Upcoming Exhibitions
 

The experiences of the photographer, sitter, and viewer often collude and sometimes collide in the creation of photographic meaning.  At its start, the portrait involves a shifting negotiation from behind the camera to the front of the camera.  Yet, despite both the message the photographer aims to portray and the image the sitter chooses to betray, the true control resides with the viewer, who ultimately interprets the photograph.  This exhibition explores the endlessly interesting terrain of the portrait in over 100 photographs from the permanent collection that reveal an infinite range of human complexities and contradictory states of heart and mind.

Multimedia works by this critically acclaimed emerging artist have been described as inventive, humorous, and "discomfitingly complex." This installation—the artist's first solo museum exhibition in the western United States—features a selection of five video portraits. Using flat-screen monitors encased in frames, these works appear to be conventional photographs or even paintings, each depicting one or more figures rendered abstract through the use of masks and costumes. As these strange figures subtly and slowly move at a nearly imperceptible pace, they create a sense of surprise and perhaps even unease for the viewer. Combined with vague visual references to imagery found in modern art, these works are familiar yet strange simultaneously, which adds to their associations with the uncanny. Strategically placed throughout the Museum, they address not only the viewer, but also the works and concepts already existing within its walls.

As an inventive form of portraiture, the works in this exhibition are also meant to complement the major summer exhibition, Portrayal/Betrayal.
 

This exhibition showcases nearly 60 paintings from an era of unrivaled historical drama and artistic achievement in China that spans from the late Ming (ca. 1600–1644) and the early Qing dynasties (1644–ca.1700). By adopting a novel, thematic approach centered on the concept of yin ?, or reclusion, this presentation brings the viewer deeply into the world of the literati—the educated elite who were at the forefront of historical change and voiced their thoughts and ideals through art.

Works included in the exhibition hail from the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, five other public institutions, and six private collections in the United States and Taiwan, as well as the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s permanent collection?with a number of paintings that have never before been published. They cover a variety of formats—hanging scrolls, handscrolls, albums, and fans—and span a range of subjects including landscape, figures, birds-and-flowers, and fish.

The accompanying catalogue will be the first publication to explore in depth the theme of reclusion in painting and calligraphy within the broader context of political and social changes in the 17th century.