The Institute of Visual Arts, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, presents a range of works by an internationsl group of artists. Shows this fall in the galleries are installations, paintings, film and video.
Gallery One
Meschac GABA
Originally from the West African nation of Benin and now residing in Amsterdam, Meschac Gaba (born 1961, Cotonou) creates art that comments on various post-colonial issues, including European‚s plagiarism of African arts and the relationship of culture and imperialism, while involving audience participation in realizing the work as behavior. Many of his works use money, museums, African flags and games as reference points and media. In Milwaukee, Gaba‚s first exhibition in North America, he will continue his mixture of personal and private, local and global concerns into three new installations.
Meschac Gaba has presented his work at the the 3rd Kwangju Biennale, 2000, the 2nd Taipei Biennial, 2001, Berlin Biennial, 2001 and has been included in exhibitions in Belgium, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, South Africa and Switzerland.
This exhibition has been supported by the Mondriaan Foundation, the Consulates General of the Netherlands- New York and Chicago and the Netherland-America Foundation ˆ New York
Curators: Pedro Alonzo, Adjunct Curator and Peter Doroshenko, Director, Institute of Visual Arts
Mona MARZOUK
As part of the younger generation of Egyptian artists who have achieved a delicate balance in their art work of representing a local cultural past inside the global future, Mona Marzouk (born in 1968, Alexandria) creates paintings and sculptures that meld isolated elements of architecture into oddly universal forms. These dislodged images become free floating signifiers not just of the universalized building forms found around the world, but suggest the process of globalization has existed for millennia.
Marzouk studied art in Egypt, Germany and Greece. She was included in the 1998 Cairo Biennale and has presented her work exhibitions in Egypt, Germany, Kenya (where she recently completed an arts residency), Spain and Turkey.
Mona Marzouk has been supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts - New York and Rebecca and Alexander Stewart - Seattle.
Curator: Marilu Knode, Senior Curator, Institute of Visual Arts
Kim SOOJA
In her installations, video projections and performances, Korean artist Kim Sooja (born in 1957, Taegu) uses the acts of sewing and walking as ways to highlight issues of concern to her. The delicate flux of natural events as they shape the earth; the relentless urbanity of human nature in motion; the vagaries of immigration and forced migration, all become witnesses to Kim Sooja‚s activities. For her first exhibition in a museum in North America, Sooja will create new work based on her character A Needle Woman.
Kim Sooja has presented her work at the 2000 Biennale de Lyon, France, the 48th Venice Biennale, 1999, the 3rd Kwangju Biennale, 2000, the 2nd Taipei Biennial, 2001, and has been included in exhibitions in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Kim Sooja has been supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts ˆ New York and the Institute of Visual Arts‚ Major Exhibition Fund.
Curator: Jérôme Sans, Adjunct Curator, Institute of Visual Arts
Kirstin STOLTMANN
In her quasi-autobiographical video installations, Kirstin Stoltmann (born in 1968, Milwaukee) shows herself at the edge of the action˜whether parties or informal gatherings˜examining her role as an outsider of social norms. Her works blend different streaks of pop culture into a unique environments of growth, memory, time and fantasy. The artist uses chiché music and camera movements in her large-scale video projections to produce a decadent atmosphere, which relates to the viewing audience‚s longing to belong. Stoltmann will create two new video installations for her exhibition. This will be her first one-person exhibition in the United States.
Stoltmann studied film at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee (BFA, 1991) and studio art at the University of Illinois at Chicago (MFA, 2000). She has presented her work in various exhibitions in Australia, Canada, Germany, Mexico and Poland.
Kirstin Stoltmann has been supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts ˆ New York and Institute of Visual Arts‚ Major Exhibition Fund.
Curator: Peter Doroshenko, Director, Institute of Visual Arts
Gallery Three
Peter BONDE
There is a decidedly egalitarian approach to Peter Bonde‚s installations and paintings. Whether producing an elaborate installation such as the one during the last Venice Biennale with American Jason Rhoades and based on their mutual interest in car racing, or creating color field paintings that have scrawled on their surfaces cryptic poetic morsels, Bonde always gives his viewers a way to place his object inside their own lives.
Peter Bonde (born in 1958, Copenhagen) has presented his work in galleries and museums in Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the United States. This is his first institutional exhibition in the United States. He currently teaches at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen.
Funding for Peter Bonde has come from the Danish Contemporary Art Foundation ˆ Copenhagen.
Curator: Jérôme Sans, Adjunct Curator, Institute of Visual Arts
Surasi KUSOLWONG
Thai artist Surasi Kusolwong (born 1965, Ayuthaya) creates marketplaces of plastic household items that are sold in groups for a specific price. By literalizing the function of commercial art venues - and suggesting something else for non-profit exhibitions - Kusolwong plays on notions of cultural and economic values, and the psychological import of shopping, whether for inexpensive kitsch or priceless art.
Kusolwong has created situations for the 2000 Taipei Biennial, the 1999 Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary of Art, Brisbane, Australia, the 1998 Biennale of Sydney, Australia, and has been included in other group shows in Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Japan, Korea, Sweden, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Support for Surasi Kusolwong has come from The Andy Warhol Fondation for the Visual Arts - New York and Institute of Visual Arts‚ Major Exhibition Fund.
Curators: Peter Doroshenko, Director and Marilu Knode, Senior Curator, Institute of Visual Arts
Gallery Video
Joana HADJITHOMAS / Khalil JOREIGE
Beirut - Paris based artists Joana HadjiThomas and Khalil Joreige will show their film Khiam (2000), a meditation on the affects of the Lebanese civil war on individuals who were incarcerated without trial for many years. In each of their projects they explore a landscape that was slowly destroyed through operatic and historical forces, while suggesting the strength of human life in the face of this destruction.
HadjiThomas and Joreige (both born 1969), have been collaborating for ten years on a series of film and documentaries. Their works have been screened in San Francisco, Munich, and more than thirty other festivals around the world. They have created installations in spaces in France and Lebanon, and produced a major work about Beirut for the Institut du Monde Arabe ˆ Paris, in 1996.
HadjiThomas studied modern literature and cinema in France, and is currently head of the script-writing department at the Institute of Audiovisual Studies of St. Joseph University, Beirut. Joreige studied cinema in the United States and France, and currently teaches aesthetics and cinematography at the Institute of Audiovisual Studies of St. Joseph University, Beirut.
Curator: Marilu Knode, Senior Curator, Institute of Visual Arts
Related Links:
