Fine Arts Lecture Series: Mika Rottenberg, Thursday, April 21st, 5:30pm

The Penn Design Fine Arts Lecture Series is pleased to present a lecture by video installation artist, Mika Rottenberg. Rottenberg's latest work, "Squeeze" (2010), presents an uncommon and unsettling vision of art and commerce that is mirrored in the uncommon and potentially disorienting museum experience she creates for viewers. To reach the video, one must travel a mazelike installation. This physical passage offers a through-the-rabbit-hole journey into an alternate art space in which impossible and uncanny events transpire, serving as an architectural symbol of the absurdist approach with which Rottenberg produces serious commentary on current social conditions.

To create her short films, Rottenberg typically pursues an idea through drawings that give free rein to her imagination. Next she begins the careful casting process to find real people (instead of trained actors) who will interact with her mazelike, sculptural installation. She collaborates with a team of carpenters, engineers, and other assistants to build the environment or film set. Even before the construction is complete, she works with her characters in the space—almost as objects or motion studies—filming them and tailoring each compartment to fit their behaviours and unique corporeal features. Rottenberg makes feminist art decades after feminism was legibly defined. She makes seriously political art that is preposterously funny. She documents reality, but spins it into narrative fiction. With "Squeeze" (2010), Rottenberg hones these signature tactics, creating a video installation that is both humorous and unsettling.

Mika Rottenberg was born in Buenos Aires in 1976, and holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts (2000) and an MFA from Columbia University (2004). She lives and works in New York. Solo exhibitions include San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; La Maison Rouge, Paris; KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin; and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York. Her work has been exhibited in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art; the Tate Modern, London; Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao and New York); The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Uncertain States of America: American Art in the Third Millenium (multiple venues, 2005-2006). In March 2011 she will have a monographic exhibition at de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam.

To learn more of Rottenberg's work, visit http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/arts/design/26galleries-MIKAROTTENBE_RVW.html

Event Date and Time: Thursday, April 21st, 5:30pm

Morgan Building
205 South 34th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
*Once you enter the building the lecture will be in the room immediately to your right.

Fine Arts Lecture Series: Michelle Grabner, Thursday March 31st, 6pm

The Penn Design Fine Arts Lecture series presents Michelle Grabner and her lecture at the ICA. Michelle Grabner is an artist and writer. She is also is a corresponding editor for X-tra and ArtUS. Her writing has been published in Artforum, Modern Painters, Frieze, Contemporary, X-tra, Art Press, Teme Celeste among others.

Professor and Painting and Drawing Department Chair at The School of the Art Institute, she has also taught at The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cranbrook Academy of Art, and the Yale Norfolk Program. Recent visiting artist engagements include California Institute of the Arts; Albert College of Art and Design, Calgary; American University; Bennington College; California College of Art; and the San Francisco Art Institute.

Grabner is also the founder and director of The Suburban, an artist-run project space in Oak Park, Illinois, which over the past ten years has hosted projects by numerous major and emerging artists. A ten-year anniversary catalogue titled Can I Come Over to Your House: The First Ten Years of The Suburban, with essays by Michelle Grabner Michael Newman is being published later this year. She and her husband Brad Killam also run The Poor Farm, a kunsthalle in Waupaca County WI.

She has exhibited her work at Musée d´art Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg; Stadtgalerie, Keil; Kunsthalle, Bern; Daimler Contemporary, Berlin; Midway, Minneapolis; Rocket, London; INOVA, Milwaukee; Southfirst, Brooklyn; Gallery 16, San Francisco; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Feigen, Inc. New York; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; The Milwaukee Art Museum; Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen, Sindelfingen; McKenzie; Bricks and Kicks, Vienna; Turbinehallerne, Copenhagen; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, Kansas.

To learn more about Grabner's work, visit http://www.michellegrabner.com/

Event Date and Time: Thursday, March 31st, 6:00pm

The Institute of Contemporary Art
Tuttleman Auditorium
118 South 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
http://www.icaphila.org/events/

Fine Arts Lecture Series: Josiah McElheny, Thursday February 24th, 6pm

Josiah McElheny is an artist working and living in New York. McElheny creates finely crafted, handmade glass objects that he combines with photographs, text, and museological displays to evoke notions of meaning and memory. Whether recreating miraculous glass objects pictured in Renaissance paintings or modernized versions of nonextant glassware from documentary photographs, or extrapolating stories about the daily lives of ancient peoples through the remnants of their glass household possessions, McElheny’s work takes as its subject the object, idea, and social nexus of glass. McElheny’s work often takes the form of ‘historical fiction’—which he offers to the viewer to believe or not. Part of McElheny’s fascination with storytelling is that glassmaking is part of an oral tradition handed down generation to generation, artisan to artisan. Looking at a reflective object becomes a metaphor for the act of reflecting on an idea. Sculptural models of Modernist ideals, these totally reflective environments are both elegant seductions as well as parables of the vices of utopian aspirations.

McElheny's has exhibited his work at national and international venues including the Museum of Modern Art, Orchard, and Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York, Donald Young Gallery in Chicago, Institut im Glaspavillon in Berlin, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, White Cube in London, and the Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid. He has written for Artforum and Cabinet among other publications and is a contributing editor to BOMB. Recently published monographs and artist books include Josiah McElheny: A Prism (Rizzoli, 2010), The Light Club (University of Chicago Press, 2010), A Space for an Island Universe (Turner Publications, 2009), and Island Universe (White Cube, 2008).

To learn more about Josiah McElheny's work, visit http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mcelheny/

Event Date and Time: Thursday, February 24th, 6:00pm

The Institute of Contemporary Art
Tuttleman Auditorium
118 South 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
http://www.icaphila.org/events/

Fine Arts Lecture Series: David Salle, Thursday November 18th, 6:00pm

Since the end of the 1970's, David Salle has helped define the post-modern sensibility by combining figuration with an extremely varied pictorial language. Salle's radical use of juxtaposition conveys an improvised sense of meaning being made, of things unexpected but necessary. His paintings have been shown in over 100 museums and galleries worldwide, including major exhibitions at the Whitney; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; MoCA, Chicago; Stedelijk Museum; MoMA, Vienna; Menil Museum, Houston; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Castello di Rivoli; and the Guggenheim, Bilbao. His work is in the permanent collections of museums around the globe.

Although known primarily as a painter, Salle's work grows out of a long- standing involvement with installation art and perfomance. Over the last 25 years he has worked extensively with choreographer Karole Armitage, creating sets and costumes for many of her ballets and operas. Their collaborations have been seen at theaters in Europe and America, including The Metropolitan Opera House; The Paris Opera; The Opera Comique; Lyon Opera; Opera Deutsche, Berlin; and La Fenice, Venice. Salle received a Guggenheim fellowship for theater design in 1986 and in 1995 directed the feature film "Search and Destroy", starring Griffin Dunne and Christopher Walken.

Salle is also known as one of the most literate artists of his generation, and his essays and interviews have been published in Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, Modern Painters, The Paris Review, as well as numerous exhibition catalogs and anthologies.

To see more of Salle's work, visit http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/david_salle.htm

Event Date and Time: Thursday November 18th, 6:00pm

The Institute of Contemporary Art
Tuttleman Auditorium
118 South 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
http://www.icaphila.org/events/

Fine Arts Lecture Series: Matthew Monahan, Tuesday November 9th, 6:30pm

Matthew Monahan’s work presents a futuristic archaeology. Drawing from a wide range of influences, from Modernist art to ancient totems, Monahan’s ‘artefacts’ are both familiar and strange. Filtering historical mythologies through his own personal system of reference, altered further through the experience of making, Monahan’s work alludes to a contemporary spirituality, where beauty and brutality coalesce as virtual monuments. Nondescript and clunky, the work's plausible function is secondary to their materiality: wax, paper, and plaster take on barbaric forms, their temporal media humorously suggesting timelessness. Their precious value is guarded by an over-sized sculptural ‘shard’. Through his assemblages, Monahan offers a dark mysticism, where material trickery and abstracted form resurrect forgotten primal instincts (The Saatchi Gallery). Matthew Monahan received a BFA from Cooper Union School of Art. He studied at Gerrit Rietveld Academy, and De Ateliers, Amsterdam, and in Japan at the Kitakyushu Center for Contemporary Art. His work was the subject of a solo show at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. He has been included in Sonsbeek Sculpture Exhibition, Arnhem; Life on Mars: 55th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh; Unmonumental, New Museum, New York; Eden's Edge: Fifteen LA Artists, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the 2006 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum, New York. Monahan currently works and lives in Los Angeles, California.

To see more of Monahan's work, visit http://www.mmmonahan.com/

Event Date and Time: Tuesday November 9th, 6:30pm

University of Pennsylvania: Penn Design
B1 Meyerson Hall
210 S. 34th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Fine Arts Lecture Series: Rick Lowe, Thursday November 4th, 6pm

Rick Lowe is an artist, architect, urban designer, developer, businessman, and activist who is a catalyst for social outreach for underserved neighborhoods. Lowe’s early founding of Project Row House in Houston’s Third Ward in 1993 became the template for others to follow on how to bring local people together to engage their own creative energies and aesthetic values to produce a “collective expression” to reinstate a community. Lowe’s socially engaged methodology helps individuals excavate talents that they might have either forgotten about or just lost sight of. An example of his progressive thinking can be seen in a recent concept for a series of small businesses that draws on local individual’s abilities—such as homemade cookies and laundry service—and turns them into emerging noted talents and proprietors.

To see more of Lowe's work visit, http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/Public2/USAFellows/2009Fellows/Alphabetically/RickLowe/index.cfm

Event Date and Time: Thursday November 4th, 6pm

The Institute of Contemporary Art
Tuttleman Auditorium
118 South 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Fine Arts Lecture Series: Anne Chu, Thursday September 23rd, 6:00pm

Sculptor and Painter Anne Chu will present an artist talk on Thursday, September 23rd at 6:00pm at the University of Pennsylvania as part of the MFA Fine Arts Lecture series. Drawing her inspiration from ancient sculptures, such as funerary carvings from the Tang Dynasty, or the medieval friezes at Chartres, Anne Chu's version of history is something more akin to fairytale. Primitively carved from wood, Chu's invented relics capture a rich, timeless aesthetic, which makes their authenticity all the more believable. Tombstone For a King is a rough-hewn tableau depicting a long forgotten tragedy. Her clunky figures are careful study of craftsmanship, displaying a casual presence rarely found in ancient depictions, her washy pigmentation is convincing as battered remains. But it's her dreamy colours, greys, pinks, and yellows, which give rise to girly romance: her ancient dynasties always seem strangely contemporary, bringing mystery and romance to life. Chu has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina; Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, California; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; and Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Ohio. Her work was included in The Puppet Show, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and the 54th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh; Sculptors Drawing, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; and Shuffling the Deck: The Collection Reconsidered, Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey. The artist currently resides in Queens, New York.

To see more of Anne's work, visit http://www.donaldyoung.com/chu/chu_1.html

Event Date and Time: Thursday, September 23rd, 6:00pm

The Institute of Contemporary Art
118 South 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104

To discover more about the MFA Fine Arts Lecture Series, visit http://www.design.upenn.edu/fine-arts/visiting-artists

Visiting Artist Sze Tsung Leong Lectures Mon. Apr. 19, 5pm

Sze Tsung Leong, New Fengdu, Chongqing Municipality, 2003

Photographer Sze Tsung Leong will present a lecture on Monday, April 19 at 5:00pm. Leong is American and British, born in Mexico and living in New York. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Yale University Art Gallery, among others. His work has been exhibited internationally, including An Atlas of Events at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, the 2006 Havana Biennial, New Photography at the High Museum of Art, the 2004 Taipei Biennial, and Painting as Paradox at Artists Space. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2006 his book History Images was published by Steidl. He is represented by Yossi Milo in New York.

This lecture is generously sponsored by the Silverstein Lectures in Contemporary Photography.

Event Date and Time: Monday, April 19, 5:00pm

University of Pennsylvania
Meyerson Hall, B1
210 S. 34th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
www.design.upenn.edu/fine-arts-undergraduate
http://www.design.upenn.edu/calendar

To see more of Leong's work visit www.szetsungleong.com

Fine Arts Lecture Series : Dana Schutz, Thurs. Apr. 15, 5:30pm

Dana Schutz, How We Cured the Plague, 2007

Painter Dana Schutz will present an artist talk on Thursday, April 15 at 5:30pm at Penn as part of the MFA Fine Arts Lecture series. Schutz is a New York-based artist who graduated with her MFA from Columbia in 2002 and has tremendous artistic success since that time. Her work has already been included in major museum collections and she is represented by Zach Feuer LFL.

In Bomb magazine, critic Mei Chin wrote that "dissection and dismemberment abound in Dana Schutz's work, all offset by sunny colors and a pert sense of humor. Among other things, she has created a race of people who eat themselves; a guy called Frank who is the last man on Earth; a gravity-phobic person who has tied herself to the ground; and a variety of characters that are spliced, for different reasons, on operating tables. Schutz loves to give her characters life and then cut them up. Yet hers is a blithe cruelty, the curiosity of a child playing at being a creator. Even when she hates, she does it with whimsy."

Event Date and Time: Thursday, April 15, 5:30pm

University of Pennsylvania
Meyerson Hall, B3
210 S. 34th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
215 - 898 - 8374
fine-art@design.upenn.edu

http://www.design.upenn.edu/calendar/dana-schutz?destination=home

To see more of Dana's work, visit www.zachfeuer.com/danaschutz.html

Artist Jun Kaneko Lectures TONIGHT, Tues Mar 30, 5:30pm

Jun Kaneko will present a lecture titled Between Light and Shadow tonight, Tuesday March 30 at 5:30pm. Jun Kaneko is an internationally recognized artist known for his large ceramic sculptures. He has completed numerous public art commissions in the United States and Japan and is the recipient of national, state, and organization fellowships. His work is included in more than seventy museum collections.

In 2008 The Opera Company of Philadelphia commissioned him to design their production of Beethoven’s Fidelio. In the photo above, Kaneko prepares for Heads, an installation on the Park Avenue Malls, New York. The University of Pennsylvania’s Residency Program is made possible by the Emily and Jerry Spiegel Fund to Support Contemporary Culture and Visual Arts. The Spiegel Fund creates and supports a series of coordinated interdisciplinary courses, programs and events.

Event Time and Date: 5:30pm, Tuesday March 30, 2010

Admission is free. Seating is limited.

Free tickets will be available at the door at 4PM.

University of Pennsylvania
School of Design
Meyerson Hall, B1
210 S. 34th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
215-898-8374
fine-art@design.upenn.edu
http://www.design.upenn.edu/fine-arts

To see more of Jun's work, visit http://www.junkaneko.com/

Visiting Artist Lecture : A.L. Steiner, TONIGHT, Weds Feb 17, 4:30pm

A.L. Steiner is a Brooklyn-based artist who uses constructions of photography, video, installation, collaboration, performance and curatorial work as seductive tropes channeled through the sensibility of a cynical queer eco-feminist androgyne. Steiner is a collective member of Chicks on Speed, co-curator of Ridykeulous and collaborates with numerous visual and performing artists. She is represented by Taxter & Spengemann.

Event Date and Time : Wednesday, February 17, 4:30pm

University of Pennsylvania School of Design
Meyerson Hall, Room B3
210 s. 34th street, Philadelphia, PA 19104
t: 215-898-8374
fine-art@design.upenn.edu
www.design.upenn.edu/fine-arts/visiting-artists

To see more of A.L.'s work, visit www.taxterandspengemann.com

Miler Lagos, Visiting Artist Exhibition Opening TONIGHT, Weds. Jan. 27, 5:30 - 7:30pm

Visiting Artist Miler Lagos has an installation titled Silence Dogood at the Arthur Ross Gallery opening Wednesday, January 27 from 5:30 - 7:30pm.

Lagos is a multi-media artist with an interest in relating different socioeconomic environments (urban and popular) and re-appropriating the different visual and social phenomena that emerge in each context. Lagos' installation uses literally four tons of recycled newspapers to create sculpted trees. This work has been made this month during a three week residency as a Distinguished International Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.

Opening Reception: Wednesday, January 27, 5:30 - 7:30pm
Exhibition Dates: January 27 - March 21, 2010

The Arthur Ross Gallery
University of Pennsylvania
220 South 34th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Housed in the Fisher Fine Arts Library
www.upenn.edu/ARG

For more information about Philagrafika, visit www.philagrafika2010.org

Lecture: Charles Atlas, Thurs, Jan 21 5:30pm, Meyerson B3

Charles Atlas, video artist and filmmaker, will present a lecture on Thursday, January 21 at 5:30pm in Meyerson Hall, B3.

Charles Atlas was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1958. Atlas is a filmmaker and video artist who has created numerous works for stage, screen, museum and television. Atlas is a pioneer in the development of media-dance, a genre in which original performance work is created directly for the camera. Atlas worked as filmmaker-in-residence with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for ten years. Many of the Atlas’s works have been collaborations with choreographers, dancers, and performers, including Yvonne Rainer, Michael Clark, Douglas Dunn, Marina Abramovic, Diamanda Galas, John Kelly and Leigh Bowery. His work has been shown at international institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Museum of Modern Art; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Geoerges Pompidou, Paris; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Charles Atlas lives and works in New York City and Paris.

Thursday, January 21, 5:30pm

University of Pennsylvania
Meyerson Hall, Room B3
210 S. 34th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104

http://www.design.upenn.edu/fine-arts/visiting-artists

To learn more about Charles, visit www.pbs.org/art21/artists/atlas

Lecture: David Humphrey, Friday, December 4, 5:00pm

Painter David Humphrey will lecture Friday, December 4 at 5:00pm at the ICA. David Humphrey received a B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1977 and an M.A. in liberal studies from New York University in 1980. He lives and works in New York City and is represented by Sikkema Jenkins and Co. His first show was with the McKee Gallery in 1984, and he has since been exhibiting nationally and internationally. His work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, the Carnegie Institute, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two New York Foundation Grants. He wrote a column for Art issues from 1989 until the journal's demise in 2002 and is a periodic contributor to Art in America.

This lecture will be followed by a signing of Humphrey’s new book of art criticism, Blind Handshake. Forward written by Alexi Worth. Limited copies available.

http://www.design.upenn.edu/fine-arts/visiting-artists
http://www.sikkemajenkinsco.com/davidhumphrey.html

Friday, December 4. 2009, 5:00pm

Institute of Contemporary Art
Tuttleman Auditorium
118 South 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
215-898-7108
www.icaphila.org

University of Pennsylvania School of Design
Graduate Fine Arts
t: 215-898-8374
fine-art@design.upenn.edu

Olaf Breuning Lectures Thursday, November 19, 5:30pm

Olaf Breuning, MFA Visiting Artist, will present a lecture on Thursday, November 19 at 5:30pm.

Olaf works in photography, video, sculpture and installation. His one-person exhibitions include the Migros Museum, Zurich; New Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City; Musée de Strasbourg, France; MAGASIN: Centre d'Art Contemporain, Grenoble; Chisenhale Gallery, London; and the Swiss Institute, New York. The work has been included in group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona; Museum of Modern Art, New York; 2008 Whitney Biennial, New York; Hayward Gallery, London; 2007 1st Athens Biennial; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Ellipse Foundation, Portugal; P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; 2005 Prague Biennale; and Jeu de Paume, Paris.

Olfa was born in Switzerland and currently lives in New York and Zurich.

Lecture: Thursday, November 19, 5:30pm

Meyerson Hall, B3
University of Pennsylvania
210 S 34th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
215-898-8374
fine-art@design.upenn.edu

To see more of Olaf's work, visit www.olafbreuning.com

And www.metropicturesgallery.com

LECTURE: Hernan Bas THIS Thursday, Nov. 5th at 630pm. Meyerson Hall, B-3

HERNAN BAS

Artist Lecture this Thurs, Nov 5th, 2009 at 6:30PM

Room B3 - Meyerson Hall
210 S. 34th St. Philadelphia, PA

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/hernan_bas_articles.htm

From Hernan Bas at Daniel Reich Gallery By Dan Tranberg...
"Twenty-four-year-old Miami-based artist Hernan Bas is one of a growing number of emerging artists who makes figurative paintings a la Henry Darger, working in an awkward painterly style that blatantly favors psychologically rich narratives over technical mastery. But unlike his stylistic counterparts (Elizabeth Peyton, for instance) Bas delves into a highly charged social landscape, one occupied over the past decade or two by writers such as Dennis Cooper and filmmakers such as Gregg Araki. Bas himself cites earlier references: Oscar Wilde and French novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans. Either way, he uses his work to wrestle with a seemingly unavoidable queer pedigree.

His recent solo show at Daniel Reich Gallery, Sometimes with One I Love, offered a dozen recent works in which slender teenaged boys hover in a state between connection to and alienation from their environments. Fitting In, a 31 x 24-inch painting on wood panel, was a clear standout. A solitary figure stands in a shallow pool of water, mimicking the pose of a flamingo while a large group of the flamboyant pink birds carry on without noticing him. As with many of Bas' works, the boy's surroundings can be seen as a stand-in for a conventional social network, one with which the boy may want to blend, but obviously can't. Right Place Wrong Time uses a similar strategy; a boy shows up at a secluded rocky beach, only to be left alone standing in the rain, holding a red umbrella.

Such a sense of alienation and frustration is in many ways glamorized by Bas. Confused and depressed as his characters often seem, they also imply a certain cool detachment from the increasingly mainstream world of gay assimilation. In this sense, Bas revels in the psychological ambiguity that arises from not belonging to the relatively new world of gay normalcy."

LECTURE: Oran Catts, bio-artist and co-founder of SymbioticA, to give lecture at the Penn Museum, Nov. 4th, 2009

Oron Catts Lecture, 4 November 2009 from 5:00–6:30pm

Harrison Auditorium
Penn Museum
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Lecture:
Killing Flesh? Can the Semi-Living Die?

http://www.phf.upenn.edu/09-10/catts.shtml

Cosponsored by Penn's Institute of Contemporary Art
Perhaps no one has probed the connections between life and art more dramatically than Oron Catts, bio-artist and co-founder of SymbioticA, an artistic research laboratory housed within the biological science department at the University of Western Australia. Professor Catts discusses the fascinating issues raised by bio-artwork, such as the living coat he created out of mouse stem cells for a recent MoMA design exhibition.

Oron Catts is Co-founder and Artistic Director of SymbioticA, School of Anatomy and Human Biology, University of Western Australia. An artistic laboratory dedicated to the research, learning, and critique of life sciences, SymbioticA is the first research laboratory of its kind. Since its founding in 2000, the lab has produced new cultural experiments in the field of neurosciences, molecular biology, anatomy, physics, anthropology, and ethics. It has enabled dozens of artists to create "wet technologies" while complying strictly with scientific requirements within a bioscience department. In 2007 SymbioticA was awarded the inaugural Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in Hybrid Arts.

Artist, researcher, and curator, Oron Catts has pioneered the emerging field of bio-arts, which examines shifting perceptions of life. He was a Research Fellow at the Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication Laboratory, Harvard Medical School, and has worked with numerous other biomedical laboratories around the world. In 1996, he founded the Tissue Culture and Art Project to explore the use of tissue technologies as a medium for artistic expression.

In April 2009, Icon Magazine (UK) named him one of the top 20 designers “making the future and transforming the way we work.” He has received international awards, including the 2008 Western Australia Premier Award and Second Prize in the Telephonica VIDA10 International Competition on art and artificial life. Catts' work has been shown at MoMA, Ars Electronica, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), and National Gallery of Victoria (Australia), among others.

John Yau: Visiting Artist Lecture, Wednesday, October 14, 5:30pm

John Yau is an art critic, essayist, poet, and prose writer who will be speaking Wednesday, October 14 at 5:30pm. He was born in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1950, shortly after his parents fled Shanghai. He received his B.A. from Bard College in 1972 and his M.F.A. from Brooklyn College in 1978. His collections of poetry include Borrowed Love Poems (Penguin, 2002), Forbidden Entries (1996), Berlin Diptychon (1995), Edificio Sayonara (1992), and Corpse and Mirror (1983), a National Poetry Series book selected by John Ashbery. His books of art criticism include The United States of Jasper Johns (1996) and In the Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol (1993). He has also edited Fetish (1998), a fiction anthology. Yau's honors include the Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Jerome Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the General Electric Foundation. He lives in New York City.

Meyerson Hall Upper Gallery
210 S. 34th St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104
215-898-8374
www.design.upenn.edu/fine-arts/visiting-artists

LECTURE: Terry Winters, Painter. Friday April 24th at 5pm...Meyerson Hall, B3.

GRADUATE FINE ARTS LECTURE

TERRY WINTERS, painter

Friday, April 24th at 5:00pm

MEYERSON HALL, Room B3
University of Pennsylvania
210 S. 34th St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Lecture Open to the Public

Born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1949, Terry Winters attended the High School of Art & Design in New York and continued formal training at the Pratt Institute, receiving a BFA in 1971. His early paintings are influenced by minimalist, monochromatic paintings, like those of Brice Marden. Winters' love of drawing led him to introduce schematic references to astronomical, biological and architectural structures as the subject matter of his paintings. He began exhibiting work in 1977, and by the early 1980s his ideas had developed into loose grids of organic shapes beside lushly painted fields.
His has been included in numerous Whitney Biennials of 1985, 1987 and has held solo shows at the Tate Gallery in London and the Sonnabend Gallery in New York. His work has been exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art as well as with many international museums. Bill Goldston invited Winters to print at the Universal Limited Art Editions studio in 1982. Mr Winters lives and works in New York and Geneva, Switzerland.

See more of Terry Winter's work here: http://www.matthewmarks.com/

LECTURE: Stanley Lewis, painter. FRIDAY, April 17th at 4:30pm...Morgan Bldg. White Room

STANLEY LEWIS, Painter

Friday, Apr 17th at 4:30pm

WHITE ROOM
Morgan Building
205 s. 34th street, Philadelphia, PA

After receiving a BA from Wesleyan University, Lewis went on to receive a BFA and MFA from Yale and was a Danforth Fellow. Solo exhibitions have included Dartmouth College, NH; the Bowery Gallery, NY and the Dorry Gates Gallery, MO. A major retrospective of his work was shown at the American University Museum, Washington D.C. in 2007. Group shows include the Delaware College of Art and Design; the Commission for Arts and Humanities in Washington D.C., and Swarthmore College, PA. His work is in the collections of the Albrecht Gallery, MO and the University of Indiana among others. Lewis' teaching experience includes The American University in Washington D.C.; Smith College MA, and Parsons School of Design, NY. Awards include both the Altman Prize and a Henry Ward Ranger Fund Purchase Award from the National Academy of Design, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

For more info see: Midwest Paint Group