PAT STEIR CREATES PANORAMIC
INSTALLATION FOR CINCINNATI
AT THE CONTEMPORARYARTSCENTER
Cincinnati, OH – Noted
artist Pat Steir will transform a
vast trapezoidal gallery within the ContemporaryArtsCenter (CAC)into an immersive environment of her famous poured paint.
The work will be on view from May 22 through August 22, 2010.
In Water & Stone, Steir treats the over 1800 square-foot gallery space
at the CAC, located in the Lois & Richard
Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art designed by Zaha Hadid, as if it
were a canvas, painting the surfaces and creating one of her signature waterfalls directly
on a 24-ft. tall wall at
the end of the gallery.Raphaela Platow, the Alice & Harris Weston Director and Chief Curator
of the CAC, explains “This site specific installation is an experimental
reflection of sorts, one that synthesizes many of the forms of expression Pat
has pioneered in a career extending more than four decades.”The project allows Steir, one of the nation’s most esteemed artists
a celebrated and established figure in the art world, to interact with a
singular architectural space for the first time. The result is envisioned by
the artist to be a dark, mysterious work of complex interplay between wall
paintings, conventionally hung paintings, paintings conceived as
three-dimensional objects, and diaphanous scrim paintings.
Immediately upon entering the
installation, visitors encounter a wall-sized, concavely curved panoramic waterfall
painting which leads them into a windowless space of blue and black. Amid the
darkness, light animates three diaphanous scrims of waterfalls. On other
surfaces the shifting light will reveal shapes and marks such as rectangles,
moons, frets and scratches. “I hope this becomes confusing,” says Steir, “as
visitors see paintings appear and disappear into a perpetual dark, it will be
like a nocturnal underwater experience.”
Wind &
Stone is the culmination of a long line of inquiry by Steir. Among the
predecessors to this project are works such as Panorama at the Newcastle Biennale, Newcastle, England (1990); her
installation at Documenta IX, Kassel, Germany (1992); and Likity Split at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
(1998).
About the Artist
Born Iris Patricia Sukoneck in
1940 in Newark, New Jersey, Pat Steir has been a working artist for over 40
years. Her work has been the subject of many museum exhibitions, including solo
shows at The Brooklyn
Museum (1984) and The New Museum (1987), which traveled in the U.S.
and Europe. Among the public collections holding artwork by Steir are The Metropolitan
Museum of Art (New York), Museum of
Modern Art (New York), National
Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum (New York), The Tate (London) and Whitney
Museum of American Art (New York).
As well as achieving notoriety for
installation work, painting, and drawing, Steir is an important
printmaker—working with Crown Point Press and Pace Editions. Crown Point Press
began publishing her prints in 1977 and a print retrospective at the Cabinet
des Estampes in Geneva traveled to The Tate in 1990.
In 1990 Steir received an honorary
Ph.D. from Pratt Institute. In 2001 she received an Alumni Achievement Award
from Boston University and in 2008 she received one from Pratt Institute. Steir has taught art at Parsons School of
Design, PrincetonUniversity, HunterCollege
and at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). She currently lives and
works in New York and Amsterdam.
