Nasher Sculpture Center Presents Statuesque First Garden Exhibition on View from April 9 through August 21, 2011

DALLAS, (January 25, 2010) – The Nasher Sculpture Center is pleased to present Statuesque on view from April 9 through August 21, 2011. Statuesque brings together a dynamic group of six international artists – Pawel Althamer, , Aaron Curry, Thomas Houseago, Matthew Monahan and Rebecca Warren – whose work reveals a renewed significance of the figure in contemporary sculpture. Featuring ten large-scale sculptures, this exhibition marks the Nasher Sculpture Center’s first exhibition to be presented outdoors. On view in the Nasher’s 1.4-acre Sculpture Garden, as well as in front of the Nasher on Flora Street, visitors will be able to see this new work within the context of the Nasher Collection, which includes a broad range of figurative sculpture from the last 125 years that serves as the foundation for much of the work in the exhibition. Organized by Public Art Fund’s Director and Chief Curator Nicholas Baume, Statuesque comes to from the historic setting of Lower Manhattan’s City Hall Park, where it was on view from June 2 through December 3, 2010.

”We are very happy to add the Nasher Sculpture Center Garden to our repertoire of exhibition venues,” said Nasher Sculpture Center director, Jeremy Strick. “Statuesque is an especially appropriate exhibition to show at the Nasher, as its artists make work profoundly influenced by the modern masters represented in the Nasher collection.”

“Long considered marginal in the contemporary art world, figurative sculpture has returned to center stage in the recent works of an international group of artists born in the 1960s and 1970s” said Baume. “It is clear that despite their highly developed individual styles, these artists share striking affinities. By turns visually playful, formally experimental, and viscerally charged, their works reinvent and extend the language of figurative sculpture for the twenty-first century.”

Neither literal portraits nor traditional monuments, these works push the expressive potential of sculptural forms and materials. While the approaches and backgrounds of the artists are very different, their work shares a number of key characteristics. They tend towards abstraction over realism, assemblage over the readymade, construction of form over casting from life, and physicality and texture over refinement of finish. Their artistic references range from Ancient Egyptian and African sculpture to works by Michelangelo, Rodin, and Picasso. By turns colossal, complex, dazzling, and confronting, their impact is visceral, charging one of art's most traditional subjects with a renewed sense of expressive potential and contemporary relevance.

About Public Art Fund

Public Art Fund is New York’s leading presenter of artists’ projects, new commissions, installations, and exhibitions in public spaces. Since 1977, the Public Art Fund has worked with over 500 emerging and established artists to produce innovative temporary exhibitions of contemporary art throughout New York City. By bringing artworks outside the traditional context of museums and galleries, the Public Art Fund provides a unique platform for an unparalleled encounter with the art of our time.

About the Nasher Sculpture Center; Open since October 2003, the Nasher Sculpture Center is dedicated to the display and study of modern and contemporary sculpture. The Center is located on a 2.4-acre site in the heart of the Dallas Arts District. , a world-renowned architect and winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 1998, is the architect of the Center’s 55,000-square-foot building. Piano worked in collaboration with landscape architect Peter Walker on the design of the two-acre sculpture garden.

The Nasher Sculpture Center was the longtime dream of the late Raymond and Patsy Nasher, who together formed one of the finest collections of modern and contemporary sculpture in the world. The Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection includes masterpieces by Calder, de Kooning, di Suvero, Giacometti, Hepworth, Kelly, Matisse, Miró, Moore, Picasso, Rodin, and Serra, among others, and continues to grow and evolve.

The Nasher Sculpture Center presents rotating exhibitions of works from the Nasher Collection as well as special exhibitions drawn from other museums and private collections. In addition to indoor gallery space, the Center contains an auditorium, education and research facilities, a cafe, and a store.

The Nasher Sculpture Center is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm and until 11 pm for special events. General Admission to the Center is $10 for adults, $7 for seniors, $5 for students, and free for members and children 12 and under. For more information, visit www.NasherSculptureCenter.org .

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Kristen Mills Gibbins Associate Director of Media Relations 214.242.5177 [email protected]