CHAKAIA BOOKER
GUERRILLA GIRLS
JENNY HOLZER
FIERCE WOMEN Thursday, January 30-Saturday, April 25, 2020 All galleries and Cube
MARILYN MINTER
ROZEAL
This suite of one-person exhibitions by some of the most acclaimed artists of our era presents exemplary works of art that are formidable, impactful, and “fierce” in both their dramatic visual power and the potency of ideas presented. Spanning the latter part of the 20th century up to the present time, the exhibition features sculpture, painting on paper, digital prints, and video, all of which give voice to a range of key and especially critical issues in our world today. Beginning with the historical precedent of the Guerrilla Girls, a notorious (and still active) collective of activist artists, the exhibition continues with works by the internationally acclaimed artist Jenny Holzer, then proceeds up to the present with Marilyn Minter’s enthralling monumental video installation Smash (2014). Ranging from Holzer’s iconic LED signs to Chakaia Booker’s audacious rubber tire sculptures or Rozeal’s hybrid, cross-cultural mashups, these artists take on gender and racial inequality, the politics of identity, and the all too many injustices surrounding power, morality, and corruption in our world. From Booker’s fiercely audacious sculptures to the Guerrilla Girls’ exposés of sexual and racial discrimination, the art by the five artists in this suite of exhibitions is formidable. These artists take a stand. Their work speaks out. And they are fierce in not only their astute observations and critical appraisal of the status quo, but in giving voice to these essential issues of our times.
patterns and hues ranging from matte greys to glistening shades of black—are intriguing, even beautiful. Booker’s sculptures are essentially abstract, yet they allude to wildly imaginative plant or animal forms and are rich with many possible references and interpretations. They have been interpreted as powerful metaphors for the Black body and spirit, with the resilience of rubber symbolizing strength and survival, while the chromatic nuances of the rubber material suggest a range of Black skin tones. The geometric patterns of tire treads have been interpreted as references to African textiles and scarification rituals. It has also been observed that “each tire, with varying degrees of wear and tear, tells an individual story of production, use, 1 and abandonment.”
Chakaia Booker Thursday, January 30-Saturday, April 25, 2020 Ruth C. Horton Gallery Audacious and wildly inventive, gritty and beautiful A nationally acclaimed sculptor, Chakaia Booker is well known for her large-scale—at times massive—indoor and outdoor sculptures made out of discarded automobile tires. In a unique and rigorous working process, Booker slices, bends, twists, shreds, and transforms used rubber tires into provocative, highly original works of art. Commanding and at once fiercely aggressive, her masses of cut and mangled rubber, tubes, and metal seemingly seethe with an exuberant, latently explosive energy. However dauntless, her sculptural forms—richly textured with various tread
Booker’s sculptures can also be seen in the context of industrialization, consumer culture, recycling, and environmental issues. Despite such analogies, by salvaging scraps of rubber from city streets, auto body shops, and dump sites, and then transforming them into audacious works of art, Booker makes a universal statement about the sheer power of forging “something out of almost nothing.” Additionally, “the rubber tire with its circular 2 shape,” she states, “is about growth and about mobility.” Booker’s striking sculptures speak resolutely to endurance, reinvention, and transformation. Booker has an extensive exhibition and collection history. Her impressive work has been the subject of numerous oneperson and group exhibitions, including a solo exhibition at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts (2010), and a monumental installation of outdoor works adjacent to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. (2012-2014). Booker’s work is in the collections of many prominent museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Chakaia Booker Image courtesty of Freshwater Cleveland © Chakaia Booker Chakaia Booker El Gato, 2001 Rubber tire and wood 48 x 42 x 42 inches Courtesy of Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection, Museum Purchase Enid and Crosby Kemper and William T. Kemper Acquisition Fund, 2004 © Chakaia Booker, Photo by E.G. Schempf, 2017
ON THE COVER: Marilyn Minter Smash, 2014 (still image) HD digital video 7-minute, 55-second loop Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York © Marilyn Minter
Guerrilla Girls Thursday, January 30-Saturday, April 4, 2020 Francis T. Eck Exhibition Corridor Brash interventionists; a strident critique of sexism, racism, and cultural injustice Since 1985 the Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous collective of feminist activist artists, have zealously taken on the established art world in an ongoing campaign to expose sexism and racism in art institutions. Delivered with a fierce directness, scathing wit, and occasional humor, their proclamations have taken the form of posters, flyers, billboards, banners, performances, and unauthorized public projections and installations. Their work combines bold images and text with lists of facts and statistics to expose discrimination and the abysmal representation of women and minorities by prominent collectors, art galleries, and museums in the art world.
its campaign beyond the art world to include Hollywood and politics, focusing on the U.S. Senate. Wearing gorilla masks to maintain their anonymity, members of the group, which over the years has included 55 artists, call themselves the “conscience of the art world.” The Guerrilla Girls have presented over 100 exhibitions and projects around the world and continue today to decry discriminatory and exclusionary practices, speaking out vociferously on social injustices. Among the many recent exhibitions that have been presented of the collective’s work are those at the Walker Art Center (2016), the Baltimore Museum of Art (2016-2017), and retrospectives in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Bilbao, Spain; and Madrid (2017-2018). Presented in this exhibition is a selection of 15 of the Guerrilla Girls’ most iconic works, culled from the current exhibition, The Art of Behaving Badly (1985-2016).
The Guerrilla Girls formed in response to the Museum of Modern Art’s 1984 exhibition, An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture, which included works by 165 artists, only 13 of whom were women and none of whom were people of color. Since the 1990s the collective has expanded Guerrilla Girls Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?, 2012 Dimensions variable © Guerrilla Girls Courtesy of guerrillagirls.com
Jenny Holzer Thursday, January 30-Saturday, April 25, 2020 Miles C. Horton Jr. Gallery Jenny Holzer is an internationally acclaimed conceptual artist who for over 40 years has employed language as her primary medium, deploying it in a range of versatile art forms. Words are central to Holzer’s work. Her texts take the form of concise, incisive, thought-provoking, and sometimes contradictory statements that scrutinize the injustices and complex contradictions surrounding power, sexuality, and morality. Her words touch on everything from war, sexism, and AIDS, to gun violence and abuse. Initially in the late 1970s Holzer’s texts took the form of flyers plastered all over lower Manhattan. Her words have since been printed on posters and T-shirts, carved on stone benches, cast as bronze and aluminum plaques, printed as billboards, or projected onto rivers and building facades. Holzer was among the first to pioneer the use of LED technology in her art, transforming her writings—and subsequently those of other authors—into a striking, visually stunning range of sculptural forms and installations. One of her LED installations spiraled up the entire interior of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Other LED works have activated gallery walls and floors with not only words but color and continuously moving points of
light. From the lyrical to the trenchant, Holzer’s work is daring, unsettling, and unflinching in the power of the messages delivered. At the same time, her art elicits and calls for selfawareness, however acute, and a heightened consciousness of our own weaknesses, vulnerability, and collective humanity. Presented in the exhibition here is a selection of four of the artist’s electronic LED works, featuring some of Holzer’s iconic texts, including Truisms (1977-79), Survival (1983-85), Arno (1996), and Blue (1998). Holzer received a bachelor of fine arts from Ohio University (1972) and a master of fine arts from the Rhode Island School of Design (1977). She first rose to prominence with her Truisms series, which consists of more than 250 pithy and sometimes subversive aphorisms and slogans. Since that time Holzer has become one of the most acclaimed and respected American artists working today. She was the first woman to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale (1990), for which she received Leone d’Oro Grand Prize for best pavilion. Her work is in the collection of many of the most prestigious museums and has been shown in exhibitions worldwide, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York (1989-1990); the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland (2009-2010); and the Tate Modern in London, England (2018-2019). This past fall her work was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain. Jenny Holzer Purple Red Curve, 2005 LED sign with blue and red diodes 5.25 x 57.7 x 5.4 inches Text: Arno, 1996; Blue, 1998 © 2005 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers, Berlin
Marilyn Minter Splish Splash, 2005 Digital print, exhibition copy Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York Š Marilyn Minter
Marilyn Minter
Smash, 2014 Thursday, January 30-Saturday, February 8, 2020 Cube Intense, captivating, enthralling One of the most daring and provocative artists of our times, Marilyn Minter is renowned for her outstanding body of paintings, photographs, and videos that explore the complex and contradictory perceptions and experiences of beauty and the feminine body in American culture. Delivered with intense color and bold, garish imagery, Minter’s works have a gripping sensuality that is captivating and at times repulsive—but always enthralling. Minter is a nationally recognized artist, known for her extraordinary enamel on metal paintings and her photographic and video works, all of which delve into and question the complexities of glamour, sensuality, and desire in our culture. Characterized by extreme close-ups of the female body, her work zooms in on women’s faces, mouths, lips, or feet, vividly portrayed with bold, luscious colors and an irresistible if close to decadent sensuality. Minter’s rendering of glistening flesh; glittery, makeup-laden eyes; jewel-encrusted necklines; succulent mouths, lips, and tongues; and glitzy, spike-heeled feet are alluring and decidedly visceral. While the sensuality and visual pleasure of the work is seductive, intimated throughout is the intrinsic and disturbing contradiction between attraction and the recognition of how false, manipulated, and essentially debilitating the expectations and standards of beauty and sexuality can be for women. Minter’s HD video Smash (2014), projected in the exhibition at monumental scale, depicts closeups of a woman’s feet in bejeweled stilettos, sloshing back and forth in slow motion through glistening puddles of silvered water, rain, or mud. The work is luscious and seductive, saturated with rich, silvered tones, glistening jewels, and the rising, falling, and swirling of alternately viscous and translucent liquids. As in much of Minter’s works the subject here is glamour, sensuality, and desire, edged with a tinge of decadence. Though seemingly glamourous, what might be inferred in Smash is the somewhat sordid (and dangerous) suggestion of ladies, once elegant and glamourous but now tawdry, trampling through back allies. The video plunges us into
the reality—or rather, the unreality—of the seduction of fashion and glamour as well as its seedy underside, an imposed but often sought after and adopted fantasy of how women should look, how their bodies should be, and how beauty and sexuality are culturally defined. In a moment of defiance, however, the woman in the video smashes through the glass with fierce determination. Shattering the glass barrier despite the glamourous trappings of fashion makes a strident feminist statement. Minter invites us to rethink culturally imposed notions of femininity, sensuality, and desire, calling attention to the commodification of the female body and the challenging and often conflicted predicament of women in our culture. Minter received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida at Gainesville (1970) and a master of fine arts from Syracuse University, New York (1972). She rose to prominence with her participation in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and has since become nationally acclaimed with an extensive history of exhibitions, including the one-person exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2005); Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (2010); Brooklyn Museum; Denver Art Museum; and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2016-2017), among others. Her video, Green Pink Caviar, was exhibited in the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art in 2010 for over a year and was also shown on digital billboards along Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles and on the Creative Time MTV billboard in Times Square, New York. Minter’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions in museums all over the world. In addition to the presentation of the video Smash (2014) in the Cube, Minter’s iconic wall-mounted digital prints of Smash (2014), Studs (2005), and Splish Splash (2005) will be on view in the Miles C. Horton Jr. Gallery through April 25, 2020.
RELATED EXHIBITION Marilyn Minter: Splash Wednesday, January 29-Saturday, February 22, 2020 Armory Gallery 203 Draper Road, Blacksburg
Rozeal
Thursday, January 30-Saturday, April 25, 2020 Sherwood Payne Quillen ‘71 Reception Gallery Radical cultural sampling Boldly probing the complexities of cultural and gender identity “Geishas,” Rozeal once remarked, “are some of the fiercest women around… well educated, well versed in the arts, and 3 dressed to the nines.” This conviction, deployed regularly in the artist’s depiction of the “Afro-Asian” divas throughout her art, is amply conveyed in El Oso Me Pregunto (2016). In this painting Rozeal portrays a regal geisha, elegantly dressed, adorned with sumptuous white fur and strands of pearls. This courtesan, however, with her elaborate afro and face painted black, is racially, culturally, and historically ambiguous. References to historic Japanese traditions and African-American hip-hop street culture come together here, fused in a fluid and indeterminant space. El Oso Me Pregunto is one of several works in the exhibition from the artist’s Afro-Asiatic Allegories (or a3) series, an expansive group of paintings and prints in which Rozeal probes the complexities of cultural and gender identity. In these works Rozeal draws on myriad cultural and artistic traditions, including ukiyo-e printmaking from Japan’s Edo period (1600-1868), Noh and Kabuki theatre (1500s-present), current Japanese Ganguro subculture, American hip-hop culture, voguing, graffiti, and comic book motifs. Rozeal integrates a longtime fascination with Kabuki, geisha, and samurai traditions with her experience in Japan with Ganguro, a subculture of Japanese adolescents who idolize and imitate African-American rap stars by darkening their skin and adopting stereotypical hip-hop cultural tropes, such as ornate hairstyles, flamboyant jewelry, and designer clothing. Rozeal stylistically mimics Japanese traditions in the poses and robes of her geishas, but mixes it all up, spinning and remixing these varied sources with imagery that is fantastical and certainly beguiling. El Oso Me Pregunto depicts an arresting geisha, but why is its title in Spanish? Why the reference to el oso (“bear” in Spanish)? What does it all have to do with the quizzical comic book figure on the side? The seemingly fluid gender
roles evoked by this geisha layer in even more ambiguity. In traditional Kabuki theatre actors were always male; for female roles, men played women. Is the diva portrayed in El Oso Me Pregunto a male kabuki actor taking on the female geisha role? Is the figure actually a woman absorbing and imitating hiphop culture, or is this diva a contemporary persona in drag? Rozeal’s work is replete with such complex and ambiguous innuendos that comment on the fusion or collision of cultural heritages and the appropriation of African-American hip-hop in the construction of identity across global cultures, while also examining an increasingly complex gendered landscape. An African-American artist and DJ who lives in Washington, D.C., Rozeal has a bachelor of fine arts from the San Francisco Art Institute (1999) and a master of fine arts from Yale University (2002). Her work has been featured in one-person exhibitions at the Spellman College in Atlanta (2004), Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (2004), University of Arizona Art Museum (2007), Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (2010), and the Joselyn Art Museum (2014), in addition to gallery shows in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C. Her work is in numerous museum collections, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond; and the Yale University Art Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, among others.
Margo Ann Crutchfield Curator at Large
Rozeal El Oso Me Pregunto, 2016 Archival pigment print with gold leaf 40 x 30 inches Collection of the Weatherspoon Art Museum, UNC Greensboro; Museum purchase with funds by exchange from the Gift of Dr. Lenoir C. Wright, 2016 Image courtesy of the artist and Adamson Editions, Washington, D.C.
LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION
WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION
Guerrilla Girls
The artists Cheim & Read, New York Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri Krakow Witkin Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts Caren Golden, New York New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey Salon 94, New York Sprüth Magers, Berlin, Germany Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut Weatherspoon Art Museum, UNC Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina Private collections Jeanne and Dennis Masel Richard Price and Yung Chang
Chakaia Booker
Selections from The Art of Behaving Badly, 1985-2016 15 digital prints on Phototex Dimensions variable Courtesy of the artists © Guerrilla Girls
NOTES 1 Charlotta Kotik, Chakaia Booker New Sculptures. (New York: Malborough Gallery, 2001), np. 2 Chakaia Booker quoted in the 2000 Malborough Gallery exhibition press release 3 Rozeal originally quoted in Biters of Style, in Trace Magazine no. 43; requoted in the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art exhibition brochure iona rozeal brown: Matrix 152. Fierce Women is curated by Margo Ann Crutchfield, curator at Moss Arts Center. Our sincere appreciation to the following for their invaluable assistance and commitment to this exhibition: the artists; Jenny Holzer Studio and Alanna Gedgaudas, Esther Dörring, Andrew Witkin, Stephen Truax, Sarah Hutchins, Patricia Hickson, Mary Busick, Kimberly Terbush, Nancy Nichols, Laurie Adamson, Caren Golden, Andrea Pollan, Cheryl Numark, Sandy Davis, and Marianna Peragallo.
Competitive Engagement, 2019 Rubber tires and wood 31 x 28 x 12 inches Courtesy of the artist Strayed, 2019 Rubber tires and wood 64 x 62 x 60 inches Courtesy of the artist On & On & On, 2018 Rubber tires and wood 38 x 33 x 17 inches Courtesy of the artist
Guerrilla Girls images and projects 1985-2016, 2016 Video; 9-minute, 23-second loop Courtesy of the artists © Guerrilla Girls
Jenny Holzer
The Fatality of Hope, 2007 Rubber tires and wood 85 x 201 x 32 inches Courtesy of the artist
Pearl’s Truisms & Survival, 2013 LED sign with blue, green, and red diodes Text: Truisms, 1977-79; Survival, 1983–85 9.3 x 68.1 x 2.4 inches Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers, Berlin
Bitches Brew, 2002 Rubber, steel, and wood 45 x 45 x 41 inches Collection of the Newark Museum of Art Purchase 2003 Friends of American Art 2003.29
Purple Red Curve, 2005 LED sign with blue and red diodes Text: Arno, 1996; Blue, 1998 5.25 x 57.7 x 5.4 inches Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers, Berlin
Urban Townie, 2001 Rubber tire, metal, and wood 48 x 48 x 36 inches Collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, Museum Purchase Joseph Jones Family Foundation Fund, 2002.4
Arno Blue, 2005 LED sign with white diodes and stainless steel 76 7/8 x 5 ¼ x 3 inches Edition 5/6 Courtesy of the artist and Krakow Witkin Gallery, Boston
El Gato, 2001 Rubber tire and wood 48 x 42 x 42 inches Courtesy of Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection, Museum Purchase Enid and Crosby Kemper and William T. Kemper Acquisition Fund, 2004
Arno, 2005 LED sign with blue diodes, housing, and bezel Text: Arno, 1996 5 x 76.9 x 2.4 inches Edition 1/6 Collection of Jeanne and Dennis Masel Courtesy of Cheim & Read, New York
Marilyn Minter Smash, 2014 HD digital video 7-minute, 55-second loop Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York Produced by Marilyn Minter, Brooklyn Museum and Salon 94, New York Smash, 2014 (still image) Digital print Dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York Studs, 2005 Digital print Exhibition copy Dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York Splish Splash, 2005 Digital print Exhibition copy Dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York
Rozeal El Oso Me Pregunto, 2016 Archival pigment print with gold leaf 40 x 30 inches Collection of the Weatherspoon Art Museum, UNC Greensboro Museum purchase with funds by exchange from the Gift of Dr. Lenoir C. Wright, 2016 a3 blackface #70, 2004 Acrylic on paper 50 x 38 inches Collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut African American Art Purchase Fund a3 blackface #59, 2003 Acrylic on paper 49 3/4 x 38 inches Collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Lindley T. Smith, 2004.67 Untitled 1 (female), 2003 Color screen print 34 ¾ x 27 ¼ inches Edition of 35 Collection of Caren Golden, New York a3 series #67 Acrylic on paper 50 x 38 inches Collection of Richard Price and Yung Chang
Rozeal a3blackface #59, 2003 Acrylic on paper 49 ¾ x 38 inches Collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Lindley T. Smith Photo: Katherine Wetzel
MsREPRESENTATION Join us in the galleries for a variety of lively, substantive, and evocative talks, discussions, and events that explore women’s voices and themes within the exhibition, including women in art history, issues of representation and inclusion, and a series of events in celebration of the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in America. Please visit artscenter.vt.edu for details about new events throughout the duration of the Fierce Women exhibition. All events are free.
Thursday, January 30, 5-7 PM OPENING RECEPTION Grand Lobby Refreshments provided Thursday, February 13, 6 PM Art Herstory Talk Series, Part I: Women in the Ancient World With Ann-Marie Knoblauch Miles C. Horton Jr. Gallery Approximately 30 minutes Saturday, February 15, 2 PM & 3:15 PM Saturday, March 21, 2 PM & 3:15 PM Saturday, April 18, 2 PM & 3:15 PM OPEN GALLERY TOURS: FIERCE WOMEN Grand Lobby Approximately 45 minutes Thursday, February 27, 6 PM Art Herstory Talk Series, Part II: Women in the Renaissance and the Early Modern Era With Michelle Moseley-Christian Miles C. Horton Jr. Gallery Approximately 30 minutes
Friday, March 20, 4 PM THE CORSET UNLACED A Conversation with Valerie Steele, Ph.D. Cube Approximately 90 minutes Thursday, April 2, 6 PM Art Herstory Talk Series, Part III: Women in Art of Our Times With Margo Ann Crutchfield Ruth C. Horton Gallery, first floor Approximately 30 minutes Thursday, April 9, 6 PM Bijing-ga: Women in Japanese Prints With Michelle Moseley-Christian Sherwood Payne Quillen ‘71 Reception Gallery, second floor Approximately 30 minutes
Gallery Hours Monday–Friday, 10 AM–5:30 PM Saturday, 10 AM–4 PM All gallery events are free. To schedule a tour or class visit, please contact Meggin Hicklin, exhibitions program manager, at megh79@vt.edu
For more information about exhibitions and events: artscenter.vt.edu
@artscenteratvt #attheMAC
Chakaia Booker El Gato, 2001 (detail) Rubber tire and wood 48 x 42 x 42 inches Courtesy of Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection, Museum Purchase Enid and Crosby Kemper and William T. Kemper Acquisition Fund, 2004 © Chakaia Booker, Photo by E.G. Schempf, 2017