Deborah Aschheim: Reconsider

February 9, 2008 – May 11, 2008
Laumeier Sculpture Park Museum Galleries

Laumeier Sculpture Park is pleased to present the work of Deborah Aschheim. The exhibition will transform the Laumeier galleries into an intensely immersive sensory experience. Deborah Aschheim comes from a family with a history of Alzheimer’s disease. As a result, much of Aschheim’s work focuses on creating sculptural and interactive multi-sensory responses to neuroscience, memory and cognitive processes. Much of the work emanates from her personal experiences.

Reconsider will include a refined version of her six-part series of neural network installations. Among new work in the exhibition will be a site-specific “memory web,” an expansive network of audio-video elements that integrate songs created in collaboration with musician Lisa Mezzacappa. Linked by LED light nodes and colored plastic fibers, the installation will wind though three museum galleries. Aschheim will also recreate an outdoor work, Arborization — a network-based sculpture making a visual connection between the microscopic systems of the body, the electrical networks of the city and the branching patterns of the living trees supporting it. Additionally, a gallery will be reserved for video, drawings and ephemera from many of the artist’s perception experiments.

Deborah Aschheim (b. 1964) received a B.A. in Anthropology from Brown University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Washington. She lives and works in Los Angeles. During the past decade, she has created installations for various group and solo exhibitions across the United States and Europe including the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, the Ben Maltz Gallery at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, California. Aschheim has received a variety of supporting grants and appointments. A curriculum vitae, examples of her work and additional information are available on the artist’s website at www.deborahaschheim.com.
 

Exhibition opening reception: February 9, 2008, 5–7 PM
 

Deborah Aschheim, Daniel and Annie, 2006, ink and acrylic on Dura-Lar™, 20”x25”, image courtesy of the artist 

Collaborative Artist Lecture/Discussion: March 20, 2008, 6 PM
Washington University’s January Hall, Room 110
 

Download a Lecture Poster (PDF, 147K)
For a campus map click here (January Hall is building 45 on the map).

Exhibition Catalog

Media Coverage:

• Visit the KWMU (FM 90.7) website where you can hear Deborah Aschheim's interview with Cityscape's Stephen Potter (1 February 2008).
• To learn more about the artist and her methodology read Malcolm Gay's profile of Deborah Aschheim in the Riverfront Times (7 February 2008).
• Read St. Louis Post-Dispatch Visual Arts Critic David Bonetti's review of the Deborah Aschheim: Reconsider exhibition (6 April 2008).
• Watch video of Deborah Ascheim's interview and exhibition tour for the State of the Arts program on HECTV's website (May 2008).