Mpls.St.Paul Magazine - Out + About - Museums + Galleries

Fit to Print

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:26:18 GMT

Each year for the past decade, Highpoint Center for Printmaking has hosted three Jerome residents. All Minnesota-based emerging artists, the fellows learn, create, get critiqued, and ultimately help curate a show of new work. Later this month, 2012–13 residents Caitlin Warner, David Frohlich, and Jonas Criscoe deliver on that last facet in the Jerome Emerging Printmakers Exhibition.

Warner and Frohlich, both graduates of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, share little in common besides their alma mater. Frohlich combines screenprinting and mixed media to illuminate the otherwise invisible (think processes within the body), while Warner takes a more whimsical approach. She is retrofitting vending machines that will dispense art—screenprints, miniature books, small boxes with secrets inside—to gallery visitors. Criscoe’s work is different from both of them; he explores assemblage and collage techniques (above) and playfully blends geometric and natural shapes.

Carla McGrath, Highpoint’s executive director, says that cross-pollination of distinct aesthetic and technical approaches is part of what makes the residency valuable. “Their work is all very different, but they do interface with each other and the 25 other artists who are here. . . . They end up benefitting from being around others and being exposed to new ideas.” Opens May 24. Highpoint Center for Printmaking, 912 W. Lake St., Mpls., 612-871-1326, highpointprintmaking.org

Can You Fake the Truth?

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 15:42:01 GMT

Rossum's Universal Robots at The Soap Factory

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 15:02:11 GMT

Ben Heywood is a curious sort of curator. The director of The Soap Factory doesn’t choose artists based on a theme, he chooses a theme based on the artists. “I’m not interested in what curators want to do,” says Heywood. “I’m interested in what artists want to do.” The theme suggested by the nine artists whose work appears in a group exhibition opening this month? R.U.R.—as in Rossum’s Universal Robots, the seminal 1921 science fiction play by Czech playwright Karel Capek.

Capek’s play asks us to consider a world in which human-like robots do all the work. Unfortunately, when infertility in the human population begins to spread and the robots revolt, humanity is imperiled. You see where this is going. The exhibition takes some of the play’s most salient themes—the way identity is constructed, our relationship to labor, the tension between artificial and authentic—and runs with them.

One artist uses phone books to create large-scale sculptures that explore color theory. Another uses ceramics to illuminate the constraints (self-imposed or otherwise) on identity, while another creates a machine powered by discarded copper etching plates that references the intersection of art and labor. R.U.R. mines this rich terrain in myriad ingenious ways. One of the artists in the show is even using the historical identity of The Soap Factory itself as a launching point to reflect on the multiple identities of the building and the neighborhood around it, which is rapidly shedding the veneer of its industrial past. March 2–April 21. The Soap Factory, 514 SE 2nd St., Mpls., 612-623-9176, soapfactory.org

"Painter Painter" at Walker Art Center

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:15:26 GMT

The last time the Walker put on a group exhibition about painting, the world was a decidedly different place. When Painting at the Edge of the World opened in early 2001, the extroverted, expansive tendencies of Takashi Murakami were ascendant. Artists were trying to break free from the confines of the canvas and extend their practice beyond the studio. That’s not necessarily so today.

Painter Painter, a show curated by Eric Crosby and Bartholomew Ryan opening at the Walker Art Center, leaps boldly into the present zeitgeist of abstract painting, paying special attention to the way the artists work. And, as it turns out, many of today’s painters have rediscovered their love for the studio.

Crosby describes the exhibition as “a snapshot of their studio practice at this moment.” The artists are connected by affinities in their approach to painting rather than a shared stylistic or conceptual posture. With new work by more than a dozen emerging artists, Painter Painter reveals a more introspective mood focusing on “the space of the studio, the materials at hand, and painting’s minor histories.”

The show has a decidedly intellectual framework, since it is difficult to connect an abstract painting on a gallery wall with an artist’s actual practice and thought processes. So rather than rely solely on a catalog to fill in the blanks, Crosby and Ryan have extended the exhibition into virtual space with a series of interviews and blog posts—Painter Painter Studio Sessions—that shed some light on the artists’ “creative process, thinking, and obsessions.” Opens Feb. 2. Walker Art Center, 612-375-7600, walkerart.org

"Edge of Camp" at Bockley Gallery

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 10:04:32 GMT

Because it is tucked away in a quiet street in Minneapolis’s Kenwood neighborhood, Bockley Gallery is easy to miss. The small, independent gallery, run by namesake Todd Bockley, occupies an unassuming corner next to Birchbark Books, a short walk from Lake of the Isles. Bockley’s specialty is emerging and established Native American artists including Frank Big Bear, Julie Buffalohead, and Jim Denomie.

This month, Bockley offers up something a bit different with Edge of Camp, an eclectic group show featuring a half-dozen artists whose work in some way touches on our sense of place and impermanence in a rapidly changing world.

While the show includes work from a range of artists with divergent styles, it is organized around the mixed-media assemblages of Jim Proctor. The artist likens his chimerical creations, which are made out of local plant materials, to the contents of old Victorian curiosity cabinets. Set against black shadowboxes, Proctor’s mini-sculptures—acorns fused with thorns, a prickly stem with tufts of seedpod hair—reflect back our complicated relationship to the natural world.

“When I visit any outdoor space I’m drawn to the edges,” says the artist, who asks: “What will emerge out of these spaces?” Proctor’s work, and that of his fellow artists, suggests the possibility of a hybrid future “both ugly and beautiful, both alien and native.”

Opens Jan. 18. Bockley Gallery, 2123 W. 21st St., Mpls., 612-377-4669, bockleygallery.com

"Supper with Shakespeare: The Evolution of English Banqueting" at The MIA

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 11:07:45 GMT

With its dark wood paneling and sturdy, unembellished furnishings, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts’ Tudor period room may seem a bit somber to some—yet it’s exactly the sort of room where a 17th-century aristocrat might have entertained a select group of companions at a banquet.

Supper with Shakespeare: The Evolution of English Banqueting, an exhibition rooted in culinary history, offers a glimpse of a period dinner party—or, rather, part of one. After all, the word “banquet” meant something quite different back in the day. Then, a banquet was a gathering within a gathering in which a select group of guests would join the host for dessert after a feast, and the host would go to great lengths to surprise and delight the guests with lavish cakes and confections.

That’s where British culinary historian Ivan Day comes in. Besides knowing a lot about food, Day actually cooks and crafts elaborate 17th-century desserts. For this exhibition, he will be re-creating an entire banquet, complete with sweetmeats and other delicacies including a marchpane, the British cousin to marzipan, in the form of an intricate coat of arms.

Cori Wegener, MIA associate curator of decorative arts, textiles, and sculpture, describes Supper with Shakespeare as an example of “experimental archaeology.” As unusual as the setting and food may be, using food as a connecting cultural element resonates in the here and now. “This notion of planning a special meal with surprising elements for special guests doesn’t change much over the ages,” says Wegener. “I hope this exhibition gets people thinking about why we eat the way we do today.” Opens Dec. 13. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 612-870-3000, artsmia.org

Oh, The Humanity

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 08:55:26 GMT

It will not be a quiet month at the Mpls Photo Center. The gallery/education facility in the North Minneapolis Arts District will be opening three photography exhibits in November, all of them opening simultaneously, all featuring work by nationally known photographers, and all addressing themes of humanity and courage.

Mark Seliger, former chief photographer for Rolling Stone magazine, will be exhibiting photos from a project called When They Came to Take My Father, featuring 22 black-and-white photographs of Holocaust survivors, accompanied by the subjects’ written personal recollections of those dark days.

The winners of an MPC-sponsored photography contest make up the second exhibit, The Human Condition: A Survey of Humanity. Judged by renowned National Geographic photographer Annie Griffiths-Belt, the theme of the show allowed for a broad range of subject matter and styles. According to Griffiths-Belt, the winning photograph, My Father, Pensive “glows with tenderness and exquisite light.” The other winners and honorable mentions will also be on display.

Finally, Minnesota photographer Doug Knutson weighs in with a series of 20 portraits of various living Nobel laureates, including Elie Wiesel, Lech Walesa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and 16 others. Though he has shot commercially for Time, Business Week, and many other publications, Knutson is an equally serious student of documentary photography and portraiture.

All three shows open Nov. 10. Mpls Photo Center, 2400 N. 2nd St., Mpls., 612-643-3511, mplsphotocenter.com

Cindy Sherman at The Walker Art Center

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 15:26:38 GMT

Cindy Sherman’s ability to create images that call into question what, exactly, we are trying to say about ourselves has earned her an exalted place in the pantheon of great living artists. “We’re all products of what we want to project to the world,” says the artist, who mines the fertile ground of media and contemporary culture to unwrap that notion, by presenting a copy of reality that exposes undercurrents of anxiety, vulnerability, and objectification.

A major retrospective of Sherman’s work to date, organized by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, opens this month at the Walker Art Center. Cindy Sherman features more than 160 photographs covering all of the artist’s major series, including her most recent work, a series of larger-than-life murals.

Sherman adheres to a fairly straightforward formula. She is both artist and subject, arranging scenes, applying makeup, striking a pose, and, ultimately, capturing the image. The resulting photographs are anything but straightforward or predictable, though. “She continues to reinvent the work over and over,” explains Walker curator Siri Engberg, who is coordinating the Minneapolis leg of the MoMA exhibition.

Sherman’s dedication to the camera set her apart from the start. “While it’s commonplace for contemporary artists to use photography as one element in their work, few have immersed themselves in the medium as completely as Sherman,” says Engberg. Given two of the major themes in Sherman’s work—identity and representation—photography is the ideal medium because it shares a common aesthetic with movies, TV, and other media from which the artist often draws.

Cindy Sherman offers a rare opportunity to engage the entire body of Sherman’s work, populated as it is by a menagerie of characters who inhabit the corners of our collective unconscious. “Sherman is recognized as one of the most important contemporary artists in the last 30 years,” says Engberg. “The work just continues to become more and more interesting over time.” Nov. 10–Feb. 17. Walker Art Center, 612-375-7600, walkerart.org

The MIA’s “Terracotta Warriors”

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 10:08:57 GMT

The first emperor of China, Qin Shihuang, came to power in 246 bc, at age 13, and work on his elaborate tomb complex began almost immediately. Upwards of 800,000 people labored for 38 years to secure an afterlife befitting the ruler who initiated construction of the Great Wall, unified China, and, incidentally, sparked a major shift in Chinese art.

China’s Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor’s Legacy, a new exhibition curated by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, goes well beyond the tomb’s famous statuary to explore both the style and substance of this fascinating period. In 1974, Chinese archaeologists discovered approximately 8,000 life-sized terracotta warriors in a vast tomb complex built to ensure the emperor’s immortal glory, but the scale and realism of the figures also marked the beginning of a new chapter in Chinese art history.

“The first emperor really started this revolution in art,” explains Yang Liu, MIA curator of Asian art. The exhibition features some 130 objects from Qin’s tomb, including a carefully selected cross-section of the very best sculptures of generals, archers, infantry soldiers, and horses. In addition, there are pieces of jewelry and other objects made of gold, silver, and jade, as well as a group of life-size bronze waterbirds—a crane, swan, and two geese. There is even a replica of one of the ornate chariots found in Qin’s tomb.

“Everyone knows the terracotta warriors,” says Liu, who has spent years visiting Chinese museums and gathering scholarly input for the exhibition. What is less known is the context that gave rise to Qin’s ascendance, which is why the period preceding the Qin dynasty is a major focus of the show. “It’s a fascinating story that has never fully been told,” says Liu. Opens Oct. 28. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 612-870-3000, artsmia.org

Minnesota Museum of American Art

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 09:56:36 GMT

For the past three years, the Minnesota Museum of American Art has been a museum without a home. But that changed in June, when it was announced that the museum will take up temporary residence this fall in the Pioneer-Endicott Building at 4th and Robert streets in downtown St. Paul.

To survive its homelessness, the museum toured art from its collection to arts venues around the state. In the meantime, Kristin Makholm, the director, curator, and for a year the only full-time staffer of the MMAA, had time to reconsider the museum’s place in the St. Paul arts ecosystem.

“We are in an enviable position to be able to bring the zeitgeist into the formation of our new space,” says Makholm. In keeping with current trends at museums around the country, Makholm sees the new MMAA as a museum with “porous walls” that will allow local artists and members of the community to influence the shape and form of what happens within. Initially, the space—at 3,700 square feet—will be more akin to a gallery, but the museum plans to open a larger permanent space in 2015.

The MMAA’s inaugural show, Painting the Place Between, will feature four contemporary Minnesota landscape painters or painters who get their inspiration from the land. In the meantime, the museum continues its summer Patio Nights series with three dates in August.

651-797-4057, mmaa.org