PREVIEWS
Regina Foster, A Sign of Things to Come, oil on canvas. 24” x 24”, 2012 Michiyoshi Deguchi, Innerdrawing NO11803, Acrylic Resin Dome, ink on paper, laser print, 27½” x 27½” x 5”, 2011 Courtesy Gallery SUDOH, Odawara City, Japan.
ART Santa Fe Tuesday, July 12 through Friday, July 15 Santa Fe Convention Center, 201 West Marcy Street, Santa Fe. 988-8883 Gala Opening and Vernissage: July 12, 5 to 8 pm. With the cancellation of SOFA West, it would be a travesty to miss ART Santa Fe, as it’s now the international contemporary art event of the Santa Fe summer. And with exhibitors from Argentina, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Japan, the twelfth annual ART Santa Fe is something to celebrate. Works to look for include Border Series by Monica Lozanos (one of Mexico’s top contemporary photographers), which depicts the inventive—and sometimes appalling—methods people devise to flee their home countries, and a lovely survey of Afghani artists by Galleria Kabul. Of course, local galleries will also make an appearance, including Zane Bennett Contemporary Art and DR Contemporary. This year’s keynote speaker is eminent art critic and historian Barbara Rose, who was the first Morgan-Menil Fellow at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. Other events include several demonstrations: Ted Sawyer of Bullseye Glass will show how kiln-formed glass is made, and Yu-Ra Lee, president of the Korean Traditional Paper Association, will demonstrate the creation of a handmade Korean paper called hanji.
Regina Foster/James Foster: In the Pursuit of Happiness Friday July 20 to Sunday, September 9 Center for Contemporary Arts, 1050 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe. 982-1338 Reception: Friday, July 20, 6:30 to 9 pm. The dullest of philosophers knows that money doesn’t buy happiness, but for centuries the most brilliant minds have struggled to puzzle out what does. Aristotle thought it was balance, the Bible touts devotion to God, and Americans can’t seem to shake the idea that it is a charmed mixture of a successful career, a paid-for house, a peaceful marriage, and a Labrador Retriever playing with the kids in a perfectly manicured back yard. In the Pursuit of Happiness, an exhibition of paintings by Regina Foster at the CCA’s Muñoz Waxman Gallery, considers this conundrum on a grander scale. Foster’s work is partly inspired by a relatively new economic paradigm known as the Gross National Happiness Index, pioneered in Bhutan, which measures the well-being of a people not on their Gross Domestic Product, but on the health of their environment, the wisdom of their government, the strength of their social bonds, and so forth. Foster is also inspired by her brother-in-law, James Foster, renowned professor of economics and co-author of the Multi Disciplinary Poverty Measure, an algorithm closely related to the Gross National Happiness Index. In Regina Foster’s paintings, brilliantly colored birds and tranquil Buddhas break forth from patterns of limitation, celebrating the emergence of happiness and success in unlikely environments. Concurrent with the exhibition, the CCA will also host a symposium led by James Foster on public policy and art’s place in social and economic movements.
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Seung Woo Back, W001-001, from Real World I series, digital print, 2004 Courtesy the artist and Gana Art Gallery, Seoul, South Korea.
More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness SITE Santa Fe, 1606 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe. 989-1199 Sunday, July 8 through January 2013 Reception: Friday, July 6, 5 to 7 pm. Stephen Colbert’s now-famous term “Truthiness” is defined by the American Dialect Society as “the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.” Truthiness lies at the heart of SITE Santa Fe’s upcoming international exhibition. Technology and globalization are changing the world so quickly that we have trouble distinguishing what is true—and what is not. More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness presents work that grapples with this conundrum, such as Colored Vases, ancient pottery repainted in gleeful colors by Ai Weiwei, and pieces from An-My Lê’s “Small Wars” series, the Vietnamese artist’s conceptualization of homeland and war using staged and documentary photographs. In the tradition of SITE’s international shows, the entrance to the building will be transformed, this time by award-winning Los Angeles architect Greg Lynn. Lynn’s swooping, parabolic portal will serve as a “disorientation room” leading to the rest of the exhibition, where viewers will begin to absorb the meaning behind the other works on view. A fictional exhibition orientation video will then greet viewers in the lobby, a work created by artist Jonn Herschend, known for his penchant for bringing humor into the often humorless art world. More Real? is a joint presentation of SITE Santa Fe and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and will travel to Minneapolis in 2013.
| j un e 2012