Saturday evening openings at Real Art Ways

Real Art Ways
56 Arbor St., Hartford, (860) 232-1006
Olu Oguibe
Saya Woolfalk: Institute of Empathy
Oct. 23, 2010—Mar. 20, 2011
Opening reception: Sat., Oct. 23, 6—8 p.m.

Press release

Conceptual artist Olu Oguibe brings a 40-foot New England stonewall into the Real Art Ways gallery to examine its role as an iconic amalgamation of geology, history, craft and metaphor. Working together with local masons and using area field stones, Oguibe has created a stonewall as a neo-minimalist gesture where the natural and cultural histories of New England take form and become art.

There will be a free opening reception Sat., Oct. 23 from 6—8 p.m. Real Art Ways is located at 56 Arbor Street in Hartford's Parkville neighborhood.

Oguibe describes the New England stonewall as both a line and a limn, an illuminated space where the natural and cultural histories of New England take form and become art. By moving the stonewall into the gallery space, and making it part of the vocabulary of conceptual art, Oguibe hopes to generate a new, inclusive discourse that draws no line between aesthetic or formal concerns, on one hand, and environmental, cultural, or social discourses, on the other. Oguibe, an international artist whose work often deals with place, says, "I believe that it is time that New England artists rebuild the bridge between art and the museum public. By returning to the peculiar natural elements and forms that define the region and its environment, I hope this exhibition helps renew the public's interest in the beauty and uniqueness of the region."

Olu Oguibe is a conceptual artist whose work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, including the biennials of Venice, Havana, Busan Korea, and Johannesburg, South Africa as well as the Whitney Museum; PS1-MoMa; the Smithsonian; the Irish Museum of Modern Art; Migros Museum, Zurich; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastrich; Whitechapel Gallery; Royal Festival Hall; the United Nations Headquarters; and many others. He has also served as curator or co-curator for many international exhibitions including shows at the Tate Modern in London and the Venice Biennial. Oguibe is a Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Connecticut.

Using craft based installation, video, photography, drawing and live performance, artist Saya Woolfalk invites Real Art Ways visitors to re-imagine the world through her fictional creation, Institute of Empathy. The piece is an installment in Woolfalk's ongoing creation of another universe in which boundaries between man-woman, plant-animal, machine-human are blurred.

There will be a free opening reception Sat., Oct. 23 from 6—8 p.m. Real Art Ways is located at 56 Arbor Street in Hartford's Parkville neighborhood. Institute of Empathy will come alive with a dance performance from Scapegoat Garden's Deborah Goffee at the opening reception and from University of Hartford dancers under the direction of Stephen Pier and Bonita Weisman during upcoming Creative Cocktail Hours.

Woolfalk has used conversations with Hartford area doctors, political activists, dancers and others as a springboard for Institute of Empathy's subject matter: a group of "Empathics" who seek to understand truth through reason and mysticism, and to change themselves and their world. By blending fact and fiction, Woolfalk constructs playful narratives that immerse us in the logic of another place, ultimately exploring how ideas evolve in our own culture.

Woolfalk says, "Culture is not static. It is an ever-emerging phenomenon and I try to mirror this process in this body of work."

Artist Saya Woolfalk re-imagines the world in multiple dimensions (sculpture, installation, and painting to performance and video). She was an Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, completed the Whitney Independent Study Program in Studio, and holds an MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Brown University. She has exhibited at PS1/MoMA; Deitch Projects; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Studio Museum in Harlem; Momenta Art; Performa09; and many others. She has received an Art Matters grant to Japan, a NYFA grant, a Fulbright Fellowship to Brazil, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA grant.