BACA Laureate 2012:
Mary Heilmann: Good Vibrations
& BACA Projects
2 October 2012–27 January 2013
Bonnefantenmuseum
Avenue Céramique 250
6221 KX Maastricht, NL
T +31 43 329 0190 (Tue–Sun)
F +31 43 329 01 99
The exhibition Good Vibrations is devoted to the BACA Laureate 2012: Mary Heilmann and will be on show until January 27th at the Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht. The BACA (Biennial Award for Contemporary Art) is the only major award for international visual art in the Netherlands. The price is intended as a tribute to an artist for his or her adventurous oeuvre and visible influence on other (younger) artists.
Mary Heilmann, born in San Francisco in 1940, spent her youth on the beaches of Los Angeles. She studied literature at the University of California Santa Barbara and experienced the rise of the Beat Generation. She learned about ceramics and poetry at San Francisco State College, making sculptures of clay, wood, tar and steel, while dreaming of Fluxus happenings and Warhol’s Factory in New York. When she moved to the Big Apple in 1968, she flung herself into the Bohemian lifestyle of the avant-garde. She made sculptures and felt an affinity with Bruce Nauman, Keith Sonnier, Eva Hesse, but switched to painting around 1970, a medium that, at the time, had been entirely written off.
The museum considers it a great honour to organise Heilmann’s first European museum retrospective, entitled Mary Heilmann Good Vibrations, for the occasion of the BACA Award. The exhibition gives insight into the varied oeuvre she has created over fifty active years, which comprises gouaches, graphic work, sculpture, furniture and ceramics, besides her paintings.
BACA Projects
Under the title of BACA Projects, the Bonnefantenmuseum will be presenting two extra exhibitions during the BACA exhibition, which are related to the BACA Award.
The exhibition Theatre of Thought* is an experimental collaborative project between the Bonnefantenmuseum and the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht.
Six artists from Europe and America, associated with the postgraduate institute in Maastricht, are exhibiting their work in two adjoining rooms of the museum. *After the book of the same name by Snejanka Mihaylova.
For the occasion of the presentation of the BACA 2012 to Mary Heilmann, the American artist Maya Hayuk has created a site-specific installation in the Bonnefantenmuseum on the basis of new and existing work under the title Heavy Lights. Maya Hayuk (1969, Baltimore) likes to incorporate her paintings and wall paintings in monumental installations, on which she regularly works with other artists and musicians. Besides the site-specific wall painting, the exhibition includes 14 other paintings by Hayuk.
The Bonnefantenmuseum receives long-term support from the Province of Limburg.
Sponsor: DSM. Supporters: Province of Limburg, City of Maastricht.
The Bonnefantenmuseum is beneficiary of the BankGiro Loterij.
Klara is the media partner of the exhibition.
