New Zealand artist to exhibit at Guggenheim Museum, New York

Max Gimblett, Inaugural Honorary Visiting Professor of Art of the National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries (NICAI), will join such artistic luminaries as Yoko Ono and Laurie Anderson in a powerful new exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum.

The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989, considers the dynamic and complex impact of Asian art, literature, music, and philosophical concepts on American art. The exhibition features approximately 270 works by more than 100 artists across a broad range of media, including painting, sculpture, video art, installations, works on paper, film, live performance, books and ephemera.

Auckland-born Max Gimblett has been a leader in New Zealand’s art arena for more than four decades. Based in New York for the past thirty years, Max still maintains strong ties with New Zealand, making regular visits to NICAI and working closely with students at the Elam School of Fine Arts.

“Max has long been recognised in the national and international art arena and his invitation to participate in this important exhibition at the Guggenheim reflects the calibre of his artistic contributions,” says Professor Sharman Pretty, Dean of NICAI.

The Third Mind proposes a new art historical construct, challenging the widely accepted view of the development of American modern art as a dialogue with Europe by alternatively focusing on artists’ prolonged engagement with forms and ideas aligned with Asia. The exhibition will illustrate how Asian art, literature, music, and philosophical concepts were incorporated, interpreted, and mediated to inspire new modes of experiential, contemplative, process-oriented, and interactive art.

The exhibition title refers to a “cut-ups” work by Beat writers William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, The Third Mind Untitled (“Rub Out the World”), ca. 1965, in which unrelated texts are combined and re-arranged to create a new narrative, evocative of the eclectic method by which American artists appropriated from Asia to create new forms, structures and meanings for their own art.

The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989 will be mounted at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1071 Fifth Avenue, New York) from 30 January 30 – 19 April.

The University of Auckland’s National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries comprises the School of Architecture and Planning, Elam School of Fine Arts, the Centre for New Zealand Art Research and Discovery (CNZARD), the School of Music and the Dance Studies Programme.

FOOTNOTE

see below for details on book, MAX GIMBLETT published by Craig Potton Publishing in 2003.

Max Gimblett
Text by Wynstan Curnow and John Yau

NZ59.99

Artist Max Gimblett occupies a unique position in the history of contemporary New Zealand art. An expatriate who has made New York his home for the past thirty five years, Gimblett has remained thoroughly committed to the New Zealand art scene, with regular exhibitions in this country throughout this period.

Gimblett's paintings are held in major collections, both private and public, around the world.

This book was the first major publication on Max Gimblett - both the artist and his work. With around 100 reproductions of this work, and essays by writer and curator Wynstan Curnow and New York based writer John Yau, this publication is invaluable to anyone interested in Gimblett's work and in contemporary art practise. Published in association with the Gow Langsford Gallery. ISBN 0908802943
170 Pages,100 colour plates
Size-265 x 240 mm
Format-Hardcover with dust jacket.