at the Grey Art Gallery. “It is part of our mission to help shed more light on Icelandic culture, and the Erró Collection is providing one means to do so.”

Worldscapes: The Art of Erró will be on view at the Grey Art Gallery, 100 Washington Square East, April 13 thru July 17, 2004; gallery hours: T, Th, F: 11am – 6pm, W: 11am – 8 pm, Sat: 11am – 5pm; tel: 212-998-6780; website: www.nyu.edu/greyart. Femmes Fatales will be on view at Goethe-Institut New York, 1014 Fifth Avenue, April 14 thru July 16, 2004; gallery hours: M thru F: 10am – 5pm; tel: 212-439-8700; website: www.goethe.de/newyork. Mao’s Last Visit to Venice will be on view at NYU’s Lillian Vernon Center for International Affairs; 58 West 10th Street, April 19 thru May 28, 2004; gallery hours: M thru F: 10am – 5pm; tel: 212-992-9091; website: www.nyu.edu/vernon-center.

Worldscapes: The Art of Erró is co-organized by the Grey Art Gallery and the Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland.  The Grey Art Gallery presentation is made possible in part by the Abby Weed Grey Trust, the Consulate General of Iceland, and Iceland Naturally.  Educational programs are supported in part by the Grey Art Gallery’s Inter/National Council.

GREY ART GALLERY, NYU
greyartgallery.nyu.edu

Dark Matter: The Art of David Huffman, de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University

Dark Matter: The Art of David Huffman 

de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University 

April 17 - August 1, 2004 

Berkeley-based David Huffman’s compelling paintings, works on paper, and ceramic sculptures combine references to Japanese animation and cartoon imagery with powerful social commentary. David Huffman describes trauma as being the core of his work: the pain of slavery and ministrelsy internalized by African Americans for centuries. David Huffman has exhibited his work in California and New York since 1993. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the California College of the Arts and is currently a lecturer at Santa Clara University and California College of the Arts.

Karen Kienzle, curator of exhibits and collections at the de Saisset Museum.

DE SAISSET MUSEUM

Santa Clara University

500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, California 95053

www.scu.edu

David Huffman, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco - Tribulations

David Huffman - Tribulations

Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco

April 1 - May 15, 2004

Patricia Sweetow Gallery presents the paintings of David Huffman in his exhibition of new paintings, Tribulations. This exhibition is in conjunction with the University of Santa Clara, de Saisset Museum exhibition, Dark Matter: The Art of David Huffman, April 17 - August 1, 2004.

Bay Area artist DAVID HUFFMAN (b.1963), has expressed his idiosyncratic universe of Traumabot's, and Trauma Smiles in an unfolding epic of violence as the cultural norm. The cataclysmic conflicts portrayed in his paintings metaphorically parallel our nation/state, religious, racial and personal tragedies. His language is one of alienation and urgency, where characters that are marked with the Minstrel's smile exist in an environment of isolation fearing phenomena that are of their own making.

Although the paintings graphically depict a culture of apprehension, David Huffman's palette and brushwork seduce the viewer with a surface of muted tones, watermarks that dissolve in a mat, powdered surface of liquid atmosphere. Roberta Smith, art critic for the New York Times, wrote of Huffman's paintings in a November 28 review of The Studio Museum in Harlem recent exhibition Blackbelt "David Huffman's paintings of black astronauts and action figures drifting in surfaces of soft, smoky plumes and swirls suggest a familiarity with Chinese landscape painting and supply one of the show's few sensuous moments". 

Through interviews, reviews, essays and statements, David Huffman's work has been discussed and written about in many publications." In the exhibition catalog of Freestyle, The Studio Museum in Harlem,  Eungie Joo writes, "Imagine traveling to the outskirts of infinity to arrive in a Journey to the Center of the Earth-territory of bodily space, replete with internal organs, digestive gases, and glandular operations. The organs can process disease, infection and sorrow. They are awareness...."In comparison, Huffman articulates his ideas through his paintings, often demanding the viewer draw their own conclusions about influence and substance. "By recontectualizing the minstrel into super-robots, the concentration has been intellectual and material accomplishments, thus leading to a soul-less spiritual crisis. Their sense of self has become an artifact from denial of self, from obsessive material success, all cast and proffered by others. Although the stereotype of caricature has been removed, the Trauma smiles continue to inhabit the mask of the minstrel."

David Huffman's work is represented in public and private collections.

PATRICIA SWEETOW GALLERY

49 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94108

www.patriciasweetowgallery.com

Do-Ho Suh at Freer & Sackler Galleries, Washington DC

Perspectives: Do-Ho Suh
Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington DC
April 17 - September 26, 2004

Recent statistics show that about 11 percent of people living in the United States are foreign-born. Many have experienced the emotional tensions of displacement; of belonging while being alien, of being home while longing for "home." Few however, have expressed those feelings as powerfully as Korean-born artist Do-Ho Suh, whose exploration of these issues through monumental, three-dimensional works is widely known.

Do-Ho Suh says that his work "starts from a reflection on space, especially personal space...not only a physical one, but an intangible, metaphorical and psychological one." His site-specific "Staircase-IV," created from gossamer red nylon fabric for the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Pavilion, is the second in the Perspectives series of exhibitions focusing on the work of leading contemporary artists from Asia and the Asian Diaspora. "Staircase-IV" will be on view through September 26, 2004.

The son of a prominent Korean artist, Do-Ho Suh was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1962 and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in Oriental Painting from Seoul National University before moving to the United States in 1993 and continuing his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and Yale University. His work includes both huge, fabric, tent-like scale reproductions of domestic interiors as well as sculptural works that explore the tension between the individual and the collective. They have been exhibited world-wide and were included in the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001 and the 2003 Instanbul Biennale. In the last three years alone, Do-Ho Suh has held solo exhibitions in Seoul, London, New York, Kansas City and Seattle. Based in New York, Do-Ho Suh leads a semi-nomadic life, traveling the world to install his art. He returns frequently to Korea to visit family and supervise the seamstresses who construct his fabric works, which evoke his childhood home and the interior and staircase of his apartment in the Chelsea district of Manhattan in meticulous, carefully scaled detail.

Do-Ho Suh conceived of his first fabric-based architectural work while living as a student in a noisy New York apartment building across from a firehouse. Recalling the peace and comfort of his childhood home with its translucent rice paper walls, he searched for a light, portable fabric with which to replicate it. Eventually in 1999 as the result of a commission from the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles, the diaphanous structure was fabricated on a scale of one foot to an inch that in principle could be packed in a suitcase and carried wherever he went. Reconstructed at successive locations, this "Seoul Home" has since added the name of each city to its title, tracing its passage and modifying the concept of site-specificity.

"Staircase-IV," on view at the Sackler, is the fourth in Do-Ho Suh's more recent series of monumental staircases. Meticulously stitched out of a translucent red nylon fabric, "Staircase-IV" replicates the staircase in Suh's New York apartment in 1:1 scale, complete with architectural detail, creating an uncanny sense of the real while transforming density into lightness and the concrete into the remembered. Hovering just above the Pavilion floor, the flight of stairs rises high above the ground before reaching a large and expansive plateau representing the apartment floor above. "Staircase-IV" invokes movement, impermanence and the promise of transcendence along the anonymous passage from one level to another.

The installation coincides with the museum's September and October Korean film festival.

This exhibition has been generously supported by the Korea Foundation, USA and the Korea Times-Hankook Ilbo.

Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
www.asia.si.edu