Maya Lin - "Flow"
(Ticket Contest Details Below)
The Dayton Art Institute’s current special exhibition, Changing Landscapes: Contemporary Chinese Fiber Art, offers a rare look at the world of contemporary Chinese fiber art. It is the first exhibition of contemporary Chinese fiber art to travel outside China, and The Dayton Art Institute is the last of only three U.S. venues to host the exhibition. Changing Landscapes is on view at DAI now through June 17.
Changing Landscapes showcases the work of 48 artists selected from the past five International Fiber Art Biennales, held in China since 2000, which are devoted to innovative and exciting new ideas and thinking in the global field of fiber art.
The exhibition was originally co-curated by Ni Yue-Hong, a professor at the Fiber Arts Institute in China, and Deborah Corsini, curator at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles in California. Guest curator for The Dayton Art Institute’s presentation is Lisa Morrisette, from the Department of Art and Art History at Wright State University.
The works range from figurative to abstract, two dimensional to sculptural, crafted to conceptual. They vividly demonstrate how contemporary Chinese fiber artists are forging a new aesthetic by synthesizing their own experience with the diverse influences of China’s artistic heritage. The techniques and forms of the artworks include a broad spectrum, from classic tapestry weaving and pile weaving (a rug hooking technique), to embroidery, printing and dyeing, and large-scale constructed sculptural pieces.
"Resplendence"
Traditionally, tapestry has been a transcription of painting, employing yarns like wool, silk, and linen to create two-dimensional wall hangings. Zheng Dan’s tapestry Resplendence is an example of the rich dimensional effects of hand woven tapestry. This triptych has subtle color variations feathered together using a variety of traditional techniques from hatching to knotting. Her curving forms pulsate and softly glow with the addition of metallic fibers.
Many artists utilize more unusual materials, such as metal, wood and plastics. Zhao Dandan, for example, uses stainless steel to create a three-dimensional armature whose shape is reminiscent of a crescent moon or boat. Into this armature she weaves delicate, translucent threads of plastic that both fill and cascade from the belly of the arc.
Increasingly, fiber is simply another medium for artists to express their vision; the material is used to express something beyond the nature of the material. Their approach transforms fibers to articulate a personal artistic viewpoint.
"Memory of August"
The title Changing Landscapes is not just a reference to the outer visible form of the world, but serves as a metaphor for the inner landscape of an artist’s heart and mind. Wang Kai’s Origin of the River, a monumental work that cascades from ceiling to floor, creates both the image and feel of the falls on China’s Yellow River. Bai Xin’s set of corn fiber, pine, and bamboo cubes, Balminess, captures the space and color of fields from her childhood memories. As a subject matter in Chinese art history, landscape dates back to the 7th century. This venerated subject has been used in both painting and poetry to convey social, political, and philosophical views of the world. Transcending the literal, landscape operates on a metaphoric level – the concrete object refers to other things.
Changing Landscapes provides a snapshot of how three generations of artists have used fiber as an expressive media to respond to economic, political, and social changes that have transformed the Chinese landscape over the past decade.
For more, go to www.daytonartinstitute.org/changinglandscapes.
MAYA LIN: FLOW
In conjunction with Changing Landscapes, The Dayton Art Institute is also showing one of Maya Lin’s large-scale installations, Flow.
Lin is perhaps best known for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. She achieved national recognition when, as a 21 year-old senior at Yale University, her design for the memorial was selected from among 1,420 submissions. Since that first work, she has gone on to create numerous public monuments, architecture, earthworks and installations, as well as smaller-scale gallery pieces.
Her work defies categorization. Moving between boundaries, she explores relationships between architecture, sculpture, and landscape, between the natural and the man-made, between science and art. Her inspiration is drawn from a wide range of sources, including geological phenomena and topography, prehistoric earthworks, Japanese gardens, and engineering principals such as fluid mechanics.
Flow embodies landscape, framed within the space of architecture. Thousands of 2 x 4s are cut and stacked on end to create a commanding form whose shape is somewhere between a hill and a wave, the swells of which reach two feet high. Working with industrial materials and abstract forms, Lin evokes the natural rather than man-made. Her work is not a reproduction of landscape; rather it recreates the feeling of landscape. She is interested in the human relation to the environment, translating forms and experience.
The sculpted form of Flow is a static grouping of 2 x 4s, but it implies the movement of the current or the ripple of a wave. It echoes sculpted prehistoric earthworks, such as the Serpent Mound in Ohio, or the topographic lines of a map.
For more, go to www.daytonartinstitute.org/flow. To watch a time-lapse video of Flow’s installation at the museum, click here to visit the DAI’s YouTube page.
Maya Lin’s Flow by the numbers:
Number of crates: 29
Average weight of each crate: 293 lbs.
Total weight: 8,500 lbs.
Average dimensions of crates: 28” x 53” x 48”
Individual 2x4s in Flow: 10,148
Time for 2 art handlers to install: 45 hours
Coffee consumed by art handlers: 256 ounces
HOW TO GO
Tickets include admission to Changing Landscapes, Flow and DAI’s permanent collection. A $1 per transaction Historic Preservation Fee will be added to all ticket sales.
Adults: $12
Seniors (60+), Students (18+ w/ID) & Active Military: $9
Youth (ages 7-17): $6
Museum Members & Children (6 & under): Free
The Dayton Art Institute is located at 456 Belmonte Park North in downtown Dayton, just off Interstate 75. The museum is open Wednesday – Saturday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. and Sunday, noon – 5 p.m., with extended hours until 8 p.m. on Thursdays.
(submitted by The Dayton Art Institute)
Ticket Contest!!!
We have three pairs of tickets to this exhibit (a $24 value) and we want to give them to YOU! So just
[form 23 “Contest Entry – DAI Changing Landscapes”]
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