�Ground Truth: Peter Happel Christian� and �Painting Before and After Words: Margaret Wall-Romana�
January 21 � April 3, 2011
MINNEAPOLIS, JANUARY 4, 2011�The Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP) presents a duo exhibition featuring the work of Peter Happel Christian and Margaret Wall-Romana. In �Ground Truth,� Happel Christian�s photographs and sculptures display the scientific method as a process for documenting events, acquiring knowledge, and testing theories. �Painting Before and After Words,� Wall-Romana�s large-scale oil paintings engage the traditions of European old masters and art history. An opening reception for both exhibitions will be held Thursday, January 20, 2011, in conjunction with Third Thursday.
Peter Happel Christian, a conceptual artist, observes the technologies that mediate our everyday relationship with art and natural phenomena, including geography, cartography, and topographical surveys. He measures, collects information, and records data, creating installations and photographs that are positioned at the intersection of art, science, and history. As a part of �Ground Truth,� Happel Christian has engaged MIA staff by asking to install and care for their office plants in the MAEP galleries.
A sharp student of art history, Wall-Romana strives to encourage her viewers to take a deeper look at her paintings. Engaging with traditions of oil painting, she controls the physics of paint, but also lets go of that control to open up to the paint�s own properties. The irresistible tensions on the surfaces of her large-scale paintings keep viewers looking. Wall-Romana structures her paintings using an elaborate atmospheric perspective balanced with non-illusionistic color. �Painting Before and After Words� represents Wall-Romana pushing the paint to its limit, with her use of thin, translucent colors to create delicate surfaces, and chalky impasto for ripe forms and textures.
This exhibition is presented by the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program, a curatorial department of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, which features work selected by Minnesota artists. MAEP is made possible in part by generous support from the Jerome Foundation.
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About the Minneapolis Institute of Art
The Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA), home to one of the finest encyclopedic art collections in the country, houses more than 80,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history. Highlights of the permanent collection include European masterworks by Rembrandt, Poussin, and van Gogh; modern and contemporary painting and sculpture by Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Stella, and Close; as well as internationally significant collections of prints and drawings, decorative arts, Modernist design, photographs, textiles, and Asian, African, and Native American art. General admission is always free. Some special exhibitions have a nominal admission fee. Museum hours: Sunday, 11 A.M.-5 P.M.; Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, 10 A.M.-5 P.M.; Thursday, 10 A.M.-9 P.M.; Monday closed. For more information, call (612) 870-3131 or visit www.artsmia.org.