Cheekwood Holds Dual Opening of Contemporary Art

Outlying Area, 2001, Oil on wood, Courtesy of the Artist and DCKT Contemporary, New York.

NASHVILLE, TN.- Cheekwood will hold a dual opening of contemporary art on October 5 for David Lefkowitz’s exhibition, Oblivious to Place, in the Temporary Contemporary gallery and Open Call: Emerging Video Artists in the Video Installation galleries. The reception opening the two shows will be from 6:00-8:00 p.m. at Cheekwood’s Frist Learning Center. David Lefkowitz, a Nashville native, will give a gallery talk at 7:00 that evening.

In Oblivious to Place, David Lefkowitz explores the uneven development of architecture in the landscape. There are multiple ways to understand architectural design such as the discussions of a period, a region’s style, a client’s particular taste or an architect’s philosophy. In each case, decisions are made about how to manipulate a landscape. The installation of Lefkowitz’s architectural images represent the unpredictable direction development can take as well as the historical overlaps and juxtapositions they represent.

Lefkowitz suggests the uniform nature of contemporary architecture and landscape design in his images. He calls attention to how planned communities seem authoritarian and disconnected. His work creates discussion with the exhibition showing in Cheekwood’s Museum of Art, A Genius for Place: American Landscapes of the Country Place Era, contrasting the 19th century picturesque landscape architecture with contemporary urban design issues. Oblivious to Place will be on display through December 30.

David Lefkowitz was raised in Nashville. He currently lives in Minnesota and teaches art at Carlton College. He has had solo exhibitions at Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota, the ARC Gallery in Chicago, and at DCKT Contemporary in New York.

For the exhibition, Open Call: Emerging Video Artists, video artists from around the world submitted over 200 works to be judged by curators, artists, and art historians associated with Cheekwood. This exhibition presents a survey of styles and techniques currently explored in contemporary art, and each work intersects with multiple dialogues in contemporary culture. Open Call will be on view from October 6, 2007 through April 6, 2008 and will feature the work of:

Phillip Andrew Lewis - For Memphis-based artist Phillip Andrew Lewis, the landscape provides a site to document shifting patterns of light, sound, and movement across a horizon.

Julia Gail Oldham - Julia Gail Oldham performs interpretive dances that mimic the gestures of insects. She limits her movements to a series of repetitive gestures translated from the “dances” of insects. These dances suggest that humans like insects use movement to create systems of non-verbal communication.

Julie Orser - In the three-channel projection The Garden, artist Julie Orser creates a humorous scenario riffing on early twentieth-century film to experiment with how time and space affect a cinematic narrative..

Sam Easterson - Sam Easterson presents videos from the perspective of a variety of animals. To create these works, he attaches small noninvasive cameras to capture short glimpses into their routines and movements.

Mai Yamashita and Naoto Kobayashi - Infinity by the Japanese-born Germany-based artists Mai Yamashita and Naoto Kobayashi visually illustrates the proverb “paths are made by walking.” To create the symbol of infinity, the artists plotted a course in the grass at a park and ran along it for five consecutive days, and edited in a fast-forward format, making it seem like an infinite number of people traversed the path.

Hjørdis Kurås - Norwegian-artist Hjørdis Kurås uses a wolf as a metaphor for a misperceived danger. The found-video a wolf uses low light and infrared to document its movement across a landscape. The eerie green light is reminiscent of the violent scenes from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan shown by Western media. Kurås’ video suggests that like wolves the West misperceives Middle Eastern cultures as dangerous.

Cheekwood inspires and educates by making art, horticulture and nature accessible to a diverse community. Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art is located at 1200 Forrest Park Drive in Nashville, 8 miles southwest of downtown Nashville. Open Tuesday – Saturday 9:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. For further information call 615-356-8000 or visit www.cheekwood.org.

Olivier Deprez - Fishmarket - 80x110cm - oil on canvas.

VILLEFRANCHE DE LONCHAT, FRANCE.-The first International Painting Festival of Villefranche de Lonchat (South-West of France, in the middle of a vast wine region, near Bordeaux, and even nearer to Saint-Emilion) will show about 125 paintings, by twelve emerging and mature painters (one American, one French, two Dutch, one Pole, one American, one German, four Belgians). The region is superb and was in need of cultural revival : a good reason to organise this festival in one of its most beautiful villages (a "bastide", which is a fortified town dating back to the medieval wars between the French and the English). Four premises : the town-hall, the castle and two churches. The theme is "Nature contre Nature". It has produced a fine and extremely varied collection of paintings that modulate on this pregnant and very topical subject. Nature has been a continuous source of inspiration for the painters, from Joachim Patenier (who is considered to be the very first painter of landscapes) to Hockney. Lately however, Nature, in its broadest acceptation, has again overwhelmingly caught the attention of the painters, and evidently not only with landscapes. The reason for this fact might be found in the (un)conscious fear that Nature is now under great danger. Artists have always been prophets, and consequently the works shown in this festival illustrate the delights, but also the the frights offered by Mother Nature. The exhibition will be on view from 5 till 31 October 2007. A catalogue is available. For more information visit this website www.factura2007.org (in French).

Material Terrain: A Sculptural Exploration of Landscape and Place

James Surls, Me the Flower and the Pistil, 2000. poplar, oak, steel 10' x 9' x3' /indoor.

CORAL GABLES, FL.- Material Terrain: A Sculptural Exploration of Landscape and Place is on view at the University of Miami ’s Lowe Art Museum , through November 27, 2007. The imaginative, thought-provoking exhibition features large-scale, mixed-media works by eleven artists who address the uneasy balance between the natural and the constructed environment. Employing diverse techniques and materials they raise questions about “inside-ness” and “outside-ness.”

Enormous sculptures, composed of surprising materials such as poured fiberglass, polyethelene, aluminum, and even wheat grass, will fill Green and Friends Galleries. Probing myriad associations of landscape and place, the artists reveal the fantasy of nature as a place of retreat and wonder; nostalgia for a pristine pre-industrialized landscape; and desire and eroticism evident in cycles of cultivation, production and consumption. By employing richly symbolic objects they allow us to consider the variety of ways in which we view ourselves in the context of nature.

These days, our intense sensory experiences are more likely to come from electronic media rather than from directly experiencing landscape and its soil, stone, vegetation, water, sky and sound. The scientific advances that allow for genetic engineering and modification of species, the advocates for conservation, farming and logging, and the intense emotions that such issues inspire make the negotiation of our relationship to the planet as urgent as it is complex. Whether through crafting exquisite sculptural forms, imbuing work with irony or danger, or representing nature with startling verisimilitude, the selected artists create a malleable terrain that attests to nature’s astonishing power and vitality. Material Terrain is a visually enticing and mentally stimulating exhibition!

Participating artists are Michele Brody, Kendall Buster, Ming Fay, Donald Lipski, Dennis Oppenheim, Roxy Paine, Wendy Ross, John Ruppert , Valeska Soares, James Surls, and Ursula von Rydinsgvard.

Curated by Carla M. Hanzal, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Mint Museums, Charlotte , NC . Exhibition Organized by International Arts & Artists , Washington , DC in collaboration with the Laumeier Sculpture Park , St. Louis , MO , with support from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation.

The Lowe Art Museum is located at the University of Miami at 1301 Stanford Drive , Coral Gables . Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 12 to 7 p.m. Thursdays and 12 to 5 p.m. Sundays. Admission is $7.00 for adults, $5.00 for non-UM students with I.D., $5.00 for adult groups of 10 or more, $3.00 to student groups of 10 or more, and free to members, University of Miami students, faculty and staff, and children under 12. For more information, call (305) 284-3535 or visit www.lowemuseum.org

Richard Tuttle

By Robert Ayers

Rosalind Davis - We Were Here Once

Rosalind Davis.

LONDON.- The Residence presents Rosalind Davis, We Were Here Once, on view through October 7, 2007. Inspired by a rich variety of locations from London to Cameroon, Rosalind Davis presents an ominous, threatening and romantic world.

Davis juxtaposes manmade structures with organic forms, combining painted post-industrial scenes with the use of embroidery and appliqué. The only evidence of human existence is rendered through her use of embroidery. Notions of textiles are subverted to find new freedoms and expressions in painting. Its use contrasts and highlights the delicate, ephemeral beauty of the subject matter.

Rosalind Davis and Freddie Robins will be conducting an artists' dialogue to coincide with Davis' solo show at The Residence. Both Davis and Robins are graduates of the Department of Textiles at the Royal College of Arts. Davis was one of Robin's students.

Both Robins and Davis use textiles in fine art contexts, exploring contemporary issues such as identity and social conditions. They will discuss their work and their experiences of subverting traditional craft techniques wihtin their work, as well as the increasing use of textiles within fine art. The floor will be open to a Q&A session afterwards.

Rosalind Davis is an MA graduate of The Royal Collage of Art. Her paintings are featured in public and private collections. She has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, and recently joint exhibitions in London and Whitstable. Davis has just become a member of the Bermondsey Artists Group associated with Café Gallery Projects.

Freddie Robins is an artist, curator and tutor in the Department of Textiles at the Royal College of Art.

Freddie is an anarchic knitter, producing conceptually led knitted textile pieces. She has built up an extensive and innovative body of medium and small-scale figurative works that cross between the categorisations of art and craft. By using knitting to explore pertinent contemporary issues Freddie continues to disrupt preconceptions of the medium as being feminine and non-threatening.

In 2002 she was shortlisted for the Jerwood Applied Arts Prize: Textiles and had her first major solo exhibition, 'Cosy', at firstsite at the Minories in Colchester. In 2005 she curated 'Knit 2 Together: Concepts in Knitting' for the Crafts Council and "Ceremony" at the Pump House Gallery, Battersea Park, London.

She currently has work in "Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting", an international exhibition curated by the Museum of Art & Design, New York which is touring in the United States. Her solo exhibition, "Body, Nobody, Somebody" opens at the West Norway Museum of Decorative Art, Bergen at the beginning of November.
She has work in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, Crafts Council, Aberdeen Art Gallery and Nottingham Castle Museum.

Freddie is a graduate of Middlesex Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1989.

Major Public Art Project Explores Globalization

In this photo, one completed panel for Wenda Gu’s hair monument the green house is removed from the template after drying. All forty hair panels were shipped back to the Hood Museum of Art for installation. Photograph courtesy of Wenda Gu.

HANOVER, N.H.- The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, in partnership with the Dartmouth College Library, unveiled a major public art commission. On view through October 28, the green house is a site-specific installation by avant-garde Chinese artist Wenda Gu created as part of the artist's ongoing global united nations hair monuments project. This massive sculpture was created from hair collected in 2006 from thousands of Dartmouth College students, faculty, and staff and Upper Valley community members. Resonating with José Clemente Orozco's utopian vision in his Baker Library mural titled The Epic of American Civilization (1932­34), the green house arises from the museum's hope that major contemporary art projects on campus will celebrate diversity and spark transformative moments in our audiences, specifically around the making and presenting of works of art.

Last spring and summer, Hood staff collected hair from local salons and two student and community "hair drives." An estimated 42,350 haircuts resulted in the accumulation of 430 pounds of hair, which was shipped to Wenda Gu's Shanghai studio. The artist has combined it with brightly dyed hair from other parts of the world, fashioning a monument that is local in origin and global in conception. The resulting eighty-by-thirteen-foot hair screen will fill the main hall of Baker Library, the physical and intellectual heart of the Dartmouth campus. The hair screen is accompanied in Berry Library by a six-mile-long hair braid in twelve neon colors representing all of the countries of the world currently recognized by the United Nations.

Wenda Gu's united nations sculptures result from his dream that through his art he might unite humanity and encourage international understanding. He writes, "The united nations art project is committed to a single human body material--pure human hair. Hair is a signifier and metaphor extremely rich in history, civilization, science, ethnicity, timing, and even economics. [It] becomes the great human 'hair-itage.'" Wenda Gu's sculpture at Dartmouth is a powerful statement about the living, human dimension of globalization and the diversity represented by our own community.

A second installation, Retranslation and Rewriting Tang Dynasty Poetry, presents a newly completed work on paper that explores the effects of globalization on intercultural understanding and language. The first in a series of large books by Wenda Gu, this work illustrates what happens when poetry is translated from one language to another and back again. The work confronts written communication and especially the impossibility of true or faithful translation from one language to another. The resulting texts are wry, witty examples of the misreading of language over time.

Hudson River School Trilogy at Loeb Art Center

"Sunset Glow, Roman Campagna", after 1874, by William Stanley Haseltine (American, 1835-1900), oil on canvas.

POUGHKEEPSIE.-Known for its rolling landscapes and pastoral beauty, the Hudson River Valley and its surrounding areas have inspired countless artists to pay tribute to their majesty – most notably, what has come to be known as the Hudson River School of painters. Their style, an outgrowth of the Romantic Movement, celebrated the natural beauty of the American wilderness and served as the dominant school of landscape painting throughout the 19th century.

To explore this critical period in the history of American art, and how its works have since been collected, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center has gathered Hudson River School works from three different sources: Vassar's founding collection, purchases by a Vassar alumna and her husband, and a collection guided by the contemporary sculptor Dan Flavin. The result is the new exhibition Hudson River School Trilogy: A Focused Collection; Drawings From Dia; Selections from the Permanent Collection, to be shown August 17-October 21 at the Art Center.

The extensive Hudson River School works that have been collected by Alvin Friedman and his wife Maryanne (Vassar class of 1955) will comprise the first gallery of the exhibition. The second gallery will feature works from the original Vassar collection, purchased by Matthew Vassar from the Reverend Elias Lyman Magoon. Finally, selected Hudson River School drawings by masters such as John Frederick Kensett and Aaron Draper Shattuck, currently on long-term loan to Vassar from the Dia Art Foundation, will fill a third gallery.

"The effect of the combination of these three collections is a form of triangulation that sheds light on the broad appeal of the Hudson River School to very different personalities separated by time, vocation, and purpose," said James Mundy, director of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, and curator of the exhibition. "We see how a nineteenth century minister, a lawyer, and an artist from today have all turned to the accessible, yet sublime, imagery of the Hudson River School painters for solace, inspiration, and insight."

Maryanne and Alvin Friedman (a 1952 Cornell graduate) have devoted themselves to collecting American art of the Hudson River School period since they experienced the 1983 Vassar exhibition on the subject All Seasons and Every Light. Over the ensuing twenty-five years they have assembled a very focused group of paintings by the Hudson River School’s key practitioners including Frederic Edwin Church, Sanford Gifford, and Jasper Francis Cropsey.

Furthermore, the Friedman collection’s sojourn at Vassar provides a valuable opportunity to examine some of the key Hudson River School paintings owned by Vassar, works that helped to inspire the Friedmans' collecting odyssey twenty years ago. For example, the Friedmans’ luminous Andean oil sketch by Frederic Edwin Church is nicely complemented by Vassar’s own oil sketch of Autumn in North America. And, their two North American paintings by Jasper Cropsey find a suitable counterpart in his European sunset vision of “Evening at Paestum” made during his extensive Grand Tour of picturesque locations in Italy. Finally, the Friedmans’ paintings by Sanford Gifford gain resonance when seen in proximity to the Gifford sketchbooks owned by Vassar.

The Friedmans, who live in Washington, DC, approached their collecting carefully and through a mutual passion to learn more about the development of American nineteenth-century landscape painting. After considerable study that included visits to many major museum collections, surveys of commercial gallery holdings and auction catalogues, and attending special exhibitions, they were ready to begin purchasing works in 1986.

They remained consistent to their focus on landscape that was peaceful, with limpid quiescent views of earth, water, and sky in harmony. The 11 paintings in the exhibition represent less than one third of the Friedman collection but sum up the range of their interests. They are committed to sharing their collection as broadly as possible and feel a strong mission to acquaint others with the charm, majesty, and power of this period in American art.

The presentation of works from the Friedman collection is the result of a collaborative effort between The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University (where the works were exhibited April 21-July 29, 2007).

Reverend Elias Lyman Magoon of Albany (1810-1886) assembled upwards of 3,800 works of art in the 1850s and early 1860s. In 1864, he sold his collection of British art and American paintings to Matthew Vassar for $20,000, who, in turn, used them to equip the art gallery of his new college. The collection, which includes more than three hundred American paintings, is now part of The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.


The third element to the Hudson River School Trilogy is a selection of the numerous drawings by nineteenth-century American landscape artists that are owned by the Dia Art Foundation, and have been on long-term loan to The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center since 2001.

Committed as it is to promoting the work of contemporary artists, it may seem surprising that the Dia Foundation would possess such a historic collection. But one of Dia's key artists, Dan Flavin, known for his neon and fluorescent light sculptures, was an avid student of these landscape artists. With the support of the Lone Star Foundation, which later merged with Dia, Flavin was able to amass this collection of drawings as well as several related oil sketches. These were to be part of a planned museum known as the Institute for the Hudson Highlands which was to be established near Flavin’s residence in the Hudson River community of Garrison. Plans shifted however, and Flavin’s interests turned to establishing another museum in Bridgehampton, NY, now known as the Dan Flavin Institute (and maintained by Dia).

The Dia collection drawings, dominated by a significant number of works by John Kensett, reflect Flavin’s interest in the region and the artists who captured the life, light, and landscape of the Hudson River Valley, often carefully noting down colors or atmospheric conditions, similar to the note taking that Flavin often engaged in. The works by Kensett are augmented by sheets by a number of his talented peers, including Aaron Draper Shattuck, Sanford Gifford, Jasper Cropsey, and Poughkeepsie resident James David Smillie.

Modern and Contemporary Chinese Ink Paintings

Zhao Shaoang (1905–1998), Baoguo Temple on Mount Emei, 1959. Horizontal wall scroll; ink and color on paper, 60.9 x 107.1 cm. Chu-tsing Li Collection; Digital photography by Ken Howie. (Cat. 1).

CAMBRIDGE, MA.- The Harvard University Art Museums present A Tradition Redefined: Modern and Contemporary Chinese Ink Paintings from the Chu-tsing Li Collection, 1950–2000 on view November 3, 2007 through January 27, 2008 at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. This traveling exhibition of 63 works, drawn entirely from the collection of Chu-tsing Li—the finest and most comprehensive collection of its kind in the West—is the first to survey Chinese ink paintings produced during the second half of the 20th century. In examining this five-decade period, the exhibition demonstrates the dramatic evolution of Chinese ink painting in recent times and lays a foundation for understanding the international-style work that is being created in China today. In addition, the exhibition illustrates their graduate work in Chinese painting at the University of Kansas, studying with Chu-tsing Li.

“Our research on Professor Li’s collection of modern and contemporary Chinese ink paintings provides an unprecedented view of the new artistic directions that Chinese ink painters explored between 1950 and 2000,” said Mowry. “Since the majority of the works in the Li collection were acquired directly from the artists, the authenticity of the paintings is above question; thus, this exhibition, and particularly its catalogue, will serve as a standard by which authenticity can be measured.”

A Tradition Redefined features works by artists who have reconsidered numerous aspects of classical Chinese painting and who have in various ways synthesized elements of Western modernism with Chinese abstraction. In the early 20th century China experienced a drive to modernize; as part of that phenomenon, young Chinese painters, tired of the sanctioned styles and codified brushwork of their predecessors, eagerly began to explore Western styles. These experiments of China’s first generation of modern artists were cut short by evolving historical circumstances including Japanese invasions from the 1930s through World War II, the Chinese Civil War (1927–50), and the rise of competing governments in Beijing and Taipei. Mainland China’s postwar focus on reshaping its economy, government, and society in the Communist model meant that artists were actively discouraged from exploring foreign artistic styles.

Artists working in Taiwan and Hong Kong, by contrast, were free to experiment with foreign idioms, so that painting styles followed different lines of development from one geographical area to another. Contemporary Chinese artists continue to struggle with a balance of traditional and international styles, all the while maintaining a reflection of their own inner personality and continuing the powerful legacy of their Chinese ancestry.

The paintings in the exhibition are grouped into five categories: Tradition Uprooted includes works by established artists who were displaced following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. Tradition Abstracted features artists active in Taiwan after 1949 who sought to combine Western modernist elements with traditional Chinese abstraction.

Tradition Embraced refers to artists working outside mainland China who actively sought to perpetuate and expand traditional Chinese ink painting styles. Tradition Reasserted groups the work of those artists from the PRC who adapted their styles and subject matter to values of the Communist republic but reasserted aspects of traditional painting. Tradition Transcended presents paintings by artists whose idiosyncratic works are beyond categorization—individualist rather than either strictly modernist or traditionalist.

A Tradition Redefined carries forward the work begun with last year’s exhibition and brochure The New Chinese Landscape: Recent Acquisitions (Aug. 12–Nov. 12, 2006) and continues to commemorate forty years of growing awareness in this country of modern and contemporary Chinese painting. The New Chinese Landscape presented works by five living artists, and borrowed its title from the first exhibition of contemporary Chinese painting to tour the United States (1966–68), which was organized by Chu-tsing Li and Thomas Lawton, an American scholar of Chinese art.

“The research and presentation of this exhibition continue to underscore the Art Museum’s active involvement in Asian art, both classical and modern,” said Thomas W. Lentz, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums. “We thank Chu-tsing Li for his loan of these paintings—for his generosity and his belief in our teaching and research missions—and are pleased to offer this exhibition and catalogue in his honor.”

Chu-tsing Li - Professor Chu-tsing Li is one of the pioneers in the study of modern and contemporary Chinese ink paintings. His interest in art began while he was studying for his BA in English literature at Nanjing University in the early and mid-1940s. He befriended Michael Sullivan, a young architect from Cambridge University who taught English at Nanjing University but who also offered an introductory course in Western art history. Sullivan and Li shared many of the same interests, and the two attended exhibitions and visited with artists, becoming friends; through this association, Chu-tsing Li became interested in art history and, almost by coincidence began his first contacts with modern and contemporary art.

Li came to the United States in 1947; after completing his MA in English literature at the University of Iowa in two years, he switched to their art department to study northern Baroque painting. In 1955 Li completed his PhD at Iowa, where he then taught classes in Baroque painting and was urged to teach modern and Asian art as well. Preparation for these new courses awakened a deep interest in both fields, and he subsequently immersed himself in the history of Chinese painting. Best known for his studies of classical Chinese paintings, particularly paintings of the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), he was also developing a second specialty in modern and contemporary Chinese painting by visiting artists and studying their work first-hand. At this time, Li began to acquire contemporary works and to form lifelong friendships with artists.

After ten years of teaching at Iowa, Li in 1966 moved to the University of Kansas, Lawrence, where he established a doctoral program in Chinese art. He was Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor of Art History until his retirement in 1990. In 1975 he offered the first course in modern Chinese art taught in the West—perhaps the first course in this subject taught anywhere; he wrote most of his best-known works on classical Chinese paintings and on modern and contemporary Chinese art while at Kansas.

As an art historian well-trained in both Eastern and Western art, a specialist in Chinese painting, and an acclaimed author of scholarly works on modern Chinese painting, Li has been in a perfect position to assemble a collection of modern and contemporary Chinese ink paintings. His collection ranks among the finest and most comprehensive in the West; though wide ranging, it is particularly strong in works created during the second half of the 20th century.

Featured Works - The majority of the works in the Chu-tsing Li collection were acquired directly from the artists who created them, and many of the paintings include personalized dedications to Professor Li and his wife Yao-wen Li.

Samuel Gelber at Lincoln Street Center for Arts

Samuel Gelber, Primeval Forest: a slightly cropped image of the this 12-foot-long painting.

ROCKLAND, MAINE.-To stand before a monumental canvas of Samuel Gelber is to be embraced by the true colors and light of nature. From July 6 to August 3 at the Lincoln Street Center for Arts and Education in Rockland, Maine, experience the inimitable strength of Gelber’s art.

Two years since his last show in the same space, 21 – 18 – 12, which refers to the length in feet of the paintings exhibited, is a rare opportunity to be enveloped by his colossal works. The gallery’s three large walls will carry: Chaos and War, 2006-7 (5’ x 21’); Recollection of Sri Lanka, 2006 (4‘ x 18’); and Primeval Forest [dedicated to Dr. Charles L. Tyer], 2003 (5‘ x 12’).

Representational painters have forever labored to find order in nature, but Gelber releases nature – and himself – from such limitations. In his works, the overlapping, intersecting genuine disarray of the world – its profusion, abandon and radiance – are given unfettered life, as wild as the untamed apple orchards of Maine that were an early inspiration of his brush.

Carl Little reviewing (in the Maine Times) Gelber’s exhibition at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland in 2002 said: “ ‘The Season’s Suite’ is an act of liberation. One can’t help… shar[ing] the artist’s excitement as he explores new territories where individual details are less important than the power of the whole.”

In 1975 Gelber put aside representational aspects of objects for more elemental relationships. He embraced a construction that was less than “real.” His search was for space and relationships between one thing and another, more than fidelity to the look of objects.

Gelber says: “My paintings remain landscapes. There are seasons and forests, occasions for color, space, linear connects, ever expanding and contracting. As associations shift, new information is required, added to the surface without removing previous data. Working transparently and translucently, the entire process of construction is open for all to see, a spontaneous accumulation of reactions to the dialogue between artist and painting. Every surface mark (brush stroke) demands a response. I used to deliberate this, ponder the possibilities, most often concluding with my original impulse.”

These are not the untutored words of a young aspirant seeking to justify post-modern artistic folly; they are the reasonings of a seasoned professional with 50 years of exposure and experience, 40 years as a professor of art (a graduate of Brooklyn College, CUNY, who returned to teach there) and colleagues and contemporaries including Ad Reinhardt, Jimmy Ernst, Lois Dodd and Carl Holty.

The art critic Philip M. Isaacson wrote (in the Portland Herald), when Gelber exhibited in the Great Hall of the Portland Museum of Art in 2001: “Gelber’s paintings…could have anticipated the hall. There is a confidence about them that is almost a challenge to the room…. Gelber is a master with paint. At this scale, the tonality and the application are symphonic. They sweep across the surface in a valedictory summation of fine painting. The works show an assimilation of the influences – often seismic in their importance – of Cubism and more recent more abstract attitudes. Almost as impressive is [his] willingness to take risks…no small factor…at this scale. The pay-off is two works of art that will touch you with the beauty of their craft and their intellectuality and their sustained aesthetic intensity.”

Jenna Russell reviewed (in the Portland Phoenix) Gelber’s Hay Gallery 2002 exhibition, ‘The Liberated Landscape’ as follows: “Gelber communicates the darkness of thickets, the motion of water, the pink glow of twilight and the shimmer of mist, using little more than the painterly equivalent of pick-up sticks thrown at the canvas with painstaking precision over months and even years…. We’ve all seen plenty of representational landscapes. Its that familiarity – breeding as it does a kind of blindness, a belief that we’ve seen it all before – that makes our eyes and hearts prick up at this – its newness, its commitment to discovery and, even tougher with age, rediscovery.”

Gelber continues: “I gave up gravity, sources of light and cast shadow, object edges, defined dark and light, in effect freeing myself of the weight of expected requirements. The history of art can be a great weight. Italians have the burden of the Renaissance to carry. Can they jettison that history for open air? I unburdened myself and found fresh air.”

Lucas Pola, in his (Brunswick Times) review of the Portland Museum 2001 paintings, opined: “For contemporary landscape painter Samuel Gelber, no amount of words can match the canvas in its ability to capture emotion the natural world may evoke at a particular moment in time.… The harsh rapid brush strokes and dark hues…imbue the images with violent energy and motion; in each case the viewer gets the distinct feeling of being on the edge of a powerful storm.”

The artist reveals that in the current show “Recollection of Sri Lanka, painted last year in Maine, is about landscape, particular and universal, but Primeval Forest is a dream about what may never have existed – I hope poetry – that can be visualized only because it never was. Chaos and War, the longest work at 21 feet, is about the expenditure of earthly and human resources.”

Samuel Gelber was born and educated in Brooklyn, New York. For more than 40 years, he has spent a significant part of each year painting at his studio in Maine. He can be reached for commentary at rebleg@earthlink.net or 207-342-5509.

The Lincoln Street Center for Arts and Education is located at 24 Lincoln Street, Rockland, tucked between Summer and Limerock streets and routes 1 and 1A. For more information, visit the website at www.lincolnstreetcenter.org or call 207-594-6490.

Variations of Grass, Light, and the Wind

Kim Jung Hwa before one of her textile works.

SANTA CLARA, CA.- The de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University presents Variations of Grass, Light, and the Wind: The Plant Dye Art of Kim Jung Hwa, on view through August 19, 2007. Korean artist Kim Jung Hwa creates astonishing textile works in luminous colors that reflect the landscapes of her native country. She strives to depict images “with the colors of the mind.” In order to master the art of natural dye processes, she traveled all over Korea to learn the art of traditional dye processes from community elders. This exhibition will include numerous wall works and installations by the artists. The exhibition has been organized in conjunction with Site Creations and the participation of Yeoungcheon City in South Korea.

Yeongcheon, Korea-based artist Kim Jung Hwa was educated at the Korean National Open University and the Graduate School of the Catholic University of Daegu. Her work has been included in solo exhibitions at the Bongsan Cultural Center in Daegu, Korea and the Chungsan Hyanglim Gallery in Daegu, Korea and group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Osaka, Japan, and the Textile and Quilt Art Museum in Seoul, Korea. Kim Jung Hwa has received numerous awards, including a Presidential Prize awarded by the Korean government.

Our Fragile Earth: An exhibition from the IMMA Collection

Clare Langan, Glass Hour, 2002, Super 16mm film transferred to DVD with surround sound, Dimensions variable, Collection Irish Museum of Modern Art, Purchased, 2003.

NEW YORK.- An exhibition of works from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Collection opens to the public on Friday 25 May 2007 at three venues in Co Clare - St Caimin’s Church of Ireland , Mountshannon; Raheen Hospital and Scariff - as part of the Iniscealtra Festival of the Arts. Our Fragile Earth is the theme of the festival and includes works by well-known Irish and international artists such as Marie Jo La Fontaine, Clare Langan and Tom Molloy. Individual works from the IMMA Collection will be placed in three venues in Scariff – Tony O’Malley at the Bank of Ireland, Patrick Collins at the Derg Credit Union and Tim Goulding at Loughnane & Co.

The monumental film installation, Waves, 1998, by Belgian artist Marie-Jo La Fontaine, is on show in St Caimin’s Church of Ireland . Shot on the west coast of Ireland this film-work seeks to capture the power and passion of the natural world. The viewer is drawn into the work through La Fontaine’s striking use of sound that alternates between dramatic pieces of classical music and mysterious otherworldly voices. The crescendos of this dramatic piece echo the movements of the breaking waves leaving the viewer with a sense of the mystery and power of the ocean. Also on show in St Caimin’s Church of Ireland is Irish artist Clare Langan’s trilogy of film-works, Forty Below, 1999, Too Dark for Night, 2001, and Glass Hour, 2002, which also explore the limitless forces of nature.

At Raheen Hospital 16 delicate leave drawings Oak, 1998 – 99, by the Irish artist Tom Molloy are on view. After moving to the Burren in Co Clare Molloy became interested in the collection, classification and registration of the natural world. In this work he focuses on the individual leaves from one particular oak tree, each drawing is governed by the same rules of production allowing the uniqueness of each leave to evolve. Molloy is concerned with reproduction, mechanical representation and questions relating to the very nature of representation itself. Two works by one of Ireland ’s most highly regarded landscape painters Patrick Collins are on view in the Derg Credit Union in Scariff. Collins painting The Wood Pigeon’s Nest, 1974, captures the vulnerability and fragility of the birds nest as it emerges from an abstract landscape.

The Iniscealtra Festival of Arts is an annual festival held at various locations in and around the beautiful lakeside village of Mountshannon in Co Clare. IMMA has a long-standing relationship with the festival lending works from the Collection through the National Programme for the past ten years. Clare based artists Nicola Henley and Jane Seymour will facilitate workshops in response to the exhibition with primary school students. The Education & Community programme is supported by the Department of Education & Science.

IMMA’s National Programme is designed to create access opportunities to the visual arts in a variety of situations and locations in Ireland . Using the Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and exhibitions generated by the Museum, the National Programme facilitates the creation of exhibitions and other projects for display in a range of locations around the country. The National Programme establishes the Museum as inclusive, accessible and national, de-centralising the Collection, and making it available to communities in their own localities, on their own terms, in venues with which the audience is comfortable and familiar.

Our Fragile Earth continues until 4 June 2007.

Wutaishan: Pilgrimage to Five Peak Mountain

Map of Wutaishan, detail of procession II, Sino-Tibetan, c. 1846, Painted and colored xylograph, 56 3/4 x 76 5/8 in. Rubin Museum of Art, C2004.29.1 (HAR 65371).

NEW YORK.- Wutaishan is an extensive complex of mountains composed of a group of five towering, flat-topped peaks. Located in Shanxi Province, China, Wutaishan has been famous throughout the Buddhist world since the seventh century as the earthly abode of Manjushri, Bodhisattva of Wisdom. As the home of an important deity in the Buddhist pantheon, this sacred mountain has a long history as a site of convergence. Wutaishan: Pilgrimage to Five Peak Mountain utilizes RMA’s permanent collection to delve into the multifaceted history of this mountain, examining it as a site of transnational pilgrimage where the interaction between the Chinese, Manchus, Mongolians and Tibetans fostered a multiculturalism representative and endemic of Himalayan art.

The exhibition is curated by RMA Curatorial Fellow, Karl Debreczeny, with RMA Senior Curator, Jeff Watt. This is an RMA “signature” exhibition which brings together many cultures of the Himalayas and surrounding regions and a multitude of ideas. The focal point of the exhibition is an intricately-detailed, hand-painted woodblock print map of Wutaishan, created in the 19th century by a Mongolian monk at a monastery on Wutaishan, called Cifusi. Six feet wide, this rare map offers a panoramic view of Wutaishan which can be read as both a primary historical record of the lay of the land and as a declaration of the political primacy of Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhism, claiming Mongolian ethnic and sectarian identity over the mountain.

The blurring and intertwining of religious, state, ethnic, and even artistic identity is rich terrain traversed in Wutaishan: Pilgrimage to Five Peak Mountian. With the map as a starting point, the exhibition offers alternating views of Wutaishan, from wide-scope exploration of multiculturalism and identity in the Himalayas to closer looks at various forms of artistic representation of Manjushri and ritual life.

RMA is pleased to have the opportunity to work closely with Columbia University by planning Wutaishan: Pilgrimage to Five Peak Mountain in conjunction with Columbia’s international conference, “Wutaishan and Qing Culture,” being held at RMA May 12 – 13, 2007.