Wisconsin Triennial Brochure 2019

STEPHEN PERKINS MADISON
Latin American Art and the Decolonial Turn (1963–2018): Memories of
Underdevelopment Revisited, 2019 • Mixed media printed matter, dimensions
variable • Courtesy of the artist
Stephen Perkins is an avid collector of printed works made by artists from
around the world. He proposes curating as a form of art, choosing a thematic
selection of works from his personal collection and presenting them as a
group in a salon-style display. Using his home as an informal gallery space,
Perkins has organized several installations derived from his archive of
materials, which enables him to re-animate older works within new thematic
contexts. This practice is in keeping with his interest in collecting work by
international artists who operate within alternative artistic milieus and explore
new ways of exhibiting. Much like Perkins challenges the traditional museum
model, the pieces he includes in this installation challenge dominant narratives
about art and culture. They present a counter-narrative to the colonial rhetoric
of development that framed artistic practices and discourses across Latin
America between the early 1960s and the mid-1980s.
JEFFREY REPKO MADISON
Fermata, 2018 • Acrylic, paint, and wood, 60 x 36 x 60 inches •
Courtesy of the artist
Jeffrey Repko was born in Pittsburgh right after the fall of the steel industry.
His large-scale sculptures channel the post-industrial narratives of his
hometown to convey notions of assembly and reconstruction. Merging his
interest in machinery with his childhood fascination with plastic toys, Repko
pairs bright colors with modular, building-block forms. In Fermata, Repko uses
the bright pinks, lavenders, and yellows of toys from his childhood to inspire
creative play and youthful optimism.
SUZANNE ROSE FORESTVILLE
45º9'35" N 87º14'10'W" from the series Blind Spot, 2019 • Archival pigment
print, 23 x 34.5 inches • Courtesy of the artist
Suzanne Rose’s Blind Spot series uses photographic techniques and styles directly
influenced by photography of the 19th century by artists like Carleton Watkins
and Timothy H. O’Sullivan, to explore natural landscapes altered by humankind.
Grand, impressive trees cut through with telephone lines, branches shorn off trees,
root systems laid bare are all shown in moonlight, twilight, or the pre-dawn light.
The title of each work in this series is named for the GPS coordinates where the
image was taken, effectively contrasting the modern mapping system with the
19th-century aesthetic Rose embraces. Shaped vignettes are used to detail Rose’s
observations of the rural Midwest that are lushly detailed and rich in contrast.
ANDY RUBIN MADISON
Love in Balance, 2018 • Collage and monotype, 18 x 24 inches •
Courtesy of the artist
Andy Rubin’s etchings incorporate the poetic images from La sculpture
grecque au Musée du Louvre, a 1937 art book documenting Greek sculpture
from the collection of the Louvre Museum in Paris. In Love in Balance, the
sculpture of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, is depicted alongside
a sculpture that has been masked by a blue monoprint that only reveals the
image through a stack of geological forms. For Rubin, these rock towers
represent our earthly knowledge, an accumulation of facts that build up over
time. Not perfect, nor linear, the information we discover as a society shifts
and is called into question as time passes. What remains is the eternal truth —
the love that unites, repairs, and balances out all the foibles of humankind.
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