September Issue 2000
Weatherspoon Art Gallery in Greensboro, NC, Features Exhibition by Dona Nelson
The Weatherspoon Art Gallery at the University
of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC, is presenting an exhibition
of works by Dona Nelson, which will be on view through Oct. 29,
2000.
Dona Nelson: The Stations of the Subway, Octopuses,
and Arrangements presents for the first time three of Nelson's
best known series in their entirety, providing a fascinating overview
of Nelson's works over the past ten years. Organized by Weatherspoon
curator of exhibitions Ron Platt, this is the first major museum
exhibition of Nelson's thirty-year career.
Not known to employ a singular or "signature" style,
Nelson has spent the last decade working in discrete series where
specific visual and conceptual relationships exist from one work
to the next. Nelson intended for each series to be stronger as
a group than as individual works and sometimes found the connections
between them more interesting than the paintings themselves.
The twelve paintings of The Stations of
the Subway chronicle Nelson's experiences of riding the New
York Subway as well as her memories of the art she looked at in
the city's galleries and museums. The series is full of visual
references to the subway and city streets including passengers,
lights, grids, glass and steam.
The Octopuses series of four paintings is inspired by the
artist's childhood fascination with the film Twenty-Thousand
Leagues Under the Sea as well as remembrances of a famous
ancient Minoan vase. Using this ever-changing creature as a centralized
image, the paintings range widely in their pictorial and technical
treatments. The Arrangements series builds on the physicality
of the Octopuses series. Upon their densely packed cloth
surfaces, figures and shapes seem to emerge and dissolve back
into abstraction.
The Weatherspoon has produced a catalogue to
accompany the exhibition with an essay by noted arts writer Klaus
Kertess, an interview with the artist by curator Ron Platt, full
color reproductions of the works in the exhibition with accompanying
checklist, and a biography.
A gallery talk by Dona Nelson is scheduled for Sept. 15. The event
is free and open to the public.
For further information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings or call Patti Gross, Public and Community Relations
Officer, at 336/334-5770, e-mail at (weatherspoon@uncg.edu) or
on the web at (http://www.uncg.edu/wag).
Mailing Address: Carolina Arts, P.O. Drawer
427, Bonneau, SC 29431
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