Self Reimagined Artists Talk II - Closing Reception

Wednesday, April 26, 2017
4 – 6PM

The New-York-based artists Zhang Hongtu and Noriko Shinohara will provide a talk about their work for the closing of the Self Reimagined Exhibition from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., followed by a brief reception. Extending Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, this group exhibition explores creative ways in which artists reimagine themselves. Featuring painting, sculpture, photography, and performance by: Laura Alexander, Kevin Darmanie, Lisa Ficarelli-Halpern, Farsad Labbauf, Noriko Shinohara, Hirotsune Tashima, Martha Wilson, and Zhang Hongtu. The exhibition brochure is available online and in print in the gallery.

Zhang Hongtu was born in Gansu province, in northwest China, in I943, but grew up in Beijing. In I982, he left China to pursue a career as an artist in New York. He was extremely active in art world protests following the Tiananmen massacre of 4 June I989. Zhang works in a variety of media such as painting, sculpture, collage, ceramics, digital image, and installation. His work explores the freedom to criticize the Chinese authorities afforded to an artist living in the West. It also reflects on themes of authority and belief (specifically the power of iconic imagery) and cross-cultural ‘East and West’ connections. These themes are largely derived from his “outsider” standing as a Muslim in China and, after his move to the United States, as a Chinese citizen in the Western world. Zhang Hongtu’s recent artworks examine the relationship between the “East and West” in landscape paintings. He began producing oil paintings in the late 1990s, using compositions of Chinese landscapes and executed them in the styles of European Impressionists. The series explores the nature of modernism and the artistic encounter between China and the West. He is the recipient of many grants including one from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.

Noriko Shinohara is an independent Japanese-American artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. A multi-disciplinary artist, Shinohara has expressed herself through painting, sculpture, writing and etching, but is best known for her semi-autobiographical drawing series, Cutie & Bullie. The series inspired the 2013 documentary film, Cutie and the Boxer (won an Emmy Award for Best Documentary), which focused on Noriko’s 40-year marriage to famed Japanese artist, Ushio Shinohara, and highlighted the artist’s characters in animated form. Born and raised in Takaoka, Japan, Noriko left her home at the young age of nineteen to study art in New York City. Shortly after her arrival she met her future husband, Ushio, and gave birth to their son, Alex in 1974. Making the Brooklyn neighborhood of DUMBO her home for the past few decades, Shinohara has quietly carved out her own space within the studio she shares with her husband. Shinohara created a character to narrate her life’s story and her innermost feelings into Cutie, while creating another character to represent her husband, which she called Bullie.

Image: Noriko Shinohara, A Long Time Ago When Cutie Was Naïve…., Oil on canvas, 2013