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April Issue 2010
Duke University
in Durham, NC, Features Works by Mark Hewitt, Liu Xiaodong, Yun-fei
Ji, Zhuang Hui, and Chen Qiulin
Duke University in Durham, NC, is presenting several new exhibits including: Mark Hewitt: Falling Into Place, on view on the front lawn of the Nasher Museum of Art through Apr. 30, 2010 and Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art, featuring works by Liu Xiaodong, Yun-fei Ji, Zhuang Hui, and Chen Qiulin, on view in the Museum through July 25, 2010.
The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University has invited Pittsboro, NC-based potter Mark Hewitt to create an installation of 12 of his large ceramic pots on the museum's front lawn.
For nearly 30 years, Hewitt has drawn inspiration from Asian and West African ceramics, and the native North Carolina potting traditions of Seagrove, NC, and the Catawba River valley in NC. Hewitt digs the clay, mixes his own glazes and fires in a wood burning kiln on his property. For this installation, the artist selected pots from his own collection, four private collections and the collection of the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, NC.
" Falling Into Place describes my love affair with North Carolina and its venerable ceramic heritage," Hewitt said. "Finding this tradition was a little like an English guitar player discovering the blues."
The installation was conceived by Sarah Schroth, the Nancy Hanks Senior Curator at the Nasher Museum.
"Mark Hewitt is an internationally renowned potter whose work has been compared to icons, monuments and temples," Schroth said. "The huge scale of his work conveys an unmatched mastery of the medium. In this case, we are asking Mark to think like a sculptor. The daring placement of his beautiful pots with their salt glazes and incised patterns will create an organic transition between the museum's modernist architecture and the surrounding woods."
Hewitt was born and raised in Stoke-on-Trent, England, and has lived in North Carolina since 1983. He has exhibited in New York, Tokyo and London, and co-curated the exhibition, The Potter's Eye: Art and Tradition in North Carolina Pottery, at the North Carolina Museum of Art in 2005.
The exhibition is supported by Marilyn M. Arthur.
Four leading contemporary Chinese artists-Liu Xiaodong, Yun-fei Ji, Zhuang Hui, and Chen Qiulin-respond to the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangzi River in China in the exhibition, Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art.
The exhibit was organized by the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago. The exhibition is curated by Wu Hung, Smart Museum Consulting Curator, Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished service Professor of Art History, and Director of the Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago, in consultation with Jessica Moss, Smart Museum Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, and Stephanie Smith, Smart Museum Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Curator of Contemporary Art. The exhibition and related programs have been supported by Dan Bo, the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, and the University of Chicago Women's Board, and the Center for East Asian Studies. The accompanying publication was made possible by a generous gift from Fred Eychaner and Tommy Yang Guo.
At the Nasher Museum, the exhibition is supported by the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, Asian/Pacific Studies Institute Duke University, Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment, the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina, Diane Evia-Lanevi and Ingemar Lanevi in honor of their daughter Sammy Lanevi, and the North Carolina Chinese Business Association (as of Jan. 26, 2010).
For further information
check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at
919/684-5135 or visit (www.nasher.duke.edu).
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