QMAil: November 2008

In this ISSUE:

EXHIBITIONS: Reason's Clue | Stephen Talasnik – Panorama: The Mapping of Prediction | CLOSING: Erasing Borders 2008: An Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art of the Diaspora | Pedro Meyer: Heresies | Jane South: Deceptive Volume (QMA at the Bulova Corporate Center)

EVENTS: MetLife presents First Sundays for Families at QMA: El Día de los Muertos | Melodia Women's Choir Concert | MIAAC Film Festival | CINEMAROSA - Queens Only Queer Film Series | Healthy Taste of Corona Cookbook Launch Event | Opening Reception for Framing AIDS

QMA INFORMATION: Permanent Exhibitions | Special Announcements | Learning Programs & Workshops | Adult Programs | For Seniors | Credits | Subscribe to QMAil

November masthead: Pedro Meyer, Calaca Guadalupana, La Villa, Mexico City, Mexico. Non-editioned pigment ink-jet print, 2001/02. Courtesy the artist.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Reason's Clue

EXTENDED through January 4, 2009

By holding fast to the Reason of the ancients, the present is mastered, and the origin of the past understood. This is called Reason's Clue.
– Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Inspired by the Tao Te Ching, the 6th Century BC text by Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, Reason's Clue focuses on contemporary art that engages the diverse ideas and attitudes about the history and culture of China. Eight artists working in China, Taiwan, and the United States examine the ways in which history reflects on and influences the present. Moving away from the simplistic binaries of past and future, East and West, and negative and positive forces, the works in the exhibition explore fluid interactions and integral structures between the opposites. The artists meld traditional and contemporary sensibilities to render their own understanding of the various subject matter including language, art history, popular culture, archeology, and global politics.

Reason's Clue is curated by Luchia Meihua Lee.

Participating Artists: Cui Fei, Hong Hao, Zhang Hongtu, Michael Cherney, Xu Bing, Tu Wei-Cheng, Lin Ju, and Yang Mao-Lin

Image: Yang Mao-Lin, A Story About Affection - Beloved King Kong Vajradhara (detail), 2008. Bronze and gold foil, sculpture: 130 x 115 x 65 cm. Courtesy the artist.

Reason's Clue has been made possible through grants from the Council for Cultural Affairs, Taiwan, R.O.C. in collaboration with Taipei Cultural Center, TECO in New York; Queens Museum of Art Taiwanese Endowment Fund; and Lin & Keng Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan.
Additional support provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and New York State Council on the Arts.

Now Available - Tours of Reason's Clue, Monday - Friday
Feel like you need further information about a particular artist or work of art? Request a 60-minute tour of Reason's Clue with a Museum Educator and have all your questions answered by our knowledgeable staff. Reduced Rate: $75 for groups of 30 or less

Additional exhibition information is available here.

Stephen Talasnik, Panorama: The Mapping of Prediction

CLOSING Sunday, November 30, 2008

The Queens Museum of Art proudly presents Panorama: The Mapping of Prediction, an exhibition of Stephen Talasnik's architecturally inspired drawings. Including thirteen pieces from Talasnik's Panorama series, measuring up to twelve feet in length, the exhibition captures his trademark use of architectural forms, transforming the monolithic into the intimate, and the structurally complex into the fantastical and futuristic. Installed in the same space as the Museum's Panorama of the City of New York, built as the world's largest architectural scale model for the 1964 World's Fair, the exhibition presents Talasnik's own musings on architecture and design juxtaposed with the model that inspired his artistic career.

Prophecy (detail), 2005-2006. Graphite on paper, 18 x 117 in. Courtesy the artist and Marlborough Gallery.

Panorama: The Mapping of Prediction captures Talasnik's affinity for architecture and the future, and also presents the artist's use of the panoramic format. The panorama, whether utilized by painters in the 15th or 16th centuries or more contemporarily by photographers, allows large spaces to be depicted on a more intimate scale. While Talasnik's early panoramic work drew inspiration from the predella panels he encountered while living in Rome, it also grew out of a desire to encapsulate the largest possible space and represent it to the viewer in the smallest possible arena. Where Renaissance painters immortalized massive battle scenes, and 19th and 20th century photographers examined themes such as urban development, Talasnik has used the format to capture the monolithic – urban landscapes, labyrinthine transportation systems and forms from the World's Fair – and present it to viewers as “an exaggerated letterbox in which to envision the spirit of the future and to harness the majestic components of the Utopian landscape.”

Stephen Talasnik, PANORAMA: The Mapping of Prediction is supported in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts. The exhibition is organized by the Queens Museum of Art. Special thanks to Marlborough Gallery.

Additional exhibition information is available here.

Erasing Borders 2008: An Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art of the Diaspora

CLOSING Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Now in its fifth year, Erasing Borders 2008: An Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art of the Diaspora is a traveling exhibition organized with the Indo-American Arts Council. Curated by Vijay Kumar, this exhibition presents the work of forty artists who utilize a myriad of styles, mediums and ideologies to express a shared, yet diverse Indian heritage that has been cultivated within the United States. The artists articulate their ideas and visions through conceptual artwork, sculpture, mixed media, abstract and figurative paintings, photo installations, printmaking, photography, drawing and nakhachitra - the rare art of fingernail relief drawing, representing the breadth and depth of artistic techniques and expressions as a means of erasing borders.

Erasing Borders is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, India Abroad, and Rediff.

Pedro Meyer: Heresies

On view through January 4, 2009

Pedro Meyer's Heresies is a retrospective exhibition comprising four decades of work by one of the world's most inventive photographers in the realm of digital photography. Meyer began his career in the early 1960's, taking pictures on the streets of Mexico City. Since then, he has traveled extensively throughout the world, becoming one of Mexico's premier documentary photographers. Meyer's photographs question the limits of truth, fiction and reality.

With the advent of digital photography in the early 1990s, Meyer evolved from a documentary "straight photographer" into a "digital-documentarian" who often combines photographic elements from disparate times and places to arrive at a different or higher truth. Meyer's statement that all photographs, digitally manipulated or not, are equally "true" and "untrue" has been labeled "heretical" in the conventional photographic community. He has also developed the website ZoneZero to host interactive exhibitions that incorporate photographs, sound, video and text.

The exhibition Heresies is simultaneously hosted by 60 institutions worldwide. To celebrate the unique nature of Meyer's work and its exhibition format, the Queens Museum of Art invited eight local community partners initiated by QMA staff educators to make their selection for the QMA presentation.

These selections will be exhibited in multiple installments, each providing a different perspective on the work of this innovative photographer.

November 2 - 16
Educators from PS 144
Artists from Mano a Mano: Mexican Culture without Borders

November 23 - December 2
QMA Docents
Students of Ms. Gould and Ms. Ticas's 7th grade class, JHS 190

IMAGE: Pedro Meyer, The Sax Player, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Non-editioned pigment ink-jet print, 1986. Courtesy the artist.

This exhibition is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
Image: Pedro Meyer, Heresies series, ink-jet print. Collection of Queens Museum of Art.

On view at the QMA at the Bulova Corporate Center: Jane South: Deceptive Volume

EXTENDED through February 15, 2009

Informed by a Do-It-Yourself spirit, Jane South's structures come from a combination of ample patience and basic engineering know-how. When her early use of industrial materials gave way to the more modest mediums of tape, balsa wood, and paper, South created a new language for exploring urban forms. Neither simply drawing nor sculpture, her constructions play on our sense of depth and perspective, their spindly shadows revealing an underlying fragility. Using the delicate flatness of paper to mimic the apparent solidity of architectural, technological, and industrial forms, they question things we take for granted–what is tenuous and what is substantial, what will perish in and what will stand the test of time.

South's freestanding sculptures reveal an opposite aspiration–to cage and contain. Whether they call to mind a cash register, slot machine or prison, these exploded forms appear to have tremendous weight. Like the overgrown versions of her smaller grids and radiuses, they push South's folded-and-cut-paper technique to its physical limits. But their substance–or menace–is an illusion, contradicted by tenuous materials and indefinite meanings. Once again confusing the signifiers of strength and frailty, South fools our expectations of what is fleeting and what is real.

IMAGE: Jane South, Untitled (Long Brown/Red), 2007. Hand-cut and folded paper, mixed media. Courtesy of the artist and Spencer Brownstone Gallery.

This program is sponsored by the Blumenfeld Development Group, Ltd. and the Queens Museum of Art.

Additional exhibition information is available here.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Melodia Women's Choir Concert

Saturday, November 8, 3 - 4 pm

Melodia Women's Choir of NYC, conducted by Cynthia Powell, Artistic Director, presents Wrapped in Song - a concert to welcome the holiday season. The program includes A Ceremony of Carols and other melodic works created for women's vocal ranges and the harp. Melodia is an ensemble of 30 singers who explore, create and perform music for the vocal ranges of women. Now in their sixth season, they have performed throughout New York City, including Merkin Concert Hall, Symphony Space, and Queens Library, Flushing. Melodia has also been seen on NBC TV and heard on WNYC.

Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council (MIAAC) Film Festival

Saturday, November 15, 3 - 8 pm

MIACC Film Festival, the premier showcase of South Asian diapsora film, presents two highlights from its 2008 edition for a special price. MIACC Revised Ticket Announcement: $10 day pass, includes admission to Museum, entry to both films, free soda and candy! Tickets can be preordered here or can be purchased at QMA on the day of the event.

3 – 6 pm - Color of Passion / Rang Rasiya (Ketan Mehta, India, 2008; 130 min., Hindi with English ST)
The life of an artist who imprinted the iconography of Hindu gods and goddesses upon a billion minds, Raja Ravi Varma's life as an iconoclast who dared to mass-produce his prints, becomes a sensuously beautiful and bold film in director Ketan Mehta's latest venture. From his early days under royal patronage to his trial for blasphemy for his increasingly eroticized work, Mehta brings to life the artist's search for his muse, the birth of Indian modern art, the dawn of Indian cinema, and inspiring the Indian independence movement. With Paresh Rawal, Nandana Sen, Deepti Naval.

6 – 8 pm - Amal (Richie Mehta, Canada, 2007; 101 min., Hindi with English ST)
First-time director Richie Mehta makes a gently humorous debut with this wry, fable-like tale of contemporary India. When Amal, an autorickshaw driver (a sensitive portrayal by Rupinder Nagra) in chaotic New Delhi, generously allows a dishonest, seemingly homeless curmudgeon to cheat him out of his fare, strange events are set in motion that affect both men in far-reaching ways. Mehta, who also co-wrote the film, conveys with immediacy the noise and chaos of a burgeoning working-class in Delhi, as its members rub shoulders and scruples with the new rich classes. Amal is a powerful and touching story of one man's decency. Also starring Koel Purie, Naseeruddin Shah, Seema Biswas, Roshan Seth.

CINEMAROSA - Queens Only Queer Film Series: Gays and Lesbians In The Military

Sunday, November 16, 3 - 6 pm

Tell (Tom Murray, USA, 2007, 83 min.)
A timely film exploring the US military's shameful "don't ask, don't tell" policy. With no real end in sight to the US's current military involvement abroad, this film adds to the debate by questioning why willing and able potential recruits are kept from serving based on institutionalized discriminatory practices.

Ask Not (Johnny Symons, USA, 2008, 70 min.)
In this documentary, current and veteran gay soldiers reveal how "don't ask, don't tell" affects them during their tours of duty, as they struggle to maintain a double life, uncertain of whom they can trust.

Local Jackson Heights, and Queens veterans will participate in a panel with attending director Tom Murray after the screenings. For more information, visit CINEMAROSA.

Healthy Taste of Corona Cookbook Launch Event

Sunday, November 16, 3 - 6 pm

The Healthy Taste of Corona Cookbook includes over 30 recipes collected from restaurants, elected officials, and community-based organizations in the Heart of Corona Initiative. It showcases traditional foods from a variety of countries reflecting the diversity of cultures in the neighborhood, while at the same time updating the recipes to make them healthier. Join us for food tastings and cultural performances to celebrate the publication of the book and the cultural vibrancy of Corona.

Opening Reception for Framing AIDS (Community Gallery Exhibition)

Sunday, November 30, 3 - 7 pm

QMAD organizes Queens' annual observance of World AIDS Day through the arts. Framing AIDS is a multidisciplinary exhibition designed to contextualize the re-emergent world-wide concern about the AIDS Pandemic, and its effects on local communities and populations around the globe.

Public Events at the Queens Museum of Art are supported in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Ford Foundation Partners for Livable Communities, J. M. Kaplan Fund, and Independence Community Foundation.

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