"Human Nature" Gallery Exhibition at Montalvo

Description

Explores the relationship between humans and animals and includes work by Tim Hawkinson, Celeste Boursier-Mougenot, Ariane Michel, Misako Inaoka and Dana Harel.

On August 27, Montalvo Arts Center will open Human Nature, a new exhibition that examines the human condition through the relationships humans have with animals. On view in the Project Space Gallery and running through October 17, Human Nature features work by internationally recognized artists Tim Hawkinson; Celeste Boursier-Mougenot and Ariane Michel; and Lucas Artists Residency Program Fellow Misako Inaoka and former Lucas Fellow Dana Harel. Human Nature, organized and curated by Kelly Sicat, director of programs at Montalvo, is part of Montalvo's 18-month long thematic program Natural and Creative
Capital, which explores issues of sustainability in our natural and creative environments. There will be a public opening reception for Human Nature on Friday, August 27, at 7 p.m.

"As an investigation of Natural and Creative Capital, Human Nature examines human beings' relationships to the animals they share the planet with," said Sicat. "It seems we can better encourage sustainable actions by understanding the human condition, and these works begin to reflect the
human-to-animal relationship, where humans influence, are entertained by, or reject outright their relationship with the animal world."

In the exploration of this ancient relationship, Human Nature brings humor and whimsy to the roles humans play as they engage with animals or completely disregard them. The artists depict domestic pets, livestock, wild birds and other forms of animal life, in order to examine the enigmatic distance between being human and being animal.

Tim Hawkinson is represented in the exhibition with two free-standing sculptures. DOY, is a portrait of a nearly six-foot tall boy and his dog. In this portrait, the boy clearly places dominance over the dog, with his exaggerated
hand fully engulfing the face and muzzle of the dog, who patiently sits at his feet. Sweet Tweet is a lyrical depiction of a young girl with a flute, or perch, extending from her lips, upon which sit five birds. A closer look reveals that
the birds are constructed of fingernail clippings, a subtle but characteristic aspect of Hawkinson's work, where he incorporates symbols of his own body into the artwork.

Artist and composer, Celeste Boursier-Mougenot, and film and
performance artist Ariane Michel, are represented in the exhibition with a film that documents their collaborative installation titled Les oiseaux de Celeste. The installation was comprised of a colony of finches housed in a built environment that Boursier-Mougenot created within a gallery space in Paris. The birds were provided with water, food, grass and an amplified electric guitar as a perch. The layered sound created by the finches and the guitar in Michel's film will fill the Project Space Gallery with dissonant "music" as the birds and a manmade instrument intersect.

Also featured in Human Nature are works by Lucas Artists Residency Program, Irvine Fellow Misako Inaoka and former Fellow Dana Harel. Inaoka's small-scale sculptures depict a fantastical exploration of the natural and artificial elements we find in the world around us. In her work Seahorse, she blends the body parts of a sea horse and a bronco to create an unusual and yet familiar creature, a visual word play - a curiosity. Inaoka also explores food production through her modified farm animals (Food Production) as well as alternative energy sources in works such as Solar Cow, Whale Spill, and Connected. Her works are created primarily from reassembled toys and contain very playful elements as they examine
profound issues of bioengineering, cloning, natural animal life and the possibilities of our imagination.

Dana Harel, who explores an ambivalence that relates both to gender-based conflicts and human battles with natural ecosystems, is represented in the exhibition with two new large-scale drawings created during her residency at Montalvo. In I Am Not An Animal I and I Am Not An Animal II Harel explores
the human portrait through an investigation of her own hands, resulting in introspective images of soldiers who have possibly returned from a long-ago battle. Cock Fight, a large-scale graphite drawing on paper, will also be on view. This compelling drawing incorporates a finely drawn rooster with
Harel's signature hand-puppets, depicting human hands that are positioned to create a shadow puppet of another rooster – getting ready for the illicit fight.

TIM HAWKINSON
Los Angeles-based artist Tim Hawkinson, a native San Franciscan, earned his BA from San Jose State University, and received his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Hawkinson is renowned for creating complex
sculptural systems through surprisingly simple means. His work has been exhibited in numerous international exhibitions, including the 1999 Venice Biennale, as well as at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada; the 2002 Whitney Biennial, New York, NY; the
2003 Corcoran Biennial, Washington, D.C.; and The Getty Center, Los Angeles. In 2005, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art organized a retrospective of his work.

CELESTE BOURSIER-MOUGENOT
French artist Celeste Boursier-Mougenot's work merges the realms of the musical and the visual, mining unexpected sources for musical potential and creating situations or devices in which sonic events are expressed visually or visual informational is expressed sonically. Boursier-Mougenot's work is in major public and private collections around the world, including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, Calif.; the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, Paris; and Fonds Regional d'Art Contemporain, Reims, France. He lives and works in Sete,
France.

ARIANE MICHELE
Paris-based artist Ariane Michele makes installations, performances or simple screenings, in which video and film recur with the intention of creating perceptive experiences. A graduate of the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, Michele's work has been shown internationally at
such venues as Fonds Regional d'Art Contemporain, Reims, France, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. Her films have been shown at the International Film Festivals in Locarno, Switzerland and Rotterdam, Netherlands; the International Documentary Film Festival in Marseilles, France, and Art Basel 38. Her film LES HOMMES was a 2006 grand prize winner at FID in Marseilles.

MISAKO INAOKA
Born in Kyoto, Japan, Misako Inaoka, received her BFA in printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she participated in the school's European Honors Program and spent a year in Rome, Italy. She received her MFA from Mills College in Oakland, Calif. With a focus on mixed media sculpture and site-specific installation, the Bay Area-based artist's work has
been shown at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; the de Young Museum; and the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art. She has exhibited in galleries in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Texas, Japan, England, China and Italy. She is a recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts for MacDowell Colony residency and S and R Foundation's Washington Award.

DANA HAREL
Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, Dana Harel currently lives in the Bay Area, where she received a BA in architecture from the California College for the Arts. Harel creates large-scale graphite on paper drawings that evolve organically,
fusing themes of man and environment. She has exhibited her work at the Viewing Program at the Drawing Center, New York, NY; the Napa Valley Museum of Art, CA; the Palo Alto Art Center, CA; Nebraska Wesleyan University, NE; and the Herzelia Museum of Contemporary Art in Israel.

The Project Space Gallery is located next to the Box Office at Montalvo Arts Center. The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday through Sunday, or by appointment.

About Montalvo's Natural and Creative Capital theme:
Natural and Creative Capital, Montalvo Arts Center's 2010-11
multidisciplinary thematic arts program, explores concepts of
sustainability in our natural and cultural environments. This 18-month program features visual and performing arts coupled with conversations and literary arts programs that invite audiences of all ages to contemplate a sustainable future. Visual artworks feature renewed thinking by artists about the use of cast-off materials, new works that reflect the many wonders of the natural world, the possibilities of a sustainable future, and works that capture the challenges facing our planet. The performing arts challenge and ignite
passion for change; featuring new works of dance and music that will both inspire and engage. Education and public programs encourage exploration and engagement with the environment – particularly the 175 acres that comprise Montalvo's extraordinary grounds and rustic hiking trails.

About Montalvo Arts Center
Montalvo Arts Center is a nonprofit organization that fosters community engagement through the creation and presentation of multidisciplinary art. By uniting the broadest possible audiences with a global community of artists, Montalvo expands the role of arts and culture as an essential community resource. Montalvo's programming includes: an annual themebased
arts program; music and performance; education and public
programs; new media and visual arts; and the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency. Located in the Saratoga foothills in the midst of Silicon Valley, Montalvo Arts Center occupies a Mediterranean-style villa on 175 stunning acres.

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http://www.montalvoarts.org

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408-961-5800