Ruffner and Viola: Member-Only Preview (Upper Level: Patron, Benefactor, Director's Forum, Masterpiece Society and Collectors' Circle), 4–5pm
As a valued Museum Member, we invite you to join us for the exclusive opening of two new exhibitions— Ginny Ruffner: Reforestation of the Imagination and Bill Viola's Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier. On Thursday, September 12, 2024.
4–5pm, Upper-Level (Patron, Benefactor, Director’s Forum, and Masterpiece Society Levels Only).
5–7pm, All Members (Artist, Educator, Senior, Individual Levels, and Above).
The Asheville Art Museum is pleased to present Ginny Ruffner’s Reforestation of the Imagination, organized and toured by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibition imagines an apocalyptic landscape of withered plant forms that come to life when activated with augmented reality. In collaboration with animator and media artist Grant Kirkpatrick, Ruffner illuminates the delicate balance between nature and the artificial human-built world around us, putting forth an optimistic hope for the future: that technology can be a means to understand and help save the earth from environmental devastation.
Bill Viola’s Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier on loan from Art Bridges is an immersive experience that explores the ideas of death and regeneration in nature. In a darkened room, sounds from nature envelop the viewer, as a placid pool of water reflects a projected image of Mount Rainier onto a screen. The water is periodically disturbed, causing the image to dissolve and slowly recompose as the pool settles. As an active volcano at rest, Mount Rainier embodies both quiet beauty and dramatic violence. Using time as both a tool and a theme in his work, Viola visualizes the dualities of nature’s rhythms of renewal, which include moments of both fragility and strength.
Images: Ginny Ruffner with Grant Kirkpatrick, "Canna grandiflora (Magnolia gondola)," 2017, holographic image. Courtesy of Ruffner Studio.
Bill Viola, "Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier, 1979," 1979, color videotape playback with rear projection reflected off water surface of a pool onto a suspended screen, in a large, dark room, water disturbed by hand at intervals, and amplified stereo sound, pool: 8 in x 10 ft x 20 ft. Art Bridges. Photo: Kira Perov.
