Friday, February 22 – Sunday, June 22, 2008

Appleby Foundation Gallery

Artists: Laurie Anderson, Ken Fandell, Charles Mary Kubricht, Kimsooja, Maya Lin, Sally Mann, Richard Misrach, Kiki Smith and Hiroshi Sugimoto. 

Guest Curator: Ann Batchelder

* Click the names of the artists for more information and an example of their work.

This spring the Asheville Art Museum is pleased to present an unusual look at landscape art. The exhibition brings together a select group of contemporary artists who consider intersections between time and place.

Guest Curator Ann Batchelder assembled works in photography, video, painting, printmaking, film and sculpture from some of the most innovative and exciting artists working today.

In a majestic yet unsettling photomontage, Ken Fandell merges images of the sky taken in different locations over a series of months. A large-scale photograph by Richard Misrach shows erosion from a more intimate point of view. Misrach's chilling and beautiful scenes of Cancer Alley scenes suggest the impact of human thoughtlessness toward nature.

Maya Lin offers layered sculptures of carved mountains and icebergs as well as a site-specific topographical depiction of the French Broad River made from thousands of straight pins. Shot from a moving car along a hillside road in Hawaii, artist Kimsooja's video A Wind Woman focuses on the elusive horizon and the blurred boundary where two worlds converge.

Hidden Inside Mountains, a film by Laurie Anderson, explores the present moment from within the landscapes of our thoughts, while Charles Mary Kubricht 's paintings of her raft trip down the Grand Canyon seem to collapse time.

Kiki Smith is concerned with the way nature affects humans and vice versa. Her accordion book sculpture Tidal  illustrates the rhythmic pull of the Moon on Earth. Etc. Etc., another piece, shows Smith's own eyes peering from within a snowy landscape.

Using antique, damaged camera lenses and 19th-century printing methods, Sally Mann merges human and natural histories of place. Hiroshi Sugimoto's contemplative photographs present audiences with sublime images of the sea as an immutable landscape that exists outside of human history.

Time is of the Essence: Contemporary Landscape Art offers possibilities for a deeper connection to the world in which we live by expanding our notion of time and challenging the way we consider our environment.

This project is sponsored by the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art. Exhibition support is provided by Four Corners Home.

Related programs:

Exhibition opening, February 22

Community Gallery Poster Session, February 22 - March 9

Film screening, Bill Viola: I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like
March 1 +2

Art Break, The Garden Quilt, March 14

Labyrinth Walk, April 4

Film screening, Rivers and Tides, April 5 + 6

Art Break, Time is of the Essence, April 11

Dance performance, Mourning, choreographed and performed by Eiko & Koma , April 12

Art Break, Understanding Contemporary Media and Form, April 25

ARTmob happening, The Dark Side of the Rainbow, April 25

Up for Discussion, Southern Appalachian Bonsai, May 8

Free film screening, Naqoyqatsi: Life as War, Saturday + Sunday, May 10 +11 

Personal Mandala by artist and art therapist Laura Zeisler, May 18

Image credits:

(Top)

Maya Lin
Altered Atlas, 2007
Recycled Atlas
2 x 11 x 14 inches
Courtesy of Maya Lin Studio

Kiki Smith
Tidal, 1998
Edition of 39, Working BAT
Photogravure, Offset Lithography and Silkscreen
19.5 x 126.45 inches
Courtesy of the Publisher, Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies, Columbia University