COLOSSUS
Preview: May 1-9
June 2 - July 11 for LAND/ART
An installation in the Gold Street Lofts at 104 Gold Street SW
516 ARTS presents COLOSSUS, a collaborative, site-specific art installation in the Gold Street Lofts in Downtown Albuquerque, with guest artist Karl Hofmann and the students of Bret Aaker at Amy Biehl High School. The groups will produce a large-scale interpretation of the mountain Grosser Mythen in the Swiss Alps, a famous subject for Romantic artists and writers for centuries, revisioned out of scrap wood, cardboard and junk mail. The goal of this ambitious project is to create a thought-provoking, visually powerful installation using waste-stream materials to explore contemporary and historical ideas of the Sublime as a source of inspiration. A soundscape by students of Blake Minnerly at the Media Arts Collaborative High School will accompany the piece.
May 1 - 9 is the preview for the project, with a public reception on Friday, May 1, 6-9pm. It continues as an off-site project for LAND/ART in conjunction with the exhibition at 516 ARTS titled Here & There: Seeing New Ground, June 2 - July 11. This exhibition of contemporary artists examines the landscape from perspectives that are both visual and cultural, including artists who subvert landscape perspective to examine issues of the environment and human beings’ relationship with nature. LAND/ART is a collaborative exploration of land-based art in New Mexico during June through November, 2009. For more information about this exhibition and LAND/ART, visit landartnm.org. Download Press Release.
During May 1 - 9 and June 2 - July 11, the COLOSSUS installation at the Gold Street Lofts is open to the public Saturdays and Sundays, 12-4pm.
About Artist Karl Hofmann
Installation artist Karl Hofmann renders site-specific, multi-dimensional compositions using common-place material such as scrap wood, chenille stems (pipe-cleaners) and house paint. The sublime and epic are visible in Hofmann’s work through his hybrid aesthetic that combines pop, funk assemblage and expressionism with a geometric, viral-like logic. An ironic tension is generated in his work by the combination of non-traditional materials and sprawling, quasi-natural constructions that derive their visual power from the formal interplay of color, rhythm and movement, echoing Hofman’s interests in natural and built environments, music and early Modernist aesthetics.
About Bret Aaker and the Art program at Amy Biehl High School
Bret Aaker has been working as an artist and educator since 1992. He designs and implements art curriculum for the freshman students of Amy Biehl High School with a focus on community involvement and historical context. In addition, he is a consultant for other school-wide and individual art initiatives. He has exhibited his own work in galleries in Albuquerque, Silver City, Marfa/Texas and Minneapolis.
This project has been made possible in part by 516 ARTS, the Historic District Improvement Company, McCune Charitable Foundation, Amy Biehl High School and the Media Arts Collaborative Charter School.
Special thanks to Rick Rennie and Abe Lilllard, Grubb & Ellis New Mexico.