December 1 – 23, 1999
Guest curator, artist Amy Adler, collaborated with artist/musician Joni Mitchell to create an exhibition of Mitchell’s paintings for the second exhibition in our year-long, three-part series.
Many of us have seen the paintings of Joni Mitchell. Rather, to be more accurate, many of us are familiar with the graphic images that cover Mitchell’s albums and CD’s. Guest curator Amy Adler addressed Tri-Annuale (Part 2) as an opportunity to exhibit these images, which exist for most of us as widely distributed reproductions, and place them as unique objects within the context of a gallery.
Unlike replicated museum works which also have popular/commercial destinations, Mitchell’s works have not been attached to a point of origination. This presentation sought to recontextualize and bring form to Mitchell’s work, and to create a situation for questioning our recollection and understanding of a very public image when we are presented a posteriori with the very private object it mimics.
Mitchell’s compositions utilize intensive, saturated color and a deliberateness of line which translate a complex relationship of gesture, music, humor, history, and a profound love of painting. This exhibition presented a collection of twelve rarely shown paintings, with an emphasis on portraiture and landscape. The selections, made from a catalogue of over a hundred pieces, function as a descriptive profile for a body of work made in the 1990’s.
