ASPEN, CO.- Beginning with a free public reception from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m., on Thursday, December 18, 2008, the Aspen Art Museum is proud to present the international group exhibition Now You See It. Featuring work that challenges basic assumptions about interpreting the essence of an artwork’s materials Now You See It draws upon unconventional notions of transformation—like alchemy or magic—as a way of understanding the artistic process as more than simply an elevation of base materials, and features the work of nineteen historically significant and emerging contemporary artists, including: Walead Beshty, Alexandra Bircken, Ceal Floyer, Tom Friedman, Felix Gonzalez–Torres, Wade Guyton, Anna Sew Hoy, Wolfgang Laib, Robert Morris, William O’Brien, Mitzi Pederson, Dieter Roth, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, Gedi Sibony, Rudolf Stingel, Lawrence Weiner, Jennifer West, and Erwin Wurm.

Of the exhibition AAM Director and Chief Curator Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson comments: “These artworks offer the chance to glimpse the instant at which we know a change has occurred, allowing us to look more closely at the moment when something stops being what it was before and becomes something else. Erwin Wurm uses dust; Fred Sandback, string; Robert Morris uses felt; Tom Friedman, the act of staring to make art. It can be likened to the shift in perception when a problem is answered, or a stranger morphs into a friend—a fissure forms. Now You See It is about the magical moment of transformation and about what happens to the viewer in the presence of such uncertainty.”

Public programs scheduled during the exhibition include a January 8th poetry reading hosted at the AAM by poet/critic, Parkett magazine U.S. Associate Editor, Now You See It catalogue contributor Jeremy Sigler, as well as a January 29th public talk with Massimiliano Gioni, critic, curator, Director of Special Exhibitions at the New Museum, and the Artistic Director of the Nicola Trussardi Foundation in Milan. The exhibition will remain on view through Sunday, February 1, 2009. Now You See It is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the Aspen Art Press, and distributed by Distributed Art Publishers (D.A.P.), New York.

The AAM presentation of Now You See It is organized by the Aspen Art Museum, funded in part by the AAM National Council, with generous additional underwriting from Susan and Larry Marx. Exhibition lectures are presented by the Questrom Lecture Series. Opening reception sponsored by Aspen Magazine.