Gallery season begins with 'Sleeping Giants'

Kicking off the 2010-2011 season, the Rowan University Art Gallery presents “Heavy Breathing/Sleeping Giants” from August 30 – October 2, 2010. A reception will be help on Thursday, September 16 from 5:30 to 7 pm.

“Heavy Breathing” is a presentation of Max Streicher’s inflatable soft kinetic sculptures called sleeping giants. As described in an essay by Gordon Hatt, Sleeping Giants has “brought together the phenomenology of the physical body. The giants in their great mass heaved and sighed to the timed intervals of the fans. Lying on their backs and sides, heads rose from the floor, legs stiffened, chests inflated, only to relax again as if in some futile attempt to get out of bed or off the couch. The giants recalled the body as gross anatomy – of a soul trapped within spoilable flesh – the dispirited body, incapable of action because of the sentiment of futility. The giants also recalled the tragic body – the self-perpetuating machine – needy, voracious, desiring, independent of consciousness and will.”

Streicher takes the inflatable – the prepubescent symbol of wonder and tragedy (balloons, soap bubbles, inflatable toys) – and rehabilitates it and gives it an adult life. He has done this not by stripping the inflatable of those characteristics that appeal to children, but by probing those aspects that are fundamental to understanding one’s self.

About his work, Streicher has said, "My intention is to overwhelm the gallery space and impose on the viewer a sense of scale like that which a toddler might experience. I am attempting to recreate a situation like that of childhood encounters with humongous snow banks or haystacks; structures that invite a physical exuberance which in turn leads the imagination . . . In this work I want to physically embrace the viewer within a tension between pleasure and threat, enchantment and self-reflexive awareness."

A sculptor and installation artist from Alberta, Canada, Streicher now resides in Toronto. Since 1989, he has worked extensively with inflatable technology in kinetic sculptures and installation works. He has shown widely across Canada in solo exhibitions at museums such as The Art Gallery of Ontario, Edmonton Art Gallery and Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon. He has been part of group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto, Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montreal and Power Plant Centre for Contemporary Art in Toronto. He has completed site-related projects in such places as Taichung, Taiwan; Erfurt, Germany; and Prague, Czech Republic. His inflatable works are in the collections at the ESSL Museum in Vienna, Hara Museum in Tokyo and Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton. He was a founding member of the Nethermind collective of artists in Toronto (1991 – 1995) and is currently represented by Galerie Raquel Ponce in Madrid, Galerie Eric Mircher in Paris, Gallery Maskara in Mumbai, Felix Ringle Galerie in Düsseldorf, Ricco/Maresca Gallery in New York and Wagner + Partner in Berlin.

Heavy Breathing/ Sleeping Giants is the first in a series of exhibitions at the Rowan gallery that explores the body as a theme in contemporary art.  The series will go on to explore this theme from a variety of viewpoints including gender stereotypes regarding the female form, identity, the vulnerable body, the body as an individual that seeks and desires attention and control, and the body as self reflective and emotional. Works will include video, performance, painting, photography and sculpture.

“THE FEMINIST RESPONSIBILITY PROJECT (PART 1)”

March 21 – May 14, 2011

Admission to exhibits and receptions is free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday – Friday, 10 am to 5 pm, and Saturday, 12 to 5 pm. For more information, call 856-256-4521 or visit www.rowan.edu/fpa/artgallery. Rowan University Art Gallery is located on the lower level of Westby Hall on the university campus, Route 322 in Glassboro, NJ.