Three Exhibits to See at NSU Art Museum

NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale will welcome art lovers to enjoy a trio of fall exhibitions, including: “Walasse Ting: Parrot Jungle,” on view November 9 to March 12; “Glory of the World: Color Field Painting (1950s to 1983),” on view November 12 to March; and “Pablo Picasso: Dust You Are, To Dust You Return” featuring ceramics by the late artist drawn exclusively from NSU Art Museum’s collection, on view now through February 4.

“Walasse Ting: Parrot Jungle” will re-introduce audiences to the extraordinary world of artist Walasse Ting, one of the most radical and independent artistic figures of the twentieth century. Ting’s art bridges the worlds of ancient Chinese aesthetics, the European avant-garde, and the American Pop Art. While Ting’s place within the art historical canon is recognized due to the artist’s book, 1¢ Life, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale will be the first American institution to go beyond this legacy and acknowledge Ting’s mastery within a monographic museum show.

This exhibition will allow viewers to immerse themselves in Ting’s neon-soaked visions of  flora, fauna, and an endless menagerie of cats, parrots, and hibiscus. Simultaneously, the show will establish a biographic narrative, in which viewers will learn about the diasporic life of Ting. Ting and his family came to South Florida frequently to visit his in-laws, who were among the influx of Jewish residents who relocated here in the 1950s and 60s. This exhibition will highlight how Ting’s signature motifs were inspired by these trips, where he discovered and fell in love with the wildlife adventure park Parrot Jungle, a landmark he documented in hundreds of photographs and countless on-site drawings.

In “Glory of the World: Color Field Painting (1950s to 1983),” guests will venture into a visual exploration of mid-twentieth-century American abstract painting, in which vast areas of color appear as the dominating force. Although this type of painting was prefigured in the work of previous generations of abstract painters, such as Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, it is most closely identified with artists including Frank Bowling, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Gilliam, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons, and Alma Thomas.

Curated by chief curator Bonnie Clearwater, the selection of paintings focuses primarily on the earlier years of color field, beginning with Frankenthaler’s large stain paintings and ending in 1983 when postmodern and imagist painters began to dominate the art scene. In recent years, a young generation of artists has rediscovered color field painting, which makes this exhibition especially timely. The exhibition will be augmented with a hard-cover, full-color book published by Skira.

Finally, “Pablo Picasso: Dust You Are, To Dust You Return” showcases ceramics by Pablo Picasso from NSU Art Museum’s collection in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the artist’s death.

For more information about the exhibitions, visit nsuartmuseum.org.