Between Heaven and Earth: The Sculpture of Isamu Noguchi will feature—for the first time in Central Florida—a rare look at the work of this seminal figure of 20th Century art. Organized to highlight the opposing tendencies in Isamu Noguchi’s art and life, the show features more than 20 works selected from the Noguchi Museum in New York. Between Heaven and Earth: The Sculpture of Isamu Noguchi opened January 17th and runs through March 6th 2006 at the UCF Art Gallery. The UCF Art Gallery is located in the Visual Arts Building on the UCF campus. Admission is free and open to the public.
The son of an American editor and a well-known Japanese poet, Noguchi (1904-1988) was one of the pioneering forces of modern abstraction, and his importance and influence continues to grow. Noguchi’s work typified a fusion of Eastern and Western sensibilities by combining a Zen approach to materials with the force of will of Abstract Expressionism.
Noguchi often found himself moving between divergent realms—Japanese and American culture, and the fine art world and the world of industrialized commerce. By his own account, this sense of being an interloper between realms was the leitmotif of Noguchi’s life.
A particular opposition inherent in Noguchi’s sculpture is the dichotomy between earth and sky. A careful examination of Noguchi’s work reveals repeated reference to landscape and ascension. His stone sculptures were often left virtually untouched, allowing them to retain the rawness of a rock recently excavated from the earth. Other works are finely resolved, and impart a sense of lightness. In Between Heaven and Earth: The Sculpture of Isamu Noguchi the works that typify grounded-ness or the lightness are contrasted. In addition to the stone and steel sculptures, a number of Noguchi’s famous paper lamps—the Akari—will be included in this show.
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