Walker Art Center's Target Free Thursday Nights in February Include a Conversation with Jazz Artist Jason Moran, a Drawn Here Design Lecture, The Artist's Bookshelf Book Club, and Experimental Films
The Walker Art Center’s Target Free Thursday Nights in February are highlighted by a Contemporary Art in Conversation talk between jazz pianist and former Walker artist-in-residence Jason Moran and Walker performing arts senior curator Philip Bither (February 15, 7 pm). The two will discuss Moran’s recent CD Artist-in-Residence (Blue Note), a new release inspired by his 2004 residency at the Walker, as well as talk about the process of writing music inspired by visual art, accompanied by some solo pieces from the new recording played live by Moran. Other highlights in February include another edition of the Walker book club The Artist’s Bookshelf, featuring Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid (February 1, 7 pm); a Drawn Here design lecture with St. Paul-based graphic designer Sharon Werner and Brian Collins, chief creative officer at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide (February 8, 7 pm); and screenings of films from the series Expanding the Frame, a six-week showcase of established and emerging directors who are breaking the boundaries of film and video (February 8, 15, and 22, 7:30 pm).
Target Free Thursday Nights are made possible by Target. Additional support provided by The Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Target Free Thursday Nights
February 1, 8, 15, 22
Galleries open 5–9 pm; special events follow.
Free
Thursday, February 1
Gallery Tour, 6 pm
Book Club
The Artist’s Bookshelf: Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid, 7 pm
Star Tribune Foundation Art Lab
Free, but reservations are required; call 612.375.7600
The exhibition Body Politics: Figurative Prints and Drawings from Schiele to de Kooning addresses, in part, the tendency of some early 20th-century artists to exoticize African and Oceanic tribal culture in their work. Lucy personalizes the legacy of this gaze with a story about a young West Indian woman, working in New York for a wealthy family, who is caught between her people’s colonial history and the cultural experience of modern America. Join a tour of Body Politics before the book club at 6 pm. For discussion questions, visit blogs.walkerart.org/ecp and look for posts marked the Artist’s Bookshelf. Books are available at the Walker shop and the Minneapolis Public Library (mplib.org). Presented in partnership with the Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library.
The Artist’s Bookshelf is a book club that focuses on shared themes between contemporary literature and art. Authors are not present at the discussions.
Film: Expanding the Frame, 7:30 pm
Investigating Landscape
Olivo Barbieri creates disorienting cityscapes using a tilt-shift lens. By shooting from above, he drastically manipulates scale and perspective, transforming major cities—Shanghai, Las Vegas, Sevilla—into geometric reliefs. Investigating the urban environment, Diane Bonder’s If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now pairs landscape stills with small town stories questioning the use of public space. Program length 54 minutes.
Thursday, February 8
Gallery Tour, 6 pm
Drawn Here: Sharon Werner and Brian Collins, 7 pm
McGuire Theater
Free tickets available at the Hennepin Lobby Desk from 6 pm
Sharon Werner defies expectations: her two-person graphic design studio in St. Paul produces outsized projects for clients such as Target, VH1, Comedy Central, Chronicle Books, Minnesota Public Radio, the University of Minnesota, and Moët Hennessey. She is the principal of Werner Design Werks, which has been the recipient of numerous design awards for a diverse range of products, including Blu Dot 2D:3D packaging, Levi’s Orange Tab, Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day, and 10 Cane premium rum. The firm’s work is in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Museé des Arts Decoratifs, Montréal; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, New York.
Werner will converse with Brian Collins, chief creative officer at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, the firm behind projects such as Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty; a 15-story Hershey chocolate factory in Times Square; and new design programs for Coca-Cola, Yahoo!, Rainforest Alliance, Mattel, and others.
Film: Expanding the Frame, 7:30 pm
In the Spirit of Big Brother
In an era that revels in the voyeuristic cult of celebrity and celebrates surveillance on reality TV, these works sharply critique our society under watch: Rebecca Baron’s How Little We Know of Our Neighbors; Deborah Stratman’s In Order Not to Be Here; and Julia Meltzer and David Thorne’s It’s Not My Memory of It. Program length 107 minutes.
Thursday, February 15
Eva Hesse Drawing Tour, 6 pm
Contemporary Art in Conversation: Jason Moran with Philip Bither, 7 pm
McGuire Theater
Free tickets available at the Hennepin Lobby Desk from 6 pm
Jazz composer/pianist Jason Moran returns to the Walker stage for a conversation about Artist-in-Residence (Blue Note), a new release inspired by his 2004 residency at the Walker. Including the recorded voice of performance/visual artist Adrian Piper and percussion by performance/video artist Joan Jonas, this work follows Moran’s trajectory of expanding the territories claimed by jazz. Join Moran and performing arts senior curator Philip Bither for a talk about the process of writing music inspired by visual art, accompanied by some solo pieces from the new recording played live by Moran.
Film: Expanding the Frame, 7:30 pm
Paulina Hollers and Other Shorts by Brent Green
Introduced by director Brent Green
Fresh from its premiere at Sundance, Paulina Hollers is a contemporary Appalachian folktale of a wayward boy who dies and finds himself on the way to hell. His desperate mother kills herself to help him escape his fiery fate. Above ground, the story plays out with stop-action figures constructed from rabbit bones and bird’s wings, while below ground the scenes are hand-drawn animations. Program length 75 minutes.
Thursday, February 22
Gallery Tour, 6 pm
Film: Expanding the Frame, 7:30 pm
An Evening with Peter Tscherkassky
Moderated by Rembert Hüser, Institute for Advanced Study Film Collaborative at the University of Minnesota
By manipulating both found footage and original material beyond recognition, Austrian filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky combines his studies on the aesthetics of cinematography with the dissection of experimental techniques. Originally working in small-gauge film, he established his reputation as one of the foremost figures in the field with his arresting 35mm CinemaScope works that evoke a dreamlike state. Program length 90 minutes.