NASHVILLE, TN – Nashville-based artist Lauren Kalman studied as a goldsmith and jewelry-maker and now uses her experience from designing accoutrements to explore ideas of adornment and the feminine body image in western culture. This installation exhibit, on display January 19 through April 6, at Cheekwood Museum of Art combines metalwork, video, and performance to examine expressions of Western beauty.
 
An opening reception will be held from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. on Friday, January 18 with a gallery talk by the artist at 6:30 p.m. in Cheekwood’s Frist Learning Center.
 
Lauren Kalman addresses the critical issue of how we perceive the body in contemporary culture. Her installation Corpus, Figure, Skate associates the body with two symbols--roller-skates and slabs of meat. Kalman suggests that our culture has two opposed notions about the human form. On the one hand, there is the unattainable and idealized image found in magazines, on television, and on billboards. These bodies seem ageless and perfect. On the other hand, there is the physical being. Unlike mass-media images, our bodies blemish and deteriorate.
 
“Corpus, Figure, Skate serves as a poetic warning about fleeting beauty,” said Adam McCoy, Cheekwood’s Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, “It is a palpable reminder of mortality, and an admonishment about the dangers of idealized bodies.”
 
Lauren Kalman currently serves as assistant professor of fine art at Watkins College of Art and Design. She received an MFA from Ohio State University and a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art. In addition, she has studied glass lathing at the Penland School of Craft in North Carolina and jewelry making at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Her solo exhibitions include Hard Wear at the Recoleta Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Dress Up, Dress Down at the Medicine Factory in Memphis. She also has participated in group exhibitions at The Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Ohio and the Houston Center of Contemporary Craft in Texas.
 
Also on display in Cheekwood’s contemporary galleries January 19 through April 6, 2008: Popular Experience: New Realists from the 1960s to Present In the late 1950s and early 1960s, many artists rejected creating traditional introspective and expressive artworks.  Instead, they represented life as experienced through popular culture and mass media. This exhibition surveys artists from Pop to present and includes works by Andy Warhol, Edward Ruscha, and Takashi Murakami.
 
Cheekwood Museum of Art inspires and educates by making art, horticulture and nature accessible to a diverse community. Cheekwood is located at 1200 Forrest Park Drive in Nashville, 8 miles southwest of downtown Nashville.  Open Tuesday – Saturday 9:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.   For further information call 615-356-8000 or visit www.cheekwood.org .