BOULDER, CO.- From September 26th through December 27th, 2008 the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art presents the work of New Mexico-based artist Erika Wanenmacher in the museum’s West Gallery and featured in the East and Union Works galleries, a joint project with CU Art Museum, curated by Lisa Tamiris Becker. The exhibits open Friday, September 26th. Members’ preview is from 5:30 to 6:30 pm, with a free public reception from 6:30 to 8:00 pm.

Erika Wanenmacher, a dynamic multi-media sculptor who explores the conflict between the natural world, science, and culture, focuses largely on New Mexico’s atomic sites and the aftermath of government experiments run from 1940 through 1970 on both the environment and those that inhabited it. Paying close attention to detail, she uses a multitude of media, such as ornate woodcarvings, metal
sculptures big and small and audio and visual elements. Wanenmacher plays off the idea of the pursuit of progress in science, and the adverse effects of such pursuits.

In her new series, The Science Club, The Boy’s Room, Now, Forever, Then, part 1 Wanenmacher examines the relationship between nature and culture in U.S. atomic history, influenced by reports of government testing of radioactive iodine on children, she recreates a young boy, life-size bedroom circa 1960, bringing together nostalgic childhood elements such as comic books strewn across a bed, and various paint-by-numbers depicting atomic explosions.

Her interest in the U.S. atomic legacy has been ongoing. Using this research Wanenmacher integrates her quality craftsmanship to “bring it to the public consciousness.” She often uses found objects from test sites, such as government dials, gauges and other equipment found at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and reintroducing them into an environment paying homage to the victims of said experiments with an almost light-hearted but haunting milieu. This integration brings light to the public and allows for “changing consciousness at will” as one begins to recognize the consequences of the past. The “Boy’s Room, Now, Forever, Then” is the first part of the trilogy “Science Club.”

Wanenmacher received her education from the Feminist Studio Workshop in Los Angeles, CA as well as the Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, MO. She has exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM; SITE Sante Fe, NM; Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM; Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM; Claire Oliver Gallery, New York, NY; the Linda Durham Contemporary Art Gallery, Santa Fe, NM; Susan Blachard Gallery, New York, NY. Selected awards include a purchase award from the New Mexico Arts Acclaimed Artists Series, an art commission from the City of Albuquerque, and an Artist-in-Residence from the New Mexico Arts Division. Wanenmacher is currently represented by Linda Durham Contemporary Art in Santa Fe and teaches sculpture at the Santa Fe Community College.

The exhibition In and Out of Time: Selections from the CU Art Museum's Video Collection will investigate the cultural, aesthetic, and social aspects of video art as an evolving and significant form of artistic production through selections from the permanent collection of the CU Art Museum, University of Colorado at Boulder. The exhibition will feature works of video art by artists including Jeremy Blake, Dan Boord, Greg Durbin, Gary Emrich, Mary Lucier, Rick Silva, Diana Thater and Luis Valdovino. Works on view will include Mary Lucier’s masterpiece, Noah’s Raven, 1992, which interweaves images of breast reconstruction surgery with rubber harvesting and other anthrocentric and geologic processes of movement and change in the natural world, as well as the late Jeremy Blake’s Winchester Redux, 2004 which weaves together Rorschach-like images of the unconscious with images of the notorious Winchester mansion, thought to be possessed by spirits. The exhibition will also feature a selection of video works by Dan Boord/Luis Valdovino such as Refutations of Time, 1997 (by Dan Boord/Greg Durbin/Luis Valdovino) and Patagonia, 1996 (by Dan Boord/Luis Valdovino), which map continuity and disjuncture across time and space and the North and South American continents. Works by Diana Thater, Rick Silva, and Gary Emrich also diversely address juxtapositions of nature and culture and poetically play with images culled from the anthropomorphic, geologic, and biologic spheres.

In and Out of Time: A Video Art Symposium will investigate the cultural, aesthetic, and social aspects of video art as an evolving and significant form of artistic production bringing to campus video artists, curators, and scholars for an all-day symposium on Sat., Nov. 1, 2008, 9:30 - 4:30 in the ATLAS building on the campus of the University of Colorado, Boulder. Symposium participants will include:
David Antin, Poet, Artist, Theorist and Professor Emeritus, Department of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego
Eleanor Antin, Artist and Professor Emeritus, Department of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego
Melinda Barlow, Film and Video Historian and Associate Professor, Film Studies Program, University of Colorado at Boulder
Lisa Tamiris Becker, Director, CU Art Museum and Curator of the concurrent exhibition: In and Out of Time: Selections from the CU Art Museum's Video Collection, on view at BMoCA
Dan Boord, Artist and Professor and Chair of Film Studies Program, University of Colorado at Boulder
Gary Emrich, Artist and Head of Photography & Video Art, Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design
Barbara London, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Chip Lord, Artist, Theorist and Professor, University of California at Santa Cruz
Liliana Porter, Artist, New York
Steve Seid, Video Curator, Pacific Film Archive, University of California at Berkeley
Luis Valdovino, Artist and Professor, Department of Art and Art History, University of Colorado at Boulder.