This is the third installment of an annual show that serves as a vital means of recognizing, supporting, and documenting the development of contemporary art in East Tennessee. Contemporary Focus 2011 artists are John Bissonette, Brian Jobe, and Greg Pond.
This exhibition includes faxes by nearly 100 artists sent to the initial showing of FAX at The Drawing Center, NY, along with seminal examples of early telecommunications art. The KMA is inviting additional artists to submit works through a working fax line in the gallery throughout the duration of the exhibition. All of the transmitted pages will be archived or displayed together with the active fax machine, which may produce new faxes from invited artists at any moment. The result- an ongoing cumulative project – is a show concerned with ideas of reproduction, obsolescence, distribution, and mediation.
This exhibition is one of the first major surveys devoted to the wealth of exciting art being produced by a new generation of artists from Eastern Europe’s former communist countries. Many of these artists are in their thirties, and several are quickly becoming widely known after being featured in international biennials, art fairs, and museum exhibitions. Each was born under Communist rule but their art training occurred following the fall of Communism. Despite being internationally involved in the art world, these artists are devoted to living and maintaining studios in their home towns. Organized by the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in partnership with the KMA.
The Tennessee Art Education Association is pleased to announce its partnership with the Knoxville Museum of Art to present the Sixth Annual East Tennessee Regional Student Art Exhibition, featuring artwork created by East Tennessee middle and high school students. This competition offers students the opportunity to display their talents and be honored for their accomplishments in a professional art museum environment. The student art exhibition provides an excellent competitive arena for young artists.
This exhibition showcases recently acquired watercolors by East Tennessee artists Thomas Campbell, Charles Krutch, George Galloway, Walter Stevens, Carl Sublett, Richard Clarke, Whitney Leland, and Jered Sprecher, and presents them in the larger context of the museum’s watercolor collection alongside works by Charles Burchfield, Janet Fish, and other internationally known artists. Organized by the KMA.
Horizons is an installation by noted Icelandic artist Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir (pronounced Stay-nun Thorens-daughter). The exhibition includes 12 androgynous, life-sized iron figures in the KMA’s South Garden. Each is unique in pose and expression, and has a polished glass band inserted in its torso. The artist explains this juxtaposition of glass and iron, “The color of the iron signifies their primal quality—as if they are emerging from the earth” while “Glass as a material has a lot of different connotations. It can be fragile, yet dangerous. It can be translucent, or solid . . . It's like water, but also like air.”
Several Silences is a group exhibition exploring various kinds of silence – meditative, ambient, memorial, etc. – calling attention to the rarity of the absence of sound in our growing “culture of distraction.” Works range from Ryan Gander’s 100 laser-etched glass spheres to Gran Fury’s neon sculpture to Troy Brauntuch’s shadowy drawings on cotton. Organized by the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago.
This exhibition highlights the work of a group of eight American photographers who focused their lenses on rapid social and political changes that transformed their nation during the turbulent 1960’s. The featured images present a realistic, sometimes dire, view of America ranging from the “outlaw culture” of bikers and chain gangs, Boston’s red light district known as the Combat Zone, Black Panthers; the gritty streets and neighborhoods of New York, the politically charged South, and fringe communities and sub-cultures around the country.
Semmes, A Brooklyn-based artist, is known internationally for her unique multimedia installations. She works in contradictions, challenging the conventional definitions of craft and “women’s work” by creating completely non-functional pieces out of traditional materials such as clay and fabric. Treading the line between fantasy and reality, she evokes visions of fairy tales with her massively lush silk and velvet dresses, pieces that evolved from costumes the artist designed for her photographic and video pieces. Semmes’ ceramic and crystal pots defy the time-honored symmetry and beauty expected in pottery and glass. Although irregular and distorted, the crystal work poses a dazzling contrast to the lusciously colored, but misshapen, clay pots. Organized by the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga.
This renowned video by Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss earned a cult following since it premiered at international art festivals in 1987. The video documents the artists’ use fire and fireworks, blasts of air, gravity, and a variety of corrosive liquids to sustain a chain reaction of materials and events for 30 minutes. The imagery touches on themes common in the duo’s work, such as order and chaos, humor, transformation, and illusion. In 2007, the Tate Gallery, London, organized “Flowers and Questions,” a major retrospective exhibition devoted to Fischli and Weiss’s creative achievements.
Contemporary Focus is the KMA’s annual exhibition series designed to serve as a vital means of recognizing, supporting and documenting the development of contemporary art in East Tennessee. Each year, the exhibition series features the work of artists who are living and making art in this region, and who are exploring issues relevant to the larger world of contemporary art.
This is a collaborative project with the East Tennessee Art Education Association designed to bring together the best student work grades 6-12 from a 20-county region; award winners are eligible for $600,000 in scholarships to national art schools. Organized by the KMA