This week, Jared Bowen reviews two museum exhibitions by artists with connections to Greater Boston.
“Shen Wei: Painting in Motion,” on view at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum through June 20 (temporarily closed due to the coronavirus)
Many people might recognize artist Shen Wei’s choreography from the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony that found performers simultaneously dancing and drawing. However, the world-renowned dancer and choreographer has another practice he’s largely kept private: his painting. At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, “Shen Wei: Painting in Motion” highlights the artist’s massive works on canvas, including two original pieces made during his 2018-2019 tenure as an artist-in-residence at the museum.
“That in-between where images cohere and then dissolve, where they seem material and then dissolve into the ethereal, I think that's where Shen Wei lives,” says museum director Peggy Fogelman. “His dance is similar in the sense that there's a kind of structure… but then within that there's all this chance and improvisation.”
“Dave Cole: New Landscapes,” on view at UMass Dartmouth and virtually through their website
UMass Dartmouth’s University Art Gallery is now presenting, virtually and in-person, a new site-specific installation by artist Dave Cole. Titled “New Landscapes,” the exhibition is filled with paintings obscured by fragments of windows from an old Pawtucket mill. The encaustic paintings themselves are created with a range of materials including beeswax, fire, and shoe polish, reflecting the dark, fiery and uncertain nature of our current political and environmental landscapes.
“My generative process is very spontaneous,” says Cole. “This idea has been percolating for a really long time. It was a sort of a corner-of-the-sketchbook sketch maybe ten years ago that's been following me around. And for whatever reason right now felt like the right time.”
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