Going International, a group exhibition of twenty contemporary artists working in video, painting, photography, drawing, sculpture, and installation, produces an eclectic blend of international voices. Artists include Tonico Lemos Aua, Charles Avery, Nigel Cooke, William Cordova, Amie Dicke, Olafur Eliasson, Elmgreen & Dragset, Ludovica Gioscia, Anselm Kiefer, Graham Little, Josephine Meckseper, Jonathan Meese, Damián Ortega, Thomas Schütte, Yinka Shonibare, Aya Uekawa, Iris Van Dongen, Ged Quinn, and Wojciech Zasadni.

The exhibition’s title refers to the act of investigating diverse global perspectives. Culling from familiar imagery, the works included represent whimsical interpretations of pop culture, literary references, and everyday objects to create a space for disparate and exciting relationships.

Elmgreen & Dragset weave a sense of humor with historical and social references in Modern Moses, 2006, on the opening wall. By re-contextualizing the biblical narrative with a baby doll in a carrycot left beside an ATM, the viewer becomes witness to the contemporary reality of child abandonment, adoption, and the influence of money.

Josephine Meckseper’s video Mall of America, 2009, nods to Minneapolis, MN’s mall of the same title–one of the top tourist destinations in the United States–can be read as a meditation on consumerism and American identity. Amie Dicke and Graham Little utilize re-imagined, appropriated, and altered cultural imagery to reveal the fetishistic culture surrounding beauty, youth, and fashion. Wojciech Zasadni carves glossy magazine and book covers into lacquered wood, providing another interpretation of the international influence of mass media.

Damián Ortega’s Controller of the Universe, 2007, a series of found hand tools suspended in mid air, is a site of danger and otherworldliness. As if in mid explosion emanating from its center, the work appears as though a force of nature has frozen them in time and space. Ortega’s dynamic spherical formation of outward facing blades and points evoke connections between power and violence, while Olafur Eliasson’s Turbo sphere, 2007, employs geometric forms and patterns using light that invoke color and the subjective perception of the viewer. A neon tube within an intricate structure of colored glass and stainless steel forms a concentric spiral that draws the eye to the light as well as the prismatic effect it generates.