Organized every three years by Phoenix Art Museum, this exhibition recognizes the
latest developments in contemporary art. In the past, the exhibition has focussed on
the work of artists from Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. This
year, Phoenix Triennial 2001, includes artists from Mexico as well, reflecting the
global currents in contemporary art. The Triennial is organized by Brady Roberts,
the Museum’s curator of modern and contemporary art, and Beverly Adams, the
Museum’s curator of Latin American art.
Celebrating the talents of 18 artists, the exhibition
includes a variety of media - painting, sculpture,
installations and technology. The criteria used to select
artists for Phoenix Triennial 2001 purposefully were
broad and elastic. These emerging to mid-career artists
were chosen for their mastery of technique and medium
as well as for their innovative approaches to art
making. Artists also were considered for how their work
might inform others in the exhibition. The artists are:
Philip Argent... Argent’s paintings are
celebrations of artificial environments,
frequently using the format of a car window or
windshield to present the rushing spectacle of
urban lights, signs and billboards fused with
cartoon imagery and contemporary graphics.
Todd Brandt... Bridging high art with the
aesthetics of everyday packaging, Brandt
strives to create original forms of painting by
using mass produced commercial goods.
Jason Eoff... Hyper colorist Eoff creates
luscious, candy-coated surfaces in his playfully
sophisticated abstract paintings.
Brian Fridge... Fridge uses video installation to
design abstract cosmic images with the added
element of motion.
Thomas Glassford... Glassford refashions
mundane materials from everyday life -
aluminum siding, mirrors, fluorescent light tubes
- into beautiful objects.
Silvia Gruner... Throughout Gruner’s
three-track video installation work, isolation and
movement are juxtaposed with union and
stillness.
Jon Haddock... Haddock wryly comments on
the Internet age through his photographs,
which have been produced by heavily
manipulating images downloaded from the
Internet.
Jacob Hashimoto... Hashimoto explores the
intersection of industrial manufacturing and the
natural world in this sculpture.
Joseph Havel... What began for Havel as
found art installation work with existing shirt
labels has evolved into formally and
conceptually powerful work on a monumental
scale.
Deborah Hede... Finding inspiration in the
spare, mountainous landscape of the
Southwest, Hede creates highly textured
drawings in charcoal and pastels.
Salomón Huerta... Huerta’s saturated pastel
colors are drawn largely from print and
television advertising. His paintings
simultaneously evoke smoothly finished
products and the flat, precise, geometrically
stylized paintings of the early Renaissance in
15th century Italy.
Mayme Kratz... Using resin panels that
encapsulate objects found while hiking, Kratz
creates wall pieces that are sculptural, yet
viewed like two-dimensional paintings.
Stacey Neff... The organic forms of Neff’s
wall-mounted glass and fiberglass sculptures
suggest a primordial and elemental visual
language.
Rubén Ortiz-Torres... A conceptual artist,
Ortiz-Torres’ large-scale photographs raise
questions about reality and representation,
adding to the surreal nature of the scenes he
creates.
Daniela Rossell... By breaking down the
divisions between society portraiture, fashion
photography and ethnographic photography,
Rossell has created an enormously revealing
photo archive that documents her extended
personal network of family and friends.
Peter Sarkisian... Sarkisian’s video installation
work, which addresses the homogeneity,
dissemination and consumption of information
in modern society, is distinguished by a high
degree of illusionism, effective use of sound
and conceptual rigor.
Judy Tuwaletstiwa... Tuwaletstiwa’s paintings
are a complex synthesis, with enigmatic surface
patterns created with basswood and rhythmic
calligraphic lines created with feathers.
Pablo Vargas-Lugo... Stylized like Japanese
woodblock prints and Chinese painting,
Vargas-Lugo’s cut paper collages are precise
and deliberate, featuring cataclysms and
primordial landscapes.
The Triennial is a juried exhibition. The Phoenix Triennial Prize is awarded to an
artist in the exhibition for an outstanding body of work and carries a $1,500 cash
award. The Phoenix Triennial Arizona Award, a $1,000 cash prize, is presented to
an Arizona artist meeting the same criteria. The Phoenix Triennial Awards are made
possible through the generosity of the Eva and Eric Jungermann Family Endowment.
Serving as the juror for this year’s Phoenix Triennial awards is Marti Mayo, director of
Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, Texas.
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