Duets: RAM Pairs Contemporary Craft Artists

July 17, 2016 – January 22, 2017
at Racine Art Museum

Cristina Cordova
Tiempo Sin Memoria (Time Without Memory), 2008
Glazed earthenware
61 x 24 x 12 inches
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Karen Johnson Boyd
Photography: Jon Bolton, Racine

Modern exhibition display at Racine Art Museum often involves gathering artworks in a gallery in an order that accommodates formal aspects such as color and size and/or theoretical aspects such as content or artist intent. While the work of individual artists may be related, the assumption is that each artist’s work is viewed discretely, as visitors move from one piece to another.

Open July 17, 2016 – January 22, 2017, Duets: RAM Pairs Contemporary Craft Artists plays with that idea by purposefully pairing the work of various contemporary artists—visually or conceptually-related works are shown side by side in order to simultaneously highlight similarities and differences. Rather than collapsing individual artist’s interests into one another, this kind of arrangement emphasizes the myriad ways in which ideas can be explored and artistic styles can be developed.

In some instances, there are artists whose works have been on display together before at RAM. However, the context was different and the works were not shown side by side. For example, Christina Cordova and Sergei Isupov, working independently, created provocative figural sculptures that were both featured in RAM’s winter 2014 series of ceramics-focused exhibitions. In other cases, examples are provided that would not have been possible previously because the work itself or the opportunity was not available. Barbara Sorensen’s powder-coated aluminum sculpture came to RAM after she was featured in an exhibition here in 2013. With the gift of this work, there is now a chance to show it in tandem with the visually similar but substantially smaller jewelry of Donna D’Aquino.

More About the Exhibition

Exhibition Notes (PDF)

Artists in the Exhibition

Donna D’Aquino, Michael Dale Bernard, Cristina Cordova, Edward Eberle, Micah Evans, Arline Fisch, Nora Fok, Ford and Forlano, Elsa Bates Freund, Audrey Handler, Judith Hoyt, Anne Kraus, Geo Lastromirsky, Karen Thuesen Massaro, Keisuke Mizuno, Luis Montoya and Leslie Ortiz, Matt Nolan, Sergei Ispov, Harold O’Conner, Eleanor Moty, Joel Philip Myers, Earl Pardon, Tod Pardon, David Regan, Adrian Saxe, Bonnie Seeman, Barbara Sorenson, Susan Thayer, Cynthia Toops, Kurt Weiser, Beatrice Wood, Jack Earl, Michael Lucero, Tod Pardon, Bruce Metcalf