Show

Re: Fw: mostraNEWS ADVISORY

For immediate release: March 20, 2004

Austin-based artists Regina Vater and Bill Lundberg to show their new work
produced in Brazil at Flatbed Gallery.

Contact: Flatbed Gallery
Phone: (512) 477-9328, Fax: (512) 477-1799

What:
Opening of "Pool," new video installation by Bill Lundberg, and
"Body Water," a portfolio of documentary photography by Regina Vater.


Where:
Flatbed Gallery and 02 Alternative Space, 2830 E. Martin Luther King Jr.
Blvd.


When:
Opening is Wednesday, April 7, 2004.
Reception to follow from 6:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m.
Gallery talk by both artists will take place Tuesday, April 20, at 6:00 p.m.
Exhibitions continue through May 1, 2003.

Bill Lundberg is one of the pioneers in the art of film installation. He
has been called "The Magician of the Cinema "by the venerable French film
journal Cahier du Cinema. He is also the founder of the video art courses in
the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin.
Since the early seventies, he has focused the majority of his works on the
subject of human relationships. "Pool" is a video sculpture which Lundberg
began working on during his recent residency in Brazil as a Fulbright
Fellow. The taping for the work was accomplished with the help of Lundberg's
students in Fortaleza,the capital of the Brazilian state of Ceara, and was
completed upon his return to Austin.


http://www.imediata.com/sambaqui/Bill_Lundberg/

In the words of the artist:
"Pool" may be seen by some to have a certain strangeness, As in my orevius
works, there is the element of illusion-the real replaced by the apparition.
But in this case the "real" was based only on a memory. I had imaniged my
life played backwardsSin fast reverse. I mages from all the years flashed by
until I reached a pointS and then, I stopped and looked.

Lundberg is the recipient of important national art prizes, which include
two NEA grants, two Fulbright Fellowships (1992 and 2003) and a Guggenheim
Fellowship (1981). His works have been shown in major museums, including the
Whitney Museum of American Art, P.S. 1 in New York City, the Institute of
Contemporary Art (UK), Espace Lyonnais d'art contemporain (France) , Museu
de Arte Contemporanea of the University of Sao Paulo (Brazi)l, and the
Carnegie Institute Museum of Art (US). Lundberg's regional one-man
exhibitions include the Contemporary Arts Museum, 2002 (Houston), the Jack
S. Blanton Museum, 1999 (Austin), and the ArtPace Institute, 1998 (San
Antonio).

Regina Vater has long been working with photography. Some of her documentary
photos from 1973 are in the collection of the Paris Bibliothecque Nationale.
In 1976, she represented Brazil at the Venice Biennial with a photo work on
garbage and consumerism.


http://www.imediata.com/sambaqui/1ed/regina_vater/index.html
http://arteonline.arq.br/museu/interviews/reginavaterenglish.htm


Vater's interest in ecology dates from her first installation in 1970,
making her one of the pioneers in art related to this issue. The series of
photos she is presenting at Flatbed has to do with her concerns about the
conservation of water. By registering the joyful relationship mankind has
with water she underlines one of the great pleasures we have in life, which
we will lose if our waters are wasted or contaminated.

In the artist's words:
Running throughout yea(R)ivers
0r
Dripping daily
The almost unnoticed joyful gift,
Fountain of Ever?
Life
Will it succeed?
If the eternal spring
Dries out?

Besides her very recent color photographs taken in Austin at Barton Springs
Pool and at several beaches in Brazil, the portfolio also encompasses some
of the first photos that Vater took in Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro on this
subject in 1977, which are now part of a major collection of Brazilian art
in Rio de Janeiro.

In March 2003, Vater launched at Book People her Artist's Book in homage to
John Cage "Sounds Good". It was listed in the Austin Chronicle as one the
recommended cultural events of the year. She also showed her installations
at the "Shellife" exhibit at the Austin Women & Their Work Gallery in April
of the same year. In 2002, she curated the exhibit "Brazilian Visual Poetry"
at Mexic-Arte Museum, which included her installation "Camoe's Feast." Both
exhibits received strong reviews. Art in America featured an article on the
visual poetry exhibit, "In Concrete Language," by Raphael Rubinstein, in the
May 2002 issue.

Vater is the winner of important national and international art prizes, such
as, a Guggenheim Fellowship (1980), a New Jersey Council for The Arts
artists grant (1984), an ArtPace Institute residency (1999), and she has
works in many international collections, including the Jack S. Blanton
Museum and the San Antonio Museum of Art. Vater has lived in Austin since
1985.

This show was partially made possible with funds form the City of Austin
under the umbrella of Mexic-Arte Museum.






brochure's text


Agua Viva

From the nostalgic black and white photos of Ipanema beach in 1970's Rio de
Janeiro, to the colorful digital images of the Brazilian coast and of
Austin, Texas, Regina Vater transforms photography into a poetic vision of
the essence of life - water.

Water. Life. People. Action. Meditation. Experimentation. Youth. Age. Viva
agua. "Water lives." Water overflows in this uncommon look of common scenes
of sunny summer days. A look that jumps in time and in geography, that
moves from the refreshing ecological center of Austin to the friendly
beaches of Rio and the Brazilian Northeast.

The uneasy and audacious composition of these photos could have been
conceived only by a great artist who has mastered visual poetry and traveled
the world with her installations without ever having left entirely her old
love affair with photography. Here, in this set, the chemistry of the B&W
film from the 1970s marries with love and naturalness to the colorful
pixels of the new century.

This is a trip through the similarities and the contrasts of the same
subject: bodies in the water and water in the bodies; two cultures, two ways
of being and of relating with the water, with life. A well equipped and
careful child investigates a water creature with the air of a scientist,
while another child carelessly sucks seawater with straws. In one summer
people crowd the photos - sometimes glued to each other. In the other
summer, there is more interpersonal distance. More space.

In all the photos, the audacious framing give an aesthetic touch of
complexity and beauty to the simplicity of ordinary scenes of these two
summers in the Western Hemisphere. This collection demonstrates again the
qualities of Regina Vater, who for three decades has distinguished herself
as one of the most important artists that Brazil has produced.

Viva Vater. Viva agua. Viva vida.


Rosental Calmon Alves


Rosental Calmon Alves, former executive editor and director of Jornal do
Brasil, in Rio de Janeiro, is a journalism professor and director of the
Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at
Austin.