Curator to discuss contemporary art exhibit Sept. 8 at Rice University’s Media Center

Franz Brotzen
713-348-6775
franz.brotzen@rice.edu

Curator to discuss contemporary art exhibit Sept. 8 at Rice University’s Media Center

Chicago gallerist, curator and music historian John Corbett will speak Sept. 8 at 7 p.m. at the Rice Media Center at the opening of an exhibit of printed material — including posters and album covers — by contemporary artists Albert Oehlen and Christopher Wool. Corbett’s lecture will focus on the significance of music in Oehlen’s and Wool’s work.

The exhibition will be on display through Oct. 14 at the Media Center, located on the Rice campus near Entrance 8 at Stockton Street and University Boulevard. For directions, go to www.rice.edu/maps/maps.html.

Oehlen and Wool are among the best-known figures in contemporary art, according to Corbett. ”They are champions of abstraction who have pushed the boundaries between painting and various print practices, always with painting as the core,” he wrote. ”They have both explored the implications of abstract expressionism and pop art and arrived at quite different, but related, conclusions in their respective work. In both cases, their ideas have been heavily influenced by an interest in and, to some extent, direct experience with music.”

Corbett will examine these musical connections in detail, starting with the clearest and most literal aspects of their encounters with music. Oehlen was a member of the Houston-born group the Red Krayola in the 1990s, and he worked as a producer and designer for records by a wide assortment of people from wildly divergent musical genres. Wool had a direct relationship with various musicians, primarily in jazz and improvised music, as well as the burgeoning punk and No Wave scenes that he encountered when he moved to New York in the late 1970s.

Corbett will also screen a rarely seen short film that Wool made, set to music by saxophonist Ornette Coleman.

Corbett is an associate adjunct professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he has taught since 1988. His bimonthly column, ”Vinyl Freak,” appears in Down Beat magazine, for which he has been a regular contributor for 20 years. He is the author of several books, including “Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein.”

The Corbett lecture is open to the public. For more on the event and the Oehlen/Wool exhibit, call 713-348-4882.

Members of the news media who want to attend the lecture should RSVP to Franz Brotzen at franz.brotzen@rice.edu or 713-348-6775.