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Media Contact: Rebecca Basu (202-885-5950) basu@american.edu

Contact:
Media Contact: Rebecca Basu (202-885-5950) basu@american.edu

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AU Museum at the Katzen 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW Washington, DC 20016-8031 United States

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Winter 2012

Nicole Cohen: Driving in Circles

Nicole Cohen creates an evocative new installation using video and sculpture to engage audiences in her explorations of the crossroads of reality, fantasy, and cultural mores.
 

The Dark and Humorous Mind of Heather Wilcoxon

Heather Wilcoxon brings a Bay Area perspective to her seemingly whimsicle but politically-charged paintings, expressing the humor, fear, absurdity and brutality of the human race.
 

Dafna Kaffeman: What Could Be Sweeter Than Going to Paradise?

Dafna Kaffeman is head of Glass Studies at Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem. Her smaller, delicate pieces and dynamic, large-scale installations often deal with issues raised by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
 

Julie Linowes: STAIN

Julie Linowes creates emotionally wrought installations where beautiful, translucent images are layered disturbingly against spreading, seeping lacunae.
 

Marisa Baumgartner: Grande Avenues

Marisa Baumgartner builds installations to explore what she describes as "the overwhelming diminutive yet expansive sensation of self that is caused by the vastness of space, society and history."
 

Linn Meyers: A Very Particular Moment

Linn Meyers responds to the architecture of the museum by covering the walls with flowing repetitive, geometric lines, creating a hypnotic, meditative space.

William Christenberry: Site/Possession

Organized by the University of Virginia Art Museum, this exhibition features 50 of Christenberry’s rarely-exhibited drawings and the Klan Room Tableau, which includes over 200 works. According to Christenberry this body of work describes his “visceral reaction to this wholly and abhorrently American phenomenon, which, although officially excised from the public, still exists and arouses intense feelings in all areas of the country.” 

 

Summer

Paul Feinberg, Manon Cleary.

The Constant Artist

Paul Feinberg’s photographs and interviews, or “word portraits,” have enlivened magazine articles, books, and exhibitions both locally and nationally for decades. He has been particularly obsessed with interviewing and photographing artists in our own community. This exhibition features early and late works of art by nine Washington artists, together with Feinberg's photographs of the artists early and late in their careers.

Artists in the exhibition include Lisa Montag Brotman, Manon Cleary, Rebecca Davenport, Fred Folsom, Clark V. Fox, Sam Gilliam, Tom Green, Margarida Kendall Hull, and Joseph White.

See also: Paul Feinberg’s The Constant Artist at Katzen Arts Center
(Roger Catlin, Washington Post).

Mexico: Expected/Unexpected

This exhibition of selected works from the Isabel and Agustín Coppel Collection attempts to explore Mexican contemporary art from a point of view that simultaneously underlines the intense dialogue with its canonical history and the international landscape to which it also belongs. No artist is isolated from the global dynamics that fuel the contemporary art of our time. The Isabel and Agustín Coppel Collection includes not only impressive examples by today’s leading Mexican artists, but also their peers from Latin America, Europe, and the United States, including Ana Mendieta, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Ed Ruscha.

Mexico: Expected/Unexpected was initially curated by Carlos Basualdo and Mónica Amor for the Maison Rouge in Paris, and is funded in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Isabel and Agustín Coppel Collection is one of Mexico’s most comprehensive contemporary art collections.

Patrick Graham: Thirty Years—The Silence Becomes the Painting

This exhibition is a rare opportunity to view the works of Ireland’s most influential contemporary artist. Patrick Graham creates meditations in the form of landscapes and iconic imagery that touch upon questions pertaining to reality, the meaning of life, and the search for faith in a world of diminishing absolutes. The artist describes his work as “A looking-in, rather than a lived experience. That ‘looking-in on things’ has stayed with me: a self contained art.”

Patrick Graham: Thirty Years–The Silence Becomes the Painting was organized by Meridian Gallery/Society for Art Publications and curated by Peter Selz.

William Christenberry: Site/Possession

January 29 through May 11, 2008

Organized by the University of Virginia Art Museum, this exhibition features 50 of Christenberry’s rarely-exhibited drawings and the Klan Room Tableau, which includes over 200 works. According to Christenberry this body of work describes his “visceral reaction to this wholly and abhorrently American phenomenon, which, although officially excised from the public, still exists and arouses intense feelings in all areas of the country.” 

 

Early Fall

John Cage’s STEPS: A Composition for a Painting, Selected Watercolors, and Ephemera

John Cage stands as a uniquely productive and influential figure in relation to American art in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Known primarily a composer, his idiosyncratic diversity and daring as an artist led him into theater, writing, and visual art. John Cage's STEPS: A Composition for a Painting, Selected Watercolors, and Ephemera includes five enormous watercolor works resulting from Cage's STEPS project and a room showing the progression of graphically inventive musical scores — from original manuscripts through publication including never-before-exhibited items from the archives of Cage's publisher, C.F. Peters Corporation, New York. This exhibition is presented as part of the citywide celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Occupy This!

Occupy This! combines art, photojournalism, historic documents, and films to consider — in a broad, historic context — the causes, activities, and representation of the Occupy Movement. Includes large collection of work by Facing Change: Documenting America, a non-profit photo collective comprising acclaimed photographers and writers who produce and publish under-reported aspects of America’s most urgent issues.

See the Occupy This! exhibition page.

PLATFORMS: Washington Sculpture Group

Platforms is an outdoor sculpture exhibition presented in the Myrtle Berlin Katzen Scupture Garden curated by Jeff Spaulding and featuring the work of Damian Yanessa, Patrick McGowen, Kate Kauffman, Steven Jones, Linda Hesh, Robert Bickey, Greg Braun, and M Frank. In his curator statement, Spaulding poses the following: “Although the function of a platform, broadly defined, is to provide support and focus, its value lies in what is supported. What is now possible? This exhibition is meant to address what that might be.”

Revelation: Major Paintings by Jules Olitski

Widely regarded as one of America’s last classic modern painters, Jules Olitski (1922–2007) created brilliant color harmonies and chromatic shifts that became one of the hallmarks of Color Field painting. Olitski enjoyed enormous acclaim in the 1960s and 1970s, and in 1969 he was the first living American artist to be given a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The exhibition presents 30 large-scale paintings from five decades of creative endeavor, ranging from the artist’s first essays into stain painting beginning in 1959 to his visionary last compositions in 2007. Revelation: Major Paintings by Jules Olitski is organized by the Kemper Museum of Art and curated by art historians E. A. Carmean, Jr., Alison de Lima Greene, and Karen Wilkin.

Spring

Kluchy Carr Johnson, Ends to a Means, 2012.

Any Thoughts? Anyone? MFA First Year Exhibition

American University's Department of Art presents works by first year MFA candidates. Works on display showcase AU student talent and illustrate the diversity of themes and techniques explored.

Artists include: Kluchy Carr Johnson, David de Bol, Angela Esteve, Emily Francisco, Lisa Jakab, Shahdeh Khodavandi, Dan Perkins, Anna Prezioso, Heather Ravenscroft, Jenny Sawle, and Harini Thyagarajan.

Nine Degrees: MFA Thesis Exhibition

Showcasing refined talent and diversity of subject and technique, American University's Department of Art presents works by graduating MFA students: Temme Barkin-Leeds, Michèle Colburn, Kate Demong, Joo Yeon Ha, Adam Robert Hager, Tyler Mullan, Camden Place, Samuel Dylan Scharf, Ben Tolman

Floating World: 19th Century Japanese Woodblock Prints

Borrowed from the Sakai Collection of the Japan Ukiyoe Museum, the 70 prints, address themes of Sakura, US and Japan relations, and Japonism. This exhibition is supported by the Embassy of Japan and is part of the National Cherry Blossom Festival.

In the Studio: A Capstone Exhibition

American University undergraduate students explore process in the pursuit of perfection. Curated by Valerie McDonald and Neena Narayanan.

Artists: Antonio Forte, Evan Fowler, Amy Lokoff, Daniella Napolitano, Hannah O'Brien, Amanda Silva, and Riley Spencer.

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April 28 through May 20, 2012

The boundaries between artist, consumer, and curator have officially been blurred. Rather than argue against the presence of personal technology in the gallery, this exhibition explores the interaction between art and social media. Take a picture, tweet a response, “like” the exhibition. #LikeArt

Curators: Kari Allegretto, Caitrin Anderson, Samantha Barry, Kristi-Anne Caisse, Elizabeth Carbone, Jillian Ginsberg, Can Gulan, Marisa Beahm Klein, Lara Kline, Monica Medina, Violet Morris, Jazmine Rivera, Laurie Rothenberg, Dave Simmons, Brianna Townsend, and Luisa Villa.

Artists: Michael Christopher Brown, DECOY, Todd Gardner, Seth Goodman, Nadya Hadun, Aaron Johnson, Joseph Lappie, Liz Lescault, Laurel Lukaszewski, Conor McGrann, Juana Medina, Ethan Murrow, Michael Owen, Daryl Peveto, Luke Radl, John Wendle, Zac Willis, and Yan Yeresko.

Lou Stovall: Vertical Views

Nature has been explored throughout DC-based artist Lou Stovall’s 60-year career and its representation has evolved considerably. Stovall’s latest iteration, his “vertical views,” take form in silkscreen monoprints reconstructed into three-dimensional collages.

Damian Yanessa, Virtual Space

Linda Hesh
Lawn Series, 2011-2012

Variable dimensions
Plastic, wood, steel
From the fall 2012 exhibition, Platforms: Washington Sculpture Group