The 2003-3004 ASU Art Museum Exhibition Calendar
Gadgets and Gizmos
Through August 31, 2003
ASU Art Museum, Nelson Fine Arts Center
Gadgets and Gizmos is the museum’s summer family exhibition. Using high technology, such as a small video camera, or low technology, such as the hand-carved wooden cuckoo clocks by Abel Barroso, artists have combined pieces and parts into intriguing works of art. Whether conceptually complex, visually appealing and/or whimsical, these works present an unusual art experience for viewers of any age.
Philippe Bradshaw: Chains and Videos
Through Sept. 13, 2003
ASU Art Museum, Nelson Fine Arts Center
Closing Reception: 7-9 p.m., Sept. 13
Made from anodized aluminum chains, Philippe Bradshaw’s rendition of Mona Lisa hangs from the gallery ceiling like colorful beaded curtains or macramé from the early ’70s. Video projections onto the chain surface create unlikely pairings. From video art and the Mona Lisa to driving dance club music and a museum setting, Bradshaw re-examines traditional perception and environmental settings.
Andy Warhol and the Pop Aesthetic: Permanent Collection and Loans
Through Sept. 13, 2003
ASU Art Museum, Nelson Fine Arts Center
Closing Reception: 7-9 p.m., Sept. 13
Five early drawings and a classic screen print of Mao Tse-tung by Andy Warhol anchor this exhibition of artists who were associated with the American pop art movement of the early 1960s. Pop art emerged as mass advertising and television became predominant forces in American life, accompanied by a heightened consumer culture. In 1962, Time reported that the average American was exposed to about 1,600 advertisements per day. Pop artists drew from these new and pervasive sources such as advertisements, billboards, comic books and mass-produced items. Drawn from the ASU Art Museum’s permanent collection with loans from private collections, the exhibition includes works by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Wesselman, Ed Ruscha, Robert Indiana and Roy Lichtenstein.
The Painters’ Craft: Renaissance and Baroque Paintings in the Permanent Collection
August 23 – Dec. 6, 2003
ASU Art Museum, Nelson Fine Arts Center
This exhibition of 12 paintings was designed as part of a university course, but it provides the museum audience with an opportunity to see these rare works. The work is drawn from the ASU Art Museum collection of 22 Renaissance and Baroque paintings, some of which are of the finest quality. Bicci di Lorenzo’s Nativity and L’Ortolano’s Presentation in the Temple were formerly in the National Gallery in Washington, and variants of Domenico Puligo’s Madonna, Child and St. John belonged to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Even those works that are of lesser quality or are poorly preserved offer students, scholars and those who love painting an invaluable opportunity to examine how paintings were made hundreds of years ago.
Mexican Folk Art in Context: Works from the Collection of Kathleen and Richard Vanesian
Sept. 13, 2003 – Jan. 4, 2004
ASU Art Museum, Nelson Fine Arts Center
Opening Reception: 7-9 p.m., Sept. 13
Selected from more than 300 works collected over more than 25 years, the exhibition demonstrates ways in which folk artists reflect or comment on both enduring and changing aspects of their world. Some things remain constant, such as mythology, but that mythology may take on new meaning in response to the impact of political, ecological and cultural upheaval. The exhibition also places works of art in the context of the makers' particular worlds, with photographic references gathered by the Vanesians as they collected throughout the Mexican republic.
Luo Xiaoping: The Time Square Series
Oct. 3, 2003 – Feb. 7, 2004
ASU Art Museum, Ceramics Research Center
Opening Reception: 7-9 p.m., Oct. 3
Lecture: Claudia Brown, director of ASU’s Center for Asian Studies: Oct. 3, 8 p.m., CRC
Luo Xiaoping is an internationally renowned Chinese artist living in Yixing, Jiangsu Province, who also spends time in Arizona, working in ceramics. His Time Square Series will showcase 24 figures of world political leaders. Given the current turmoil in the world political arena, this timely show will help audiences put a face to the forces that influence our global communities. Some of these figures may never stand together, in reality, but through the work of the artist are brought together on a single stage.
Beyond Boundaries: The Yixing Influence on Contemporary American Ceramics
Oct. 3, 2003 – Jan. 31, 2004
ASU Art Museum, Ceramics Research Center
Opening Reception: 7-9 p.m., Oct. 3
Lecture: Ceramist Richard Notkin, 3 p.m., Nov. 16, AED 60 (Architecture building)
Workshop: Ceramist Richard Notkin, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., Nov. 15, and
10 a.m. – 2 p.m., Nov 16. Workshop cost: $100.
Beyond Boundaries: The Yixing Influence on Contemporary American Ceramics will present the work of six American ceramic artists influenced by the pottery traditions of Yixing, China. Yixing is a county in Southeast China and has been a center of ceramic production for over 1,000 years. The teapot form was most revered by Chinese tea masters dating back to the 16th century when they commissioned potters to create works depicting the natural world. The vessels transcended pure function, serving as an avenue for expression inspired by revered art forms such as calligraphy, poetry and painting. The American leader in raising the awareness of the Yixing tradition is Richard Notkin, an internationally acclaimed artist who first traveled to China in 1991. Other participating artists include Eric Van Eimiren, Gayle Fichtinger, Geo Lastimirsky, Beth Lo, Kathleen Royster and Richard Swanson.
Cuban Art from the Permanent Collection
Oct. 11, 2003 – March 6, 2004
ASU Art Museum, Nelson Fine Arts Center
This exhibition includes works added since the 1998 exhibition Contemporary Art from Cuba: Irony and Survival on the Utopian Island, and includes a commissioned piece by Cuban artists José Angel Toirac and Meira Marrero, who worked with American artist Patricia Clark to make La Edad de Oro (The Golden Age), a video triptych that juxtaposes American and Cuban coverage of the 1999 Elian Gonzalez tug-of-war between his Miami relatives and his Cuban father. A series of objects that reflect the tension between his experience and "normal" childhood complement the triptych.
Gary Hill: Language Willing
Oct. 25, 2003 – Jan. 24, 2004
ASU Art Museum, Nelson Fine Arts Center
Opening Reception: 7-9 p.m., Nov. 1
Public lecture by the artist: 7:30 p.m., Oct. 28. (Location TBA.)
Gary Hill: Language Willing presents four new works by one of the founders of video installation art. For more than 20 years, Hill has used video imagery with computer manipulation to create powerful installations that interact with the viewer. Hill’s “time based sculptures” focus on different combinations of sound, the human body and speaking. The ASU Art Museum has a history of bringing internationally recognized and emerging new media artists to Valley audiences for the first time.
Landscape in the Fireplace: Paintings by Pedro Alvarez
Feb. 7 – June 19, 2004
ASU Art Museum, Nelson Fine Arts Center
Opening Reception: 7-9 p.m., Feb. 7
Pedro Alvarez, among the best known of the Cuban contemporary artists, pries meaning from clichés about cultural exoticism to reveal underlying assumptions about racial or class superiority that are preserved in these icons.
Blue Memory: Paintings by Tran Trong Vu
Feb. 7 – May 2, 2004
ASU Art Museum, Nelson Fine Arts Center
Opening Reception: 7-9 p.m., Feb. 7
For the exhibition Blue Memory, Vietnamese artist Tran Trong Vu will suspend 100 paintings on clear sheets of plastic in the gallery, creating a labyrinth of figures. Tran was born in Hanoi in 1964 but left
his homeland to escape the shadow of his well-known dissident poet father. His striking paintings explore what it means to be Asian and Vietnamese within the context of an increasingly westernized, global culture, both inside and outside of Vietnam. The exhibition is co-curated by Heather Sealy Lineberry, Senior Curator, ASU Art Museum and Dr. Nora Taylor, ASU Humanities Program.
Humor, Irony and Wit: Ceramic Funk from the Sixties and Beyond
Feb. 27 - June 5, 2004
ASU Art Museum, Ceramics Research Center
CRC Gala events: Feb. 27, 28, 29
Ceramics Open Studios event: Feb. 28-29
Drawn from the Ceramics Research Center’s permanent collection as well as other private and public collections, this exhibition unfolds the compelling and often humorous story of the development of Funk ceramics that emerged from the San Francisco Bay area during the 1960s. Robert Arneson led the charge of this movement from the University of California, Davis. Some of his students included David Gilhooly, Richard Notkin, Peter Vandenberge, Chris Unterseher and Margaret Dodd. The artists showed little respect for traditional craftsmanship in pottery and created work that drew inspiration from Dada, Surrealism, Pop Art and the Beat culture. The term Funk was coined in 1966 by Peter Selz for a show he organized at the University of California Art Museum in Berkeley, California.
The Long Day: Sculpture by Claudette Schreuders
March 20 – June 19, 2004
ASU Art Museum, Nelson Fine Arts Center
Claudette Schreuders’ sculpture is a potent blend of personal experience and political history from growing up and living in post-apartheid South Africa. Her figurative, wood sculptures are a compelling mix of private individuals negotiating the public changes – from a domestic servant eating lunch at the park to a young white woman reading about Rwanda. These quiet yet poignant moments are enhanced by a carving style that has the immediacy of folk art and the strength of Baroque sculpture.
When I Grow Up...
May 22 - September 4, 2004
ASU Art Museum, Nelson Fine Arts Center
When I grow up… takes a younger generation’s view of different situations facing senior citizens and the respect, or lack thereof, toward the aging in our society. It presents the options, both chosen and dealt out of circumstance, that decide how and where individuals spend their “golden years.” Works in the exhibition will include photography, video and sound.
British Ceramic Masterworks: Highlights from the Anne and Sam Davis Collection
June 25 – Sept. 25, 2004
ASU Art Museum, Ceramics Research Center
Opening Reception: 7-9 p.m., June 25
In 1998, Anne and Sam Davis gave their collection of 315 modern and contemporary ceramic works by 120 British and American artists to the ASU Art Museum. Originally from England, Anne Davis collected ceramics from some of the most influential British studio potters including Michael Cardew, Bernard Leach, Lucie Rie and Hans Coper. The Davis Collection also consists of the work of other major artists including Alison Britton, Joanna Constantinidis, Stephen Dixon, Nicholas Homoky, Peter Lane, Alan Caiger-Smith, Angus Suttie, Geoffrey Swindell and George Walker among others. This exhibition will illustrate the depth and variety of British ceramics created since the 1940s, ranging from functional pottery to figurative sculpture.
Out of the Woods
July 10 – Oct. 2, 2004
ASU Art Museum, Ceramics Research Center
Opening Reception: 7-9 p.m., July 9
Family Fun Day: 10 a.m. – 2 p.m., July 10
Drawn from the ASU Art Museum’s permanent collection and local collections, this exhibition presents artworks made of wood or derived from natural sources. It will examine ecological issues connected to those materials and the environmental challenges of such practices as deforestation, as well as debates over proper conservation.The ASU Art Museum was recently named “the single most impressive venue for contemporary art in Arizona” by “Art in America.” It is a division of The Katherine K. Herberger College of Fine Arts at Arizona State University.
Media Contact:
Jennifer Pringle
480-965-8795
jennifer.pringle@asu.edu