SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA.- The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art presents Water, Water Everywhere. . . Water is an essential element of life. In many cultures—from ancient to present-day—water is a vehicle of purification and divination, a subject for the mythological imagination and a metaphor for transcendence and contemplation. For those of us who live in the desert, water is a fragile resource, too often taken for granted. Waterways have defined the paths of civilization and trade, the locations of cities and the migration of whole peoples. Water can be amniotic, healing and cleansing on one hand; turbulent, unpredictable and catastrophic on the other.

Today, in the hands of artists from diverse points around the globe, water continues to evolve as a potent image for contemporary times. These artists project an amazing range of abstract ideas onto the subject—from environmentalism to emigration—as they comment on the complexities of human life and social interactions. Here, water is a vehicle for exploring cultural, personal and political issues.

Organized by SMoCA Senior Curator Marilu Knode, Water, Water Everywhere. . . features work by fifteen international artists. The exhibition includes recent video installations, sculpture, photography and painting with the common subject matter of water. Artists in the exhibition are: Lara Baladi (Egypt), Dorothy Cross (Ireland), Song Dong (China), Stan Douglas (Canada), Laura Horelli (Finland), Ange Leccia (Corsica), Sabrina Mezzaqui (Italy), Rivane Neuenschwander (Brazil), Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba (Vietnam), Janaina Tschäpe (Germany/Brazil) and (from the United States) Tony Feher, Robert Gober, Jacci Den Hartog, Roni Horn and Carrie Yamaoka.

Water, Water Everywhere. . . features three new works commissioned by SMoCA for this occasion. Lara Baladi worked with Egyptian sign painters to create Mother of the World, 2005, a billboard dense with images drawn from literature, history and the arts from around the world. Baladi does not depict water literally; instead she suggests fluid states of cultural exchange and diaspora. In Floating: Scottsdale, Song Dong continues to investigate the gap between collective and individual memory. While visiting Arizona from Beijing, Song will shoot video footage of Scottsdale and its environment. He presents images in which Scottsdale shimmers like a mirage. Water, in Song’s art, becomes the focal point for his gentle, Buddhist meditation on the fleeting nature of life. According to Tony Feher, water escapes the straight line of human intentionality; it follows a natural path and resists our interventions. For this exhibition, Feher will suspend various commonplace items over an array of smaller objects placed on the ground below. He will thus create an interesting sense of free-floating displacement for the viewer. Are we below water looking up, or floating somewhere between sky and earth?

Water, Water Everywhere. . . is accompanied by a 96-page, lushly illustrated catalogue with essays by Marilu Knode and critic Weng Choy Lee of Singapore. Organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Major funding has come from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., New York. Sponsored by Nargess and Ali Salass, SRP, Rebecca and Alexander Stewart and the SMoCA Salon. Catalog supported in part by the SMoCA Docents.