Seventh Annual Nohl Fellowship Exhibition Opens at Inova, 10/8

The Institute of Visual Arts (Inova) at the UWM Peck School of the Arts opens an exhibition of work by the artists who received the Greater Milwaukee Foundation's Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists in 2009. The Nohl Fellowship exhibition opens on Friday, October 8, 2010 at Inova/Kenilworth, 2155 N. Prospect Ave. It brings together work by two artists selected in the Established Artist category: Peter Barrickman and Harvey Opgenorth; and two artists selected in the Emerging Artist category: Kim Miller and John Riepenhoff. For the first time in the history of the Nohl Fellowship program, the exhibition will also include several works that are the result of a year-long collaboration among the artists.

The four Fellows were chosen in October 2009 by a panel of three jurors: Brooklyn-based artist Jennie C. Jones; Toby Kamps, then senior curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (now curator of modern and contemporary art at The Menil Collection, Houston); and Barbara Wiesen, director and curator of the Gahlberg Gallery in the McAninch Arts Center at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

Inova will host a reception to honor the Nohl Fellows on Friday, October 8, from 5-8 pm.Two of the 2009 jurors, Toby Kamps and Barbara Wiesen, will be in attendance. The 2009 Nohl Fellows will offer live performances throughout the evening.

Seven additional events have been scheduled in conjunction with the Nohl exhibition. All of these events are free. A series of four Thursday evening events emerged from the Fellows' collaboration; the other events include a lecture and a screening. An exhibition catalogue will be available for purchase in the gallery during the opening and throughout the exhibition.

Gallery hours are Wednesday & Friday-Sunday, 12 noon to 5 pm; Thursday 12 noon-8 pm. The exhibition remains on view through December 12, 2010. Inova/Kenilworth will be open on Gallery Night and Day, October 15 and 16. (Please see Additional Information section below, for details and a complete schedule of ancillary events.)

Established Artists

Peter Barrickman
Peter Barrickman's paintings use a variety of small stories to speak universally. He invites detours in the way he works: "My starting point," according to Barrickman, "was to make narrative paintings by mashing up John Divola's book Continuity with Roman Polanski's Fearless Vampire Killers along with Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, some ideas about current academic art routines and the Shorewood rapids. That's where things started but not at all where they finished." The pieces combine drawing, painting and collage, and they share a set of rules (black and white, linear perspective, combination of materials) that are simultaneously disregarded. Barrickman sums it up: "In this work (among other things) we can see that weather is the boss of art history, painters are entombed by personal fascinations and black sunlight is creeping into a mausoleum of clip art."

Barrickman was born in Arizona in 1971. Over the years he has worked with installation, painting, set design, film, animation, performance and music. His work has been shown around the US, in Mexico, and Europe. This year his work was included in Paintings from England and America at Crisp London, No Soul for Sale at the Tate Modern and Halbjahresgaben 2010 at Tanzschuleprojects, Munich. He earned a BFA in film from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an MFA in painting from Bard College. He was a resident artist at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, CentralTrak in Dallas and the Millay Colony in Austerlitz, New York. His work has been reviewed in Art Papers, Street Cave and Art Lies. Barrickman is represented in Milwaukee by the Green Gallery.

Peter Barrickman's ancillary event, New Informal Salmagundi, is scheduled for December 9, 2010 at Inova.

Harvey Opgenorth
Harvey Opgenorth's work for the Nohl exhibition examines our visual values and the varieties of awareness. "What are we paying attention to?" he asks. "Why is it valued?" His minimal facades and conceptual gestures are meant to elicit questions from the viewer and to engage them in a conversation with the artist. With Liminal Visual Threshold (a two-dimensional black shape that defines the boundary of vision and which the artist describes as "a universal humanistic shape that is also deeply personal"), Opgenorth invites the viewer to approach until the black mass totally encompasses their field of vision, transforming the flat work into a kind of void. In Spasm of Starlight he reduces the celebrity phenomenon to a series of rapid and random flashes. Objet Trouvé, as its subtitle, Accidental Awareness, suggests, explores accidental -- or even a total lack of -- awareness. Opgenorth has collected a series of high visibility traffic signs that, as their dents prove, tend to disappear into the background until the moment of collision.

Harvey Opgenorth has produced a potent and provocative body of work that continually challenges us to assess the efficacy of our own two eyes," writes Jennifer Krasinski in her catalogue essay. "Opgenorth's intentions are acute-to reveal the neglected sites of sight-but his work possesses both a humor and generosity that position his ethos closer to that of a guide than a guru."

Harvey Opgenorth received a BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in 1999 and studied at Parsons School of Design. He is a founding member of The Rust Spot, a Milwaukee artist collaborative, and is the 4th corner of the WhiteBoxPainters. In 2006 he was invited to speak at an international conference, "Camouflage: Art, Science, and Popular Culture," at the University of Northern Iowa. Opgenorth has shown in solo, group and collaborative exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Kalamazoo, Finland and Spain. His works reside in Microsoft's Permanent Collection and have been auctioned at Christie's.

Other People's Vacations, Harvey Opgenorth's ancillary event, is scheduled for November 11, 2010 at Inova.

Emerging Artists

Kim Miller
In Thinking in Action, Kim Miller brings together new videos, objects and texts to consider action, language, and the possible existence of a democratic subject. The videos are shown intimately, on monitors, and are meant to be seen up close. Some of the objects shown inform the videos, others hold their own. Texts include scripts from performances, videos and lectures, as well as several new works.

Sharon Hayes, in her catalogue essay, writes this: "Probing a set of questions around the nature of communicative acts, the constitution of self and the profound possibility inherent in an exchange around and through a work of art, Kim's work asks, What is a political action? How does one act with conviction? How does the labor of a body moving in front of us help us grasp the other moments in which we labor: labor to understand each other, labor to keep ourselves and our families secure? Can a piece of art open up a radical democratic space in which the speaker and the listener can both access a kind of agency?" Miller, she continues, "places us in an exceptionally vibrant space of possibility. A space in which we can rehearse for future communications, for future moments of recognition as well as future moments of misidentification, future moments of constraint and future moments of fully-realized freedom."

Kim Miller holds a BFA from Cooper Union and an MFA from Vermont College. Her work has been shown in Milwaukee, New York, Helsinki and Bangkok, among other places. Interests include stand-up comedy, modern dance, ballet, performance and more.

Kim Miller will offer a talk entitled Thinking in Action on the Artists Now! lecture series on October 20, 2010 in the UWM Arts Lecture Hall. Her gallery event, Open Casting Call for Audience, takes place on November 4, 2010 at Inova. She will be joined by current and former Nohl fellows John Riepenhoff and Xav Leplae in a screening on November 30, 2010 in the UWM Union Theatre.

John Riepenhoff
John Riepenhoff's work is "an attempt to share how I see art: through a system of networks and socio-economic structures mediated by popular notions of the subject and other unexpected variables." He is constantly exploring art and audience, the many layers between the artist and the viewer, and the ways in which the casual observer can be drawn into the art experience. "Riepenhoff's art experiments, because they straddle the border between platform and art object," Piper Marshall writes in her catalogue essay, "stress the necessity of a community." But by giving shape to "an otherwise intangible set of connections," they also remind us of the precariousness of the relationship between individual and community.

At Inova, Riepenhoff will be ceding curatorial control of his miniature gallery, The John Riepenhoff Experience, to Agatha Wara (Bolivia), Fuminao Sugenaga (Japan) and Piper Marshall (New York), each of whom will organize a group show in one of the tiny spaces. Riepenhoff will also show his Art Stands, which provide an art handler's view of the art world, and works from a new series of night-time plein air paintings.

John Riepenhoff is an artist, curator, gallery director, art fair co-organizer and inventor of artistic platforms for the expression of others. Riepenhoff opened the Green Gallery while still an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His first solo show, Group Show, took place in 2010 at the Jackpot Gallery in Milwaukee, and his work and projects have been presented at the Tate Modern and Frieze Art Fair (London); Gavin Brown's Enterprise and the Swiss Institute (New York); Angstrom Gallery and Ooga Booga (Los Angeles); Tokyo 101 Art Fair (Tokyo); Kölnischer Kunstverein (Cologne); Karma International (Zurich); Fredric Snitzer Gallery (Miami); The Suburban (Oak Park, Illinois); Madison Museum of Contemporary Art; Milwaukee Art Museum, Dean Jensen Gallery, and Small Space (Milwaukee). Most recently, he completed a 2010 Summer Studio Residency at the Sullivan Galleries, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and opened a meta-gallery at Pepin Moore in Los Angeles, where he is regularly programming a John Riepenhoff Experience.

John Riepenhoff's ancillary event, Interview with Artist (or Something Musical), takes place at Inova on November 18, 2010.

Nohl Exhibition Additional Information

Contact Information:
Institute of Visual Arts (Inova)
UWM Peck School of the Arts
Phone: (414) 229-5070
Email: inova@uwm.edu
web: arts.uwm.edu/inova

Gallery Location and Hours:
Inova/Kenilworth
Kenilworth Square East, 2155 North Prospect Avenue, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202
Hours: Wednesday & Friday-Sunday, 12 noon-5 pm; Thursdays, 12 noon-8 pm.

October 8-December 12, 2010
Greater Milwaukee Foundation's Mary L. Nohl Fund
Fellowships for Individual Artists 2009 Exhibition

Established Artists
Peter Barrickman
Harvey Opgenorth

Emerging Artists
Kim Miller
John Riepenhoff

Opening reception: October 8, 5-8 pm
Live performances by the 2009 Nohl Fellows throughout the evening.

Nohl Exhibition Ancillary Events
These programs take place at Inova/Kenilworth unless otherwise noted. They are free and open to the public.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010 at 7pm
Department of Art & Design: Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series - Kim Miller: Thinking in Action
Arts Center Lecture Hall, 2400 E. Kenwood Blvd.
Free
Action and language are determined by a public, and the public appears where action and language come together. Action determines our identity, at least in public. If what we do in public determines who we are to a public, what happens on the dance floor? How does action determine a subject, can you win a football game by standing still, and can stand-up comedy be considered action? 2009 Nohl Fellow Kim Miller asks these and other questions when she visits the Artists Now! lecture series.
Information: (414) 229-6052 or arts.uwm.edu/artistsnow.

Thursday, October 28, 2010 at 6 pm
Talks by 2010 Nohl Jurors
Free
The three jurors who will be selecting the seven recipients of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation's Mary L. Nohl Fund for Individual Artists Fellowships (2010)-Sheryl Conkelton, an art historian, curator and writer based in Philadelphia; Nathan Lee, a critic and curator based in New York; and Lucía Sanromán, associate curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego--will give a public talk about their institutions and curatorial interests.

Thursday Evening Events
The 2009 Nohl Fellows offer a series of Thursday evening events in the gallery that demonstrate the collaborative spirit of this year's awardees. While each event is conceived and organized by an individual, all of the events are implemented collectively. Expect live performance, interactivity, hands-on activities, music and more!
Events begin at 6:30 pm and are free.
Nov. 4 - Open Casting Call for Audience (Kim Miller)
Nov. 11 - Other People's Vacations (Harvey Opgenorth)
Nov. 18 - Interview with Artist (or Something Musical) (John Riepenhoff)
Dec. 9 - New Informal Salmagundi (Peter Barrickman)

November 30, 2010 at 7 pm
Locally Grown/The Nohl Fellows: Kim Miller & Friends
UWM Union Theatre, 2200 E. Kenwood Blvd.
Free
A program featuring the video work of Kim Miller, a current recipient of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation's Mary L. Nohl Fund for Individual Artists Fellowship, and offered in conjunction with the Nohl Fellowship exhibition at Inova/Kenilworth (arts.uwm.edu/inova). Tonight's program will feature works by Kim Miller as well as current and past Nohl Fellows.

Miller will show videos created during her year as a Nohl Fellow. Her work moves between performance and video, negotiating the individual and the group. Using a vocabulary borrowed from dance, stand-up comedy and acting, her work explores the possibility of the democratic subject or not.Works will include: A List of Benefits, Untitled [Stand-Up 2010], Arendt's Staircase, There's No Business, Sing, Sing, Sing [Labanotation Recreation] and more.

John Riepenhoff will screen Shaman (2010, digital video, 8 min.), a documentary that catches an artist in the act of creating. Riepenhoff asks: Where do we find meaning in our world and how do we decide what to do with our time? Xav Leplae screens The Misanthrope (2010, 35mm, 7 min.), filmed at the opening of the 2008 Nohl Fellowship exhibition in the fall of 2009.In an October 2009 mention of this film--before it completely existed--Kat Murrell wrote in Thirdcoast Digest: "Filmmaker Xav Leplae described his presence in the gallery as Leplae's The Shooting of the Misanthrope, a shootformancetallation..." This program is co-presented by Inova.
Information: (414) 229-4070 or uniontheatre.uwm.edu.

 

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