The humorous John Waters makes fun of himself in this digitally manipulated portrait in Indecent Exposure at the Baltimore Museum of Art Fall Shows.

ART NEWS: The Baltimore Museum of Art announces fall 2018 exhibitions, which include John Waters Indecent Exposure, a show that is generating excitement in Baltimore. 

BY ARTCENTRON

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND—This fall, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) has put together some important exhibitions that many art lovers will find interesting. These shows are rich not just because of the works but also the curatorial approach. They are organized in a way that each section is in a dialogue with other sections. The exhibitions include sculpture, painting, movies, and interesting installations.  In addition to the exhibitions, talks slated several art talks as educational components for the exhibition. One featuring John Waters was held recently.  Here are some of the fall shows at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

John Waters: Indecent Exposure

October 7, 2018–January 6, 2019

John Waters is big in Baltimore and it is not surprising that his retrospective at BMA is already generating a lot of excitement.  Over the years, John Waters has become an uncompromising cultural force not only in the cinematic field, but also through his visual artwork, writing, and performances. This retrospective is befitting of his achievement through the years. It encompasses a major part of Water’s artistic career. The show features more than 160 photographs, sculpture, sound and video made since the early 1990s.

John Waters and Kiddies Flamingo

A major highlight of the show is Kiddies Flamingo, a 2014 video work. In the work, children read a G Rated version of Pink Flamingos. Pink Flamingos is a notorious 1972 celebration of all things absorbed and extreme.  Also on display is a photography installation in which John Waters explores the auras and absurdities of famous films, their directors, and actors. A certain aspect of the retrospective focuses on the artist’s humorous side. Several photographs and sculptures in which the artist proposes humor as a way to humanize dark moments in history from Kennedy to 9:11 are also on display.

Mark Bradford: Tomorrow Is Another Day

September 23, 2018–March 3, 2019

Installation view of Mark Bradford, Spoiled Foot, 2016. © Mark Bradford. Photo: Joshua White. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Tomorrow Is Another Day is one of the exhibitions that art lovers will enjoy when they visit the Baltimore Museum of Art this fall. The show features works by Mark Bradford. Originally presented at the U.S. Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale Tomorrow Is Another Day is the result of the artist’s quest to understand the social nature of the material world we inhabit.  In its U.S. debut at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Tomorrow Is Another Day acquires a new context engendered by the Baltimore community. In its recontextualization, the installation speaks to the artist’s belief in art as a platform to examine contradictory histories and effect positive change.  Some of the works in the show include Spoiled Foot, Medusa, and The Odyssey.

Lizzie Fitch / Ryan Trecartin

October 7, 2018–January 6, 2019 
Three movies and two sculptural theaters created by artist collaborators Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin are part of the Fall Shows at the BMA. One of the movies is Mark Trade (2016). The one-hour movie exhibited in a sculptural theater traces the life of a hard-drinking, eccentric protagonist and his production crew during a series of shoots that resemble reality TV. In a scene that resembles a hotel bar, takes viewers behind-the-scenes revealing the conflicts and confessions of a trapped by the bottle.

The second movie is Permission Streak (2016), a 21-minute movie shown in a sculptural theater. Permission Streak combines aspects of gymnastics and aquatics facilities, jumps jarringly between strings of unrelated vignettes. Junior War (2013), a 24-minute unscripted movie is the third movie on display. It follows a group of teenagers gathered in the woods for a late-night party. Composed of night-vision footage shot by Trecartin as a high school senior in 1999, the movie shows youthful exuberance and how technology has changed over time. Captured before smartphones became ubiquitous, the young people in the movie treat the camera’s presence as a novelty.

Ebony G. Patterson: …for little whispers…

October 10, 2018-April 7, 2019
Glitter, sequins, toys, beads, faux flowers, jewelry, and other embellishments are key elements in Ebony G. Patterson’s works on display this fall at the BMA. The artist who creates opulent tapestries out of dazzling arrays of found and fabricated materials brings to bare her knowledge of history.

For this show, Patterson created an immersive installation featuring her work …and babies too… (2016). It is made of mixed media jacquard tapestry with digitally embroidered appliqués. The piece is accompanied by 18 hand‐embellished cast glass shoes and toy cars in a plush pink environment ornamented with artificial butterflies and papier-mâché balloons. Elevated on a plinth, the installation serves as a memorial to nine girls and nine boys who were murdered in the artist’s hometown of Kingston, Jamaica, in 2015. The show also includes a new work comprising 150 hand-embellished toy guns. This corner sculpture is creatively installed to be in a dialogue with Joshua Johnson’s painting Charles Herman Stricker Wilmans (c. 1804).

Time Frames: Contemporary East Asian Photography

November 4, 2018–March 24, 2019

Time Frames: Contemporary East Asian Photography features more than 40 photographs by artists born in Vietnam, China, Japan, and South Korea. Most of the works are from the BMA’s collection. While some have never been shown in Baltimore, others have not been displayed at the museum for decades. The photographs take on the concept of time, revealing how it unravels in the context of human existence. The artists represented include Naoya Hatakeyama, Eikoh Hosoe, Daido Moriyama, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sze Tsung Leong, Chen Jiagang, Wang Qingsong, Don Hong-Oai, Liu Bolin, Liu Zheng, Lu Yao, Bae Bien-U, Noh Suntag, Lê Van Khoa, An-My Lê, Koichiro Kurita, and Toshio Shibata.

DIS: A Good Crisis

November 14, 2018–November 17, 2019
An immersive video installation and a series of interactive public programs that invite visitors into critical conversations about money, politics, and contemporary media will feature prominently during this fall at the BMA. Commissioned by BMA, the work is by the innovative New York-based DIS collective.

Focused on the period following the 2008 financial crisis and the economic future, the videos explore cartoons, public service announcements, talk shows, and mini-documentaries to generate conversations about money and financial matters. In A Good Crisis (2018), a video narrated by an actor playing the Night King from Game of Thrones, DIS illuminates the different emotional sides of the financial crisis. Two other DIS videos investigate how the new economy is affecting the Millennials and their loss of a financial safety net.

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