January 19 – April 6, 2007
Des Moines Art Center Downtown
9th & Walnut Streets


Hug: Recent Work by Patricia Piccinini is the first one-person museum exhibition in the United States for Australian artist Patricia Piccinini. After being selected to represent her country as the featured artist in the Australian Pavilion at the 2003 Venice Biennale, Piccinini quickly found international acclaim in the contemporary art scene. Her fantastic, hyperrealistic sculptures of customized life forms— humans, animals, machines, and often something in between—emotionally engage the viewer in the complex ethical debates regarding the technologically advanced world in which we live. The mapping of the human genome, cloning, stem cell research, and the like provide the impetus for Piccinini’s investigations into the precarious relationship between humans, nature, science, and technology. These concerns abound in her native Australia, a country well-known for its long-standing activist interest in protecting endangered species and the environment. These complicated issues play a major role in her work. For the artist, experimentation with the natural and the artificial ultimately becomes a question of physical and ethical responsibility for its uncertain results.

Hug includes approximately 20 works of sculpture, drawings, photographs, and video-based work created between 2002 and 2007. This exhibition was organized by the Des Moines Art Center and the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, where it will be presented from September 22, 2007 to January 6, 2008.

Learn More About Patricia Piccinini’s Work:
Patricia Piccinini's Website
Patricia Piccinini Brochure (Requires Adobe Reader)

EXPANDED HOURS FOR THIS EXHIBITION!

*Thursday, January 18 6 – 8 pm
Exhibition Preview Party
Admission $5; Members free

*Saturday, February 10
11 am – 4 pm
Free admission

*Thursday, February 22
Gallery Talk – 6:30 pm
(Gallery will open at 6 pm)
Free admission

*Saturday, March 10
11 am – 4 pm
Free admission

* Expanded hours

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Exhibition Related Programs

Conversations on Art: Patricia Piccinini
Wednesday, January 17, 6:30 pm
Levitt Auditorium
FREE admission; reservations required

Once you’ve seen Patricia Piccinini’s creations, you don’t forget them. She is best known for making sculptures that resemble science experiments gone awry, but upon further observation these works reveal familiar emotions and characteristics. “I am particularly fascinated by the unexpected consequences, the stuff we don’t want but must somehow accommodate,” Piccinini says. Join us for what promises to be an engaging lecture by the provocative artist as she discusses her work and the time in which we live.

*Reservations for this FREE lecture are required and limited.

Reservations are available exclusively through IowaTIX beginning Tuesday, January 2, 2007. Orders are processed on a first-come, first-served basis. Order online at www.iowatix.com or by phone at 515.277.3727 (9 am – 5 pm, Monday – Friday). Leaving a message will not guarantee a reservation. Please reserve only the number of seats you need.

Reservations placed with IowaTIX will be checked at the Art Center (with photo ID) the evening of the event beginning at 5:30 pm. The Art Center reserves the right to release seats for any unclaimed reservations at the start of the lecture.

Advance reservations for Conversations on Art: Patricia Piccinini are sold out. The Art Center invites you to come the night of the event to place your name on a first-come, first-served waiting list to receive any unclaimed seats at the start of the lecture. You must be present to get your name on the list. If you decide not to join us for the lecture, please help us celebrate the exhibition at the Preview Party the next evening, Thursday, January 18. The party is from 6 – 8 pm and has a $5 admission; members are free.

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Exhibition Preview Party
Thursday, January 18, 6 – 8 pm
Admission $5; members FREE
Music by Sax Man Jones
Sax Man Jones serves up the latest in R & B, jazz fusion, blues, hip hop, techno, vocals, rock ‘n’ roll, and original material.

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Gallery Talk
Patricia Hickson, curator and downtown gallery manager
Thursday, February 22, 6:30 pm
(The gallery will open at 6 pm to preview the exhibition.)
FREE admission

Join exhibition curator Patricia Hickson as she discusses the work and themes present in the exhibition.


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FILM SERIES
MEET THE NEW YOU and HUG: Recent Work by Patricia Piccinini
All films will be shown in Levitt Auditorium and are intended for adult audiences.
FREE admission.

Skeptical about plastic surgery? Curious about future medical developments?
Afraid of not having the perfect body? All of these questions and more will be explored in this film series chosen to accompany Meet the New You and Hug: Recent Work by Patricia Piccinini.

Sunday, February 4, 1 pm
Freaks, 1932
Tod Browning, director
66 minutes,
not rated but intended for adult audiences

After directing the hugely successful horror classic Dracula, Tod Browning chose this tale of circus performers who seek revenge on a gold-digging trapeze artist. The director’s decision to use actual sideshow “freaks” instead of actors in makeup and special effects remains as shocking today as it was in 1932. This controversial film was banned in many parts of the United States and across the globe, eventually becoming a cult classic in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Sunday, February 11, 1 pm
Eyes Without a Face, 1960
Georges Franju, director
90 minutes,
not rated but intended for
adult audiences
French with English subtitles

Hidden in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor attempts a radical plastic surgery that could restore the beauty of his daughter’s disfigured face—but at a horrifying price. At once ghastly and poetic, this classic of horror cinema has influenced countless artists.

Sunday, February 18, 1 pm
Shivers, 1975
David Cronenberg, director
87 minutes, rated R

Throughout his career, David Cronenberg has created cinematic nightmares based on the loss of control of the body, whether through disease, science, or other outside interference. In this film, wealthy apartment dwellers are attacked by a parasite that turns them into violent, sex-crazed zombies. Martin Scorsese describes Shivers as “shocking, subversive, surrealistic and probably something we all deserve.”

Sunday, February 25, 1 pm
eXistenZ, 1999
David Cronenberg, director
97 minutes, rated R