Until April 8, 2012
1000 Holt Avenue
Winter Park, FL 32789-4499
Leigh-Ann Pahapill: Likewise, as technical experts, but not (at all) by way of culture, on exhibition at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum through April 8, 2012
The work of Canadian artist Leigh-Ann Pahapill questions how we apprehend our world and investigates the frameworks that shape how we come to know things. For this site-specific installation at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, entitled Likewise, as technical experts, but not (at all) by way of culture, Pahapill has created replicas of several props designed by Austrian-German scenographer Caspar Neher and used in four of Bertolt Brecht’s theatrical productions from 1926–1962. As is typical in Pahapill’s work, the boundaries between the installed objects and the gallery space are blurred in a pattern of response and articulation between sculpture and architecture. In this installation, which includes painting, wall drawing, monumental sculpture, video, and photography, Pahapill combines her objects with careful studies of the museum’s McKean gallery, incorporating institutional processes and the materials of preparatory work directly into the installation. Her work engages the space and the intricacies of the museum to understand how we conceive our worlds, bringing fragments, events, and ideas into tenable meaning. “There is a structural logic that integrates the objects on view,” essayist Lisa Zaher observes, “from tree, to signpost, to balcony, a sequence emerges, one that moves from nature to culture and from matter to idea.” In Pahapill’s work, the objects on view grow to include the gallery, the encounter with the objects themselves, and the process of cognition. The artist asks us to reflect upon the degree to which predetermined ideas, concepts, and ways of framing are already embedded in acts of looking.
CFAM, who organized the exhibition, invited Pahapill to be the inaugural artist-in-residence in a new, ongoing series of collaborations across disciplines. The exhibition has been made possible with the support of the Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the Toronto Arts Council and is sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture. Rollins College’s Thomas P. Johnson Distinguished Visiting Scholars and Artists Fund subsidized the artist’s campus visits. An exhibition poster and a fully-illustrated exhibition catalogue, with texts by New York-based independent artist and writer David Court and Chicago-based art historian Lisa Zaher, are available to museum visitors free of charge. An interdisciplinary panel discussion, whose participants included the artist, art critics and art historians, and professors of history, critical media and cultural studies, philosophy, and photography, took place on January 28, 2012. The overall curator of the exhibition is Jonathan Frederick Walz, Curator and Interim Director, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College. Dawn Roe, Assistant Professor of Art, Rollins College, curated the photographs and videos in the installation.
Located on the campus of Rollins College near downtown Winter Park, CFAM is open Tuesday–Friday, 10 a.m.–4 p.m., and Saturday & Sunday, 12–5 p.m. Admission is $5.00 for adults. Free to CFAM members, Rollins College faculty and staff, all students with current ID, and children. For additional information, please call 407.646.2526 or visit cfam.rollins.edu to see a complete listing of exhibitions and events at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum.
Founded in 1885, Rollins College is Florida’s oldest recognized college, and is consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report as one of “America’s Best Colleges.” Rollins offers full-time undergraduate programs in the liberal arts. Rollins’s Evening Program, the Hamilton Holt School, serves the Central Florida community by offering exceptional undergraduate and graduate degree programs during evenings and weekends to students diverse in age, experience, and professional development. The Crummer Graduate School of Business is ranked a top MBA program by Forbes and Bloomberg Businessweek. For more information about Rollins, visit www.rollins.edu.
