La Belle Epoque: Evoking Proust's Place and Time
Elizabeth Jameson: Splendorform
The Photographic Impulse: Selections from the Joseph and Elaine Monsen Collection
Imaging the Orient
Along the Silk Road: Rugs and Textiles from Syria to China
Cheap Thrills: Great Designs for $5 or Less
Worn: Social Roles Revealed
Superflat
Jeffry Mitchell: HanabukiJeffry Mitchell: Hanabuki
East Gallery
September 14, 2001 – January 1, 2002
Seattle artist Jeffry Mitchell makes manifest in elaborate sculptural form the wondrous, fantastical landscape of his subconscious. Addressing issues of self-discovery and personal insight as a gay man brought up in a large Catholic, blue-collar family, Mitchell’s work is subtly autobiographical. In myriad layers of meaning and pure whimsy, his work also continues a long standing discourse on the relationship between craft and fine art, between the highly intellectualized realm of conceptual art and a sort of child’s playground where materials dictate form and where dreams, doodles, and accident dictate content. Mitchell’s bi-level, multi-narrative commissioned work for the Henry Art Gallery combined humor, a Zen Buddhist sense of hyper-awareness of one’s surroundings, a joyful interest in the sensual and the erotic, and an exploration of process, labor and production, among other recurring themes. Although Mitchell created significant work in the preceding two decades, this exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery was the first museum exhibition of his work in almost ten years. Solo exhibitions of his work were held at the Seattle Art Museum in 1990 and at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, in 1992.