ISSUES OF IDENTITY IN AMERICAN ART IS SUBJECT OF EXHIBIT AT WILLIAM PATERSON UNIVERSITY

The issue of American identity is explored through the works of nine diverse contemporary artists in an exhibit at William Paterson University’s Ben Shahn Galleries from January 31 through March 8, 2002. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.

Titled "Issues of Identity in Recent American Art," the show, on view in Ben Shahn’s Court Gallery, addresses issues of culture, race, gender, national, and personal identity. Artists whose works are featured in the exhibit include Enrique Chagoya, Tseng Kwong Chi, Robert Colescott, Brad Kahlhamer, Michael Oatman, Adrian Piper, Cindy Sherman, Masami Teraoka and Carrie Mae Weems.

"These artists contribute to the current dialogue with powerful, disparate, multifaceted and critical work," says Dan Mills, curator of the exhibit and director of the art gallery at Bucknell University. "In many ways, they represent the diversity of artists addressing identity issues today." Three of the artists were born outside the United states: Chagoya (Mexico), Tseng (Hong Kong) and Teraoka (Japan). Colescott, Piper and Weems are African American; Kahlhamer is Native American. Oatman and Sherman are European American.

The artists present work across the disciplines, including installation and video. For example, Chagoya intermixes the cultures of the United States and Mexico, old and new religions, and art and popular culture in his paintings and prints. The late Tseng Kwon Chi made photographic self-portraits where he presented himself as a cultural "other" in a Mao suit, making expeditions to Western tourist attractions.

Adrian Piper, among the first artists to employ the new medium of video in the early 1970s, creates installations, performances, drawings and videos that expand attitudes about race and xenophobia, and gender and forms of oppression against women. Cindy Sherman first gained attention in 1977 with a series of photos, "Untitled Film Stills," in which she donned disguises and posed as female character types familiar from postwar cinema, such as the ingenue. In both black and white photos from that series, and as well as her recent color photographs, Sherman challenges the images and myths of popular culture and mass media.

The issue of American identity has been in question since the nation’s founding. "Throughout its history, the nation has convulsed between the promise of its ideals, and efforts to contain that promise with restricted suffrage, limited rights and the suppression of dissent," writes art historian Grady T. Turner in an essay for the exhibit catalog. "American culture grew to maturity in the context of this struggle, with artists regularly taking on the task of defining the nation’s ideals through its art."

The exhibit is one of three shows on view concurrently in the Ben Shahn Galleries. On view in the South Gallery is "Bernarda Bryson Shahn," a retrospective of works by the internationally recognized 98-year-old New Jersey artist. In the East Gallery, original artworks by illustrator James Ransome, who has illustrated more than 25 children’s books, are featured in an exhibit titled "A Life’s Journey." All exhibits are free and open to the public and are wheelchair accessible.

This exhibit is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.
For additional information, please call the Ben Shahn Galleries at William Paterson University at 973-720-2654.

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1/07/02
For Further Information, contact:

Mary Beth Zeman, Director, Public Relations 973-720-2966