Nancy Cohen(ナンシー・コーエン)
展覧会タイトル: Hackensack Dreaming (ハッケンサック・ドリーミング)

写真:Nancy Cohen, installation photo of “Hackensack Dreaming” in the Visual Arts Gallery of New Jersey City University *撮影: Edward Fausty
会場:Visual Arts Gallery, New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ, USA / Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia, PA, USA / The Power Plant Gallery at Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
期間:2015年9月15日ー10月22日 (New Jersey City University)
キュレーター: Midori Yoshimoto (New Jersey City University) / Christina Catanese (Schuylkill Center) / Caitlin Kelly (Powerplant Gallery)
アーティスト: Nancy Cohen (ナンシー・コーエン)
コンセプト:I’ve spent time this last decade following the waterways of New York and New Jersey, finding the contradictions of “nature” in my urban environment endlessly interesting. My upcoming exhibition at New Jersey City University (which will travel to the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in Philadelphia and the Power Plant Gallery at Duke University) is created in response to the beauty, fragility and other worldliness of the Mill Creek Marsh in the Meadowlands of Secaucus, NJ.
The part of the Hackensack River I am responding to is a quiet and deserted space where pools of flat still water give way to the tops of wooden tree stumps. The stump forms are inexplicable, magical, sculptural. They seem to embody fragility, perseverance and a caught moment. Conceptual ideas I had been moving around in my work for years were suddenly presented to me beside the New Jersey Turnpike.
This used to be a cedar forest – intentionally destroyed hundreds of years ago. The Meadowlands themselves have been ravaged by the development surrounding this part of New York and New Jersey. The marshes made the location resistant to actual construction and instead became a seemingly endless absorption tank for every kind of refuse. The land’s uninhabitability destroyed its natural habitat and yet in some perverse way seemed to preserve it.
I find this site of unending interest as the stumps seemingly emerging from the water – surreal, beautiful, majestic in their survival and sad. In reality the water has overtaken them but they remain, monumental and as monuments to their history.
The elements of ‘Hackensack Dreaming’ are constructed primarily of handmade paper and glass. I am choosing to work with materials that are both fragile and strong to echo the environment I am responding to. Although I have been making work in response to rivers for a number of years this is a significant project for me for a number of reasons.
First, it is my most complex installation to date – incorporating every aspect of the physical space of the room (floor, ceiling, and wall) and physically inviting the viewer to walk among them. Second, I am using handmade paper and glass in new ways in this installation and in some ways that may never have been used before (I can’t say that for sure but I think so) and in any case create a major breakthrough for my work. Finally, it is my first travelling exhibition, of personal and professional significance and I hope very much you will find it worthy of support.
This installation is in no way meant to reproduce the landscape, my inspiration and reference point. I want the viewer to move through “Hackensack Dreaming” discovering and finding connections – compelled by the beauty and the strangeness. Thinking simultaneously of the made and found worlds – of nature (whatever that might be to a contemporary artist in urban New Jersey) – a viewer might hopefully become temporarily lost in the contradictions and visual experience.


写真:Nancy Cohen, installation photo of “Hackensack Dreaming” in the Visual Arts Gallery of New Jersey City University *撮影: Edward Fausty
千田 泰広
展覧会タイトル: 宇宙を見る眼

「宇宙を見る眼」展覧会風景
会場:山ノ内町立志賀高原ロマン美術館 (長野県)
期間:2015年7月18日ー10月12日
キュレーター: 鈴木 幸野
アーティスト:大西浩次、小阪淳、榊原澄人、千田泰広、早川和明、松田朕佳、山極満博
コンセプト:
このたび、志賀高原ロマン美術館において、アートと天文学の眼をとおして見たさまざまな宇宙像を提示する展覧会を開催します。
「百 聞は一見にしかず」という言葉があるように、私たちは物事を把握するのに目を使います。しかし、アートと天文学の関係をたどっていくと、今では畑違いのも のとされるアートと天文学が未分化の時代がかつてあり、もともと聴覚と触覚が視覚よりも優位にあったのが、視覚という共通の眼が作られたことにより、それ ぞれが独自に発展を遂げて今日に至っていることが明らかになります。
ロラン・バルトが論じるようにそもそも人間の五感のうち視覚が優位を占 めるようになったのは近代においてのことでした。それ以前、たとえば中世においては聴覚と触覚が重要な位置を占めていました。それが近代になっていわゆる 遠近法が発明されたことによって、一気に視覚の位置が引き上げられ、世界が均質化された表象空間となります。その後19世紀を迎えて写真術の開発などによ り視覚の拡張が起こり、20世紀以降にはこの拡張された視覚に動きと音が加わり、新たな知覚の融合が生み出されているといえます。この現象は奇しくも、 アートと天文学双方に起きており、たとえば、天体望遠鏡が様々な波長(可視光線と電磁波)を観測対象にしたり、芸術表現に新しい技術的発明を使ったりと、 最先端の技術がアートと天文学双方に多種多様な「眼」(知覚)をもたらしていると言え、現象が起こっている場である「現代社会」を共通項として、これから さらに変化を遂げていくでしょう。
このように、ふたたび、急激な知覚の変化を余儀なくされている現代において、どのような宇宙をみることが できるでしょうか。それを享受するにあたり、今一度少し後ろをチラ見しつつ歩んでみませんか。その場として、自然が豊かで星空の美しい、動物と人間が入れ 子状になって住まう山ノ内町はふさわしいと考えます。そして実は「後ろ」が「前」でもあること、すなわちアートと天文学の融合を考えるうえで、知覚の歴史 の「前」「後」は「ウロボロスの輪」のようにつながっていることを、アートと天文学にまたがる宇宙像を、出展される天文学の最新の観測機器や、天文学や物 理現象と融合したアート作品、宇宙観と人間の関係からインスピレーションを得たアート作品から体感していただけたらと考えています。
そし て、5月に開催される「アーティスト・イン・レジデンス in 国立天文台野辺山」では、日本で初めて国立天文台に本企画のアーティスト数名が滞在し、直接的に天文学と触れ合って得たインスピレーションを志賀高原ロマ ン美術館に持ち帰って展示します。このような新しい取り組みも盛り込んだ展覧会を計画しています。

「宇宙を見る眼」展覧会風景
Ginger Porcella(ジンジャー・ポーチェラ)
展覧会タイトル: Women’s Work: Masculinity and Gender in Contemporary Fiber Arts(女性の作品:コンテンポラリー・ファイバーアートにおける男らしさとジェンダー)

Photo: Norman Eric Wallace, Paddy Hartley, 2007
会場:San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA, USA
キュレーター: Ginger Porcella (ジンジャー・ポーチェラ)
アーティスト: Blanka Amezkua, Laura Blanco, Sheena Dowling, Rose Eken, Kris Grey, Paddy Hartley, Don Porcella, Jacob Rhodes, Katia Sepulveda, Nathan Vincent
コンセプト:”Women’s Work: Masculinity and Gender in Contemporary Fiber Arts” is an international exhibition that calls for a reexamination of traditional gender stereotypes. “Women’s Work” will be a group exhibition of powerful images evoking and informing psychological experiences. The artists in this exhibition employ a variety of techniques regarded as traditional and domestic, such as embroidery and crochet, using traditional craft materials and techniques to address cultural and gender issues in a complex intersection of domestic practices, popular culture and aesthetic splendor. Several artists in the exhibition use unexpected materials-such as discarded clothing and pipe cleaners- to show the range of fiber art materials being incorporated in contemporary craft.
Several artists in the exhibition reside on the Tijuana/San Diego border, and use the issue of gender and identity politics to discuss other “boundaries”,,, whether physical, psychological, or technological. Both Kris Grey and Katia Sepulveda’s work examine queer identity; Grey’s ongoing investigation entitled “Gender/Power” documents his transition from male to female, while Tijuana-based Katia Spulveda’s work about the trans-feminist insurrection call for a destruction of the sex and gender binominal.
Denmark-based Rose Eken creates a series of embroidered images about Rock’n Roll culture, such as records, drum kits and set lists from bands like Metallica and Ozzy Osboun, while NYC-based Jacob Rhodes invents his own society in the series “Candy Skins”, an ongoing project about a fictional subculture of skinheads who all make their own uniform in a detailed examination of codes of masculinity and punk rock culture.
Both renowned London-based artist Paddy Hartley and San Diego-based artist Don Porcella investigate the way in which the human body is changed, modified, and reconfigured either by choice or circumstance. Addressing subjects such as biomedical research and the ethics of human cloning, their work takes the form of figurative installations and assembled objects.
Finally, Nathan Vincent’s monumental installation “Locker Room” deals with gender permissions, acceptable gender activities, and created spaces. Creating a stereotypically masculine space with a stereotypically feminine process bring to surface questions around activities that our culture deems acceptable for men and women.
This exhibition takes complex topics regarding masculinity and gender and makes them accessible for all audiences and ages. The exhibition will be documented in a 4-color catalogue, and a full series of public programs, lectures, and performances will accompany the exhibition.
