NASHVILLE, TN.- The Cheekwood Botanical Garden presents Lain York: Family Grouping, on view through April 8. Nashville-based artist, Lain York, is a prominent member of the local art community. He is the gallery manager for Zeitgeist Gallery, art activist, and event organizer. In Family Grouping, York re-contextualizes formal elements from Non-Western cultures to create new artworks. The resulting exhibition, on display through April 8, comments on contemporary culture and modern art.

York’s work addresses strategies from modern art history and questions how museums present cultural objects. To create his installation, he culled images of ritual objects made by African, Asian, and Oceanic cultures. He then paints abstract impressions of the objects on wood boxes. Through this process, he appropriates a strategy used by artists like Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso. When installed, his works ape ethnographic exhibitions by assigning accession numbers as titles and displaying his work like exotic objects. As a result, York’s work questions how we understand visual art and culture.

York’s work indicates a search for new ways to understand the experience of life at the beginning of the 21st century. He explains, “As a painter, I am considering this desire to incorporate new aesthetic elements as a rejection or dissatisfaction with sensibilities of any particular period; hence a rejection and a criticism.” Through visual elements outside mainstream Western culture such African masks, he suggests a rejection of an increasingly homogenous culture formed by mass-communication commercial networks.

Lain York is a resident of Nashville, Tennessee. He received his BA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Since graduating, he has exhibited widely across the Southeast. His recent solo exhibitions include “Directions to My House” (2006), University of Alabama, Huntsville. Select group exhibitions include “The Fragile Species” (2005), Frist Center for the Visual Arts; “Fugitive in Memphis” (2003); Delta Axis/Marshall Arts Center; “Arts on the River” (1999), Savannah College of Art and Design. He also serves on the Fugitive Projects’ Board of Directors.