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News Release
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Nov. 7, 2005 -- No. 559 |
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Prints by eight contemporary artists
comprise new exhibition, acquisitions
CHAPEL HILL – Eleven prints purchased recently by the Ackland Art Museum, on display through Dec. 31, highlight the talents of both emerging and established contemporary artists.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill museum is showcasing the works throughout its galleries in the exhibition "Collecting Contemporary Prints." Visitors will see labels that explain why Ackland curators decided to acquire each work.
"These works provide recent examples and innovative uses of traditional media: engraving, aquatint and woodcut," said Dr. Barbara Matilsky, curator of exhibitions at the museum.
The prints complement the exhibition "Three Sides to a Sheet of Paper: How Prints Communicate, Represent, and Transform (1482-2002)," open through Nov. 13 at the museum.
The eight artists and their prints in "Collecting Contemporary Prints" include Japanese artist Chiho Aoshima, whose "City Glow" evolves from the Japanese "Mange" (comics) and "Anime" (animation) pop culture phenomena.
"‘City Glow’ is a fantastic view of the intermingling of urban life and lush nature, Matilsky said. "It also represents a fusion of old and new technologies, pairing printmaking with computer drawing."
The exhibition also features Aoshima’s "Japanese Apricot 2," inspired by traditional Japanese woodcuts. "The futuristic and traditional collide in Aoshima's treatment of a female figure," Matilsky said.
Aoshima exhibited recently at the University Art Museum at the University of California, Berkeley, and in the 2005 exhibition at the Japan Society in New York.
The color silkscreen "Lyle," by Chuck Close of Washington state, is "epic in its scale, comprising hundreds of abstract details that visually create a representational portrait of photographer Lyle Ashton Harris when viewed at a distance," Matilsky said.
Close is widely considered the most important portrait painter living today, she said; his works hang in the world’s most prestigious museums. ARTNews magazine once named him one of the 50 most influential people in the art world.
Roland Fischer, associated with contemporary German photography, has three photographic screen prints in the exhibition: "PPG Pittsburgh," "Williams Tower, Houston," and "Bank of Bangkok." All are from his portfolio "Facades on Paper II, 2004-2005."
The Pinakothek der Moderne Museum in Munich, Germany, displayed a major exhibition of Fischer’s work in 2003.
"Untitled 10," a 24-block color woodcut by English sculptor Anish Kapoor, demonstrates how an artist working three dimensionally translates artistic ideas into prints, Matilsky said. Kapoor recently created a monumental site-specific installation for the Tate Modern, a museum in London.
Dorothy Napangardi’s "Sandhills," the Ackland’s first artwork by an Australian Aborigini, abstractly represents the artist’s ancestral homeland. Napangardi created the image through an Aboriginal process of meditative drawing called dreaming.
Napangardi lived in Alice Springs, Australia, in the late 1980s and painted for the government-funded Centre for Aboriginal Art.
Matthew Ritchie, known for huge cosmological wall drawings, is represented in the exhibition by a set of prints "Sea, State, Five." His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and Guggenheim Museum, all in New York City, and in Dallas’ Museum of Fine Arts.
"Shaker Blue," a lithograph silkscreen with hand coloring by Barbara Takenaga, finds inspiration in dreams, 1960s psychedelic culture and the cosmic and molecular worlds, Matilsky said.
An emerging artist, Takenaga teaches at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. Her recent exhibitions have been at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the Halsey Gallery at the University of Charleston (S.C.).
Japanese artist Masami Teraoka uses Ukiyoe woodblock prints, a style popular in Japan in the 19th century, to comment on social issues. A retrospective of his paintings interpreting the AIDS epidemic was featured at the Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C. in 1996.
His work "AIDS Series/Geisha and Ghost Cat," part of the Ackland exhibition, explores similar themes.
The Ackland, on South Columbia Street near Franklin Street, is open from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 1-5 p.m. Sundays and until 9 p.m. on the second Friday of every month.
Admission is free. For more information, call 919-843-1611 (recorded information), 919-966-5736 (museum office), 919-962-0837 (TTY) or visit the Web site www.ackland.org. For program details, call 919-843-3676.
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Contact: Maria Bleier, (919) 843-3675, maria_bleier@unc.edu
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