calendario eventi  :: 

X

28/4/2011

Two exhibitions

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha

Keith Jacobshagen: A Golden Year
curated by Hesse McGraw, Bemis Center chief curator

Keith Jacobshagen is a preeminent American landscape painter. Instantly recognizable for their signature relationship of sky to land, Jacobshagen's paintings construct spaces of intense introspection within the spectacular expanse of the Midwestern sky. Throughout his career, Jacobshagen has focused on the sixty-mile radius surrounding Lincoln, Nebraska to make pictures that capture the spiritual vastness of Nebraska's landscape.

A Golden Year is a series of 365 oil paintings, produced from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2011 on 3.5 x 5 inch sheets of copper. The copper panels will be installed in a continuous line encircling the gallery. Although Jacobshagen has long been accustomed to painting daily in Moleskin watercolor books, he has never exhibited the works comprehensively.

Keith Jacobshagen’s land and sky paintings give form to places we think we know. A Golden Year does not aim to document, nor measure the artist’s endurance and it only loosely represents specific sites. Although deeply invested in the daily practice of painting, and keen to reference field sketches such as Frederic Church’s, Jacobshagen’s series reads as a whole work, each day contingent on the others. His 365 paintings create a buoyant image of a year at dusk, a spectrum of enormous vistas, elevated perspectives and the limitless horizon. Jacobshagen offers us a year of looking into and beyond the sky.

Keith Jacobshagen has said, “Painting is fiction.” His embrace of subjective pleasure grants singular force to these works. The paintings are constructed from direct observation, photographs and watercolors, but also from multiple perspectives, memory, invention and ultimately, from knowing. Jacobshagen’s fiction is purely held up by a set of painterly tactics that form believable and compelling places. His earth-shaping works quietly chronicle vast spans of nothing. Places teeming with information — crop rows, outbuildings, flock forms and color spiked contrails are alas dots, dashes and scrims of paint. Jacobshagen gleams in the space between perceived representation and the actual regimens and joys of his studio. He has spent his career in the space between what the mind knows, and what the hand does.  

Jacobshagen sets the deep times of our plains landscape — its inland sea and unquantifiable ecological histories — against the rapidity of our presence here, our imprints on the land and miniscule interaction with its scale. Jacobshagen’s works are fully in the moment, yet untethered to the single sunset. In the totality of the series there is a hopefulness and a belief in the coming sunrise.

It is in one’s own belief that Jacobshagen allows the viewer to get lost. Stripped of specific markers, the paintings become places for everyone, for the lost memory to emerge and for the future country drive to find its focus. As a means of feeling out one’s place in the world, Jacobshagen’s paintings sear through the mess and their copper streaked skies grant us the sublime personal clarity of the plains horizon.

A limited edition catalog is produced in conjunction with the exhibition.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Trained as a graphic designer, illustrator and painter at the Kansas City Art Institute (BFA, 1965) and the University of Kansas (MFA, 1968), Keith Jacobshagen (b. 1941) has been painting the light and space of the Midwest for four decades. Jacobshagen’s work has been shown in galleries and museums throughout the United States and, since the late 1960s, he has presented over 80 one-person exhibitions. His work is included in many public, corporate and private collections nationwide. He is professor emeritus at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Exhibitions presenting sponsor: Omaha Steaks
Promotional sponsor: Douglas County Visitor Improvement Fund
Sponsored by: Clark Creative Group, Larry Gawel Photography, Chris Headley / OmahaComputerHelp.com, Nebraska Arts Council, Quail Distributing, Sherwin Williams, The Todd and Betiana Simon Foundation, Upstream Brewing Company, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Visions Custom Framing, Warren Distribution

Gallery Talk: Saturday, April 30 | 12 noon | FREE

--------------------------

Bemis Gardens. Exhibition and Urban Garden
curated by Hesse McGraw, Bemis Center chief curator

participants include el dorado architects, Peter Goché, Min | Day + FACT, Michael Beitz, Ruth Dusseault, SIMPARCH, Colin C. Smith, Studiomama / Nina Tolstrup, Anne Trumble, Sean R. Ward, James Woodfill

Bemis Gardens is an exhibition and design laboratory that will transform the Bemis Center's exterior into a public art site and urban garden, and speculate on the urban condition of the contemporary art center and its relationship with downtown Omaha. In the midst of the Building | Bemis construction process, a project that will result in a significant expansion of the artist-in-residence program, renovated fabrication facilities and a restored front dock — this exhibition and project series serves to initiate a holistic reconsideration of the Center’s land use and exterior relationships with the public.

In recent years, artists, architects, ecologists and social designers of all stripes have formed new hybrids between food production and social space, urban ecologies and public art, forgotten space and material ingenuity, storm water reclamation and public spectacle. Responding to these emergent possibilities and to the Bemis Center’s physical rehabilitation, Bemis Gardens aims to build model ecological and aesthetic relationships with the city.

Bemis Gardens is structured as an open laboratory and interactive exhibition. Throughout its three month run the exhibition will remain in flux — between the gallery and its exterior, between design process and fabrication, between representation of completed projects and installation of site-specific works. During the exhibition, renovation of the front dock will establish a Place for public sculpture, perennial gardens and a shifting social platform.

The Bemis Center will host a weekly series of charrettes and dialogues throughout the exhibition that will convene professionals from diverse fields to consider macro urban land use futures and speculate on specific possibilities for the Bemis Center’s full site. The charrettes are intended as collaborative dialogues and will be formalized as actionable proposals. This process will take place in the gallery and be presented for the public in real-time through lectures, renderings and fabricated prototypes.

Presenting Sponsor: Omaha Steaks
Bemis Gardens Sponsor: Carol Gendler | Marathon Realty
Sponsors: Justin V. Allen Design + Development, Clark Creative Group, Davis Erection and Crane Rental & Rigging, Nebraska Arts Council, Quail Distributing, Upstream Brewing Company, Larry Gawel Photography, Chris Headley / OmahaComputerHelp.com, Min | Day, Sherwin Williams, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Visions Custom Framing, Warren Distribution

Design Charrettes: Every Thursday April 28 – July 28, 4 – 6 p.m. | FREE
Lecture: Min | Day Thursday May 19 6:00 p.m. – 8 p.m. | Bemis Center, AIA & AIAS members: $5.00 Public: $10.00
Lecture: el dorado architects Thursday July 28 6:00 p.m. – 8 p.m. | Bemis Center, AIA & AIAS members: $5.00 Public: $10.00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: Andrew Hershey, Media Director
Andrew@bemiscenter.org; (402) 341-7130 x 14

Opening Reception: Friday, April 29, 6-9p.m.

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts
12th and Leavenworth streets, Omaha

stampa

permanent link