VIGNETTES: PAINTINGS BY LEEAH JOO

OCTOBER 5 – NOVEMBER 6, 2005
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, September 2005 — Vignettes: Paintings by Leeah Joo, an exhibition that depicts quiet glimpses of peoples’ lives through windows, opens at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University on October 5, 2005.

Korean-born painter Leeah Joo's narrative paintings are set through the frames of windows. Windows are architecture's built-in picture frames – cropping our views, casting our shadows on their curtains and screens, and reflecting our image in their glass. Portraying both traditional Korean-paper screen and American double-hung glass windows, Joo's detailed paintings place us at the edges of these frames to peer into abridged intimate moments. Her work depicts silhouettes cast against paper screens like a puppet play; a view out a window reveling a suburban neighborhood at dusk while simultaneously reflecting the artist standing in the kitchen; and venetian blinds obscuring the goings-on in a bedroom. Narratives surrounding the figures are interrupted and veiled by their quotidian domestic surroundings. Like an innocuous voyeur or peeping tom, the viewer is placed outside strangers' windows or dropped into their living rooms as a surprise guest embarrassedly averting the residents' gazes by looking out the window.

Leeah Joo's skill with paint is evident in her intricate depiction of reflections on glass and trompe-l'oeil lace curtains. But just as the rigid structure of a window serves as a portal through which to view domestic life, the formal aspects and skill behind Joo's work are ways to enter and explore human drama and narrative. Joo states, "In the process of arriving at these images, under the guise of exploring formal pictorial language, life experiences culminate to a level of clarity unavailable to me in any other form."

About the Artist

Leeah Joo received her BFA in Painting and Art History from Indiana University (1994) and her MFA in Painting from the Yale School of Art (1996). Her work has been exhibited at the Seoul Art Center, Seoul Korea; H&R Block Artspace, Kansas City; Frye Art Museum, Seattle; the Wichita Center for the Arts, Wichita, KS; the Michael Cross Gallery, Kansas, City; and the Andrew Bae Gallery, Chicago. She was an Assistant Professor in Paintings at the Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO from 1998 to 2004.

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SPECIAL EVENTS

Opening reception with talk by the artist
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
4:00 – 6:00 pm
Visual Arts Gallery

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The galleries at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center are open Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; and Sunday 1-5 p.m. For more information about special events associated with this exhibition, please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4882 or visit our website at:
http://www.depauw.edu/galleries

For more information please contact:
Kaytie Johnson, Director and Curator of University Galleries, Museums and Collections
Richard E. Peeler Art Center
10 West Hanna Street
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135
765-658-6556

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SALLY HELLER: MATERIAL MINUTIAE

AUGUST 24 – DECEMBER 4, 2005
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, August 2005 — A commissioned large-scale, sculptural installation created by New Orleans-based artist Sally Heller opens at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University on August 24, 2005.

New Orleans-based artist Sally Heller creates unique structures that are at once familiar and strange by presenting mass-produced, disposable objects in unusual contexts. Through a process of subtle twists and turns she strips everyday detritus and disposable, low-end consumer goods of their original use-value, recycling them into organic forms that are repositioned in room-size installations, creating bizarre landscapes from the generic and proliferous discards of our disposable lifestyles. Fascinated by the poetics of contradictions, oxymorons and double entendres, Heller is less interested in her work’s inherent commentary on consumerism, waste and ecology than she is in seeing humor in our world’s plasticized realities.

Amused by the comedy of making fine art from the most mundane of materials, Heller states: "I have always been fascinated with the potential of mass-marketed products when viewed outside of their intended context. When making words or images out of these materials, I play on the ironies inherent in the medium... I am interested in what our culture discards and what can be made from this detritus..." Using wit as a tool for political commentary, Heller transforms weak, mundane materials into strong, solid forms and meaningful visual statements that confront perceptions of femininity, the temporality of art and culture, and the state of modern society, albeit in an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek manner.

Sally Heller has exhibited at the Contemporary Center for the Arts (Atlanta), the Contemporary Art Center (New Orleans), Socrates Sculpture Park (Brooklyn), as well as Art in General and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (New York). She holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University (1980) as well as a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1978).

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SPECIAL EVENTS

Opening reception with talk by Sally Heller
Thursday, August 25, 2005
4:00 – 6:00 pm
Peeler Art Center Auditorium

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The galleries at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center are open Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; and Sunday 1-5 p.m. For more information about special events associated with this exhibition, please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4882 or visit our website at:
http://www.depauw.edu/galleries

For more information please contact:
Kaytie Johnson, Director and Curator of University Galleries, Museums and Collections
Richard E. Peeler Art Center
10 West Hanna Street
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135
765-658-6556

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FIGURES OF THINKING: CONVERGENCES IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURES

SEPTEMBER 14 – DECEMBER 4, 2005
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, September 2005 — Figures of Thinking: Convergences in Contemporary Cultures, an exhibition that reveals the connective tissue that links contemporary ideas, opens at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University on September 14, 2005.

Curated by Vicky A. Clark and Sandhini Poddar, Figures of Thinking: Convergences in Contemporary Cultures presents an open-ended discourse on the nature of our global society, one that is fraught with anxiety and overwhelmed by information. This is expressed in the work of the 14 artists included in the exhibition: Rina Banerjee, Lesley Dill, Ellen Gallagher, Mona Hatoum, Adrienne Heinrich, Nina Katchadourian, Simone Leigh, Wangechi Mutu, Yuki Onodera, Kathy Prendergast, Barbara Weissberger, Heesung Yang, Zarina, and Cheryl Yun. The intention of the curators is not to present a theoretical argument in support of an overriding projection or definitive position, but rather to disclose and observe the unfolding of experience as a reflection of the imprint of migrant cultures and the influence of abundantly accessible information.

The artists included in the exhibition were selected because they share certain visual and conceptual sensibilities, as evidenced by their considered and metaphorical use of materials, willingness to share the intimate and the personal, their confrontation of stereotypes, regard for beauty, and immersion in process.

In the catalog essay Clark, who grew up in Los Angeles during the 1960s, and Poddar, who grew up in Hindu India during the 1980s, use an interview-style conversation that informs and shapes their curatorial viewpoint and, ultimately, models their position. Clark opens: "'Figures of thinking': I love this idea because it encourages a consideration of many points of view and refuses the harshness of current political and religious rhetoric. It lets us continue to explore possible answers, to let our minds run wild." Indeed, the imaginations and visual representations of the 14 artists included in this show present a broad and expanded idea of what culture, origin, home, identity, and human values might signify in a time of accelerated globalization.

As postmodernism, identity politics, and feminism (all of the artists in this exhibition are coincidentally women) have become fully assimilated in the mindset and experience of at least two generations of artists, these defining positions have moved from theory to practice. Now fully incorporated as an integral part of art's culture and background, the political impulse is no longer central to the meaning. Meaning is found in how each of the 14 artists weaves their personal narrative into representation, giving voice to what is accessible to the audience as shared experience and embedded knowledge.

Figures of Thinking: Convergences in Contemporary Cultures taps into theorist and critic Marjorie Garber's source quote for the title: "Ours is an era that distrusts language, that fears figures of speech, and especially what could be called figures of thinking—ideas and associations that beget ideas, that link to other links in culture..."

CATALOGUE

Figures of Thinking: Convergences in Contemporary Cultures is accompanied by a catalogue published by the University of Washington Press and co-published by University of Richmond Museums and Pamela Auchincloss/Arts Management. The catalogue features an introduction by the curators, an essay drafted as a dialogue between the two curators, a recommended reading list, and full-color reproductions of artworks by each artist.

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SPECIAL EVENTS

"Art for Lunch" Gallery Talk
Thursday, October 13, 2005, 12:30 pm
"Some Women Marry Houses"
Meryl Altman, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Women's Studies Program
University Gallery, lower level

"Art for Lunch" Gallery Talk
Thursday, November 17, 12:30 pm
"The Beginning of the End of Self-Portraiture: Beuys and Grrrls and the Self NOW"
Anne Harris, Associate Professor of Art (Art History)
University Gallery, lower level

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The galleries at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center are open Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; and Sunday 1-5 p.m. For more information about special events associated with this exhibition, please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4882 or visit our website at:
http://www.depauw.edu/galleries

For more information please contact:
Kaytie Johnson, Director and Curator of University Galleries, Museums and Collections
Richard E. Peeler Art Center
10 West Hanna Street
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135
765-658-6556

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POSHLUST: RECENT SCULPTURE BY LORI MILES

AUGUST 24 – SEPTEMBER 25, 2005
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, August 2005 — Poshlust: Recent Sculpture by Lori Miles features the work of DePauw University Assistant Professor of Art Lori Miles. This exhibition will be on view at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University from August 24 through September 25, 2005.

"…Poshlust is not only the obviously trashy but also the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive," wrote Vladimir Nabakov, who popularized the term. Poshlust is kitsch that thinks it is not, whereas straightforward kitsch is almost transparently trashy and, therefore, wholesome in comparison. Nabakov stated that poshlust "is especially vigorous and vicious when the sham is not obvious and when the values it mimics are considered, rightly or wrongly, to belong to the very highest level of art, thought or emotion."

Artist Lori Miles toys with Nabakov's notion of poshlust by basing her sculptures on images found on the website istockphoto.com, which buys and sells royalty-free, unlicensed photos. The stock photography found on the site is intended to be open to interpretation; oftentimes, designers add copy to the image to define its meaning. The objects photographed are common, are shot in extreme close-ups, at unusual angles, and are saturated with color, imposing an aura of attractiveness and importance. Candy, cardboard boxes, and pencil shavings are part of stock photography's visual vocabulary, and are dressed up in the finest stylings of poshlust.

"I looked at every one of their 40,000+ images," says Miles. After scouring the istockphoto.com archives, she singled out the most benign and pedestrian objects, such as nails, vases and crumpled paper. Working from selected images of these objects she created sculptures, installations, and drawings; other stock images were printed for display as "readymades." By exhibiting a slickly produced stock photograph next to a sculpture blueprinted from a stock image, she illustrates how style and image can become more important than the object itself. Miles takes lowbrow items that have been instilled with high-class style and creates artworks that leave us wondering if we are looking at winking kitsch, or oblivious poshlust.

Lori Miles joined the DePauw faculty in 2004 where she holds the position of Assistant Professor of Art. Her work has been exhibited at the Bodner Art Gallery and Herron School of Art, Indianapolis; the Dairy Barn, Athens, OH; Nathan D. Rosen Gallery, Boca Raton; the Swope Museum of Art, Terre Haute; and the Wood Street Gallery, Chicago. Miles is a recipient of a 2004 Indiana Arts Council Individual Artist Grant.

A brochure will accompany the exhibition, with an essay written by DePauw University Assistant Curator Christopher Lynn.

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SPECIAL EVENTS

Opening reception with gallery talk by Lori Miles
Wednesday, August 31, 4-6 pm
Visual Arts Gallery

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The galleries at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center are open Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; and Sunday 1-5 p.m. For more information about special events associated with this exhibition, please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4882 or visit our website at:
http://www.depauw.edu/galleries

For more information please contact:
Christopher Lynn, Assistant Curator
Richard E. Peeler Art Center
10 West Hanna Street
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135
765-658-4884

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YUN-FEI JI: THE EMPTY CITY

FEBRUARY 2 – APRIL 17, 2005
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, Indiana, February, 2005 — In his first solo museum exhibition, artist Yun-Fei Ji shares his long-time interest in the social, political and environmental affects occurring in China due to the construction of the world's largest dam, Three Gorges Dam. On February 2, the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University will host the exhibition Yun-Fei Ji: The Empty City, featuring work by internationally-renowned artist Yun-Fei Ji.

Painted on rice paper with mineral inks, Ji presents The Empty City as a series of eight related landscapes. Each landscape depicts autumn, as a metaphor for the season, as well as to signify the end of a life cycle. For his exhibition at the Contemporary, Ji has created new paintings that reflect his interest in the affects the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, has had and will have on the people who live in the Yangtze River region. His paintings portray an almost prophetic view of what hundreds of thousands of people in the Yangtze River region will face.

Shannon Fitzgerald, curator at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the show's organizer, describes the exhibition, "Within Ji's autumnal, veiled landscapes, are scenarios that compress the past, present and future. They also present the failure of Modernist utopian ideas and perhaps warn of what China's future may hold. From a distance, Ji's traditional brush paintings seem to hearken back to the atmospheric landscapes of the Sung Dynasty painters, but viewers who approach the work closely are quickly brought through time as his mists, waterways, mountains, architecture, and people reveal toxic clouds, boiling polluted waters, dangerous craggy mountains, fallen modernist buildings and scavengers and ghosts."

Ji's dark imagery also includes stylized abstractions that may or may not refer to speech scrolls, intestines, explosions or underworld movement. Using traditional materials (inks, muted pigments, Chinese brushes and handmade mulberry paper), Ji employs age-old methods to illuminate historic and contemporary concerns in a compressed and urgent space. His recent work deals with such issues as the Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, and the environmental impact of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River region, scheduled for completion in 2009.

While his landscapes are influenced by his Chinese predecesors, they also depart from traditional methods in a number of ways. First, Ji plays with our perceptions of space and scale, giving his landscapes a surreal, disconnected quality. Second, instead of the spatial depth achieved by the Sung Dynasty landscape painters, Ji's overloaded scenes and nonsensical space/time relationships seem to push the picture plane into the viewers' space. Third, Ji populates his landscapes with disproportional mythical, political or historical figures that create enigmatic and fascinating narratives for viewers to unravel. Fitzgerald adds "While The Empty City is about the possible fate of thousands of people in China, these new pieces make you contemplate each individual's place and position between the past and present, between nature and the man-made, and most of all- within contemporary global culture."

Support for Yun-Fei Ji: The Empty City has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Regional Arts Commission St. Louis and the Arts & Education Council.

CATALOGUE

Yun-Fei Ji: The Empty City 50-75 page catalogue, includes full-color images of the works in the exhibition with an introductory essay by the Contemporary's Curator Shannon Fitzgerald. The catalog also will feature additional essays by New York-based writer and artist Tan Lin, New York-based art critic and curator Gregory Volk, and an interview by Melissa Chiu, Curator of Contemporary art at the Asia Society in New York.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Yun-Fei Ji was included in the Whitney Biennial 2002 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and has exhibited at The Pratt Manhattan Gallery and the Drawing Center in New York City and The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Connecticut, in addition to others. He has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Sharpe Foundation and the Pollack-Krasner Foundation.

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SPECIAL EVENTS

Opening Reception
February 23, 4-6 pm
Opening reception and gallery talk by the artist.
Upper level, University Gallery.
This event has been sponsored in part by a donation from the DePauw University Asian Studies Program’s Freeman Foundation Grant and the Robert and Carolyn Frederick Visiting Professorship of Ethics.

'Art for Lunch' Gallery Talk
March 3, 12:30 pm
Sherry Mou, Assistant Professor of Modern Languages (Chinese) and Asian Studies, DePauw University, will present a gallery talk entitled: Three Worlds in One: Traditional Chinese Landscape Painting.
Upper level, University Gallery
This event has been sponsored in part by a donation from the DePauw University Asian Studies Program’s Freeman Foundation Grant and the Robert and Carolyn Frederick Visiting Professorship of Ethics.

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The galleries at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center are open Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; and Sunday 1-5 p.m. For more information about special events associated with this exhibition, please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4882 or visit our website at:
http://www.depauw.edu/galleries

For more information please contact:
Kaytie Johnson, Director and Curator of University Galleries, Museums and Collections
Richard E. Peeler Art Center
10 West Hanna Street
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135
765-658-6556

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2005 DEPAUW BIENNIAL: CONTEMPORARY ART IN THE MIDWEST

FEBRUARY 16 – MAY 8, 2005
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, February 2005 — The work of 25 contemporary artists based in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio will be featured in the inaugural edition of the 2005 DePauw Biennial: Contemporary Art in the Midwest, an exhibition that will be on view at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University from February 16 through May 8, 2005.

Curated by Kaytie Johnson, Director and Curator of University Galleries, Museums and Collections at DePauw, the show features approximately 50 works, several created specifically for the Biennial, by artists based in the three-state region of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. The 25 artists selected to participate in the 2005 DePauw Biennial – a group that includes one artist collective – were chosen because their work confirms an awareness of, and participation in, global contemporary art practice.

As Johnson states: "My curatorial prerogative in organizing this exhibition was not to seek out work that expressed any sort of geographic style or sensibility. My selection of artists was primarily driven by curatorial intuition and critical response. A major goal was to avoid propagating or perpetuating a sub-genre of contemporary art – that is, a "Midwest style" – one that would suggest stylistic homogeneity or encourage a one-dimensional reading of work in the region."

Although the show was not organized based upon specific thematic or formal concerns, the work showcased does reflect a number of overlapping tendencies, such as diverse approaches to process, narrative, materiality, abstraction, conceptual strategies, technology, and place. The diversity extends to the wide range of materials, processes and media represented, including sound, web-based art, video, site-specific installation and performance, as well as painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and digital art.

The artists invited to participate in the 2005 DePauw Biennial are: Noelle Allen (Illinois), Jimmy Baker (Ohio), Conrad Bakker (Illinois), Keith Benjamin (Ohio), Denise Burge (Ohio), Tammy Burke (Indiana), Jennifer Danos (Illinois), Carrie Dickason (Ohio), Katy Fischer (Illinois), Warren Fry (Ohio), Linda Gall (Ohio), Emily Kennerk (Indiana), Chip Kohrman (Ohio), Anthony Luensman (Ohio), Lori Miles (Indiana), New Catalogue (Illinois), Melissa Oresky (Illinois), Brian Presnell (Indiana), Scott Roberts (Illinois), Jason Salavon (Illinois), Dana Sperry (Indiana), Steve Stelling (Ohio), Jeremy Tubbs (Indiana), Heidi van Wieren (Illinois), and Ryan Woods (Indiana).

A brochure will accompany the exhibition, with an essay written by curator Kaytie Johnson.

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SPECIAL EVENTS

Opening Reception
Thursday, March 3, 2005
6:00 – 8:00 pm
Lower level, University Gallery
With a performance by Toy Band

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The galleries at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center are open Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; and Sunday 1-5 p.m. For more information about special events associated with this exhibition, please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4882 or visit our website at:
http://www.depauw.edu/galleries

For more information please contact:
Kaytie Johnson, Director and Curator of University Galleries, Museums and Collections
Richard E. Peeler Art Center
10 West Hanna Street
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135
765-658-6556

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BORDERABILIA: THE MUSEUM OF THE "GLOBALIZED" OTHER

MARCH 16 – APRIL 17, 2005
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, January 2005 — Performance artist, writer and MacArthur fellow Guillermo Gómez-Peña will make a rare appearance in Indiana in conjunction with the project/installation Borderabilia: The Museum of the "Globalized" Other, which will be on view at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University from March 16 through April 17, 2005.

Borderabilia: The Museum of the "Globalized" Other is a contemporary wonder cabinet, the product of a collaboration between curator Kaytie Johnson and performance artist/writer and self-styled "reverse anthropologist" Guillermo Gómez-Peña. The project reflects a current trend in which curators and artists throughout the world are experimenting with original presentational formats for contemporary art which take into consideration the drastic epistemological changes in the relationship between audience and cultural institution, as well as artist and audience, produced by the current mainstream culture of interactivity and role playing.

Containing a selection of pop ethnography, political kitsch, "high" velvet art, barrio conceptual art, one-of-a-kind artist books and archaeological performance props and costumes, Borderabilia: The Museum of the "Globalized" Other is an installation that critically examines the techniques and narratives of display by situating objects and notions of collecting within the context of the "Fourth World. The fascination for collecting natural and man-made wonders was immensely popular in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Wealthy collectors often displayed their encyclopedic collections of paintings, sculpture, and natural and artificial exotica in rooms known as Wunderkammers, literally "wonder cabinets." During this age of exploration, these cabinets became "theaters of the universe" in which the new discoveries of the world were proudly displayed and consumed.

The borderized and hybridized works that comprise the installation reconfigure in contemporary terms the objects originally contained in sixteenth-century European collector's cabinets. Within the performance universe and site of cultural transmutation that is (re)created in Borderabilia, constructed personas are exhibited as "cultural specimens," traditional rituals coexist with contemporary technology, and tourist artifacts and souvenirs, taking the form of "involuntary conceptual art," are transformed into sacred objects.

Guillermo Gómez-Peña's work, which includes performance art, video, audio, installations, poetry, journalism, and cultural theory, explores cross-cultural issues, immigration, the politics of language, "extreme culture" and new technologies in the era of globalization. A MacArthur fellow, he is a regular contributor to the national radio news magazine All Things Considered (National Public Radio), a writer for newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and Mexico, and a contributing editor to The Drama Review (MIT). For twenty years, he has explored intercultural issues with the use of mixed genres and experimental languages. Continually developing multi-centric narratives and large-scale performance projects from a border perspective, Gómez-Peña creates what critics have termed "Chicano cyber-punk performances," and "ethno-techno art."

Gómez-Peña's performance and installation work has been presented at over seven hundred venues across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, Australia, the Soviet Union, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Brazil and Argentina. Through his organization La Pocha Nostra, Gómez-Peña has focused very intensely in the notion of collaboration across national borders, race, gender and generation as an act of citizen diplomacy and as a means to create "ephemeral communities."

The exhibition and all events are free and open to the public.

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SPECIAL EVENTS

"El Mexterminator vs. The Global Predator"
March 31, 2005, 7:30 pm, Thompson Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
A solo performance by Guillermo Gómez-Peña.

"Border Karaoke"
March 31, 2005, 8:30 pm, Visual Arts Gallery, Richard E. Peeler Art Center
An interactive performance where audience members are invited to come dressed as their favorite "cultural other," or to bring props and costumes that can be used to create performance personas in "ethnic drag."

These events have been sponsored in part by the DePauw Public Occasions Committee, the Committee for Latina/o Concerns, United DePauw, Ladies Aligning for Cross-Cultural Excellence and the Butler Family Fund.

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The galleries at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center are open Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; and Sunday 1-5 p.m. For more information about special events associated with this exhibition, please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4882 or visit our website at:
http://www.depauw.edu/galleries

For more information please contact:
Kaytie Johnson, Director and Curator of University Galleries, Museums and Collections
Richard E. Peeler Art Center
10 West Hanna Street
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135
765-658-6556

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EL MEXTERMINATOR VS. THE GLOBAL PREDATOR:
A Solo Performance by Guillermo Gómez-Peña

Performing Arts Center, Thompson Recital Hall, DePauw University
MARCH 31, 2005, 7:30 PM
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, March 2005 - Performance artist, writer and MacArthur fellow Guillermo Gómez-Peña will make a rare appearance in Indiana in conjunction with the project/installation Borderabilia: The Museum of the "Globalized" Other, which is on view at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University from March 16 through April 17, 2005.

In his solo performance El Mexterminator vs. The Global Predator, Guillermo Gómez-Peña is back as a spoken word brujo-poet who explores the fear of immigration, the dark side effects of globalization, the digital divide, censorship and interracial sexuality. Continually developing multicentric narratives from a border perspective, Gómez-Peña creates what critics have termed "Chicano cyberpunk performances." Using spoken word, multilingualism, humor and hybrid literary genres as subversive strategies, Gómez-Peña moves cultural borders to the centers and pushes the alleged to the margins, placing the audience member in the position of "foreigner."

This solo performance will be followed at 8:30 pm by Border Karaoke, an interactive performance directed by Gómez-Peña that will take place in the Visual Arts Gallery at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University. Audience members are invited to bring ethnic costumes and props, and to dress as their favorite "cultural other."

Borderabilia: The Museum of the "Globalized" Other is a contemporary cabinet of curiosities based upon a metafiction conceptualized by curator Kaytie Johnson and performance artist and writer Guillermo Gómez-Peña. With Gómez-Peña in the role of contemporary Liebheffer, high-tech Humanist, and sideshow museum impresario, the installation uses the strategy of reverse anthropology to critically examine the techniques and narratives of display by situating objects and notions of collecting within the context of the "globalized border," a transcontinental zone where centers don't exist and hybridity is the dominant culture. Within this fictionalized space and performance universe, the ethnic gaze is appropriated and subverted, while the hegemonic culture is pushed to the margins where it is treated as exotic and unfamiliar.

Guillermo Gómez-Peña's work, which includes performance art, video, audio, installations, poetry, journalism, and cultural theory, explores cross-cultural issues, immigration, the politics of language, "extreme culture" and new technologies in the era of globalization. A MacArthur fellow, he is a regular contributor to the national radio news magazine All Things Considered (National Public Radio), a writer for newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and Mexico, and a contributing editor to The Drama Review (MIT). For twenty years he has explored intercultural issues with the use of mixed genres and experimental languages. Continually developing multi-centric narratives and large-scale performance projects from a border perspective, Gómez-Peña creates what critics have termed "Chicano cyber-punk performances," and "ethno-techno art."

Gómez-Peña's performance and installation work has been presented at over seven hundred venues across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, Australia, the Soviet Union, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Braziland Argentina. Through his organization La Pocha Nostra, Gómez-Peña has focused very intensely on the notion of collaboration across national borders, race, gender and generations as an act of citizen diplomacy and as a means of creating "ephemeral communities."

The exhibition and all events are free and open to the public.

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SPECIAL EVENTS

"El Mexterminator vs. The Global Predator"
March 31, 2005, 7:30 pm, Thompson Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
A solo performance by Guillermo Gómez-Peña.

"Border Karaoke"
March 31, 2005, 8:30 pm, Visual Arts Gallery, Richard E. Peeler Art Center
An interactive performance where audience members are invited to come dressed as their favorite "cultural other," or to bring props and costumes that can be used to create performance personas in "ethnic drag."

These events have been sponsored in part by the DePauw Public Occasions Committee, the Committee for Latina/o Concerns, United DePauw, Ladies Aligning for Cross-Cultural Excellence and the Butler Family Fund.

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The galleries at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center are open Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; and Sunday 1-5 p.m. For more information about special events associated with this exhibition, please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4882 or visit our website at:
http://www.depauw.edu/galleries

For more information please contact:
Kaytie Johnson, Director and Curator of University Galleries, Museums and Collections
Richard E. Peeler Art Center
10 West Hanna Street
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135
765-658-6556

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ENGELKE, GOODHEART, HAY, AND HERROLD: REVISITED

FEBRUARY 2 – MARCH 6, 2005
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, October 2004 — An exhibition of the ceramic work of Dan Engelke, John Goodheart, Dick Hay, and David Herrold opens at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University on February 2, 2005.

During the 1970s, an exhibition titled Indiana Ceramics opened at DePauw University's Emison Art Center, and featured the work of four promising young ceramists: Dan Engelke, John Goodheart, Dick Hay and David Herrold. In 1975, David Herrold, Professor of Art at DePauw, organized an exhibition called Indiana Low Temperature, one that served as an introduction to the work of the four artists at an early point in their respective careers. At the original show the group presented a gallery talk about the unusual, and sometimes controversial, imagery they used, and also speculated about where they thought the ceramics medium was heading.

These four young Indiana ceramists banded together through their desire to deemphasize the traditional craft skills the ceramic medium represented. Among their shared attitudes was a disrespect for the clay object as a "humble vessel." Thirty years later, all four have returned to the vessel as a significant theme in their work.

As they approach retirement from their appointments at Indiana universities, they bring their work together to reflect on the evolution of their ceramic practices over the intervening years. Engelke, Goodheart, Hay, and Herrold: Revisited will trace the trajectory of their development as ceramists through the inclusion of photographs of their early work from the 1970s, as well a selection of the ceramic objects they currently create.

Dan Engelke has exhibited at the International Museum of Ceramics, Faenza, Italy and SOFA Chicago. His work has been included in a number of exhibitions, including the International Exhibition of Design, St-Etienne, France and The Altech Ceramics Bienniale 2000, Sandon Civic Center, South Africa. He has served on the faculties of the University of Southern Indiana (1971-78) and Purdue University (1978-2004), from which he recently retired.

John Goodheart is a professor of ceramics at Indiana University, Bloomington (1973-present). His work has been exhibited at the Craft Alliance Gallery, St. Louis; Pewabic Pottery, Detroit; Mark Rushman Gallery, Indianapolis; and the Garth Clark Gallery, New York.

Dick Hay's work is part of a number of public collections, including the Byung-Tak Woo Public Collection, Korea; The Sea of Japan Collection, Japan; the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow; and the State Museum of Art, Riga, Latvia. He is currently the head of the ceramics program at Indiana State University.

David Herrold has exhibited at Instituto Allende, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Images Center for Photography, Cincinnati; the Rushman Gallery, Indianapolis; and the Alexandria Museum of Art, Alexandria, Louisiana. He currently is a Professor of Art at DePauw University (1972-present).

Engelke, Goodheart, Hay, and Herrold: Revisited may be visited through March 6, 2005, and is free and open to the public.

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SPECIAL EVENTS

Opening Reception
February 9, 2005, 4 - 6 pm
Visual Arts Gallery
Featuring a gallery talk by the artists.

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The galleries at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center are open Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; and Sunday 1-5 p.m. For more information about special events associated with this exhibition, please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4882 or visit our website at:
http://www.depauw.edu/galleries

For more information please contact:
Kaytie Johnson, Director and Curator of University Galleries, Museums and Collections
Richard E. Peeler Art Center
10 West Hanna Street
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135
765-658-6556

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