July Issue 2000
SECCA in Winston-Salem, NC, Offers Three Exhibits in July
The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, NC, presents Thomas Daniel: Into My Eyes through July 9. Co-curated by Anderson Gallery Director and former SECCA Director, Ted Potter and New York Critic/Curator/Poet, John Yau, this mid-career retrospective is the first comprehensive museum exhibition of Virginia artist Tom Daniel's documentary photographs. The exhibits, Black Ice, by renowned artist Stephen Hendee and post-hypnotic featuring work by 28 international artists will also be on display through Sept. 29, 2000.
Thomas Daniel's photographs extend out of the documentary vein of Diane Arbus and Gary Winogrand, but his approach and connection with the subject is unmistakably his own. His 80 black and white images capture ten major themes the artist has pursued over the past three decades. These include the last real Daughters of the Confederacy, Yoruba practitioners of the Louisiana cane country, paraplegic stockcar racing team and the Deep South Bible Belt. Daniel's first experience as a photographer came when he enlisted in the Army and was stationed in Vietnam. Shortly after arriving there, he purchased a 35mm camera and began documenting the people and events that surrounded him. Halfway through his third tour, Daniel was selected to be his unit's combat photographer.
As seen in the Into My Eyes collection, Daniel relies solely on natural light and settings for his portraits and works in black and white film, which he prints himself. He also attempts to include the viewer in his images by capturing subjects and events from unique angles and vantage points, similar to what the viewer would see if they were actually there.
Daniel's work has won numerous awards and has been shown in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. He is the only Virginia artist to have received four Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Senior Artists Fellowships.
Audiences of all ages and backgrounds will appreciate this emotionally rich and insightful body of work. Ted Potter and John Yau, the exhibition's co-curators, commented about the artist "... as smart as an old coon dog, as resourceful as a mountain hermit, and as sensitive to the human condition as any artists the gallery has ever presented."
Black Ice, an experiment in inspiration by renowned artist Stephen Hendee will transform the entire Potter Gallery at SECCA into an otherworldly environment full of fantasy and adventure.
Responding to a variety of sources as diverse as the work of the Constructivists at the turn of the century, the stagecraft of Syd Mead (Bladerunner), and molecular nanotechnology, Hendee's work engulfs the viewer in a world ripe for investigation and intrigue. Closely following his work at New York's P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center that garnered national and international attention, this installation will be the artist's most ambitious project to date. Using disposable materials such as foamboard panels, black tape, and controlled lighting, Hendee will construct a new wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, site-specific sculpture. According to Hendee, "The making of these structures is largely a spontaneous act. The spaces are sculptural drawings that become a challenging calculation in time and space." Hendee is a 1999 recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany award, a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant and the Kirin Contemporary Award in Japan.
The exciting sculptural environment will be co-sponsored, in part, by Long Haymes Carr (LHC) Advertising as part of its ongoing "Creative" Odyssey program. "Some of the best ideas are born outside of conventional environments, where art influences the way you work and grows creativity," said Steve Zades, Chairman/CEO of LHC. "LHC is committed to a continual culture of learning that sparks new, innovative ideas that will raise the level of our work. We challenge other members of the business community to create their own experience in inspiration within this exhibition space." LHC and their clients will use much of Hendee's exhibit space for meetings, creative brainstorming sessions and special projects throughout the summer.
Remember the day-glo color, hallucinogenic patterns and pulsating afterimages used by the 1960s Op artists? That short-lived movement was quickly embraced by the commercial design world evidenced by rock posters, fabrics, and other forms of sixties' psychedelia. Since the 1980s, many artists have revisited and updated those investigations into mind-bending visual phenomena, resulting in large-scale abstractions that seem to dance, shimmy, or shake off the gallery walls.
"post-hypnotic" celebrates this reevaluation
of optical effects in the work of 28 artists from the United States,
Switzerland, England and Japan. From Phillip Taafe's alteration
of Bridget Riley's classic Op art line paintings and Tom Moody's
low-tech Xeroxed grids to the carved surfaces of Bruce Pearson's
mutated words and thousands of aspirins cast in resin by Fred
Tomaselli, these artists mix the older forms of optical art with
more recent effects of digital technology, popular culture, and
mass media advertisingÐmaking it all their own. The resulting
dots, squiggles, splashes and plaids, even subliminal advertising
slogans, have never looked better on this magic carpet ride to
a new visual world.
The exhibition was organized by Barry Blinderman, University Galleries,
Illinois State University, Normal, IL.
SECCA will be offering several related events during these exhibits. For details call the Art Center.
For further information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings or call SECCA at 336/725-1904 voice/tty or visit
our web site at (http://www.secca.org).
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