New Exhibitions:Dave Cole: Flags of the World (February 14 to May 31, 2009)
Installed in the Museum’s lobby, Dave Cole’s work Flags of the World #3 is one of a series of American flags that the artist has painstakingly handcrafted. Each flag in the series is composed from all of the red, white, and blue found in the 192 flags of the countries that are members of the United Nations, and is accompanied by the resulting leftover fragments, displayed in an adjacent laundry basket. Carefully sewn together in the manner of a quilt, the iconic symbol is turned by Cole into an object that engenders contemplation on the character of the United States in an age of growing globalization.
Alejandro Diaz: Blame It On Mexico(February 21 to June 7, 2009)
Alejandro Diaz uses humor to draw attention to the culturally embedded racial stereotypes with which he is familiar from his bicultural Mexican/Texan upbringing. At The Aldrich, Diaz will create a series of language-related works that further his acclaimed cardboard signs by incorporating them into sculptural elements, ultimately reversing stereotypical perceptions. For example, the artist disrupts an anthropological diorama of ingredients and tools for preparing a traditional Mexican “tortilla” by presenting a cardboard sign that states that Lupe, the cook, is on a break. Assimilated in contemporary culture, she is no longer as quiet, passive, or willing as the stereotype—or a traditional diorama—would proclaim.
Robert Lazzarini: Guns and Knives (February 25 to September 13, 2009)
Robert Lazzarini’s Guns and Knives will continue the artist’s exploration of the reconfiguration of objects through the use of compound planar and sine-wave distortions. This installation will feature a series of .38 Smith and Wesson revolvers and a cluster of kitchen knives, addressing repetition of the single object and variation within the group. Lazzarini will subject the Leir Gallery walls to subtle transformations, activating not only the sculptural figures, but also the visual ground. The installation will create an immanent space, emphasizing the artist’s interest in phenomenology and physically seeing. The works become a meditation on fear and violence, contrasting reductive display with charged subject matter and its inherent rational and irrational aspects.
Frank Poor: Enon Cemetery—Main Street Sculpture Project (February 7 to May 24, 2009)
Frank Poor’s memory-laden outdoor work, Enon Cemetery, is based on a graveyard in Woodstock, Georgia, the small community where the artist was born and grew up. Composed of over 20 life-size grave markers (some over 15 feet tall), each element in the installation references an actual marker in the cemetery. The patterns on each of the hand-painted plywood markers are blown-up fragments of the text found on each specific gravestone. Although the process for the artist is a very personal one (numerous relatives are interred in the cemetery), the abstraction of the text makes the work more universal, evoking the spirit of the displaced burial ground. The markers will be installed so the primary view of them is from the Museum’s Camera Obscura, with the dark and ethereal image further amplifying the sense of time’s passage inherent in the work.
David Taylor: Frontier/Frontera (February 14 to May 31, 2009)
New Mexico-based photographer David Taylor documents the complexity of the US/Mexico border, ranging from the work of patrol agents to the ancient barefoot pilgrimage up the Cristo Rey mountain that is now divided between the two countries. Taylor’s photographs differ from the complex and convoluted dynamics of the region in their beauty, clarity, and sharpness. In this exhibition, the artist explores the different notions of the frontier and the border (frontera), as understood differently by Americans and Mexicans. For Taylor, the American frontier relates to a desert that holds a utopian promise of constant renewal, whereas the Mexican notion of border is a physical limit that needs to be crossed.
Also on View:
Full Circle: Ten Years of Radius (through June 7, 2009)
This exhibition will feature work from the first ten years of Radius: Emerging Artists from Connecticut and Southeastern New York, a professional development program for regional artists, which is jointly organized by The Aldrich and the Ridgefield Guild of Artists. The exhibition will present a selection of recent works produced by alumni of the program, curated by independent curator Regine Basha of Brooklyn, New York, who was previously adjunct curator at Arthouse, in Austin, Texas. Artists: Kelly Bigelow Becerra (Bridgeport, CT), Jaclyn Conley (Brooklyn, NY), Paul Favello (West Haven, CT), Robert Federico (Mahopac, NY), Beth Gilfilen (Jersey City, NJ), Jim Hett (Darien, CT), Bryan Jones (New Haven, CT), Nathan Lewis (New Haven, CT), Christopher Mir (Hamden, CT), Mari Ogihara (Mamaroneck, NY), Alyse Rosner (Westport, CT), Joseph Smolinski (New Haven, CT), Thuan Vu (Hamden, CT), and Benjamin Weiner (Long Island City, NY).
Kwang-Young Chun: The Soul—Journey to America (through May 24, 2009)
Noted Korean artist Kwang-Young Chun makes fantastically intricate sculpture out of the recycled pages of old Korean books printed on mulberry paper. He wraps the handmade paper around Styrofoam triangles and other geometric forms that serve as the basic units of his compositions. The forms are then arranged in free-standing three-dimensional sculptures or mounted on the wall as two-dimensional low-reliefs. The artist will be producing his largest free-standing work to date—over eleven feet high—for presentation in The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum’s Project Space. The Soul—Journey to America will travel to the University of Wyoming Art Museum following its Aldrich debut.
Traveling exhibition
Video A—Harry Shearer: The Silent Echo Chamber (through May 31, 2009)
The Silent Echo Chamber is the newest video work by actor, musician, and satirist Harry Shearer. Presented on ten monitors, The Silent Echo Chamber captures well-known personalities from politics and the media in the silent moments before “going live.” Individuals portrayed include James Carville, Barack Obama, Larry King, Dr. Phil, John McCain, and Chris Matthews, each caught in the uneasy prelude to becoming the familiar animated “talking head.” Shearer’s silent portrait gallery turns the familiar into the strange, allowing visitors to project their own meaning on the awkward collective silence of those to whom Americans usually look for guidance and commentary. Over his fifty-year career, Shearer has, among other things, been a writer for Saturday Night Live, a co-creator and actor in the 1984 spoof This is Spinal Tap, host of KCRW’s radio comedy and music program Le Show, and perhaps most memorably, the voice actor for over twelve characters on The Simpsons, including Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, and Ned Flanders.
The Aldrich will host a reception to celebrate five new exhibitions on Sunday, March 1, 2009, from 3 to 5 pm.
In advance of the reception there will be a panel discussion at 2 pm titled Art on the Border featuring exhibiting artist David Taylor and Paul F. Wells, Field Operations Supervisor, United States Border Patrol.
Refreshments will be served. Free round-trip transportation from New York City is available for members (non-members $15). Please note that the shuttle will not arrive in time for the 2 pm panel discussion and that the pick-up location has changed. Reservations are required for transportation.
For more information, or to reserve a seat on the shuttle, please contact Priscilla Matthews at 203.438.4519 or pmatthews@aldrichart.org.
Adults $7, seniors & college students $4; members, K–12 teachers and children 18 & under FREE
Aldrich exhibitions are supported, in part, by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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