WorkSpace:
Lisi Raskin
Armada
Through June 21, 2009
The University of Texas at Austin
MLK at Congress
For the past ten years, Lisi Raskin has used the Cold War (1947-1991) as a stage for examining uniquely American aspirations and anxieties. This moment in American history was a time of incredible prosperity and innovation. It was also a time of terrible fear, when the realization of the American Dream ran parallel to the frightening possibility of the atomic bomb and global warfare. In investigating these contrasting cultural emotions, Raskin asks: How do dreams and fears take material form? What are the aesthetics of the American Dream? How have these aesthetics been applied to our very real landscape? She answers these questions with immersive environments that playfully reinterpret politicized sites. Raskin’s installations resonate with historical and current events, art history and popular culture.
Her exhibition, Armada, began with a road trip to the various sites across the United States that played an instrumental role in the development and testing of nuclear arsenal. En route she encountered the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) housed at Davis-Monthan, an Air Force Base that sits between the arid Sonoran desert and the suburbs of Tucson. There, over 4,000 decommissioned military air and spacecraft are stored outside awaiting repair or to be disassembled for parts. AMARG serves as the point of departure for Raskin’s examination of the cultural, psychological, political, material and physical landscape of the United States.
At the Blanton, Raskin has transformed the WorkSpace gallery into an abstracted landscape painting in which a group of sculptures are stored. Constructed in a suburban backyard in Austin from materials commonly used to build houses, this fleet of chip-board warships is an investigation of materials and forms found in the American landscape and the languages of drawing, painting and sculpture. Poised as if ready for flight, but also tenuous in their ability to do so, Raskin’s armada is a stage prop in an imagined theater of war.
Lisi Raskin will speak about her WorkSpace installation on Thursday, May 21 at 7 PM at the Blanton Museum of Art. FREE
WorkSpace at the Blanton
WorkSpace showcases cutting-edge developments in the work of emerging and established contemporary artists on the museum’s second floor, serving as a coda to the modern and contemporary collection galleries. The exhibitions that result from these artistic investigations provide Blanton visitors ever-changing glimpses into the art of the present moment.
WorkSpace: Lisi Raskin: Armada is curated by Risa Puleo, assistant curator of American and contemporary art, for the Blanton.
WorkSpace: Lisi Raskin: Armada is generously supported by the Blanton Contemporary Salon.
Blanton Museum of Art
The University of Texas at Austin
MLK at Congress
