North Dakota Museum of Art
August 24 – October 10, 2010
John Snyder: No Le Se

For decades artist John Snyder has wanted to find a piece of paradise upon which to build a chapel. He recently purchased his “piece of Paradise” in northeast Iowa, and in his current exhibition at the North Dakota Museum of Art he explores the themes, signs and symbols of the spiritual quest exemplified by both Buddha and Jesus Christ. Through woodcuts, paintings, and sculpture Snyder considers the relationships between the ultimate truth and ourselves. In his Drawings from the Underground, the slave ship becomes symbolic of both the physical and spiritual journey into this realm—a passage recognized by the artist as his own voyage through a deep depression. His abstract images grow out of his obsession with Oceanic art, the Cave Temples of Mogao (a World Heritage Site on the Silk Road located near the ancient town of Dunhuang in northwestern China), and from the Northwest Coast a Mowachaht whalers’ washing shrine, now in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History. The artist translates “No Lo Se,” the title of the exhibition, from the Spanish as “it isn’t yet known to me.”

August 24 – October 10, 2010
Fantastic

Fantastic brings together of the work of a dozen artists from the United States, Canada, England, Iceland, and Argentina who delve into the implausible, incredible, and improbable. It is as though the artists provide the viewer with the characters and the setting, but require that the viewer supply the narrative. Many works echo earlier paintings. Argentinean artist Rez borrows from Da Vinci and Velázquez. David Becker of Detroit seems steeped in Bosch and Bruegel. Grand Forks’ Brian Paulsen keeps company with Edward Hopper and Franz Kline. For example, the beautiful woman holding an ermine in Da Vinci’s 1490 painting now holds a pig’s head in Rez’s 2009 version. Gay, colorful, and downright weird, the exhibition poses as a collection of old masterpieces. Instead it is a rollicking excursion into fun. An edited version of “Fantastic” will tour for eighteen months throughout North Dakota as part of the Museum’s Rural Arts Initiative.

October 13 – 23, 2010
Autumn Art Auction Exhibition

October 23, 2010
Autumn Art Auction

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