Engaging Representations: Contemporary Art from The Speed Art Museum

ENGAGING REPRESENTATIONS: Contemporary Art from The Speed Art Museum

LEXINGTON, KY – Engaging Representations: Contemporary Art from The Speed Art Museum will be on display December 12, 2004, through March 6, 2005, at the University of Kentucky Art Museum.

Twenty-one works on view from the collection of Louisville's Speed Art Museum offer a profound and provocative exploration of how the world in which we live today is represented in art. The exhibition includes paintings, sculpture, and photographs by nineteen artists from across the globe. Focused on the examination of physical and cultural environments, the exhibition presents subject matter from abstract emanations of land-and cityscapes to incisive social and historical critiques. Engaging Representations also illustrates the influences of art history and the mass media, and the roles these visual agents play in creating meaning and shaping cultural identities.

The frenetic energy of urban life springs forth from Catherine Yass's lightbox image of a blurred, brightly colored cityscape; the rows of windows and walls and the frenzied intersection of humanity with the constructed urban environment is echoed again in UK art professor Arturo Alonzo Sandoval's Cityscape #6. The compelling blend of architecture, sculpture, and furniture that characterizes the work of the Cuban artists known as Los Carpinteros suggests the compartmentalization of city dwellers, while also critiquing the bureaucratic vision of twentieth-century urban planners, as well as the ideals of Modernism.

Allusions to and appropriations from art history animate the works of Cindy Sherman and Vik Muniz. Sherman casts herself as Madame de Pompadour in a “send-up” critique of both women's roles and eighteenth-century portraiture. Muniz's provocative photographic constructions recycle masterpieces by Théodore Géricault and Caspar David Friedrich, while also alluding to Jackson Pollock's paintings.

Engaging Representations also examines the construction of historical identity and the confluence of power, politics, and ritual in creating and preserving cultural legacies. Artists such as Carrie Mae Weems expose, debunk, and transform stereotypes of gender and race in their poetic and provocative works. Both current and archival images are used in her works to demonstrate how photographs, which are so often considered purveyors of truth, create misleading mythologies of history and identity. Weems's works, along with Louis Zoellar Bickett's Family Grave Dirt, demonstrate our need to preserve and memorialize our past and present identity.

“We are grateful to The Speed Art Museum for this opportunity to showcase cutting edge works to our visitors,” said Kathy Walsh-Piper, museum director.

Engaging Representations is organized by The Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, in coordination with the University of Kentucky Art Museum and curated by Alice Stites, The Speed Art Museum Adjunct Curator. This exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation and the Friends of the University of Kentucky Art Museum.

Engaging Representations is free and open to the public. A special Artists and Members Preview will be held December 11 from 3 to 5 p.m. in the museum’s galleries. This event is free to artists, students, and UK Art Museum members. Please call 859-257-5716 for more information regarding this preview event.

ART AT NOON:
Alice Stites on Contemporary Art from The Speed Art Museum

LEXINGTON, KY (December 8, 2004) – The University of Kentucky Art Museum’s monthly Art at Noon series presents Alice Stites on Wednesday, December 15, at noon in the museum’s galleries.

Stites, Adjunct Curator at The Speed Art Museum and UK Art Museum guest curator, will discuss the images and ideas presented in the exhibition Engaging Representations: Contemporary Art from The Speed Art Museum.

This exhibition and Art at Noon are free and open to the public. For more information, call Deborah Borrowdale-Cox at 859-257-6199.

The University of Kentucky Art Museum, located on the corner of Rose St. and Euclid Ave., is open noon to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday and noon to 8 p.m. on Friday; closed Monday and University holidays. For general museum information, call 859-257-5716 or go to University of Kentucky Art Museum