CU Art Galleries - Symposium

because the EARTH IS 1/3 DIRT
an exhibition and symposium, F E B R U A R Y 13 – M A R C H 19, 2004
University of Colorado at Boulder

Opening reception: Friday, February, 13, 6–8 pm

Related symposium: Saturday, February 14, 10 am–3 pm
Room N141, Sibell-Wolle Fine Arts Building

The exhibition and symposium BECAUSE THE EARTH IS 1/3 DIRT will investigate the material, visceral, and metaphoric potency of the ceramic medium—exploring ceramics’ intrinsic association with the Earth’s substance and its material connection to both nature and culture.

BECAUSE THE EARTH IS 1/3 DIRT will feature the work of artists including, Saint Clair Cemin, Johan Creten, Wim Delvoye, Leopold Foulem, Backa Carin Ivarsdotter, Walter McConnell, Kristen Morgin, Ted Muehling, Lawson Oyekan, Annabeth Rosen and Pieter Stockmans.

1/3 DIRT
Work on view will range from Walter McConnell’s wet terra-cotta topiary structures formed of twisting, gnarling gut-like coils bedecked with ornamental terracotta cabbages, flowers, and leaves and Wim Delvoye’s white porcelain tiles digitally decaled with photographs of feces—both of which link the refined with the
scatological—to Leopold Foulem’s abstractions of 18th and 19th Century European porcelain ware ornamented with traditional cornucopic botanical imagery which references the substance of the earth as a material matrix from which life both emanates and to which life inevitably returns in death.
The exhibition will also include Annabeth Rosen’s massive acid-yellow grid of stacked tiles, formed of packed tendrils, tubes, and birds. Rosen’s archeological grid powerfully draws on the potency of ceramics and its linkages with the surface of the earth. For in this clay-like surface lies embedded both the history of plant-life as well as the history of civilization. Kristen Morgin’s submerged full-scale automobiles similarly evoke the archeological pull of the ceramic medium, reminding us of the eventual return of all solid matter to the earth.

Related Symposium

Saturday, February 14,
10 am – 3 pm

University of Colorado at Boulder
Room N141
Sibell-Wolle Fine Arts Building

Free and open to the public.

The related symposium will include
panel discussions and artist presentations addressing the work on view and the conceptual and aesthetic issues raised by the exhibition.

Symposum participants include:

Lisa Tamiris Becker, Director,
CU Art Museum
Scott Chamberlin, Faculty,
Department of Art and Art History
Johan Creten, Artist
Kim Dickey, Faculty,
Department of Art and Art History
Back Carin Ivarsdotter, Artist
Walter McConnell, Artist
Kristen Morgin, Artist
Janet Koplos, Critic and Senior Editor for Art in America
Lawson Oyekan, Artist
Jeanne Quinn, Faculty,
Department of Art and Art History
Annabeth Rosen, Artist

Johan Creten
Why Does Strange Fruit Always Look So Sweet?, 2002
Metal and plaster
120 x 45 x 40”
Courtesy of the artist and Robert Miller Gallery, NY, NY
© Johan Creten

Walter McConnell
Effluvial Bloom, 2000
Moist clay in plastic enclosure, plywood, utility light, cast daylight; 89 x 66 x 144”
Installed in Marfa, Texas
© Walter McConnell

For more Information Please contact, CU Art Museum Director:
Lisa Tamiris Becker at 303-492-8003 or lisa.becker@colorado.edu