Conflict is as personal as domestic abuse and as global as war. How do we find resolution?
The Fine Arts Center presents a multidisciplinary experience, exploring the concepts of conflict and resolution through all three of its areas – visual arts, performing arts and arts education. Programs examining these themes include exhibits from a variety of national and international visual artists, a dramatic Arthur Miller play, music and dance events, Bemis classes, ‘Conversations in the Galleries,’ and a film series.
The Conflict | Resolution project has particular relevance to our community, given its unique mix of divergent political thought, religious organizations, military presence and more. The FAC is therefore partnering with a number of community organizations for the program.
Opening Celebration: Friday, March 26 | 5 – 7 p.m.
Tumbleweed/Nautical Mines
The fourteen sculptures comprising Chris Weed’s Spores have been commissioned specifically for Conflict | Resolution and will be installed in the FAC’s Sculpture Garden and Glass Corridor.
Among the most recognized sculptors on the Front Range, Chris Weed is rapidly achieving national renown. His large-scale works can be found in Colorado Springs and throughout the Denver metropolitan area.
As with the best of Weed’s art, Spores simultaneously suggests something playful yet threatening, natural yet out-scaled, organic yet industrial. Accordingly, the forms at-once appear as seed spores, tumbleweeds, thistles, and nautical mines.
View From Abroad: Reflections on War
This series of works by Mexican artist Carlos Aguirre focuses on the role of the media as it communicates and responds to world conflict.
By combining and juxtaposing texts from the actual press, Aguirre’s work revolves around premeditated manipulation of language in the mass media, especially in religious and political discourse. One of the foremost figures in contemporary art in Mexico, Aguirre is a social activist who analyzes the distance between words and their meaning in his exquisitely conceived objects and installations.
Depictions of Conflict – Suggestions of Resolution
Throughout the ages, artists have employed visual media to confront questions of conflict and resolution. It is, however, often the questions of our own time that seem the most challenging to answer. Today’s artists sometimes suggest resolution through pure reflection of our conflicts, and others through deliberate challenge to the viewer.
This exhibition will include an international selection of contemporary art drawn from private Colorado collections. Artists of various nations including the United States, Iran, Japan, Cuba, and Germany are represented by works which address topics from war to race relations to terrorism to surveillance. Media included will span traditional painting and sculpture to cutting-edge conceptual art and video.
AIDS Quilt
The FAC joins the Southern Colorado Aids Project in presenting The AIDS Memorial Quilt. Created in 1987, the Quilt is a poignant memorial, a powerful tool for use in preventing new HIV infections, and the world’s largest ongoing community arts project. Each section is approximately 12 feet square and typically consists of eight individual three by six foot panels sewn together. Virtually every one of over 40,000 colorful panels in the Quilt memorializes a life lost to AIDS.
Lost Heroes Quilt
A tribute to courageous men and women who have given their lives in service to our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Lost Heroes Art Quilt was created by artist Julie Feingold as a non-political work.
On display at the FAC May 18-31, this dramatic, mixed media fabric artwork features 82 heroes reflecting the diversity of America – 50 in the central quilt representing each state in the U.S. and 32 around the border. A photograph and poignant words describing the person’s unique personality, dreams, plans, interests and hopes appear around each hero’s square on the Quilt, permanently memorializing each life.
