ASU Art Museum Commited to Video Art
The ASU Art Museum has a 15-year history of actively promoting video art and continues to be one of the leading university museums showcasing this medium.
ASU Art Museum has had a dynamic video art presentation schedule since 1993. In 1995, the Museum represented the United States at the Venice Biennale with the five-room installation Buried Secrets by master video artist Bill Viola, which included his defining piece, The Greeting. The Museum actively commissioned Buried Secrets and was the smallest Biennale participant at the time, only the second-ever university museum to attend and the first from west of the Mississippi, but presented the first full pavilion video installation at the Biennale. Another two years later, in 1997, the Museum created its first annual Short Film and Video Festival, which is open to everyone and screens selected films every April. A number of the creators of entries in the Short Film and Video Festival have gone on to additional professional success.
ASU Art Museum currently has a formal initiative to encourage and showcase video art. Known as the Moving Target initiative, the Museum's calendar for 2008-09 includes significant accomplishments including curator John Spiak's invitation to curate a video art installation for Aqua Art Miami, one of the leading art fairs in the country, in December 2008, and the U.S. premiere of international artist Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba's evolving Refugee Memorial project Breathing is Free, coming to ASU Art Museum in January 2009. (The Aqua Art Miami installation, titled I'm Keeping An Eye on You, will be seen as a multi-channel installation at ASU Art Museum in August 2009.)
ASU Art Museum's current exhibition in the Moving Target initiative is Nadia Hironaka: The Late Show, running through January 25, 2009. In her multi-channel video installation, Nadia Hironaka expands the cinematic experience into the realm of the gallery environment. Synthesizing video projection, videos on monitors and audio, the artist entices the viewer to imagine characters leaving the confines of the projected image and entering the real space of the gallery. Using an abandoned drive-in movie theater as her point of departure to examine the convergence of cinematic and real space, Hironaka also asks us to reflect on how mood and emotion are constructed within the context of film.
“…My more recent studies with the moving image have sought to elaborate on the relationships of cinematic, physical and psychological space and perception of time,” states Hironaka. “Thoughts on spatial and temporal orientation have led me to the exploration of circumstances that cause one to ‘evade’ space and time – or, more precisely, evade the constructed rules of space and time.”
Nadia Hironaka: The Late Show, organized by curator John Spiak, is an ASU Art Museum Moving Target initiative. Support for this exhibition is provided by the ASU Art Museum Advisory Board, the FUNd at ASU and the Friends of the ASU Art Museum. In-kind support provided by Executive Flooring Systems, Inc., Phoenix, Arizona.
The ASU Art Museum, named "the single most impressive venue for contemporary art in Arizona" by Art in America magazine, is part of the Herberger College of the Arts at Arizona State University. The Museum is located on the corner of Mill Avenue and 10th Street in Tempe and admission is free. Nelson Fine Arts Center hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturday, and 1-5 p.m. Sunday. To learn more about the museum and its programs call (480) 965-2787 or visit http://asuartmuseum.asu.edu.