Today at the Walker Art Center

Fantastic Fourth : Free First Saturday : Family Program

Sat, 4 Jul 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Have fun in the sun before the fireworks take off! Celebrate Independence Day with an amazing variety of artful adventures and musical treats for all ages.

Performance: Family Jam Session
11 am: Sumunar Javanese Gamelan Ensemble
1 pm: Haley Bonar
2 pm: M.anifest
Rock out to eclectic world sounds, country-tinged indie folk, and Afrocentric hip-hop at this special holiday concert.

Movement Workshop: Harmony Hoops
10:30 am and 12:30 pm
Wiggle your hips and twirl to the beat in a hula-hooping workshop led by instructor/performer Harmony Hoops.

Art-Making for the Entire Family: Spin Art Surprise!
10 am-3 pm
With the help of a salad spinner, make a painting that looks like an explosive firework. Led by artist-instructor Hiroko Shiraishi.

Art-Making for the Entire Family: Good Enough to Eat
10 am-3 pm
Design a centerpiece sculpture for your kitchen table inspired by your favorite foods with artist-instructor Emogene Schilling. Second Harvest Heartland will be on-site, with support from volunteers from Free First Saturday sponsor Ameriprise Financial, to teach families how to help end hunger.

Family Tour: WAC Garden Packs
10 am-2 pm
Check out a WAC Garden Pack, a kit containing fun hands-on activities to engage you and your child's imagination on a self-guided tour of the Garden. Available for free with a photo ID.

Art Bike Contest
12 noon
Bring your bike! Decorate your ride at home, and then bring it to the Spoonbridge and Cherry for a bike parade. Winners will be announced at 1 pm. (Secure bike storage will be provided.)

LUKE : Directed by Bruce Conner : Screening from the Collection

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT

In 1967, artist Bruce Conner was invited by his close friend Dennis Hopper onto the set of Cool Hand Luke (screening at Summer Music & Movies on August 3). Capturing on 8mm a behind-the-scenes glimpse at a chain gang sequence, Conner went on to transform the two-and-one-half minutes of footage into a hauntingly elegiac, slow-motion look at the Hollywood production, edited entirely in-camera with an added electronic score by Patrick Gleeson. 1967-2004, 8mm enlargement to 16mm/digital, color/sound, 22 minutes.

TomA!s Saraceno: Lighter than Air : Exhibition

Thu, 14 May 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Tomas Saraceno pushes the conventions of art and architecture and their capacities to invoke inventive solutions to complex questions about how we inhabit and coexist in the world. The Walker Art Center exhibition Tomas Saraceno: Lighter than Air, on view May 14 (from 5-9 pm) through August 30, showcases installations, sculptures, and photographs from 2003 to the present. Saraceno's work was first seen at the Walker in the exhibition Brave New Worlds (2007), and in fall 2008, he brought his Museo aero solar--a continuously expanding solar-powered balloon made from hundreds of reused plastic bags--to the Walker for a residency that focused on a collective investigation to improve the balloon's flight potential. Lighter than Air is his first large-scale museum presentation in the United States.

Saraceno is internationally recognized for his architectural proposals that frame the interdependencies of systems to ponder ecological questions beyond the natural world. Much of his work has involved conceiving environments that anticipate new socio-cultural platforms for interacting and experiencing our surroundings. "Saraceno is treating the gallery space as a biosphere, where works installed in close proximity sometimes connect through a network of cords and ropes to offer a concrete picture of what the world would look like if he was to design it," says Walker associate curator Yasmil Raymond.

Following in the tradition of architects and theorists R. Buckminster Fuller, Peter Cook, Yona Friedman, and other visionaries, Saraceno looks to scientific principles and technological innovations to develop ideas for sustainable communities and new models for social interactions. Conceived by the artist as an entire organism, Lighter than Air closely integrates the works on view, formally and structurally, to render a network of relationships as well as illustrate the breadth of his practice. The exhibition's design is inspired by the ecological theories championed by physicist Fritjof Capra, who argued that "Throughout the living world, we find systems nesting within other systems. And living systems also include communities of organisms. These may be social systems--a family, a school, a village--or ecosystems." The exhibition integrates indoor and outdoor spaces throughout the Walker building, including staircases and hallways, with a network of electrical cables connected to solar panels oriented towards existing light sources. Electricity generated through this web of cables, receivers, and generators will cultivate the grass growing inside 32SW stay green/Flying Garden/Air-Port-City (2007), a self-sustainable greenhouse equipped with an irrigation system that waters a cluster of inflatable spheres.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is the sculpture Girasol (Turning Sun) (2009). Conceived for both the gallery and an adjacent outdoor terrace, it plays up the interdependencies between the sun, the wind, and technology. A wind turbine located on the terrace will power a video camera attached to a sunflower as it records intermittent views of the sky and the flower's movement as it searches for sunlight. The captured images will be projected inside the gallery. Foregoing the practical and the plausible, Saraceno seeks to harness the power of imagination--his own and the viewer's--to make a leap together into forms and vehicles that render the impossible possible.

Also on view will be photographs as well as a wall-sized drawing, Air-Port-City (2009), depicting the artist's vision for an airborne metropolis floating above an earthbound city. Intrigued by the question of national borders, Saraceno has designed an urban setting where residents circumvent geopolitical boundaries, challenging notions of nationhood, land ownership, and borderlines. As the artist has said, "My idea for an Air-Port-City is to create platforms or habitable cells made up of cities that float in the air. These change form and join together like clouds. This freedom of movement is borrowed from the orderly structure of airports, and it allows for the creation of the first international city. . . . Air-Port-City is like a flying airport; you will be able to legally travel across the world . . . . This structure seeks to challenge today's political, social, cultural, and military restrictions in an attempt to re-establish new concepts of synergy."

Such a degree of autonomy is palpable in the sculpture Iridescent Planet (2009), created especially for the exhibition. A balloon anchored to the Walker's terrace collects its energy from solar panels while depending on the force of the wind for its sustainability. Within this equilibrium, Saraceno strives to formulate systems in which the "cooperation" of individual parts--where one lament is contingent on the other--becomes a model for viewing the earth as a single organism.

While Saraceno's series of inflatable sculptures and environments introduces many of the conceptual concerns echoed in his "flying cities" of the future, his experiments outside the studio are also central to his practice. These investigations, most recently in the form of handmade spheres, provide him with models of the internal mechanics of flying vehicles. In Museo aero solar (an ongoing project initiated in 2007), Saraceno embraces the idea of building a solar-powered balloon constructed of used plastic bags assembled with adhesive tape by hundreds of volunteers across eight cities around the world, including Sharjah (United Arab Emirates); Medellin (Colombia); Lyon (France); Rapperswil (Switzerland); Tirana (Albania); Ein Hawd (Israel); and most recently in Minneapolis while the artist was in residence at the Walker. Conceived in collaboration with writer and activist Alberto Pesavento during a visit to Isola Art Center in Milan, Museo aero solar developed out of a desire to employ a "do-it-yourself" approach towards technology, pursuing a fantastical goal, in Saraceno's words, "to build the world's largest flying museum." The simplest of materials are made to contain energy in the spirit of Fuller's motto "do more with less."

Born in Tucaman, Argentina, in 1973, Tomas Saraceno lives in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He has had solo exhibitions at the University of California, Berkeley (2007); Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2007, 2008); De Vleeshal, Netherlands (2007); Centre d'Art Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain (2006); The Curve, Barbican Art Gallery, London (2006); Portikus Frankfurt (with Marjetica Potrc) (2006); and Pinksummer, Genoa, Italy (2004). His participation in numerous group exhibitions has included Psycho Buildings: Architecture by Artists, Hayward Gallery, London (2008); Greenwashing--Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2008); The Liverpool Biennial 2008, Liverpool, UK (2008); 50 Moons of Saturn: T2 Torino Triennale, Turin, Italy (2008); Brave New Worlds, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2007);The History of a Decade that Has Not Yet Been Named, Lyon Biennial, France (2007); Still Life. Art, Ecology, and the Politics of Change, Sharjah Biennial 8, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates(2007); Como Viver Junto (How to Live Together), 27th Sao Paulo Biennale (2006); I still believe in miracles, Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2005); Project Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Bueningen, Rotterdam (2005); Dialectic of Hope, Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2005); and Dreams and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer, 50th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (2003).

Tour Schedule
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
May 14-August 30, 2009

Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, Texas
January 16-April 3, 2010

Curator: Yasmil Raymond

The Quick and the Dead : Exhibition

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Surveying art that tries to reach beyond itself and the limits of our knowledge and experience, The Quick and the Dead seeks, in part, to ask what is alive and dead within the legacy of conceptual art. Though the term "conceptual" has been applied to myriad kinds of art, it originally covered works and practices from the 1960s and '70s that emphasized the ideas behind or around a work of art, foregrounding language, action, and context rather than visual form. But this basic definition fails to convey the ambitions of many artists who have been variously described as conceptual: as Sol LeWitt asserted in 1969, conceptual artists are "mystics rather than rationalists." Although some of their work involves unremarkable materials or even borders on the invisible, these artists explore new ways of thinking about time and space, often aspiring to realms and effects that fall far outside of our perceptual limitations.

The exhibition title derives from a biblical phrase describing the judgment of the living and the dead at the end of time. But it has been used in innumerable ways since, including by the designer and engineer R. Buckminster Fuller, who in 1947 lauded what he called the "quick realities" of modern physics, condemning the "dead superstitions" of classical, object-based Newtonian theories. This distinction between objects and events underlined many conceptual practices of the late 1960s and '70s that pressed at the edges of the discernable--the work of artists like George Brecht, who seamlessly transformed objects into motionless events and asked us to consider "an art verging on the non-existent, dissolving into other dimensions;" Lygia Clark, whose foldable sculptures sought to dissolve the boundary between inside and outside, each "a static moment within the cosmological dynamics from which we came and to which we are going;" and James Lee Byars who, obsessed with a magically gothic idea of perfection that included metaphorical enactments of his own death, declared that "the perfect performance is to stand still."

With an international group of 53 artists in a range of media, The Quick and the Dead expands beyond the here and now, reaffirming conceptual art's ability to engage some of the deeper mysteries and questions of our lives. The exhibition brings together more than 90 works, juxtaposing a core group from the 1960s and '70s with more recent examples that might only loosely qualify as conceptual. Included in the show are new works made specifically for the exhibition and a number that have not been previously shown or realized. The presentation expands beyond the Walker's main galleries to its public spaces, parking ramp, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, and the nearby Basilica of Saint Mary.

Artists in the Exhibition
Francis Alys, Robert Barry, Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, James Lee Byars, John Cage, Maurizio Cattelan, Paul Chan, Lygia Clark, Tony Conrad, Tacita Dean, Jason Dodge, Trisha Donnelly, Marcel Duchamp, Harold Edgerton, Ceal Floyer, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roger Hiorns, Douglas Huebler, Pierre Huyghe, The Institute For Figuring, Stephen Kaltenbach, On Kawara, Christine Kozlov, David Lamelas, Louise Lawler, Paul Etienne Lincoln, Mark Manders, Kris Martin, Steve McQueen, Helen Mirra, Catherine Murphy, Bruce Nauman, Rivane Neuenschwander, Claes Oldenburg, Roman Ondak, Giuseppe Penone, Susan Philipsz, Anthony Phillips, Adrian Piper, Steven Pippin, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Charles Ray, Tobias Rehberger, Hannah Rickards, Arthur Russell, Michael Sailstorfer, Roman Signer, Simon Starling, John Stezaker, Mladen Stilinović, Sturtevant, Shomei Tomatsu

Statements: Beuys, Flavin, Judd : Exhibition

Thu, 15 May 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Joseph Beuys, Dan Flavin, and Donald Judd were contemporaries of thought rather than form. Each took sculpture off its pedestal--literally and figuratively--and expanded the conventions of what constitutes a work of art, influencing scores of artists to do the same. Grouping Beuys, Flavin, and Judd in a new exhibition from the Walker's collection provides "a snapshot of a vital moment in postwar cultural production," says assistant curator Yasmil Raymond, and allows viewers to trace the influence of their ideas in contemporary art. "With this exhibition, visitors will see three different 'statements' that reflect distinct positions towards art-making and the ways in which these artists addressed the autonomy of art, its nature, and its social power. These are concerns that this generation of artists set in motion and continue to have relevance for artists today."

Beuys was an artist, teacher, and political activist who became one of the art world's most discussed, celebrated, and controversial postwar figures. He wanted people to see his objects as "stimulants for the transformation of the idea of sculpture." He pursued this goal by using organic materials and focusing on the process of creation, allowing chemical reactions, fermentations, and decay to render his objects constantly in a "state of change" and evolution. His preoccupation with the collective memory and trauma of European culture and civilization led him to label his objects as "vehicles" for transformation, healing, and action.

Judd paved for himself a path between painting and sculpture, with singleness or wholeness as a key pursuit. In direct contrast to Beuys' expanded notion of art, Judd championed a new sculptural aesthetic of bare geometrical shapes he termed "specific objects." By 1965, he began commissioning industrial fabricators to weld and manufacture his works in a wide variety of "new" materials--stainless steel, galvanized iron, anodized aluminum, brass, plexiglass, Formica, and plywood--he observed as "either recent inventions or things not used before in art."

Like Judd, his close friend, Flavin also rejected the Minimalist label many critics and curators placed on his work. He worked with generic fluorescent lighting to make horizontal and vertical sculptures along walls and floors--including corners, baseboards, and stairwells--dedicating his career to combining "traditions of painting and sculpture in architecture with acts of electric light defining space." His challenge of artistic convention extended to the labels "sculpture" and "environment," which he abandoned in favor of creating "proposals" and "situations" in barren rooms. This last practice is a direct predecessor to the work of contemporary artists such as Tino Sehgal, whose "constructed situations" recently received their first Walker exhibition.

Raymond cites several threads connecting the artists in Statements, including their consideration of the space surrounding their work and the removal of their own hands from the production process; they took on the function of architects providing specifications for others to fabricate the piece or, in the case of Beuys, by transforming the creative process into a collaboration. They operated in "a different manner but toward similar goals," she says. "There is also a shared confidence, an earnest conviction in both forms and ideas guiding their work. They weren't interested in flamboyance and monumentality. Each of them experimented with new alternatives and presented concrete statements despite the unwelcome reception by mainstream culture at the time.

Mythologies : Exhibition

Sun, 17 Apr 2005 05:00:00 GMT

This exhibition is built around some of the most important pieces in the Walker's collection. Including works by Joseph Beuys, Mary Esch, Katharina Fritsch, Anselm Kiefer, Paul McCarthy, Julie Mehretu, Sigmar Polke, Charles Ray, and Paul Thek, Mythologies assembles a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, and multiples, around the idea of historical or contemporary mythologies. Beuys, Kiefer, and Polke are questioning entrenched mythologies when reflecting on troubled history and the notion of national identity; mythology again comes into play when Charles Ray shapes a conflicted monument to the late 20th century in his Unpainted Sculpture of a wrecked car.

Elemental : Exhibition

Sun, 17 Apr 2005 05:00:00 GMT

By the mid-1960s, critics and artists heralded the arrival of Minimalism, an idea-based sensibility that seemed more in keeping with America's embrace of its burgeoning space program and new technologies than the Abstract Expressionists' mining or the subjective and the Pop artists' adoption of banal material culture. Although the artists in this exhibition make use of many of the same formal devices and geometries, their differing or even opposing points of view with regard to influences, form, and content opened up the discourse surrounding the movement in later decades. Major works by Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Robert Mangold, Agnes Martin, Fred Sandback, and Richard Serra provide a foundation for the exhibition which showcases one of the strongest areas of the Walker's collection.

The Shape of Time : Exhibition

Sun, 17 Apr 2005 05:00:00 GMT

Unfolding a chronological path through 50 years of art history, this exhibition begins with postwar abstraction, moves on to the historical and visual provocation of "alternative modernisms," and ends in the swarming and seductive experiments of the 1980s and 1990s.

Mid-Century Radical
The Shape of Time begins with postwar American and European abstraction. This installation of High Modernist painting and sculpture presents moments of classicism and radicality in the work of a selection of artists, including Lucio Fontana, Alberto Giacometti, Ellsworth Kelly, Franz Kline, Barnett Newman, Isamu Noguchi, Ad Reinhardt, and Mark Rothko.

Alternative Modernisms
Exploring in depth the turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s and the concurrent spirit of liberation and experimentation, this section offers a comprehensive survey of aesthetic practices aimed at subverting the conventions of painting and sculpture, as well as art-making in general: Japanese Gutai, Viennese Actionism, Italian Arte Povera, and the international Fluxus movement. Artists include Alighiero Boetti, Bruce Conner, David Hammons, Yves Klein, Marisa Merz, Hermann Nitsch, Nam June Paik, Giulio Paolini, Dieter Roth, Kazuo Shiraga, Atsuko Tanaka, and Hannah Wilke.

American Standard
This section of the exhibition contains a selection of the Walker's Pop art holdings as well as landmark works by two of the movement's progenitors--Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Centered on an ensemble of Andy Warhol "grocery carton" sculptures, the installation also features work by Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg. Multidisciplinary experimentation is represented by Walkaround Time, a stage set created by Jasper Johns for a dance choreographed by Merce Cunningham.

Variations on Convention
The last gallery belongs to the complexity and diversity of the art of the 1980s and 1990s. A cross-generational installation demonstrates, through painting and sculpture, figuration and abstraction, that cultural and critical inquiry can live happily together with lyrical sensuality. Artists represented in this section include Chuck Close, Robert Gober, Sherrie Levine, Glenn Ligon, Richard Prince, Lorna Simpson, and Christopher Wool.