Arts Briefs: Walker Art Center unveils Pacita Abad exhibit
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The Walker Art Center opens an exhibition Saturday that features the work of a noted Filipina artist.
Pacita Abad’s career spans 32 years. Having come to the U.S. in the 1970s to escape political persecution in the Philippines, Abad was known for her trapunto, a style of quilted painting.
Abad died in 2004.
The Walker’s retrospective includes many works on display in the United States for the first time, according to the Minneapolis museum. The exhibition runs until Sept. 3.
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Minnesota Harpist to perform with Yo Yo Ma
A Minnesota musician has won an audition to play with legendary cellist Yo Yo Ma.
Harpist Grace Roepke grew up in Chanhassen, graduated from Minnetonka High School and studied at MacPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis. She recently won an audition to play as principal harp at the Louisville Orchestra.
On April 27, she will perform Kentucky-themed classical music alongside Yo Yo Ma inside the state’s landmark Mammoth Cave, the longest known cave system in the world.
Roepke will join the orchestra full-time on July 1.
Four Minnesotans awarded 2023 Guggenheim Fellowships
Four Minnesotans are among the recipients of the 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, announced April 5.
They are photographer Pao Houa Her, artists Tetsuya Yamada and Kelly Nipper and writer Kao Kalia Yang.
The fellowships are awarded annually by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to scholars and artists who have “demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.”
Handcrafted publishing showcased in St. Paul exhibition
Friedli Gallery in St. Paul is presenting a Book Arts exhibition through May 27. The show will feature fine press books, zines and other examples of handcrafted publishing. Curator Erin Maurelli is a book art creator herself, creating elaborately decorated boxes and colorful stickers and prints.
Virtual-environment Indigenous movie maker to speak
The Weisman Art Museum will offer an artist talk featuring artist Skawennati. The artist was born in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory and belongs to the Turtle clan.
Skawennati works in many mediums but is especially known for her machinimas, or movies that are created in virtual environments. According to the museum, she will discuss “Indigenous Futurisms and World-building.”
Skawennati speaks at the museum April 19.
Fergus Falls artist honored
The Kaddatz Galleries in Fergus Falls has announced a second exhibition as part of a yearlong retrospective of a regional Minnesota artist.
“Studio K: A Year of Beck: Murals + Public Works” looks at the works of Charles Beck, an artist who also hand-painted many of the signs around Fergus Falls. Beck died in 2017 at 94.
The exhibition continues through June 17. There’s a reception on April 18.
Absolute Bleeding Edge: ‘Smoking Causes Coughing’
The MPR News arts team offers suggestions for the best in avant-garde, experimental and off-the-beaten path arts and culture.
French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux is reliably one of the daffiest filmmakers working, having created movies about sentient killer tires (“Rubber,” 2010), a leather coat that develops a voice and inspires a crime spree (“Deerskin,” 2019) and a giant fly (“Mandibles,” 2020).
With the now-streaming, “Smoking Causes Coughing,” Dupieux tells of a team of superheroes. In awkward spandex costumes, they fight – and graphically eviscerate – insect-like aliens that seem borrowed from Japanese monster movies. Due to slipping morale, their boss (inexplicably a drooling rat puppet) sends them on a corporate retreat.
They never get around to any team-building exercises. Instead, their retreat is constantly interrupted by storytellers – including a fish – determined to tell campfire-style horror stories. These range from small and weird to long and very weird.
All are equal parts unsettling and hilarious, including one in which an unflappable young man is slowly ground up in a wood chipper. He insists he’s fine throughout, even when there is barely any left of him at all.
