TuckUnder Projects is very pleased to announce the tandem portraiture exhibition Pamela & Frank Gaard/Dual Portraits.
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| Dual Portraits of Sean - Frank and Pamela Gaard; photo by Pete Driessen |
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Pamela & Frank Gaard/Dual Portraits opens at TuckUnder Projects,
Thursday, June 28, 6-9 pm. The exhibition runs June 28-July 29, 2012,
with unstructured
hours Wednesday
through Sunday, and by appointment. Please email info@tuckunder.org to
confirm open hours. TuckUnder Projects is located at 5120 York Avenue
South, Minneapolis, MN, USA 55410. For further information visit www.TuckUnder.org.
The atypical dual portraits of Pamela and Frank Gaard repeatedly break
the mold of traditional monarchial portraiture. Rarely are dual
portraits of an artist’s model created and painted by two different
artists from life in the same sitting. The unique qualities of the
Gaards double portraiture move beyond conservative art historical
status, power, and position by illuminating the quirky, emotive, and
personal. Through odd facial expression, ill postured poses, high and
low polychromatic saturation, and a range of brush stroke and color
blending techniques, the tandem portraits exhibit novel sensitive and
idiosyncratic qualities. In our media hyped society, these partnership
portraits bring to life the meek, the frail, and the subtle hidden human
conditions and delicate private characteristics that a video or digital
camera cannot capture.
As working artists, the Gaards live and
paint out of their home/studio in the Fulton neighborhood of Southwest
Minneapolis, Minnesota. The paintings for this second TuckUnder Projects
exhibition are drawn from recent artists, friends, coworkers, and
Fulton neighbors. Together, the Gaards portrait partnership currently
produces work that includes acrylic paintings and mixed media drawings
on paper. Their visual and conceptual portraiture vocabulary explores
human relationships, togetherness and community. The Pamela & Frank
Gaard/Dual Portraits exhibition presents multiple vantage points for the
viewer by offering a second ordered observer experience. Frank and Pam
have painted dual portraits collaboratively for the past six years, and
have exhibited them together at Co Exhibitions, Minneapolis; the Phipps
Center for the Arts, Hudson, Wisconsin; and one was included in the
recent Walker Art Center retrospective, Frank Gaard: Poison & Candy.
This is the first show that focuses solely on their dual portraiture.
American artist Pamela Gaard is a self-taught visual artist and health
educator who was born in Minneapolis in 1955. Ms. Gaards education is in
the sciences and has a master’s degree equivalent in public health. She
has primarily created visual art, sculpture and paintings from
re-purposed and disparate materials. Ms. Gaard has exhibited in
galleries and museums in the US, Germany, and Lithuania, including
Pittsburgh Center for the Arts; Indiana University of Pennsylvania;
University of Alaska Art Museum, Fairbanks, Alaska; Art in Embassies
Program, Vilnius, Lithuania; and Galeri Hori, Konstanz, Germany. Ms.
Gaard has exhibited locally at Co. Exhibitions, Flatland Gallery,
Intermedia Arts, Rogue Buddha Gallery, the University of St. Thomas, and
the Phipps Center for the Arts, Hudson, Wisconsin. Currently, she
paints in acrylics on canvas, paper, and recycled objects. Gaard is
working on a series of large-scale portraits of people, painted from
life, some often created in tandem collaboration with her
husband/artist. Pam Gaards portraits are intended, in the words of
Arthur Danto, as ‘emblems through which we confer honor by preserving
the likenesses of those portrayed . . . which can be channels for
adoration.’
American artist Frank Gaard was born in Chicago in
1944, received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago,
and his MFA from California College of The Arts. He worked as a fine
arts professor at Minneapolis College of Art & Design from
1969-1987. His solo exhibitions include the Minneapolis Institute of
Arts, Flanders Gallery, and most recently his 50 year retrospective at
the Walker Art Center. His group exhibitions include many he organized
and curated with the Art Police Collective, including LACE, Los Angeles,
California with ASCO & Group Material, and the Pompidou Centre
Galerie Salle, Paris, France. He has been awarded three McKnight Artist
Fellowships, two Pollock/Krasner Fellowships, and a Bush Artist
Fellowship. His collections include the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Institute of Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Smart
Museum/University of Chicago. Frank Gaards collaborative zine
publications with Art Police are numerous and known for their mix of
high/low browish political cartoons and sexy imagery.
TuckUnder Projects is a temporary, independent artist exhibition space
and sculpture site located within the Fulton neighborhood of Southwest
Minneapolis. As an alternative, hybridic home-based contemporary
gallery, TuckUnder Projects specializes in unrecognized emerging artists
and curatorial collaborators, tactical institutional critique,
participatory initiatives and conceptual curatorial projects. Artistic
quality at TuckUnder is based upon artist’s tactical aesthetics,
participatory exchange, home economics, and conceptual fortitude rather
than traditionally conservative art fair and gallery criteria.
For its first season of interior and exterior art exhibit programming,
TuckUnder plans six platform exhibits that engage the local community
with under recognized local and regional emerging artists and curators
working in visual arts, video, site specific sculpture and installation
from May thru October 2012. Artists will collaborate with the unique
1950’s architectural environs, TuckUnder garage, fake butterflies &
woodpecker, raspberry patch, & scenic overlook. Recent and
forthcoming exhibition and curatorial projects include the artists
Pamela & Frank Gaard, Ann George, Lisa Bergh & Andrew Nordin of
Art House/New London, Scott Stulen, Karen Kasel, and Raspberry Patch
Resident Sarah Wolbert.
TuckUnder Projects is created with the
generous help of MRAC, Springboard for the Arts Incubator program, Mayan
Co., Arvesen Co., Driessen Water, and many individuals. TuckUnder
Projects activity is funded, in part, by a Metropolitan Regional Arts
Council Community Arts Grant, and by appropriations from the Minnesota
State Legislature with money from the State's general fund, and its arts
and cultural heritage fund that was created by a vote of the people of
Minnesota on November 4, 2008.
For further information please contact Pete Driessen at 612-719-7377 or info@tuckunder.org.
