July 2011

The Weatherspoon Art Museum in Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, Offers New Exhibits

Greensboro, NC, part of UNC-Greensboro, is presenting several new exhibits including: Allora & Calzadilla: A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear, on view in the Leah Louise B. Tannenbaum Gallery through Sept. 18, 2011, and Tom LaDuke: run generator, on view in the Louise D. and Herbert S. Falk, Sr. Gallery through Sept. 18, 2011.

Marking the sixth year anniversary of the devastation that swept through New Orleans, LA, the Weatherspoon presents a video installation, A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear (2008) by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. The artistic duo creates metaphors for political and social issues through alternative interpretations of cultural materials, particularly music and musical instruments. A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear integrates film footage shot by the artists in New Orleans and the Mississippi delta, where hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc in 2005, with the rhythmic drumming of jazz.

The video oscillates between tracking shots of a lush, green, slowly moving tributary and the interior of an abandoned house that was severely damaged by the storm. The tension between the nature’s beauty and the evidence of its ability to inflict damage is heightened by the abrupt interruptions of someone drumming on the Venetian blinds of the house. The inconsistent, yet insistent sound creates a feeling of urgency and causes light to flicker inside the ruined house. A poetic portrait and homage to the people of New Orleans, the video makes the ongoing relevance of the catastrophe, and its implications for global climate change, racism, and economic disparity, strongly felt.

Jennifer Allora (b. 1974, Philadelphia) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b. 1971, Havana, Cuba) have been collaborating since 1995. Allora received a BA from the University of Richmond in Virginia and an MS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Calzadilla received a BFA from Escuela de Artes Plásticas, San Juan, Puerto Rico and an MFA from Bard College. Based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the pair has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010); the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2008); and the San Francisco Art Institute (2007), among many other institutions. Concurrent to their exhibition at the Weatherspoon, their work is featured in the United States Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale. The artists are represented by Gladstone Gallery, New York.

The exhibition was organized by Xandra Eden, Weatherspoon Curator of Exhibitions.

Tom LaDuke is a painter of light: light streaming into his Los Angeles studio; light emanating from the cathode ray tube of a television set; light from a film still frozen on the TV. These sources meld together within his meticulously crafted paintings, which are completed with a top layer of impastoed oil that emulates fragments of historic paintings. In short, LaDuke’s work must be seen to be believed and, even then, challenges our perceptual understanding.

Born in Holyoke, MA, LaDuke received a BFA in 1991 from California State University, Fullerton, and an MFA in 1994 from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has exhibited in many exhibitions and his work is held in a number of museum collections, including the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York City and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. LaDuke lives and works in Los Angeles and teaches at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

Tom LaDuke: run generator has been co-organized by Julien Robson, Curator of Contemporary Art, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Nancy Doll, Director, Weatherspoon Art Museum. An illustrated publication accompanies the exhibition.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at 336/334-5770 or visit (http://weatherspoon.uncg.edu/).

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