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Art Noir After Dark: Patricia Piccinini
January 17 Patricia Piccinini (peach-en-een-neee) lecture at the Des Moines Art Center in Levitt Auditorium at 6:30 pm.
Although the lecture is free and open to the public, seats are limited.
Art Noir hosts a private wine and hors d'oeuvre reception immediately following at the
Downtown DMAC with exhibition installation preview and tour with artist.
*Please be sure to make your reservations through IowaTIX www.iowatix.com beginning Tuesday, January 2 at 9:00am.
RSVP's for the private reception should come to artnoir@desmoinesartcenter.org.) - Reservations are required.
Conversations on Art: Patricia Piccinini
Once you've seen Patricia Piccinini's creations, you don't forget them. She is best known for making sculptures that resemble science experiments gone awry, but upon further observation these works reveal familiar emotions and characteristics. "I am particularly fascinated by the unexpected consequences, the stuff we don't want but must somehow accommodate," Piccinini says. Join us for what promises to be an engaging lecture by the provocative artist as she discusses her work and the time in which we live. *Reservations for this FREE lecture are required and limited. Reservations are available exclusively through IowaTIX beginning Tuesday, January 2, 2007. Orders are processed on a first-come, first-served basis. Order online at www.iowatix.com or by phone at 515.277.3727 (9 am – 5 pm, Monday – Friday). Leaving a message will not guarantee a reservation. Please reserve only the number of seats you need. Reservations placed with IowaTIX will be checked at the Art Center (with photo ID) the evening of the event beginning at 5:30 pm. The Art Center reserves the right to release seats for any unclaimed reservations at the start of the lecture. FILM SERIES
MEET THE NEW YOU and HUG: Recent work by Patricia Piccinini
All films will be shown in Levitt Auditorium and are intended for adult audiences. FREE admission.
Skeptical about plastic surgery? Curious about future medical developments? Afraid of not having the perfect body? All of these questions and more will be explored in this film series chosen to accompany Meet the New You and Hug: Recent Work by Patricia Piccinini.
Sunday, February 4, 1 pm Freaks, 1932 Tod Browning, director 66 minutes, not rated but intended for adult audiences After directing the hugely successful horror classic Dracula, Tod Browning chose this tale of circus performers who seek revenge on a gold-digging trapeze artist. The director's decision to use actual sideshow "freaks" instead of actors in makeup and special effects remains as shocking today as it was in 1932. This controversial film was banned in many parts of the United States and across the globe, eventually becoming a cult classic in the 1960s and '70s.
Sunday, February 11, 1 pm
Eyes Without a Face, 1960 Georges Franju, director 90 minutes, not rated but intended for adult audiences French with English subtitles Hidden in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor attempts a radical plastic surgery that could restore the beauty of his daughter's disfigured face—but at a horrifying price. At once ghastly and poetic, this classic of horror cinema has influenced countless artists.
Sunday, February 18, 1 pm
Shivers, 1975 David Cronenberg, director 87 minutes, rated R Throughout his career, David Cronenberg has created cinematic nightmares based on the loss of control of the body, whether through disease, science, or other outside interference. In this film, wealthy apartment dwellers are attacked by a parasite that turns them into violent, sex-crazed zombies. Martin Scorsese describes Shivers as "shocking, subversive, surrealistic and probably something we all deserve." Sunday, February 25, 1 pm
eXistenZ, 1999 David Cronenberg, director 97 minutes, rated R An exploration of entertainment technology, body modification, and virtual realities, this film contains extremely graphic imagery and is not for the faint of heart—or stomach. Based on the real-life Starkweather-Fugate killings of the 1950s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Film Discussion Group
Please join Assistant Curator Laura Burkhalter to discuss these thought-provoking and often shocking films. Chosen by Burkhalter and artist Patricia Piccinini, these movies not only highlight themes found in Meet the New You and Hug: Recent Work by Patricia Piccinini, but also offer an intriguing glimpse into almost 75 years of film history. Tuition fee for the four-part discussion is $25 ($20 members) or can be taken on a film-by-film basis at $7 per film ($5 members). Contact Janet Weeden at 515.271.0306 to register. Discussion group will be limited to 25 people. Patricia Piccinini Heterosis Catalogue by Drome (2002) b. 1965, Freetown, Sierra Leone lives Melbourne, Australia
Patricia Piccinini arrived in Australia in 1972 with her family. She initially studied economic history before enrolling at art school in Melbourne. Since 1991 her work has been exhibited around the world, including the Berlin Biennale 2001 and in Songs of the Earth in Kassell, in 2000.
Piccinini works in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, video, sound, installation and digital prints. She enjoys exploring what she calls 'the often specious distinctions between the artificial and the natural'. The concepts that underpin modern science, such as genetic engineering and other forms of biotechnology, appear to fascinate her. The Mutant Genome Project (TMGP) (1994), used computer software to develop LUMP (Lifeform with Unevolved Mutant Properties), a virtual hybrid 'creature'. The artist has said that 'LUMP is part human flesh, biotechnology, popular culture and marketing; unlovable to some, but the apple of its mother's eye'. LUMP is a 'baby' born from a perverse coupling of television advertising and basic engineering principles. This shiny, plastic infant again features in the computer generated photographic work, Psychotourism (1996), in which it is sheltered and protected by its human, although digitally enhanced, 'mother'. Other virtual creatures appear in Social Studies (2000) and Plasticology, the multi-screen installation featured in the 1999 Melbourne International Biennial (1999) and Sydney's 1997 Perspecta. Piccinini's vaguely embryonic invented forms are simultaneously attractive and repellent. An ambivalent and perhaps weird coupling can be seen again in Car Nuggets: They're good for you (1998) and Truck Babies (1999). The latter are cute, compressed and streamlined road machines in shiny pastel pink and baby blue fibreglass. From a similar spawning comes Car Nuggets. For Piccinini these forms are something of a nostalgic return. They refer not only to the vagaries of industrial mass production processes but also to the heady days of adolescence where the car and car parts symbolised a potent lexicon of desires. In the 2001 GL versions she has decorated these strange fragments with flame and skull details. Piccinini enjoys the fictions and mutability of the ideas of perfection. The contrasts and relationships that exist between the natural, organic and constructed worlds suggest to her the potential of the marriage of human physiology and technological development. 
2:12 PM
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