Spring 2015 exhibitions
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
3750 Washington Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63108
Hours: Wednesday 10am–5pm,
Thursday–Friday 10am–8pm,
Saturday–Sunday 10am–5pm
T +1 314 535 4660
The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) announces the opening of its spring exhibition season on January 16, 2015, featuring:
Joe Goode
January 16–April 11, 2015
Joe Goode traces half a century of selected works by one of America’s most innovative painters. Often identified with Southern California pop art, Oklahoma native Joe Goode ultimately transcends this classification, with influences ranging from Midwestern iconography to pop culture and the sublime. CAM’s presentation repositions Goode’s critical importance through an in-depth investigation of the artist’s concept of beauty through destruction as tied to a lived Midwestern experience and includes key examples of his practice, from his seminal milk bottle paintings of the 1960s to series such as Torn Clouds, Environmental Impact, and Flat Screen Nature. Curator: Jeffrey Uslip
Jesse Howard: Thy Kingdom Come
January 16–April 11, 2015
Thy Kingdom Come is the first comprehensive museum survey of the work of Jesse Clyde Howard, a self-taught artist, evangelist, and keen advocate of free speech who lived and worked in Fulton, Missouri, from the 1940s through the early 1980s. Presenting more than 100 of Howard’s hand-painted signs comprising religious exhortations, political denunciations, and autobiographical details, the exhibition documents the profusion of creative energy reflected in the artist’s dogmatic faith in the First Amendment—rights that were, according to Howard, under threat from communism and progressivism. Curator: Jeffrey Uslip
Ulla von Brandenburg: Wagon Wheel
January 16–April 11, 2015
Wagon Wheel is the US premiere of Paris-based German artist Ulla von Brandenburg’s seven-part quilt series. Inspired by the traditions of predominantly female collectives in the American South as well as the quilt patterns and symbols allegedly used by slaves when plotting escape through the Underground Railroad, the installation reimagines this coded visual language, in effect toeing the line between colorful abstraction and sociopolitical imperative. Curator: Kelly Shindler
Barnaby Furnas: The Last Flood
January 16–April 11, 2015
New York-based artist Barnaby Furnas will create the 50-foot-long painting, titled The Last Flood, on site at CAM this January. This monumental work is the latest in Furnas’s series of Red Sea paintings in which large swaths of saturated pigments and dye traverse the picture plane, alluding to Biblical narratives as well as a variety of postwar art historical motifs, including the evocative color fields of Mark Rothko and the agitated gestural patterns of action painting. Curator: Jeffrey Uslip
Toyin Odutola: Untold Stories
January 16–February 28, 2015
Untold Stories is a new series of mixed-media drawings created specifically for this exhibition by Nigerian-born, New York-based artist Toyin Odutola. Featuring works on paper made with charcoal, pastel, marker, graphite, and acrylic ink, the presentation includes text panels for the first time in Odutola’s work, bringing the idea of storytelling to the fore in a new way. Odutola’s diptychs and triptychs combine image and text to create narratives that rest intriguingly between the tangible and the elusive. Curator: Lisa Melandri
Marco Rios: At Loulou’s Door
Now through February 4, 2015
On view dusk–midnight, every night
CAM’s large-scale exterior video series Street Views features At Loulou’s Door, a single-channel video projection by Los Angeles-based artist Marco Rios, brings to life the final passages of Gustave Flaubert’s masterful novella, A Simple Heart (1877). Rios’s work features Loulou—a luminously colored African parrot—who, at 17 feet tall, appears to be perched on the Museum’s exterior facade. The parrot, displayed at a disquieting monumental scale, transcends its literal and corporeal existence, and can be understood instead as a symbolic and omnipresent being. Curator: Jeffrey Uslip
About the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) presents, supports, and celebrates the art of our time. It is the premier museum in St. Louis dedicated to contemporary art. Focused on a dynamic array of changing exhibitions, CAM provides a thought-provoking program that reflects and contributes to the global cultural landscape. Through the diverse perspectives offered in its exhibitions, public programs, and educational initiatives, CAM actively engages a range of audiences to challenge their perceptions. It is a site for discovery, a gathering place in which to experience and enjoy contemporary visual culture.
