The Aspen Art Museum presents an exhibition of the large-scale, photo-based work of artist Huma Bhabha
December 13, 2011 by All Art News
Filed under Art Events & Exhibitions
ASPEN, CO.- The Aspen Art Museum presents an exhibition of large-scale, photo- based works from 2010 and 2011 by artist Huma Bhabha, on view from Thursday, December 8, 2011, through Sunday, February 5, 2012.
Huma Bhabha is well known for her visceral, assemblage-based sculptures. Built of cast-off materials, Bhabha’s sculptures are figurative, often taking the form of conventional classical genres like portrait busts and drawn from an eclectic range of influences and art-historical references ranging from classical and African sculpture to the works of modernists like Picasso, Brancusi, and Giacometti. The sculptures also recall elements of the dystopic pop cultural visions of science fiction writers like Philip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard.
- Huma Bhabha, Untitled, 2011. Ink, acrylic paint, and collage on c-print, 80 x 50 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York. Image: Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York.
Bhabha’s Aspen Art Museum exhibition focuses exclusively on a series of large-scale, painted and collaged photographs. Beginning with photographs she has taken of desolate landscapes and abandoned construction sites in disparate locations, Bhabha layers hallucinatory streaks of ink in saturated colors and sharp, gestural figuration that lend the works the same spontaneity and raw materiality as her sculptures. Often combining figuration and landscape, Bhabha offers the viewer a state of ruin that is neither past, present, nor future. The materials within the work allude both to decay and trauma while connoting reuse and rebirth through the creative process.
Huma Bhabha was born in 1962 in Karachi, Pakistan, and currently lives and works in Poughkeepsie, New York. Recently, she was included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial and participated in an exhibition of sculpture at City Hall Park in New York organized by the Public Art Fund. In 2008 she participated in the 7th Gwangju Biennale in Gwangju, Korea, and received the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum Emerging Artist Award. Her work has been widely exhibited internationally, including in group exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium; MoMA PS1, New York; Royal Academy of Arts, London; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and Arena Mexico Arte Contemporaneo in Guadalajara, Mexico.
http://www.galleristny.com/2011/12/aspen-art-museum-denies-leader-occupy-aspen-12162011/
Aspen Art Museum Forbids Leader of Occupy Aspen to Enter Property
By Michael H. Miller 11:17am
Aspen Art Museum.
Lee Mulcahy, an artist and the leader behind the Occupy Aspen movement, has been told by police that he can no longer set foot on the site of the future home of the redesigned Aspen Art Museum. Museum officials told the Aspen Times that Mr. Mulcahy had “replaced museum signs with his own signs,” posting “for sale” signs on trailers on the property.
Mr. Mulcahy denies this, though he admitted to posting different signs at an earlier time. Police have not charged him with anything, but an Aspen police officer did have this to say: “I made it very clear to Mulcahy that he was not allowed to return to the Art Museum property or else he would be arrested for trespassing, and Mulcahy told me that he understood and would not go onto the property again.”
Aspen, a wealthy town popular with celebrities as a vacationing destination, is not really the place where one would expect people to be big fans of the shenanigans of the 99 percent. Occupy Aspen, by the way, sounds like a pretty humble affair. Mr Mulcahy refers to the movement in the Aspen Times as “all 8 of us.”
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topics: Occupy, Aspen Art Museum
http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20111217/LETTER/111219888/1020&parentprofile=1061
Dear Editor:
Since the Aspen Art Museum director has seen fit to open an attack against Lee Mulcahy, I will take this opportunity to confess to being the person who hung the two “For Sale” signs on the tractor trailers that were parked on the vacant lot (construction site) where the Wienerstube used to stand.
The signs were two 81⁄2- by 11-inch sheets of copy paper Scotch-taped with two strips of tape on each computer-printed sheet. I thought that this would be an amusing way to call attention to this extremely disliked project that has been forced upon our cityscape.
I do not know Mr. Mulcahy, and I do not know what he did to incur the wrath of the Art Museum director, but please do not condemn him for my actions.
Having cleared the record regarding whatever minor incidents occurred, I am offended by Madam Director’s branding these actions as “cowardly.” She, who engineered the slimy, underhanded, backroom blackmailing (or worse?) of City Council, in order to hide her project from the scrutiny of the public approval process, is the true coward.
I know that brevity is always more effective than wordiness, but I cannot avoid reminding the people of Aspen that your mayor and his City Council ignored more than 1,500 signed pleas to not approve the project without review.
The Art Museum summer program for their lot was very pleasant. The paper house offered shade, the pingpong amenity was fun, and the sod lawn was a pleasant, cool, green space that will be totally missing from the finished project. I am surprised that no one thought to camp out on the site.
I am sorry about the rant, but people don’t usually refer to me as a coward.
Richie Cohen
Aspen