Brooklyn Museum
Saturday, October 13, 2:00 p.m.
Screening of Episode 2: Protest
Discussion: Season 4 artist An-My Lê with Wesley Miller, Associate Curator, Art21
An-My Lê was born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1960. Lê fled Vietnam with her family as a teenager in 1975, the final year of the war, eventually settling in the United States as a political refugee. Lê received BAS and MS degrees in biology from Stanford University (1981, 1985) and an MFA from Yale University (1993). Her photographs and films examine the impact, consequences, and representation of war. Whether in color or black-and-white, her pictures frame a tension between the natural landscape and its violent transformation into battlefields. Projects include Viêt Nam (1994-98), in which Lê’s memories of a war-torn countryside are reconciled with the contemporary landscape; Small Wars (1999-2002), in which Lê photographed and participated in Vietnam War reenactments in South Carolina; and 29 Palms (2003-04) in which United States Marines preparing for deployment play-act scenarios in a virtual Middle East in the California desert. Suspended between the formal traditions of documentary and staged photography, Lê’s work explores the disjunction between wars as historical events and the ubiquitous representation of war in contemporary entertainment, politics, and collective consciousness. Lê lives and works in New York.
Sunday, October 14, 2:00 p.m.
Screening of Episode 4: Paradox
Discussion: Q&A with Eve Moros Ortega, Series Producer, Art21
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn
Free with museum admission. No reservations required.
If you missed Paradox Thursday night at El Museo del Barrio, catch this special screening at the Brooklyn Museum.
Paradox showcases five artists who, through uniquely different styles of work, address and respond to contradiction, conflict and ambiguity, and examine the relationship between mystery and meaning in art.
Mark Bradford uses signage and advertisements scavenged from the street to create wall-sized collages which respond to the impromptu networks that emerge within a city, such as underground economies, immigrant communities, or the use of abandoned public space. In his films, Bradford captures and documents the cultural, political and racial conditions of an urban environment. Catherine Sullivan’s anxiety inducing films and live performances reveal the degree to which everyday gestures and emotional states are scripted and performed, questioning the border between innate and learned behavior. Influenced by the work of artists such as Mark Rothko and his own love of jazz and bebop, Robert Ryman is well-known for his work with white paint on square forms, which reveals the nuances of the surface. His paintings are characterized by their subtlety, as they explore the distinction between art as an object or surface, sculpture or painting, and emphasize the role that perception and context play in creating an aesthetic experience. Collaborators Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla draw inspiration from their belief that art can function as a catalyst for social change, and their works – which include sculpture, video documentation and public installations – often solicit active participation and critical responses from their viewers. They approach visual art as a set of experiments that test whether concepts such as authorship, nationality, borders, and democracy adequately describe today’s increasingly global society.
