Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate the Still Life Tradition
21 September - 3 November 2022
Rowe Arts Gallery University of North Carolina, Charlotte
Nature Morte seeks to illustrate how leading artists of the 21st century have reinvigorated still life, a genre previously synonymous with the 16th and 17th centuries. This major exhibition will be one of the largest ever presented at the Rowe Gallery at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte with works displayed by artists including Gabriel Orozco, Wayne Thiebaud and Jennifer Steinkamp.
The exhibition is hopefully the first stop on an American tour, after a much lauded European one including London’s Guildhall, and the Museum of Contemporary Art at the newly modernised 1913 Four Dome Pavillion in Wroclaw Poland. In each venue historic works were borrowed from local museums to compliment those that form the spine of the exhibition coming from London. In Charlotte the curators have added historical and contemporary works from local sources and from artists nationwide. The show will exhibit works from the traditional topics of still-life: flora, fauna, the domestic object, food and vanitas.
The still life, or nature morte, has been a constant subject throughout the history of art, its significance changing over time. As an independent genre of painting, the still life came into its own in the mid- seventeenth century when the Flemish term stilleven first came to be applied to oil paintings characterised by their tight focus on an assortment of objects sitting on a flat surface. Nature Morte is very different in tone from exhibitions we would usually expect to see at Guildhall with over 100 pieces from different disciplines going beyond the two-dimensional, including sculpture, digital, and sound.
Nature Morte displays a visually enticing selection of artworks as viewers are confronted with the questions, what is real and what is representative. The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) London is excited to be bringing the exhibition to America in September 2022. The exhibition is based on chief curator Dr. Michael Petry’s book of the same name which brings together for the first time, the poignant, provocative re-imaginings of the traditional still life by over 180 international contemporary artists including David Hockney, John Currin, Sherrie Levine, Reena Saini Kallat, Damien Hirst, Gerhard Richter, and Ai Wei Wei.
The book and exhibition explore the timeless themes of life, death and the irrevocable passing of time in works that invite us to pause and reconsider what it means to be human. The book is published by Thames & Hudson in hardback and paperback and will be available at the exhibition.
Artists included in the exhibition: Peter Abrahams * Elizabeth Alexander * Sue Arrowsmith * Elizabeth Arzani * Annie Attridge Conrad Bakker * John Banting * Berthold Bell * Jan Kjetil Bjørheim * Elaine Bradford * Per Christian Brown * Christopher Clamp * Museum Clausum * Mat Collishaw * Marcus Cope * MyLoan Dinh Roberto Ekholm * Saara Ekström * Linda Foard Roberts * Nick Fox * Ori Gersht * Rigoberto A. Gonzalez * Cynthia Greig * Martin Gustavsson * David Halliday * Jefferson Hayman * Paul Hazelton Todd Hebert * Renata Hegyi * Jill Hotchkiss * Bill Jacobson * Darren Jones * Peter Jones * Edward Kay * Holly Keogh * Rob Kesseler * Sally Kindberg * Debora Koo * Alana Lake * Robert Lazzarini Andrew Leventis * Janne Malmros * Carol Marin-Pache * Nils-Erik Mattsson * Caroline McCarthy Jaydan Moore * Polly Morgan * Peter Glenn Oakley * Dermot O’Brien * Gabriel Orozco *Guillaume Paris * Michael Petry * Philip Pirolo * Victoria Reynolds * Eric Rhein * Miho Sato * Rebecca Scott Andro Semeiko * Jane Simpson * Colin Smith * Rob Smith * Jennifer Steinkamp * Richard Stone Donald Sultan * Robert The * Wayne Thiebaud * Gavin Turk * Jeffrey Vallance * Mathew Weir Kraig Wilson
Curatorial team: MOCA London: Dr Michael Petry and Roberto Ekholm Rowe Gallery: Adam Justice and Andrew Leventis