Exhibition reception and gallery talk by Robert J. LangMarch 7, 2011 at 7–9 p.m.
In conjunction with the Hillstrom Museum of Art's current exhibition, Many-Fold Manifolds: Engineered Origami by Robert J. Lang, origami master Lang will give a gallery talk as part of an exhibition reception held at the Museum on Monday, March 7, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Lang he will also present the Rydell Lecture on campus, titled "From Flapping Birds to Space Telescopes: The Mathematics of Origami, e on Tuesday, March 8, in Alumni Hall, O. J. Johnson Student Union, starting at 7 p.m. (this Rydell Lecture will also be presented off-campus, on Thursday, March 10, starting at 7 p.m., at the Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul, in the Auditorium, with a reception in the Education Commons following). Lang holds the Robert and Susan Rydell Professorship of Gustavus Adolphus College for 2010-2011. The Rydell Professorship is a scholar-in-residence program established in 1995 by Drs. Robert and Susan Rydell of Minnetonka, Minnesota, to bring Nobel Conference presenters and other distinguished scholars to campus.
Many-Fold Manifoldsfeatures over fifty of Robert J. Lang's origami masterworks. Lang, who holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology, has been an avid artist of origami, the art of paper folding, for over forty years. In 2001, he left his career as a distinguished physicist and engineer to become a full-time artist. Lang is one of the world's leading masters of his art form, and is a pioneer of the "cross-disciplinary marriage of origami and mathematics, equoting the biography on his website, langorigami.com. He has published widely on origami (a list of his publications is included in this brochure). Lang's works have been shown in many prominent museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work was used for a remarkable 2006 advertisement for Mitsubishi as well as in an ad for McDonald's, and he was one of the featured artists in the award-winning 2008 documentary Between the Folds, recently featured on PBS' Emmy Award-winning series Independent Lens. The 56-minute film will be shown continuously in a space adjacent to the exhibition, through the generosity of its writer and director Vanessa Gould.
Among the works on exhibit will be numerous insects (a favorite subject of the artist), a variety of abstract works related to mathematical concepts and ideas (a particular interest), and a large, multi-part installation piece created specifically for this exhibit, Vertical Pond, featuring nineteen individual koi, each fish folded from a single sheet of hand-made mottled paper created for Lang's use in collaboration with master papermakers Richard Alexander and Michael LaFosse. Since 1999, Lang has been exploring the recreation of his delicate paper works in colorfully patinated, durable bronze, and two such works, Hermit Crab, opus 528 and Crow, opus 422, cast under his supervision at the Artworks Foundry in Berkeley, California, are included in the exhibit.
In conjunction with Many-Fold Manifolds will be dance performances of works choreographed by students in the Dance Composition class taught by Melissa Rolnick, Department of Theatre and Dance. Student dancers will perform pieces they created based on inspiration from works on view in the exhibition. Their program, titled Enfolded Precision: Embodied Interpretations, will be presented in the Museum on April 8 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., and April 9 from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m.
Look! Works from the Hillstrom Collection, being shown in tandem with Many-Fold Manifolds, features a selection from the finest works in the Hillstrom Collection and is meant to encourage deep concentration on the visual aspect of the works on view. The exhibit springs from discussions that take place in the Museum Studies (ART255) course at Gustavus Adolphus College regarding the appropriate role and extent of explanatory texts with works of art exhibited in museums. Briefly, the debate has to do with how labels and other texts can explain or set an artwork into context, allowing for a fuller understanding of it, but how they can also detract from an aesthetic appreciation of the artwork by drawing attention away from it.
All the Hillstrom Museum of Art's exhibitions and programs are free and open to the public.<