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Wichita Art Museum announces Chuck Close. A Couple of Ways of Doing Something

The Wichita Art Museum presents A Couple of Ways of Doing Something an exhibition, on view January 29 through April 15, 2012 will featuring arresting daguerreotype portraiture as well as tapestries and photogravures created by Chuck Close.

After receiving his MFA from Yale, Close gained recognition in the 1970s for his massive-scale portraits which were painted using a photorealist style, making them nearly indistinguishable from their photographic equivalent. Close chose to create these paintings with tools considered more difficult to manipulate than brushes and paint in order to create a breakthrough for himself as an artist. Among these unconventional implements were razor blades, rags and even a stamp pad and the artist’s own fingerprints.

A Couple of Ways of Doing Something proves to be no exception, as Close, confined to a wheelchair since a spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him paralyzed, creates portraits using one of the most arduous and archaic photographic processes, the daguerreotype.

The exhibition will feature fifteen of Close’s daguerreotypes alongside enlarged portraits of 20 leading contemporary artists such as Philip Glass and Cindy Sherman. The entire exhibition is paired with poems by humorist Bob Holman. Close also crosses artistic boundaries by taking works from daguerreotypes and presenting them in a variety of media including colossal tapestries and photogravures.

This exhibition was organized by Aperture Foundation, New York.

Wichita Art Museum
1400 West Museum Boulevard
Wichita, Kansas 67203-3296
[email protected]
(316) 268-4921
FAX (316) 268-4980
www.wichitaartmuseum.org

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