El Anatsui
Although summer vacations are behind you, there’s still time to see the Akron Art Museum’s exciting, hot summer exhibition Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui.
This acclaimed body of artwork by an internationally celebrated living artist closes in Akron on October 7, 2012.
Anatsui’s art has won worldwide acclaim for its power and splendor. He is celebrated for transforming discarded metal objects, like liquor bottle caps and can lids, into shimmering, pliable artworks of monumental beauty.
Critics have praised the exhibition with superlatives, including “a magical exhibition featuring works that are regal in scale, color and form…” According to another, the twelve monumental “shiny and colorful” wall and floor sculptures “… resemble metallic waterfalls, jewel-covered landscapes or curtains of reflected light.”
The exhibition as well as the national tour are organized by Senior Curator Ellen Rudolph, in collaboration with the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, and are funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The exhibition continues on to The Brooklyn Museum in New York ( February 8 through August 18, 2013) , with anticipated future engagements in Des Moines and Miami.
Drawing on artistic and aesthetic traditions from his birth country of Ghana, his home in Nigeria and various Western art forms including modernist and post-modern modes of expression, Anatsui culls from his environment, both natural and manmade, as a source of material and inspiration.
The exhibition and national tour of Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui is organized by the Akron Art Museum and made possible by a major grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
