Date: 8/26/2010

Contemporary Sublime: The Artist in Nature with Ned Kahn, Jeremy Morgan & Mariele Neudecker
Thursday August 26, 6PM
Building 944 | SOLD OUT. Please join us another time.
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Join us for an organic dinner in the Mess Hall followed by a panel discussion by three artists whose works explore the landscape through experience, imagination, and memory. Mariele Neudecker’s installations, Ned Kahn’s interactive sculptures, and Jeremy Morgan’s paintings draw from history and tradition to prompt us to consider how the concept of landscape has become a vehicle for emotional transcendence, philosophical contemplation. and cultural identity. The artists will present their work and discuss the ways their immersion in nature affects their work.

Ned Kahn creates public artworks that seek to increase awareness of natural phenomena. His interactive sculptures are inspired by everything from wind and waves to comets, black holes, and galaxies. Kahn was an Artist in Residence at San Francisco's Exploratorium for 15 years, and an AIR at Headlands in 1987. His commissioned works can be seen at Chabot Observatory, Oakland; Gateway Village, Charlotte; Expo 2000, Hannover, Germany; Rose Center for Earth & Space, American Museum of Natural History, New York; and the United Terminal, San Francisco International Airport. He graduated from the University of Connecticut where he studied botany and received his BA in Environmental Studies

The ethereal quality of Jeremy Morgan’s highly layered canvases is balanced with vivid colors and abstracted detail that give the viewer the sense of total immersion by feeling absorbed, bathed in color and escaping the limits of the body. Born in Cambridge, England Morgan studied at Oxford, Ruskin School of Drawing and of Fine Art, and later received an Advanced Diploma in Fine Arts from the Royal Academy in London. In 1985 he was awarded the prestigious Harkness Fellowship. This provided him with the opportunity to come to the San Francisco Art Institute where, after several years, he was appointed professor and later chair of the painting department.

Mariele Neudecker is best known for her atmospheric reproductions of landscapes within glass vitrines containing simulations of forests, lakes, or mountains linked together with simulated weather effects. Born in Germany and now residing in the UK, Mariele Neudecker holds an MA from Chelsea College of Art and Design and a BA from Goldsmiths’ College, London, England. Her installations have been exhibited most recently at Arts Towada, Japan; Gallery Barbara Thumm, Berlin; NewArtCentre, Salisbury; and Bristol’s City Museum and Art Gallery.