Overview
Digital murals commissioned by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art will be installed at the construction site of the Museum’s new facility beginning September 8, 2004. Two prints, each measuring 6 feet high x 24 feet wide, will be attached to the fencing along State Street where Phase II construction for the Overture Center for the Arts is underway. Created by Milwaukee artists Lane Hall and Lisa Moline, the prints, collectively titled Macropolis, examine elements of the natural world within the changing urban environment.
In creating Macropolis, Hall and Moline placed images of caterpillars, frogs, moths, worms, and mollusks against bold solid colors and fragments of charts, graphs, and tables. In keeping with their desire for an ongoing dialogue with passersby, the artists will occasionally add elements to the murals in the coming months. In the same spirit, they will replace the original panels with entirely new prints during the late winter or early spring of 2005.
Trained as printmakers and book artists, Lane Hall and Lisa Moline use digital graphics as a way to incorporate everyday materials into their art. Jane Simon, MMoCA’s Curator of Exhibitions, says that by incorporating images from diverse sources, the works of Lane Hall and Lisa Moline “suggest larger issues, such as the role of science in everyday life and the interaction between humans and other animals. These detailed representations give viewers a rare chance to examine and contemplate non-human life forms within the changing urban environment.”
Both Hall and Moline—who teach at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and are married—earned Master’s of Fine Arts degrees from the University’s Madison campus. Sites of their previous exhibitions and installations include the Block Museum of Art, Evanston, Illinois; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York; the California Academy of Science, San Francisco, California; the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana; and Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts. For more information about the work of Lane Hall and Lisa Moline, see www.badscience.org.
Exhibition Support
Macropolis is generously supported by the Madison Cultural Arts District; the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission with additional funds from the Madison Community Foundation and the Overture Foundation; The Art League of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art; a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin; the Exhibition Initiative Fund; and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art’s 20042005 Sustaining Benefactors.