Friday, September 9, 2011

The Three Hundred and Third...At

Number Three Hundred and Three:
Athens Tavern, Dinner, Filo Chicken

Despite a pretty exhausting, exhilarating day --exhausting being up since early a.m., exhilarating locking down a Richmond Macabre event for October 30th-- Lisa and I managed a great date to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It was a lecture by 1491 (and follow up new one 1493) author Charles Mann in conjunction with the new Xu Bing : Tobacco Project exhibition. The lecture was great, Mann does a swell job of combining quirkiness with humor and a vast amount of convincing history. Our second time seeing one of his lectures and a great time.

The exhibition? Phenomenal. Stunning. Bing's study with tobacco through work and research at Duke, Shanghai and Virginia from 1999-2011 has paid off remarkably with several wonderfully effective pieces of art displayed here. The smell of each exhibit alone prove the point of their differences through various tobacco mediums; the large block of plug-like tobacco to the scroll burning detail of the scroll work "Burning Down the River" (which we as members got the sneak peak to actually SEE the long cigarette burning down the middle of the scroll) to the major stunning work; "Honor and Splendor", a "tiger skin rug" made from over half a million cigarettes. Below is the video I had to get to show how moving from one side of the room to the other, changes the works color and impact entirely.


It doesn't do it the justice it deserves. Plain and simple, go see this.


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