“Between the Sky and the Water” is a mid-career retrospective of Brazilian-German artist Janaina Tschäpe, curated by Anne-Marie Russell, the executive director of the Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College.
Tschäpe’s art crosses media boundaries, including drawing, installation, painting, photography and performance, sculpture and video. Her disparate body of work shares the same artistic language. An iconography of the sea.
Tschäpe’s paintings are fluid and mercurial. No right angles. Just swirls, smears, blots, blobs and other circular forms. They evoke the ocean without being literal.
“Gush” (2014) is one of Tschäpe’s imaginary seascapes. There’s a clear sense of spatial depth. Blue-white blobs shot through with yellow rise up at the top of the painting. Down below: a tangled mesh of waveforms. Vertical lines drip down over all of it. The eye reads sky, storm clouds, sea, and rain.
Arts events for Sarasota Manatee: Jan. 28-Feb. 3
Our weekly guide to the performing and visual arts in the Sarasota-Manatee area.
Key Chorale goes for Baroque
Like other organizations that have been experimenting with digital performances and testing how many artists they can safely bring together in one space, Key Chorale is expanding its group of musicians for its “Bach Together Again” concert that makes its digital debut Friday. Artistic Director Joseph Caulkins said he chose the Baroque program, which features Vivaldi’s “Gloria” and Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Magnificat,” because of the joyful and uplifting qualities in the music. It features the Key Chorale Chamber singers, orchestra musicians and soloists. It will be available on the group’s website through Feb. 21. keychorale.org
Listen • 4:13
The Suncoast Black Arts Collaborative Arts & Racial Justice panel series kicks off next Monday and will feature museum leaders from across the Tampa Bay region.
When it comes to the arts, people of color are historically underrepresented. But cultural organizations are pledging to do better on issues of diversity.
The nonprofit SBAC will launch “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the Visual Arts,” as part of its free series on Mon., Jan. 25, beginning at 5 p.m. The moderator for the discussion is Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a leading civil rights activist, journalist and former foreign correspondent for NPR, CNN and PBS. Panel members include artist Gale Fulton-Ross; Steven High, executive director of The Ringling; Katherine Pill, curator of contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg; and Anne-Marie Russell, executive director of Sarasota Art Museum.
Marty Fugate, Correspondent
The pandemic has thrown out the rules for the art game. Individual artists can respond quickly – but how have arts institutions adapted? Changing course for a major museum or college is a lot like putting a battleship on a new heading. It’s not so easy, to put it mildly. But following our previous look at how visual artists are adapting, here is how how three area arts leaders have responded to this time of crisis.
Steven High: Reinvent the wheel
The Ringling comprises several museums, including the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, The Ringling Circus Museum and Tibbals Learning Center. According to Executive Director Steven High, these venues host around 20 major exhibitions and draw about 400,000 visitors in a typical year. But last year was far from typical.