VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

Join the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts - UH and Blaffer Art Museum for Contemporary Salon: Johan Grimonprez, a discussion of Johan Grimonprez's exhibition It's a Poor Sort of Memory that Only Works Backwards on view at Blaffer Art Museum January 15 - April 2, 2011.

Part of the Contemporary Salon series at Blaffer, admission to the panel talk is free to the public, and it will be preceded by a wine and cheese reception. The museum will extend its normal hours, remaining open through the duration of the event. Blaffer is located in the Fine Arts Building on the University of Houston's central campus.

For each Contemporary Salon, a diverse range artists, arts professionals and experts discuss Blaffer's current exhibitions. Moderated by Blaffer director and chief curator Claudia Schmuckli, the March 23 discussion will include Hitchcock aficionado and history buff Chris Ballou, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston curator of film and video Marian Luntz, artist and UH IART faculty member Kelly Sears, and film critic Michael Sicinski.

"We are thrilled that such a stellar line up of arts experts will participate in this Salon," said Blaffer curator of education Katherine Veneman. The Mitchell Center's director of programs Bree Edwards added, "I'm interested in the panelists' insights about Hitchcockian fear, manipulation of the media and other themes that Grimonprez's work explores."

Johan Grimonprez's critically acclaimed films and video installations dance on the border of art and cinema, documentary and fiction, practice and theory. Mixing reality and fiction in an innovative fashion and presenting history as a construct readily open to manipulation, Grimonprez asks us every so often to pause, do a double take, and to reconsider our assumptions.

Acting as a media archeologist and suggesting new narratives through which to tell our histories, the artist emphasizes the co-existence of a multiplicity of realities. Blaffer Art Museum presents six films and installations including dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997), Double Take (2009), Hitchcock Didn't Have a Belly Button: Interview with Karen Black (2010), Kobarweng or Where is you Helicopter? (1992), It will be all right if you come again, only next time, don't bring any gear, except a tea kettle... (1994/2003), and the ongoing project Maybe the Sky Is Really Green and We're Just Colorblind (1995-2011).

Organized by Blaffer director and chief curator Claudia Schmuckli, the exhibition is accompanied by a reader composed of collected and newly commissioned texts and interviews and published in collaboration with the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, and S.M.A.K., Ghent, with additional support from ARTIST ROOMS.

WHAT: Johan Grimonprez: It's a Poor Sort of Memory that Only Works Backwards Contemporary Salon

WHEN: 6:30 p.m. March 23, 2011

WHERE:
Blaffer Art Museum
120 Fine Arts Building, University of Houston's central campus
(Located on Entrance 16 by the intersection of Cullen and Elgin)
Houston, TX 77204

WHO:
University of Houston's  Blaffer Art Museum and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts

About Blaffer:
Founded in 1973, Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston was named in honor of the late Sarah Campbell Blaffer, a noted Houston arts patron and collector. Since its inception, the museum has been a vital force in the presentation and promotion of contemporary visual arts in Houston. Blaffer is located in the Fine Arts Building on the University of Houston's central campus, entrance 16 south of Cullen Boulevard. It is free and open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Sundays, Mondays, university holidays and during exhibition installations (visit the website or call to confirm). The museum is ADA compliant. For general inquiries, please call 713.743.9521, or visit the museum online at www.blafferartmuseum.org.

About the Mitchell Center:
The University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts cultivates interdisciplinary collaboration in the performing, visual and literary arts. From its base at the University of Houston, the Mitchell Center offers public events, residencies and courses that fuse artistic disciplines, ignite dialogue and present new ways of experiencing the arts in contemporary life. The Mitchell Center forms an alliance among five units at the University of Houston: The School of Art, Creative Writing Program, Moores School of Music, School of Theatre and Dance, and Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston. For general inquiries, please call 713.743.5548, or visit the Mitchell Center online at www.mitchellcenterforarts.org.