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1614 Latimer Street |
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Ian van Coller
Acclimatization Chamber |
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| About
The Exhibit Opening Reception : Friday, January 19th, 2001 5:30 - 7:00 p.m. at The Print Center Ian van Coller's prints and mixed media objects address the gulf between South African and European thought and the impact of the European colonization on African culture and environment. A European born and raised in South Africa during apartheid, van Coller moved to the United States in 1991 to attend Arizona State University. The experience of leaving South Africa and arriving in the Southwest, where Native Americans also have been displaced from traditional lands, reinforced van Coller's sensitivity to the politics of land ownership. Van Coller's straightforward imagery serves as a framework for the dichotomy inherent in South African culture and his own experience. "The belief systems of the European culture I grew up in seem as foreign to me as do the traditional African belief systems that surrounded me, yet at the same time there is something familiar about both." In addition to lithographs and linoleum prints, van Coller will exhibit delicate mixed media objects made from wood, wire and mud. Van Coller breaks down rigid chicken wire patterns into free flowing forms that either hang from the ceiling or from mudbricks attached to the wall. The wire and the mud reference the fences and buildings built by imperialist nations - the demarcation of claimed property. The silver gelatin prints, hung between the wirey objects, illustrate the imposition and exploitation of western culture and the deterioration and erosion of the indigenous societies. Ian van Coller is currently pursuing his MFA at the University of New Mexico. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in the US and South Africa. Since 1995 he has worked as a photogravure printer at Segura Publishing Company in Tempe, AZ. His work is housed in the permanent collections of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library, among other prestigious international collections.
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