San José Museum of Art

See what you think.

Real and HyperReal

  • A nude figure lies in a field of flowers, vines grow slowly around the figure hiding their gender. They face you with eyes wide open. Flowers and petals fall from their slightly gaping mouth, and signs of the stigmata are on their hands. Behind them is a dark forest and a gathering storm.

    Tino Rodríguez

    El Amante (The Lover),1998

    Oil on wood

    17 × 16 inches

    Museum purchase with funds contributed by Tom and Polly Bredt 

    2001.19

  • A grid of small rectangular machines suspended in the air. The room is dark, the only light comes from the LCD text displayed on the screens of these small machines. The words appear to be fragments of conversations.

    Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen
    Listening Post, 2002-06
    Hardware includes screen modules, support beam, and connective wire; 8 audio speakers and software
    233 x 146 x 31 inches
    Collection of the San Jose Museum of Art with funding provided by:
    Deborah and Andy Rappaport, Lipman Family Foundation, Council of 100.
    Additional support provided by Rita and Kent Norton
    2005.28

  • An aerial view of a city, with a main street and a large promenade intersecting at the center of the painting. The view gives off a warm and familiar glow as it is filled with warm colors, delicate palm trees, and vintage cars.

    James Doolin
    Shopping Mall, 1973-77
    Oil on canvas
    90 x 90 inches
    Gift of Lauren Richardson Doolin with additional funds contributed by Tom and Polly Bredt, in honor of the San Jose Museum of Art's 35th anniversary.
    2002.01

  • A painting of a massive pile of abandoned and broken canvases heaped upon each other that extends almost to the horizon that hints an ocean. Above the piled canvases is a blue sky with ominous white clouds. In the very far distance are black specks resembling a flock of flying birds.

    Chester Arnold

    Ghosts, 2000

    Oil on linen

    60 x 72 inches

    Collection of the San Jose Museum of Art. Gift of Wilson and Dorothy Partridge, in honor of the San Jose Museum of Art’s 35th anniversary.

  • David Ligare
    Areta (Black Figure on a White Horse), 2000
    Oil on canvas
    96 x 116 inches
    Museum purchase with funds contributed by Drew and Katie Gibson and the Lipman Family Foundation
    2001.18

  • Sandow Birk
    Inferno, 2003
    Oil and acrylic on canvas
    66 x 120 inches
    Gift of the Lipman Family Foundation, in honor of the San Jose Museum of Art's 35th anniversary.
    2003.11

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    For centuries, people have admired artists’ magical ability to depict reality—the virtuoso dab of paint that becomes a pearl in a Vermeer painting, for example. What is realism in the 21st century, when our world has taken on a virtual as well as physical dimension? Real and HyperReal contrasts traditional realism rooted in careful observation of our immediate, visible world with new riffs on realism that mirror the expansive realities of the information age. The “real” illusionism of painters such as Sandow Birk, Llyn Foulkes, Tino Rodriguez, and Paul Wonner is juxtaposed with two “hyper-real,” monumental installations by new-media artists Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin (who use live, streaming text pulled from Internet chat rooms in The Listening Post, just back from an extended European tour) and Catherine Wagner (who explores magnetic resonance imaging in Pomegranate Wall). This exhibition asks you to question the ambiguous line between fact and fiction, between illusion and reality today. 

    Listening Post Installation Time Lapse

    Sponsors

    • Yvonne and Mike Nevens
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