FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT: Kathleen Brady (512) 475-6784,
kathleen.brady@blantonmuseum.org
Brady Dyer (512) 232-5171,
brady.dyer@blantonmuseum.org
BLANTON MUSEUM OF ART PRESENTS SURVEY OF NEW AND RECENT
WORK BY INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED ARTIST TERESITA FERNÁNDEZ
Accompanying Exhibition Explores Use Of Light Through Works
In The Blanton’s Collection Featuring Paul Chan, Stephen
Antonakos, and Others
Teresita Fernández: Blind Landscape
November 1, 2009 – January 3, 2010
Drawn Toward Light
November 1, 2009 – January 3, 2010
(Austin, Texas June 19, 2009) This
fall, the Blanton Museum of Art at The
University of Texas at Austin is pleased
to present the exhibition, Teresita
Fernández: Blind Landscape, a survey of
new and recent works by this
internationally acclaimed artist.
Organized by the University of South
Florida Contemporary Art Museum (USFCAM)
and curated by David Louis Norr, chief
curator, USF Institute for Research in
Art, in close collaboration with the
artist, the exhibition will be on view from November 1,
2009 to January 3, 2010. Visitors to Blind Landscape will
actually move through one of Fernández’ works as they enter
the museum—Stacked Waters, the breathtaking installation
currently on view in the Blanton’s Rapoport Atrium.
Contemporary American artist Teresita Fernández (American
b. 1969) is widely known for her immersive installations
and evocative large-scale sculptures that explore the
cultural fabrication of nature. Characterized by her deft
ability to transform common materials like steel, graphite
and glass into forms and images reminiscent of the natural
world, Fernández’ works bring idea and experience into
poetic tension. Meticulous, subtle, and always surprising,
her sculptural scenarios offer viewers unique opportunities
for contemplation and discovery.
“Investigating the act of looking is central to Teresita
Fernández’ work,” says Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, the
Blanton’s curator of American & contemporary art and
director of curatorial affairs. “Her lyrical
investigations address our experiences of light and space
as they evolve moment-to-moment and respond to sensation,
memory, and the process of perception.”
The exhibition will include five recent large-scale
sculptures, a series of six wall works, and a new,
monumental drawing made on site. Featured among the largescale works is Vertigo (sotto en su) from 2007, comprised
of layers of precision-cut, highly polished metal woven
into a reflective and intricate arboreal pattern suspended
high above the viewer, not unlike an immense, cascading
tree branch. The multiple planes of space through which the
viewer looks become visible simultaneously, vacillating
between object and optical phenomena, continuously
disassembling and reassembling.
Additionally, the presentation at the Blanton will include
Stacked Waters, 2009—a two-story, site-specific work
commissioned for the museum’s atrium (pictured above)
earlier this year. Stacked Waters consists of 3,100 square
feet of custom–cast acrylic that covers the cavernous
atrium walls in a striped blue swirl pattern resembling
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water. Horizontal bands of saturated color
from deep blue to white, creating what the
colored abstraction” from which the viewer
top of the grand stair. Titled in a nod to
boxes, the work suggests that the space is
this case a site of communal activity.
shift and fade
artist calls ”a
emerges at the
Donald Judd's
a container, in
Teresita Fernández: Blind Landscape is organized by the USF
Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa. The exhibition is curated
by David Louis Norr, Chief Curator, USF Institute for
Research in Art.
Major support for the exhibition at the Blanton is provided
by Jeanne and Michael Klein and the Linda Pace Foundation.
Funding also is provided by Lora Reynolds and Quincy Lee in
honor of Jeanne and Michael Klein.
Drawn Toward Light
November 1, 2009 – January 3, 2010
Light is an essential element of visual experience and the
means by which we see and begin to perceive the world
around us. A special complement to Teresita Fernández:
Blind Landscape, Drawn Toward Light is an exhibition of
works from the Blanton’s holdings and local collections
that use light as a medium. Having no materiality in
itself, light is used is used in sculptural ways and given
physical presence by artists Stephen Antonakos, Paul Chan,
James Turrell, and Leo Villarreal.
Drawn Toward Light is curated by Risa Puleo, assistant
curator of American and contemporary art, and is organized
by the Blanton Museum of Art.
Catalogue
Accompanying Teresita Fernández: Blind Landscape will be a
144-page catalogue published by JRP-Ringier of Zurich. The
book will offer the most complete view to date of the work
of this important artist with detailed visual documentation
of Fernández’ last decade of work. It includes an
introductory text by curator David Norr, essays by noted
critics Dave Hickey and Gregory Volk, an artist interview
with writer Anne Stringfield, and a short text by Annette
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Carlozzi on the Blanton’s new Fernández commission, Stacked
Waters.
About the Artist
Teresita Fernández was born in Miami, Florida in 1968. She
received her BFA from Florida International University in
Miami and her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in
Richmond, Virginia. Fernández exhibits worldwide and her
work is widely collected both privately and by art
institutions. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships
and awards both in the U.S. and abroad including the 2005
MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and a 2003 Guggenheim
Fellowship. Fernández has had residencies in Japan, Italy,
and at Artpace in San Antonio. She was the youngest artist
commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum for the Olympic
Sculpture Park and has also completed commissioned projects
for the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Public Art
Fund. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Blanton Museum of Art
Encompassing over 18,000 works of art, the Blanton’s
permanent collection spans the history of Western
civilization, from antiquity to the present, with strong
holdings of European art from the 14th through the 18th
centuries, modern and contemporary American and Latin
American art, and the finest collection of prints and
drawings in the South and Southwest.
With the opening of the Blanton’s new 180,000-square-foot
facility, the museum’s mission expanded from primarily
serving the university community to also serving the entire
Austin and Central Texas region as its major art museum.
All of the Blanton’s exhibitions and programs are now
developed with the overarching goal of connecting to both
university and community audiences through a common ground
of intellectual and emotional curiosity about art.
Located at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr.
Boulevard and Congress Avenue, the museum is across the
street from the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum and
is adjacent to downtown Austin. The museum is open Tuesday
– Friday from 10-5, Saturday 11-5, and Sunday from 1-5.
Thursday is free admission day and the museum is open until
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9 PM on the Third Thursday of each month. Admission is free
to members, all current UT ID-holders and children under
12, $7 for adults, $5 for seniors, $3 for college students
with ID, and $3 for youth (13-25). For information call
(512) 471-7324 or visit www.blantonmuseum.org.
Contact Information
Kathleen Brady / Brady Dyer
Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin
(512) 475-6784 / (512) 232-5171
kathleen.brady@blantonmuseum.org /
brady.dyer@blantonmuseum.org
Image caption: Drawn Waters (Borrowdale), 2009, Natural and
machined graphite on steel, 121 x 43 x 86 in., Courtesy the
artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, NYC
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