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PAST IN REVERSE: CONTEMPORARY ART OF EAST ASIA

AUGUST 23 – DECEMBER 8, 2006
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, August 2006 — Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia, an exhibition exploring the innovative ways contemporary artists in East Asia create work that fuses cultural histories and ancient techniques with new technologies, opens at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University on August 23, 2006.

In recent years, East Asia has become a particularly vital and increasingly influential player in the global economic and political arenas. Concurrently, cultural and artistic innovations from this geographic area, though still new to many Western audiences, are a recognized force with the international art scene. Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia brings together the work of twenty-two established and emerging artists and artists' groups from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea, and provides a rich overview of the innovative and remarkable work coming out of this region.

The exhibition's premise is borrowed from a common practice shared by the artists – namely, using the past to map the future. Ranging in age from their twenties to their fifties, and working with both traditional materials and new technologies, including painting, sculpture, photography, installation, video, and digital media, the artists in Past in Reverse represent the region's tremendous contemporary import and deep cultural complexity.

Asserting the interrelated cultural identities of East and West, Past in Reverse relates art to current geo-political conditions and reflects the emergence of East Asia as an ascendant player in the global economic and political arena. The works in the exhibition collectively shape fresh readings of contemporary society by extending or redefining both traditional and modernist visual languages. This process of self-evaluation and discovery, as well as experimentation with new technologies, has yielded a host of innovative and challenging solutions, as well as practices that rely on the seduction of historical reference and its ability to propel us towards the future.

Participating artists include: Ryoko Aoki, Yiso Bahc, Cai Guo-Qiang, Cao Fei, Flyingcity Urbanism Research Group, Hiroshi Fuji, G8 Public Relations and Art Consultation Corporation, Hung Yi, Hee-Jeong Jang, Soun-Gui Kim, Kim Young Jin, Leung Mee Ping, Michael Lin, Mitsushima Takayuki, Shao Yinong and Muchen, Wilson Shieh, Tadasu Takamine, Wang Jianwei, Wang Qinsong, Yang Fudong, Yangjiang Calligraphy Group, and Shizuka Yokomizo.

This exhibition was organized by the San Diego Museum of Art with major support provided by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation. Its presentation at DePauw has been generously funded by Richard D. and Barbara Dixon Harrison, Friend, '56.

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SPECIAL EVENTS

Thursday, October 26, 4:00 pm
Gallery talk by Betti-Sue Hertz, Curator of Contemporary Art, San Diego Museum of Art

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. Please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4822 or visit our website at http://www.depauw.edu/galleries for more information about special events associated with this exhibition.

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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
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135
765-658-4884

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PANGAEA'S Blanket: DIANA AL-HADID

OCTOBER 4 – NOVEMBER 5, 2006
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, September 2006 — Pangaea’s Blanket: Diana Al Hadid, a room-sized, mixed media installation created by the New York-based artist, will be on view at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University from October 4 through November 5, 2006.

Born in Syria and currently based in Brooklyn, New York, Diana Al-Hadid uses fiberglass planes, or “membranes,” to create large-scale installations that outline and organize space and create the appearance of fragile landscapes. These large-scale installations function as imaginary places that refer to architecture, set design, and the baroque, and depict a variety of forms and geological events that suggest the expansion and formation of geological time. While they are suggestive of slowly evolving landmasses, they also allude to highly ornate and fragile interior spaces and gratuitously opulent environments, which the viewer can often traverse.

In Pangaea’s Blanket, a room-sized installation commissioned for DePauw University’s Richard E. Peeler Art Center, Al Hadid will create a hovering blanket of undulating, white “membranes” in the shape of Pangaea, the supercontinent that is said to have existed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras, before the process of plate tectonics separated each of the component continents into their current configuration.

Al-Hadid’s installations have been described as alternate universes spurred by the substances and histories of this world, but misinterpreting those points of reference and acting as examples from the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, which purports that, in addition to the world we are aware of directly, there are many other similar worlds which exist in parallel at the same space and time. As the artist states: “My installations are propositions for an imaginary world. They are places that have a sense of believability without recognition and rely on their own internal logic. If I can’t have an inherent contradiction, I’ll take an apparent one.”

Diana Al Hadid received her MFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2005. Recently she participated in the Bronx Museum’s Artists-in-the-Marketplace program, and was the artist-in-residence at the Sculpture Space Residency in Utica, New York. Al-Hadid’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Keith Talent Gallery (London); the Kim Foster Gallery (New York); Skylab (Cleveland); the Bronx Museum (New York); Vox Populi (Philadelphia); and the Arlington Arts Center (Washington, D.C.). Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Cleveland Free Times and The Washington Post. Al-Hadid currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

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SPECIAL EVENTS

Wednesday, October 4, 2006, 4:00 – 5:30 pm
Opening reception with talk by the artist
Please call 765.658.4336 for more information

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The galleries at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center are open Tuesday-Friday 10 am 4 pm; Saturday 11 am - 5 pm; and Sunday 1 5 pm. For more information about special events associated with this exhibition, please 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
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135
765-658-6556

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Press Releases - Upcoming Exhibitions

Press Releases - Past Exhibitions

LIGHT POLLUTION: ERIC SALL

AUGUST 23 – SEPTEMBER 24, 2006
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, August 2006 — Light Pollution: Eric Sall features the large-scale, non-representational paintings of Eric Sall. The exhibition will be on view at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University from August 23 through September 24, 2006.

Drawing from the history of art and painting's lexicon of marks, Eric Sall creates large-scale, non-representational paintings that allude to figuration while remaining immersed in the abstract nature of paint. By adopting the strategy of presenting a figure – or protagonist – over an ambiguously rendered background, Sall alludes to the tradition of representational painting without depicting any discernable forms.

Characterized by a sense of visual gravity in which gestural marks, flat shapes, impastoed dollops, and textured washes coalesce into clustered forms on the surface of the canvas, Sall's paintings engage free association and instinct. Sall's work is informed by personal as much as it is by experience the history of art - drawing inspiration from a wide range of sources including magazine advertisements, film, commercial logos, and events from his youth. As he states, his paintings can be influenced by "a memory of the Northern Lights at 3:00 a.m. on a secluded dirt road in the middle of South Dakota to an image of a brand name jacket in a magazine that I desired. It is just as likely that I would associate graphic marks to designer logos as I would associate a washy field of color to a Midwest sky." Despite their seemingly schizophrenic nature, his divergent interests are processed and played out with cohesion and savvy in his paintings.

Eric Sall is a recent graduate of Viginia Commonwealth University's prestigious painting program. His work has been exhibited at ATM Gallery, NYC; Alona Kagan Gallery, NYC; ADA Gallery, Richmond, VA; Dolphin Gallery, Kansas City, MO; Joseph Nease Gallery, Kansas City, MO; and the Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, NM. He is the recipient of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship Program Award, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant Program Award and a Charlotte Street Fund Award. His work is in the collections of the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO; the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; and the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, Roswell, NM.

This exhibition may be visited through September 24, 2006, and is free and open to the public.

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SPECIAL EVENTS

Wednesday, September 6, 2006, 4 – 5:30 pm
Opening reception with talk by the artist
Please call 765.658.4336 for more information

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

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CHUCK RAMIREZ: DEEPLY SUPERFICIAL

FEBRUARY 1 – MARCH 5, 2006
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, January 2006 — A solo exhibition of photographs by San Antonio-based artist Chuck Ramirez opens at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University on February 1, 2006.

Working primarily with large-scale photography, Chuck Ramirez's oeuvre includes prints and sculptural installations that are charged with metaphors of ethnicity, gender, sexuality and religion. Using typography and digital imaging technology, his work deconstructs the media world by isolating and recontextualizing familiar objects and texts as a means of exploring the human condition. Always personally relevant and charged, Ramirez's photographs and installations explore cultural identity, mortality, physicality and consumerism. Photo-based, graphically direct and multileveled, his work also references the mixed blessings of identity-oriented, ethnic art.

Ramirez's work is particularly effective in its synthesis of personal history and narrative with pressing social issues. Drawing from personal and popular imagery – his grandmother's kitchen, his artist friends, and Brady Bunch graphics – he uses the familiar to explore how social issues impact his individual life. While earlier work investigated the complexity of Latino identity and visibility, queer politics and the AIDS crisis (Ramirez is an HIV+ gay male), in his more recent work, Ramirez resurrects waste — photographing such things as filled garbage bags, dying flowers, and battered, empty piñatas — reflecting on the fleeting nature of human existence while imposing the will to survive.

Ramirez has shown extensively throughout the United States, Mexico and Europe. Solo and group exhibitions include the Bronx Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; El Portal del Arte Contemporáneo (ARCO) Madrid; Centro de la Imagen and Galeria O Lamm, Mexico City; Galeries Khadrberlin, Berlin; Arlington Museum of Contemporary Art, TX; Center of the Visual Arts, Denver; the Austin Museum of Art at Laguna Gloria, Austin, TX; the Institute of Visual Arts, Milwaukee; Blue Star Art Space, San Antonio; and the Elizabeth Dee Gallery, NY. He was selected for an ArtPace residency in 2001 by Jerome Sans, an independent curator and co-director of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. He currently resides in San Antonio.

This exhibition may be visited through March 5, 2006, and is free and open to the public.

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SPECIAL EVENTS

Wedneasday, February 15, 2006, 4 – 6 pm
Opening reception with talk by the artist
Please call 765.658.4336 for more information

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. Please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4882 or visit our website at http://www.depauw.edu/galleries for more information about special events associated with this exhibition.

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

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2006 FACULTY EXHIBITION

MARCH 15 - APRIL 16, 2006
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, March 2006 — DePauw University's 2006 Faculty Exhibition highlights the work of DePauw University's studio art faculty. From ceramic vessels to figurative painting to conceptual sculpture, a wide range of media and ideas will be on display.

Participating faculty includes:

David Herrold (Ceramics)
Robert Kingsley (Painting/Drawing)
Lori Miles (Sculpture)
Susan Mullally (Photography)
Forrest Solis (Painting/Drawing)

DePauw's faculty has exhibited nationally and internationally in such venues as the WWW Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden; The Dairy Barn, Athens, OH; Lankershim Art Gallery, North Hollywood, CA; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NB; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Erickson/Elins Gallery, San Francisco, CA; and Presso Lo Studio, Italy.

This exhibition may be visited through April 16, 2006, and is free and open to the public.

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SPECIAL EVENTS

Wednesday, March 15, 2006, 4 – 6 pm
Opening reception with talks by the artists
Visual Arts Gallery

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

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VINCENT VALDEZ: STATIONS

FEBRUARY 1 – APRIL 30, 2006
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, January 2006 - A solo exhibition of large-scale, charcoal drawings by San Antonio-based artist Vincent Valdez opens at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University on February 1, 2006.

In this exhibition, Texas-based artist Vincent Valdez uses the Passion story as the basis for a series of large-scale charcoal drawings that recast Christ as a boxer and the crucifixion as a boxing match. Embracing the dark themes of manhood and spirituality, Valdez transforms the Passion into a rite of passage, and a boy's struggle to grow into manhood by confronting his own fears. "I was thinking of the concept of a tragic hero," says Valdez. "He was this young male who was struggling in every aspect of the world and his life. I never intended it to have anything to do with Christ as a religious image or Christ as an icon." Instead, Valdez' boxer becomes the everyman, our stand-in for the Christ figure, as he takes our beatings in the ring.

In order to create the technically correct and richly detailed images in the series, Valdez studied boxing illustrations, including those made by sketch artists in 17th-century Britain, the photographs and film footage that have more recently chronicled the sport, and ESPN Classic's "Classic Fight Night." As a result, the images often conflate details from different eras; though the boxers' clothing is modern and a jumbotron lists the score, the crowd seems plucked from a 1940s film – it's dotted with fedoras and the air is thick with smoke. "In order for the story to take off on its own," Valdez explains, "it was necessary to bounce back and forth" in time.

Peppered with scenes and figures from the artist's personal life, most of the images do not depict the action, but rather the moments when the boxer lies felled in the ring or recovering on the sidelines – a tactic that puts the focus on contemplation, rather than competition. "I wanted to leave it open," Valdez says, "so you could make up your own story and decide what you want to see in it." But perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Stations is that its focus is not on victory or glory. Instead, the cycle seems to suggest that in life, as much as in boxing and in art, real success lies in being willing to confront one's difficulties and fears – and continuing to grow, despite them.

Vincent Valdez received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2000. He has had one-person shows at the Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, the San Antonio Art League Museum, and the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio, Texas. He is represented by Finesilver Gallery, also in San Antonio. He has also exhibited his work at Parsons University, Paris; the Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Smithsonian; and the Mexican Museum in Chicago. His work is included in the collection of Cheech Marin, and is part of the traveling exhibition Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge. He currently resides in San Antonio.

This exhibition may be visited through April 30, 2006, and is free and open to the public.

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SPECIAL EVENTS

Opening reception with talk by the artist
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
University Gallery, upper level

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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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SKIRTING THE LINE: CONCEPTUAL DRAWING

FEBRUARY 15 - MAY 7, 2006
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, February 2006 — Skirting the Line: Conceptual Drawing a group exhibition featuring the work of contemporary artists whose work or practice is informed by the processes and qualities traditionally associated with drawing, yet is equally as driven by conceptual concerns, opens at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University on February 15, 2006.

Within the history of art, drawing has typically been regarded as simultaneously fundamental and peripheral, essential to artistic practice and the most basic skill an artist can possess, yet subordinate to the more privileged mediums of painting and sculpture. Paradoxically, despite drawing's moniker as "the mother of the arts," and the widely held belief that it serves as the basis for both painting and sculpture, it has historically been marginalized as a preparatory medium or process, rather than an art form complete in itself.

During the 1960s and 1970s, drawing became analogous to artistic activity - and essential to the development of Conceptual art - when artists adopted it as a means of demonstrating process. The act of drawing, or as artist Mel Bochner has notoriously quipped, "drawing as a verb," became a prime site of experimentation and a conceptual device, primarily because of its ability to directly express the artist's decision-making process between thinking and doing. Drawing's proximity to thought naturally aligned it with Conceptual art, where the idea was paramount to the object, and the resulting object - if there was one - existed as a document of the artist's thinking.

The twenty-first century ushered in a renewed interest in drawing, the re-materialization of the art object, and thereturn of the artist's hand. Reacting against the ideological, theory-based art of the 1980s and 1990s, artists reengaged with craft by adopting working practices that favored labor-intensive processes and aesthetics over politics. During this time, contemporary artists began to expand the potential of drawing through new techniques and hybrid media and, more than ever before, fully exploited its liminality and multivalent nature by pushing the medium across boundaries to new forms and possibilities.

The group of artists represented in Skirting the Line adopt these hybridic approaches to drawing - as both a verb and noun - utilizing drawing as a fundamental and continuous part of the creative process, and also as their primary conceptual medium. However, they do not favor thought over the manipulation of materials, and don't perceive drawings to be limited only to the arrangement of lines on a page. Instead, they view line as the basis for the investigation of formal and conceptual issues, and use non-traditional media and processes in order to systematically test the conditions, appearance and definitions of drawing. By transposing the qualities and processes of drawing onto a variety of contemporary media - including installation, film, sound, sculpture, photography, video, and performance - they create composite works that subvert conventional definitions of drawing by conflating this traditional medium and process with conceptually-driven contemporary art practice.

Participating artists include: Francis Alÿs, The Center for Land Use Interpretation, Clare Churchouse, Marc Dombrosky, Mark Fox, Tonico Lemos Auad, Mark Lombardi, Anthony Luensman, Marco Maggi, Ryan McNamara, Vik Muniz, Danica Phelps, Type A, Georgina Valverde, Pablo Vargas Lugo and Holly Zausner.

Skirting the Line: Conceptual Drawing was curated by Kaytie Johnson, DePauw's Director and Curator of University Galleries, Museums and Collections.

This exhibition may be visited through May 21, 2006, and is free and open to the public.

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SPECIAL EVENTS - ‘Art for Lunch' Gallery talks

March 9, 12:30 pm
"Paper Trail: Documenting and Cataloging Incidences"
Christopher Lynn, Assistant Curator

March 16, 12:30 pm
"Connecting Medieval and Modern Conceptual Art"
Anne Harris, Associate Professor of Art

March 23, 12:30 pm
"A Noticed Moment: Chance, Truth and Coincidence in Contemporary Art"
Lori Miles, Assistant Professor of Art

April 6, 12:30 pm
"Drawing a Bead on Contemporary Art"
Michael MacKenzie, Assistant Professor of Art

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. Please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4882 or visit our website at http://www.depauw.edu/galleries for more information about special events associated with this exhibition.

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

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2006 SENIOR SHOWS

APIRL 27 – MAY 7, 2007 and MAY 11 – MAY 21, 2006
Events | Download Press Release as PDF |

Greencastle, IN, March 2006 — DePauw University’s 2006 Senior Art Shows feature the artwork of graduating senior students in two back-to-back exhibitions beginning April 27 and May 11 respectively.

Show 1 (April 27 – May 7, 2006)

Megan Fogarty
Ian M. Gunn
Laurel Hageman
Jessica Milano
Milena Smatrakaleva
Michael Treffehn

Show 2 (May 11 – May 21, 2006)

Brooke Aders
Jenny Anderson
Brian Culp
Sara Haney
Sarah Miller
Dan Solberg

The 2006 Senior Art Shows are free and open to the public.

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SPECIAL EVENTS

Thursday, April 27, 2006, 7 – 9 pm
Opening reception with talks by the artists
Visual Arts Gallery

Thursday, May 11, 2006, 7 – 9 pm
Opening reception with talks by the artists
Visual Arts Gallery

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

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Events

There are no current events

General Information

Gallery Hours:
Tu - F: 10 am - 4pm
Sa: 11 am - 5pm
Su: 1 - 5pm

Closed:
During University breaks and holidays

Location:
DePauw University
10 West Hanna Street
Greencastle, IN 46135
Click for Directions

For more information, please call: 765.658.4336
The galleries are wheelchair accessible.