Indepth Arts News:
"SITES AROUND THE CITY: ART AND ENVIRONMENT"
2000-03-04 until 2000-06-04
Arizona State University Art Museum
Phoenix Area, AZ,
USA United States of America
Initiated by Arizona State University Art Museum's
Senior Curator Heather Sealy Lineberry, Sites Around
the City: Art and Environment includes more than
thirty cultural organizations in the Phoenix area
presenting art that is sited in or concerned with the
environment. The project will present art by artists
who use visual and material languages to examine
cultural, perceptual and phenomenological issues of
the land, whether specific or archetypal. The
inspiration for the project comes from Phoenix's heady
mix of city and desert, and the history of
environmental art in the area. The Southwest has a
rich history for artists, beginning with ancient
Native Americans and continuing through the earthwork
artists of the 1960s and 70s. Today Phoenix is the
sixth largest city in the nation and home to
innovative eco-art projects. It is also a place of
extremes that inspire and inform these art projects,
from the 120-degree heat in the summer to the
manicured golf courses and man-made lakes, from
expanding pollution problems to the Western insistence
on the car. Phoenix is a metaphor for the expansion
of cities throughout the Southwest and the nation.
Citywide project committee is co-managed by Heather
Sealy Lineberry and Felicie Regnier.
EXHIBITION AT THE ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM:
The ASU Art Museum's exhibition and catalogue will
present the most challenging contemporary art in the
citywide project Sites Around the City: Art and
Environment. Sculpture, photography, site-specific
installations (inside and outside the museum) and
video installations will explore the interconnections
of the built and the organic, the artificial and the
natural, culture and nature - essentially the
interaction between humans and the land. The
exhibition will focus on contemporary artists who are
cognizant of but reject the remoteness and idealism
of the earthwork artists and the didacticism of
eco-artists. Robert Smithson abhorred cities and
sited his land art projects in timeless landscapes
with no boundaries and with alternative measures of
time and history. These younger artists have found
the same sense of the infinite and chaotic in urban
and suburban landscapes, and find these environments
more pertinent to contemporary experience. Their art
is more cynical, yet also more accepting, of the
resulting flawed beauty and tensions between the
natural and the cultivated in the urban and suburban.
They explore in their art perceptions of the
landscape, patterns of behavior, and cultural and
developmental impact on the land.
ASU ART MUSEUM PRESENTATION AND CATALOGUE:
Curated by Heather Sealy Lineberry, the work will be
installed in two 2,500-square-foot galleries and
outside areas of the ASU Art Museum's Nelson Fine Arts
Center facility, which Antoine Predock designed to
respond to the landscape and culture of the area.
The project includes: a color, 64-page catalogue with
essays; a website that will grow with the project; a
visitor resource center with internet access to
research historic and contemporary artists; and a
separate guide to the citywide exhibition and programs
printed by Arizona Public Service. The ASU Art Museum
exhibition catalogue will include essays by Heather
Sealy Lineberry (artists and their work) and Ronald
Jones (contemporary connections between art and
environment).
ASU ART MUSEUM EXHIBITING ARTISTS:
Su-Chen Hung's and Diana Thater's video installations
explore cultural perceptions of the land and nature.
Roxy Paine painstakingly recreates natural elements,
such as a field of poppies from steel, wire, polymer,
vinyl, lacquer, oil paint, epoxy, pigment. Kim
Abeles collects layers of smog on screens that mimic
familiar, romantic Hudson River School landscape
paintings. During the ASU Art Museum side by side
with the original works from the Museum questioning
our perceptions of the American land still influenced
by nineteenth-century thought. Michael Ashkin creates
tabletop dioramas of the edges of cities, of sublime
industrial wastelands. Catherine Opie photographs
strip malls, suburban facades and freeway structures
that multiply in Western cities and have become our
identifiable monuments. Todd Hido captures
atmospheric, nighttime slices of suburban architecture.
On closer examination these original California
suburbs are deteriorating, experiencing the same
entropy that Smithson found in the Great Salt Lake.
Stephanie Brooks mimics the need to mediate the
experience of nature with signage. Her Feel Good
Here was a witty pop-psychology rendition of the
exercise park. She will create a signage system on
the ASU Campus drawing upon the history of the area
and the patterns of behavior of the current population.
Finally, Laurie Lundquist uses her knowledge of botany
and landscape architecture to create artworks that
actually restore the environment. Working at the
Exploratorium in San Francisco, she developed an
elaborate installation to repair the Lagoon. She will
create a site-specific installation of an algae garden
in the interior courtyard of the Museum designed
building.
CITYWIDE PARTICIPANTS:
* ArtLab 16 - a group exhibitions and Spoken Word
Series. Exhibitions: March 3-31, April 7-28,
Spoken Word; Every Friday.
* Artlink - temporary installations during ArtDetour.
* ASU Art Museum - Sites Around the City headquarters
for the entire project. Exhibition of nine contemporary
artists who consider the urban and suburban environment,
artist lectures, youth programs, March 3 - June 4.
* ASU Art Museum Experimental Gallery - PHACAEANS
desktop video/laptop installation by Sloane McFarland,
April 7 - May 27.
* ASU West Gallery - three sound artists from Mexico
City, Gustavo Artigas, Ariel Guzik and Taniel Morales,
March 2-26.
* Barlow & Straker - Turbulencia Terrenal
Collaborative project between Andy Guzzonatto and
Mona Higuchi, March 7-31.
* Central Gallery; Burton Barr Central Library - A
series of five exhibitions focusing on art and
environment. Exhibitions: February 28 - March 24,
March 1-30, April 1-30, April 3-29.
* Desert Botanical Garden - Desert Plant
Illustrations, March 4 - April 15.
Book signings: March 4,18,25 and April 1,15.
* East Side Art, Mesa - a series of juried shows.
Exhibitions: March 12-20, March 21 - April 10,
April 11-20, April 21 - May 10.
* Galeria Mesa, Mesa Art Center - Environment 2000,
national juried exhibition juried by Lisa Sette,
April 18 - May 27.
* Grand Canyon University, A.P. Tell Gallery -
Sprawl: Reflections on Urban Development,
March 22 - April 13.
* Harry Wood Gallery on the ASU campus - MFA
exhibition of Azdine Sedjal, February 28 - March 3.
* MARS Artspace - Solo exhibition by Felicie Regnier
and Mars on Earth a group exhibition by MARS artists,
March 3-31.
* Metropolitan Arts Institute - Student exhibition
inspired by workshop with Los Angeles artist Kim
Abeles, April 7-28.
* Modified - Matthew J. Plausible and Ian Van Coller,
March 3 - April 3.
* Northlight Gallery, ASU - Transport by Dean K.
Terasaki, March 3-22.
* Phoenix Art Museum - Images of Nature: Selections
from the Museum Collection, February 5 - May 14.
* Phoenix Arts Commission - temporary installations
with recycled materials at the 27th Avenue Solid
Waste Treatment Facility.
* Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art - Dreaming of
Eden: Meditations on the Garden by Barbara Rogers,
February 26 - May 7.
* Shemer Art Center - outdoor installations and
sculpture, March - April.
* Stop'n'Look - New Life New Century by Rose Johnson,
February 1 - March 31.
Installation by Denis Gillingwater, April 4 - May 20.
* Tempe Arts Commission - temporary installation, site
tours on their electric art buses.
PERMANENT SITES:
* 27th Avenue Solid Waste Management Facility
Artists - Linnea Glatt and Michael Singer
* 7th Avenue Pedestrian Bridge/Grasshopper Bridge
Artist - Ed Carpenter
* Papago Park/City Boundary
Artists - Jody Pinto and Steve Martino
* Sunnyslope Canal Demonstration Project
Artists - M. Paul Friedberg, Jackie Ferrara, Douglas
Hollis, Steve Martino and Martin R. Yoklic.
* Sunnyslope Rock Garden
Artist - Grover Cleveland Thompson
* The Path Most Traveled...
Artist - Carolyn Braaksma
* Water to Water
Artists - Edwards Tanz Collaborative, Inc.
* Sweet Acacia Project
Artist - Laurie Lundquist
* Hummingbird Sanctuary Garden
Artist - Kevin Berry
* Papago Arroyo
Artist - Laurie Lundquist
* Rio Salado Pathways
Artist - Laurie Lundquist
* Gardens for Humanity's Demonstration Healing Garden
Artists - Local Artsist, ASU Architecture Students,
School Children, Programs Sponsored by the Arizona
Commision on the Arts.
SPECIAL EVENTS:
* Arizona State University Art Museum
Sites Around the City Free public opening reception,
March 3, 7-9pm.
* Artlink Inc.
Sponsors and Organizers of Art Detour Weekend
* IceHouse Art Museum
The Rise and Fall of Elegance, Art Detour Weekend
* 27th Avenue Solid Waste Management Facility/Phoenix
Arts Commission Events throughout the month of April.
* Desert Botanical Garden
Events throughout the month of April.
Arizona State University Art Museum
Tenth Street and Mill Avenue
Tempe, Arizona 85287-2911
480.965.2787
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