calendario eventi  :: 

X

21/1/2010

Two exhibitions

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha

Borderland Abstraction

This exhibition is organized by Hesse McGraw, Bemis Center curator.

Artists include Nils Folke Anderson, Tim Bavington, Nate Boyce, Michelle Grabner, Amy Granat, Mary Heilmann, Matthew Kluber, Takeshi Murata, Ara Peterson, Eli Ping, Eric Sall, Colin C. Smith and Wendy White.

Borderland Abstraction includes several generations of artists working throughout the United States who are invested in the expanded possibilities and problems of abstraction. Their work, in painting, sculpture, photography and video, often attaches to other disciplines - music, architecture, film, urbanism, virtual space - with a fervor that swells the limits of abstraction.

Debate on abstraction ballooned in the last decade, engulfing issues as varied as the politics of beauty, material ingenuity, site-specificity and fragmentation. Response to these issues splintered into strongly worded arguments on the cause of visual pleasure v. market pressure; iteration v. spontaneity, the offhand gesture v. formal purity; reductivist aesthetics v. maximalist expression; and on and on. Rather than wallow in these debates, which ultimately shift focus from the work and its ideas, this exhibition explores the vibrant cracks in between, places where there are authentic pleasures in the making, looking and thinking about contemporary abstraction.

Nils Folke Anderson will be building work at the Bemis Center from January 19 to January 22. Please join Bemis Center Curator Hesse McGraw and Anderson, Matthew Kluber, Colin C. Smith and Wendy White for a discussion about the exhibition and their works on Saturday, January 23 from noon to 2:00 p.m.

-----

James Woodfill: Stations

This exhibition is organized by Hesse McGraw, Bemis Center curator.

James Woodfill makes sculptures, installations and public art works that often include light, sound, video or kinetic elements. Whether presented in galleries or permanently installed in quotidian public spaces such as parking lots, garages, bridges, courtyards, or self-storage facilities, Woodfill's works amplify the conditions of their surroundings and heighten our interactions with the site. By shifting our experience and memories, his works nudge neutral urban sites and gallery spaces into Places. This shift is often imperceptible, closer to a drift, that realigns the parking lot or static white cube as a place to be. The lure is not achieved through fussy decoration or a glossy makeover but through dissolving into the place itself - his works reflect the dumbness of their environment. Woodfill never aims for the transcendent metaphor, rather he makes an endearing wager with the actual conditions of our surroundings.

The exhibition Stations is a new installation of works conceived specifically for the Bemis Center. These works extend from Woodfill's history of working in galleries and public sites and build upon an ongoing dialogue about reference points such as physical perception, architectural space, urbanism's fuzzy edges, materiality and abstraction. In early conversations about this exhibition, Woodfill claimed he was looking for the work to "hover between a constructivist painting and a fireworks stand." Beyond melding high and low cultures, this thought merges the formal concerns of pure, systemic painting with the ad hoc, functional beauty of cobbled structures.

For three decades Woodfill has improvised in his studio with an ever-expanding kit of parts. His kit includes specific materials (sign flashers, amplifiers, bulbs, motors, plywood, 2x4s, ladders, casters), reference points and formal gestures but avoids an iterative process. One never gets the sense of a predetermined outcome in his work; rather a restless freebuilding, an artist working at the act of working and reveling in the drift.

About the artist:
Kansas City based artist James Woodfill's exhibitions and public art works have received significant national recognition for their effects on the perception of space. Woodfill's work has been reviewed in such publications as Art In America, Art Papers, New Art Examiner, I.D. Magazine and Sculpture magazine. His public work has been widely recognized with numerous awards, including awards from the American Institute of Architects. Woodfill's efforts have extended into education, curatorial projects, writings and numerous urban planning projects and studies. He received a Charlotte Street Foundation award in Kansas City and was awarded a multi-year studio grant from Review Studios. In 2000 he served as visiting assistant professor in experimental mixed media at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Woodfill graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1980 and he has taught there since 1998.

Bemis Center's exhibition program is presented by: Omaha Steaks
Additional sponsors for this exhibition include: Clark Creative Group, Midwest Airlines, minorwhite studios, Nebraska Arts Council, Quail Distributing, Rybin Plumbing & Heating, The Sound Environment, Sherwin Williams, Upstream Brewing Co., and Warren Distribution

For inquiries concerning the Bemis Center's marketing, please contact Andrew Hershey at 402.341.7130 x 14 or via email at andrew@bemiscenter.org

Opening Reception | Friday, January 22, 6:00 - 9:00 p.m. | FREE

Gallery Talk with the artist | Saturday, January 23, 12:00 noon | FREE

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts
724 S. 12th, Omaha USA
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
free admission

stampa

permanent link