Guild Hall bursts into its summer exhibitions on Saturday when the East Hampton museum holds Opening Receptions for four new exhibitions. Getting its season started with a bang, all four shows feature strong work worth seeing. The reception for all takes place from 4 to 6 p.m. on June 27.
Exhibitions being celebrated are the "Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies (FAPE)" curated by Robert Storr; "Billy Rayner"; the interactive installation Criss~Crossing the Divine by Nina Yankowitz; and "Arlene Slavin: Intersections", an outdoor installation of colored translucent sculptures and recent paintings.
The headliner of the quartet is "Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies (FAPE)". The exhibition of prints is guest curated by Robert Storr, Chairman of FAPE’s Professional Fine Arts Committee and Dean of the Yale School of Art. Immediately preceding the opening, from 3 to 4 p.m., Storr will lead a panel discussion on the "Role of the Artist" featuring artists Tina Barney, Lynda Benglis, Chuck Close, Joel Shapiro and Carrie Mae Weems.
FAPE contributes to the U.S. Department of State’s mission of cultural diplomacy by partnering with American artists whose work encourages cross-cultural understanding within the diplomatic community and the international public. Each year, an American artist contributes a print for display in U.S. Embassies.
The Guild Hall exhibition includes works by some of America's acclaimed artists from FAPE’s Original Print, Photography and Site-Specific Collections. The artist list is extensive.
Artists expected to attend the opening include Tina Barney, Lynda Benglis, Chuck Close, Sidney Felsen, Donald Gummer, Ilya Kabakov, Emilia Kabakov, Ellen Phelan, Dorothea Rockburne, Joel Shapiro; Carrie Mae Weems, Joni Weyl, Elyn Zimmerman and others.
FAPE is non-profit organization that provides permanent works of American art for U.S. embassies worldwide. This includes site-specific commissions, preservation projects and its original print and photography collection.
"Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies (FAPE)" opened on June 21 and remains on view through July 27, 2014.
"Domicile" by Robert Rauschenberg, 1996. Lithograph, 41 x 27 1/8 inches. Gift of the artist to the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies.
Continuing the concentration on prints is "Billy Rayner". The exhibition presents prints of watercolors that illustrate Rayner’s book Notes and Sketches: Travel Journals of William P. Rayner.
Notes and Sketches: Travel Journals of William P. Rayner is a collection of musings, paintings and memorabilia exploring over three decades of travel in Africa and India. Rayner traveled extensively and made watercolor paintings all the way. Rayner's work has been exhibited extensively, including the summer show at the Royal Academy.
"Billy Rayner" opened on June 21 and remains on view through July 27, 2014.
"Market" by Billy Rayner.
Nina Yankowitz's Criss~Crossing the Divine is an interactive installation that uses technology to allow people to explore the relative perspectives of sacred texts. Scriptures from the Old Testament, New Testament, The Quran, Buddhist and Hindu texts are color-coded to easily identify "searched perspectives" to later reveal the root religions of their interests.
The installation is based on the belief that most conflicts are fueled by religious intolerance, according to Guild Hall. "Politicians often use religion as a theme to divide people and camouflage actual party platform issues, albeit philosophies reflected in the original scriptures are, at their core, not very different from each other," states Yankowitz in a museum release.
Criss~Crossing the Divine by Nina Yankowitz opened on June 21 and remains on view through July 27, 2014.
"Exploding Texts - Criss~Crossing the Divine" by Nina Yankowitz. Photo courtesy of the artist.
"Arlene Slavin Intersections" presents an outdoor exhibition of new sculpture plus recent paintings. The geometric works in Slavin's Intersection series are constructed from translucent colored materials and designed (and sited) to cast shadow images that change with the movement of the sun.
Accompanying the sculptures are recent paintings from the Intersection series. Slavin work has been included in the 1976 Whitney Biennial and is part of permanent collections held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harvard's Fogg Art Museum and corporate clients. She has installed over 30 public sculptures.
"Arlene Slavin: Intersections" opened on May 23 and remains on view through October 13.
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"Intersections-Gardens #1" by Arlene Slavin. Stainless steel frame, stainless steel wire, and PVC vinyl strips. Photo by Arlene Slavin.
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BASIC FACTS: Guild Hall Museum is located at 158 Main Street, East Hampton, NY 11937. www.GuildHall.org.
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