Handwerker Gallery Displays 'Extraordinary Ordinary'

Tourists on the Moon #1 by Yoshio Itagaki

An exhibit of photographs, embroideries, and video works is now on display at the Handwerker Gallery. Featuring pieces by Clio Padovani, Paul Whittaker, and Yoshio Itagaki, The Extraordinary Ordinary runs through February 23. It is free and open to the public.

"The artists whose work is united here obviously believe in the force of irony, and in artistic intervention as a way to defy passivity and global inertia," says Jelena Stojanovic, gallery director and assistant professor of art history. "In their works, they use an array of different media, juxtaposing the ordinary with the extraordinary in an often incongruous and deliberately extreme way. Their aim is definitely not to change the world, but to ask the important questions of how we define and imagine ourselves and others today, and what the role and function of spectacular culture is in this process."

A native of Japan, Itagaki grew up in Bangkok and now lives and works in New York City. His photographs of tourists photographing themselves at popular sightseeing spots examine the compulsions of a document-oriented society. He has held solo exhibitions at the Bioskop Rex/European Cultural Center in Belgrade, Raw Gallery in London, Finer Side Galleries in Washington, D.C., and Chopo Museum in Mexico City, and his work is in the collections of the Gilman Foundation and Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Art. Itagaki has been honored with a Philip Morris Art Award, Pola Art Foundation Grant, and Holbein Scholarship.

Padovani and Whittaker both teach at the Winchester School of Art and Design at the University of Southampton, England. Coordinator of the school's M.A. program in textile art, Padovani is represented in the Handwerker exhibit by her video and embroidered works. She has shown at a number of galleries and is the recipient of an Arts and Humanities Research Board grant. Whittaker is program leader for Winchester's B.A. program in visual art. He has exhibited widely throughout London.

The Extraordinary Ordinary was organized with the assistance of Anna Botta of the Kahn Institute for Liberal Arts at Smith College.

The Handwerker Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. (Thursday until 9:00 p.m.); Saturday, 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.; and Sunday, 2:00 - 6:00 p.m. The gallery is closed when the College is not in session. For more information, call the gallery at 274-3018 or contact Stojanovic at 274-3548 or jstojanovic@ithaca.edu.