For this exhibition, Inoue will create an installation that methodically fills the gallery with hand-cast porcelain replicas of new or discarded domestic objects that she has mined from urban street fairs and souvenir shops. At the same time, Inoue pays homage to the meditative, temple-like serenity of the space in which the installation is housed.
Yoko Inoue
Mindmine
Organized by Katherine Gass
June 27 Â July 30, 2002
Opening reception Thursday, June 27, 6-8 p.m.
The exhibition of new work by Japanese artist Yoko Inoue. Inoue continues her
exploration of the historical relationships between people and everyday
domestic objects, which she finds most prevalent in the transient
cross-cultural mergings of the urban street market. For this exhibition,
Inoue will create an installation that methodically fills the gallery with
hand-cast porcelain replicas of new or discarded domestic objects that she
has mined from urban street fairs and souvenir shops. At the same time,
Inoue pays homage to the meditative, temple-like serenity of the space in
which the installation is housed.
Sometimes the objects Inoue replicates -- such as a small, plastic,
cartoonish cat found on Canal Street -- are recognizable icons. Inoue is
familiar with the cat as a good fortune totem placed near the cash registers
of small businesses in Japan; it is also the cat of Buddhist folktales that
saved a monk¹s life and inspired the replicas that are sold at temple fairs
in pilgrimage towns. Other times, as with Christmas Rat and strange animal
figures intended as lawn decorations, the cross-cultural associations and
manifestations are more suggestive, but no less curious.
By stripping these objects of their found location and material, Inoue
interrupts their easy commodification and calls attention to the spirit of
the person or group that may have originated them. In the process of
examining a human absence, she implies that our treatment of an object can
change its very nature. Even if the original purpose was that of a token,
a
gift, or an icon, commercial and cultural displacement for another use
creates new forms of worship and leaves a new series of inter-connected
relationships and dialectics in their wake. Inoue questions what remains
within an object that makes it possible for us to recognize ourselves in it
,
and reclaim it as part of our own identity or in a broader sense, our
culture.
In 2000, Yoko Inoue graduated with an MFA from Hunter College, New York, an
d
completed a residency at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture,
Maine. Her sculptures and installations have been included in exhibitions
at Flip Side Gallery, Brooklyn; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx;
SculptureCenter, Long Island City, New York; and Art In General, New York,
among other venues. She is currently completing a residency project of a
new work entitled Contemporary Permanence with artist Troy Richards at
Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, New York from June 30 through
October 2, 2002.
_________
Space 2
Charles Clough
Brushworks
June 27 Â July 30, 2002
Opening reception: Thursday, June 27, 6-8 p.m.
An exhibition of new works on paper by Charles Clough. Collectively entitled Brushworks,
Clough's intimate watercolors demonstrate a straightforward approach and
reveal a simple, natural beauty.
Charles Clough, who in 1974 co-founded Hallwalls in Buffalo, New York,
recently left his urban, interior workspace in favor of a garden studio in
Rhode Island. He simultaneously departed from his signature painting tool,
"the big finger," in favor of the brush and its inherent qualities and
traditions. The results are colorful, imaginative musings on art and the
natural landscape.
Charles Clough has exhibited extensively since his first solo show in 1973.
He is represented in numerous public and private collections, including the
Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Buffalo, the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Hood
Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover; the Dayton Museum of Art; the
Indianapolis Museum of Art; and Chase Manhattan Bank, New York.
Image: a work by Charles Clough
Von Lintel Gallery
555 West 25th Street
New York