Goings On: posted week of April 24, 2018
CONTENTS:
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1. Aviva Rahmani, FF Alumn, at Cardozo School of Law, Manhattan, April 25, and more
2. Mark Bloch, FF Alumn, in the Brooklyn Rail, now online
3. Brendan Fernandes, FF Alumn, Spring events
4. Franc Palaia, FF Alumn, Spring news
5. Ursula von Rydingsvard, FF Alumn, at Galerie Lelong, Manhattan, opening May 3
6. Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alumn, at A Space, Manhattan, April 27
7. Sherrie Levine, FF Alumn, at Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, Belgium, thru May 26
8. Mira Schor, FF Alumn, at Frieze New York 2018, Randall’s Island, NYC, May 3-6
9. Pablo Helguera, Saya Woolfalk, FF Alumns, at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studios, Manhattan, opening April 25
10. Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik, FF Alumns, at Nam June Paik Art Center, Gyeonggi-do, Korea, thru Sept. 26
11. Brian O’Doherty, FF Alumn, at University College Cork, Ireland, thru July 8
12. Javier Téllez, FF Alumn, at Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Y, thru June 17
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1. Aviva Rahmani, FF Alumn, at Cardozo School of Law, Manhattan, April 25, and more
Argue with us in real time how Earth rights and the spirit of art could merge to assert a new definition of public good in this Mock Trial, sponsored by A Blade of Grass 6:-8: PM at 55 5th Ave, the Cardozo School of Law, NYC. The Blued Trees Symphony by Aviva Rahmani will be the plaintiff against a natural gas corporation bent on destroying art, habitat and communities for private profit. The trial will take place with real lawyers, witnesses, a jury, a real judge, a real decision and be followed by a conversation with the audience. The goal is to inspire other lawyers to establish new case law. The defense will be represented by Gale Elston and co-counsel Steven Honigman
A BLADE OF GRASS: MOCK TRIAL
April 25, 2018 – 6:00pm to 8:30pm
The Cardozo School of Law Environmental Law Society, Art Law Society, and Intellectual Property Student Association invite you to:
A Blade of Grass: Mock Trial
A Blade of Grass Fellow Aviva Rahmani is the artist behind the work Blued Trees Symphony, an ecological artwork. The artwork is being made with the intention of using the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) copyright law to defend land in New York, Virginia, and West Virginia that is subject to eminent domain because of proposed natural gas pipelines.
This mock trial will explore whether the status of the artwork under VARA trumps eminent domain takings by corporations. Experienced VARA litigator Gale Elston (Cardozo alumna) will represent the artist.
You will have several options for taking part in the Mock Trial April 25, 2018:
a) Be part of the live audience at the Cardozo School of Law, Wednesday 6:00-8:00 PM at 55 5th Ave., NYC. RSVP at rsvp@abladeofgrass.org and then participate in the live discussion with litigators and witnesses afterwards.
b) Watch the live stream from the A Blade of Grass (ABOG) Facebook page with friends, colleagues or students, in real time.
c) Follow the ABOG twitter feed while multi-tasking.
d) Wait for release of the documentation of the evening by RAVA Films for A Blade of Grass TBA.
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
6 p.m.
Jacob Burns Moot Court Room
Cardozo School of Law
55 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY
Register: rsvp@abladeofgrass.org
For more information, please visit:
http://www.abladeofgrass.org/events/mock-trial/
LOCATION
Cardozo-Brookdale Center-Jacob Burns Moot Court Room
Aviva Rahmani, PhD
www.ghostnets@ghostnets.com
Watch “Blued Trees” at https://vimeo.com/135290635
www.gulftogulf.org
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2. Mark Bloch, FF Alumn, in the Brooklyn Rail, now online
https://brooklynrail.org/2018/04/artseen/JEFFREY-PERKINS-George
A review of “George,” a two-hour feature film about the Fluxus founder George Maciunas in the Brooklyn Rail, directed by Jeffrey Perkins, and reviewed by Mark Bloch.
“George is a work of art itself that delivers guffaws that erupt unexpectedly between poignant moments from Maciunas’s childhood traumas to tangling with the mob and the attorney general of the State of New York during his innovations in constructing the loft culture of downtown Manhattan. Jeffrey Perkins’s Georgeis an important new addition to the twin canons of art and anti-art… “
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3. Brendan Fernandes, FF Alumn, Spring events
Dear Friends,
This April, I am excited to share a few new projects and my hopes that Spring is on its way to you soon!
I am very happy to share a new interview and cover feature with The Seen Magazine. As a newcomer to Chicago, I am grateful to be welcomed into this community by so many. Looking forward to what’s next!
Second, this coming Sunday 22 April, I will be a part of a panel discussion at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in conjunction with a screening of Andrew Rossi and Okwui Okpokwasili’s film, Bronx Gothic. RSVP for tickets at the MCA’s website.
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to travel to Denton, Texas, to present the latest iteration of my performance Free Fall 49 at the University of North Texas. As a performance to reflect on and honour the victims of 2016’s Orlando Shooting, it has been an honour to be invited by so many to share this work.
Lastly, a huge and warm THANK YOU to all who were a part of “The Master And Form”. It has been exciting and rewarding to work with so many in bringing this new installation and performance to fruition with the Graham Foundation. Ellen Alderman, Sara Herda and everyone on the Graham Foundation Team for their steadfast support; Norman Kelley Architects, the Joffrey Academy of Dance and dancers Leah Upchurch, Satoru Iwasaki, Antonio Mannino, Andrea de León Rivera, Yuha Kamoto thank you for your dedication and collaborative spirits. To my many contributors Hendrik Folkerts, Zachary Whittenburg, Benjamin Wardell, Jaffer Kolb and Mark Freitas thank you for your collaborations that elevated and brought new dimensions to the work — too all, MY BIGGEST THANKS!
Very best, Brendan
Copyright (c) Brendan Fernandes Studio 2017
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4. Franc Palaia, FF Alumn, Spring news
a. I participated in the 3rd Annual Urban Art Fair in Paris last week.(April 12-15) I attended and my new book distributor and dealer, Christian Omodeo presented my NightLife book of the Shadow Paintings of Richard Hambleton with a book signing and produced a print of one of the images. for more info- Le Grand Jeu.com. One of my Hambleton photos appeared on the Art Fair catalog.
b. Le Grand Jeu will also participate in the Moniker International Art Fair in Brooklyn May 3-6 in Greenpoint. Le Jeu will also be selling my NightLife book, print and Shadowman T-Shirts as well as many important books on graffiti, street art, murals, hip hop etc.
c. I have two large photographs in the inaugural show of a new gallery in Chatham New York, Gallery@Chatham. The new large space directed by Pat D’Antonio is a branch of Gallery@Rhinebeck. info- www.galleryrhinebeck.org.
d. I have two photos in the new film on the teenage Jean Michel Basquiat which will be screened at the IFC in New York on May 11. The film-“Boom For Real -The Teenage Years of JM Basquiat”, is by Sara Driver. Wife of filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. The film trailer can be seen here- https://instagram.com/p/BhuCqWh5ig/?taken-by=boomforrealfilm. My photo in the trailer is the yellow SAMO image that I shot in Soho in 1978.
e. I am currently curating an outdoor sculpture show at a new sculpture park in Hyde Park NY, The Emporium Sculpture Park show includes 10 sculptors and include Norm Magnusson, Andres San Millan, Dave Channon, Peter Schlemowitz among others. It will be on view on Rt 9 in Dutchess County until Dec 2018.
f. I will present a solo show from my Cuban Murals and Street Art series at the Cunneen-Hackett ArtCenter Galleries in Poughkeepsie, NY from May 1 – June 30. The opening reception is May 3 from 5-6pm and I will give a Power Point talk on Cuban Murals from 6:30-7:30pm following the opening reception. Cunneen is located at 9 Vassar St Poughkeepsie, NY. www.cunneen-hackett.org. info-845-505-3123.
g. I have 6 photographs in the current group show, “Cuba Today”
at the Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, NJ on the campus of Brookdale College. The show include 12 photographers, I am showing my new Mural Mash-Up photos where I combine images of murals from several countries into one mixed media piece.
The show runs thru May 20th. Monmouthmuseum.org
h. I am included in a group show at Howl Gallery – www.howlarts.org/howler-blog/.
The show: Zeitgeist:The Art Scene of Teenage Basquiat, May 13- June 10, 2018. Opening May 13- 6-8pm. The show celebrates the debut of Sara Driver’s film, “Boom For Real- the Teenage Years of JM Basquiat”. some of the artists included in the show; Charlie Ahearn, Basquiat, Henry Chalfant, Jane Dickson, Barbara Ess, Nan Goldin, Jim Jarmusch. Glenn O’Brien, Lee Quinones, Christy Rupp, Luc Sante, Kenny Scharf, and Robin Winters. Howl gallery is located at 6 East First St, NYC 10003. tel-917-475-1294. info on boom for real- www.magnoliapictures.com/boomforreal/.
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5. Ursula von Rydingsvard, FF Alumn, at Galerie Lelong, Manhattan, opening May 3
TORN
Opening reception: Thursday, May 3, 6-8pm
Galerie Lelong 528 W. 26th Street, New York
May 3 – June 23, 2018
Please join me at the opening of my solo exhibition of work that I have most recently completed.
TORN opens one week after the opening of The Contour of Feeling, guest curated by Mark Rosenthal at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia on April 27th, which coincides with Now She: Two Sculptures by Ursula von Rydingsvard on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
My new monograph The Contour of Feeling was just published by The Fabric Worksop and Museum and Hirmer, and will be available at my openings in Philadelphia and New York.
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6. Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alumn, at A Space, Manhattan, April 27
Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alumn, reading a chapter from her novel WISH FOR AMNESIA
Event: An East Village Happening
Featuring: Barbara Rosenthal, Armand Ruhlman, Vernita Nemec and others.
Reading / Performance / Music
Location: A-Space, 614 E 9th St (B/C), NY, NY 10009
Time: Fri, April 27, 8pm SHARP (I read at 8:30)
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7. Sherrie Levine, FF Alumn, at Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, Belgium, thru May 26
Sherrie Levine
April 19-May 26, 2018
Xavier Hufkens
6 rue St-Georges
1050 Brussels
Belgium
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 11am-6pm
T +32 2 639 67 30
info@xavierhufkens.com
www.xavierhufkens.com
Xavier Hufkens is pleased to present its inaugural exhibition with the influential American artist Sherrie Levine. As one of the artists who are most often cited in relation to appropriation art, it has to be recognized this category is too narrow to contain all that Levine’s work achieves. The more it is looked at, the more depth and complexity her practice yields.
Sherrie Levine is adept at making bodies of work that are both precise and confounding. Her reiterations of artefacts obtain their own aura - through a poised selection, of source artefacts, material, execution, and a stilled dramaturgy of sequence and presentation. These aspects still do not explain the mystique Levine’s work propagates: the magic seems to lie in the way the works relate, to each other, their earlier selves in whose image they were remade, Levine’s practice, and as physical markers to the vast networks of objects and meanings that comprise our collective cultural experience.
Levine presents two postcard collages of each 24 identical, framed postcards, that in and of themselves manifest notions of repetition and seriality. And as we walk past them, we see every postcard differently, as the others crowd into our peripheral vision. The postcard of the first is a detail of James Ensor’s painting Christ’s Entry into Brussels (1889). In this painting, the Anglo-Belgian artist depicted himself as Christ at the centre of a carnivalesque multitude. Many people in the painting are wearing masks, a recurrent motif of disguise in Levine’s work: they feature again in the second postcard collage, After Ensor: The Intrigue (detail). The viewer may imagine a further link to Brussels in the bronze Christ Child, a figure not unlike Manneken Pis, the fountain of a small boy that splashes forth in the centre of Brussels. This in turn harks back to Levine’s Fountain (Buddha), with which she reiterated Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 urinal/readymade Fountain that he signed R. Mutt.
Levine’s Very Large Cradle relates to a painting by Van Gogh that Levine reproduced in an earlier work: a woman is pictured holding the strings that rock a cradle, which is left outside of the image. Van Gogh was influenced by Millet: the cradle and coffin touch on how ideas and forms reappear in the arts through time. Seeing them together further amplifies their associative potential. Medicine Ball harks back to Levine’s own Beach Ball, after Roy Lichtenstein’s Girl with Ball, an image he had found in a hotel advertisement. The sculpture was a contradiction-in-form, representing an object of lightness in bronze. This opposition is reversed again in Medicine Ball - the original item is already heavy. Lightness abounds once more in Rabbit, cast from a found folkloric item. It recalls Levine’s postcard collage After Dürer: 1-18, only here the motif is leaping.
The colours in Monochromes After Emil Nolde: 1-12, are distilled from the pixilation of a photograph of a painting of poppies by the German expressionist Emil Nolde (1867-1956). Again, Levine’s choice of source is hardly innocent: in the nineteen forties Nolde was persecuted by the Nazi’s and forbidden to paint. He called the watercolours of flowers he made in secret during this period Unpaintings, a title which, by extension, also questions the status of these new paintings.
Sherrie Levine (b. 1947) lives and works in New York. Her earliest work was included in the seminal exhibition Pictures (1977) at Artists Space in New York. In 1981 Levine debuted her controversial series Untitled, After Walker Evans which, together with other similar series, made her a leading member of the “Pictures Generation,” a group of artists using appropriation techniques to challenge the notions of authenticity and originality in the media-saturated 1980s. Levine’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent institutions worldwide and can be found in major international museum collections.
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8. Mira Schor, FF Alumn, at Frieze New York 2018, Randall’s Island, NYC, May 3-6
Mira Schor FF Alumn at Frieze New York 2018: Unseen Dick Paintings (1988 – 1993), Spotlight Section // Lyles & King Gallery, Booth SP30 May 3-May 6
Randall’s Island Park
At Frieze New York 2018, Mira Schor (b. 1950, New York) presents four never before exhibited “Dick” paintings from 1988-1991 with Lyles & King Gallery in the Spotlight section. In ‘Dicks, or The Impregnation of the Universe’ (1988), ‘Strange Fruit’ (1988), ‘MA(me) MA’ (1991), and ‘Pardon Me Ms.’ (1990), Schor approaches scale through structural multiplicity, addressing while undermining the great tradition of painting and dominant ideologies of patriarchy. The fragmented surface slows reading of the images, mounting an internal critique of the gendered character of scale, size, and imagery. In her five-decade career as a painter and theorist, Schor has been committed to painting as a space for expression of contemporary life and feminist politics. Frieze video interview with Mira Schor at https://vimeo.com/265726261
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9. Pablo Helguera, Saya Woolfalk, FF Alumns, at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studios, Manhattan, opening April 25
PROTEST CLUB
AN EXHIBITION OF EFA INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIP ARTISTS AND EFA STUDIO MEMBER ARTISTS
MARCH 6 – JULY 13, 2018
Opening Reception: Wednesday, April 25, from 6-8 PM
Public Performance: El Club de Protesta, Wednesday, May 15, 6 PM
EFA International Partnership Artists: Ava Ansari, Salar Ansari, Maria Elvira Escallón, Rashwan Abdelbaki, Şener Özmen; and EFA Studio Member Artists: Wafaa Bilal, Saya Woolfalk, Richard Jochum, Karina Skvirsky, Pablo Helguera
Curated by Natalia Nakazawa
The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program is pleased to announce the opening of Protest Club, an exhibition featuring five International Partnerships artists and five Studio Member artists engaged with global issues of power and protest. Side-stepping expectations of political art, works on view use humor, fantasy and participation to engage viewers with small and large stories of our troubled globe. This multifaceted exhibition features media, sculpture, painting and site-specific installations.
Exhibition Artworks
In the video piece, What Does an Artist Actually Want?, Kurdish artist Şener Özmen (b.1971, Turkey) stands in a plowed field with the sound of military jets drowning out his statement: “Do you think it’s possible for me to influence global art from where I am standing?” His questioning strikes at ubiquitous biases towards western mega cities, where wealth, power, and privilege conspire to drown out the voices of other artists in regions deemed outside of the political favor.
Across from this video work, Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal (b.1966, Iraq) underscores the relationship of icon to political power with a golden space satellite of Saddam Hussein. At the height of Saddam Hussein’s power, members of the Ba’ath party in Iraq had planned such a tribute in his honor. They commissioned a golden statue in his likeness, to be propelled into space where it would orbit Earth for all eternity, gazing upon his pan-Arabic lands and its enemies with the eye of God.
Also addressing hubris with humor is Maria Elvira Escallón’s (b.1954, Colombia) recreation of a series of events surrounding the discovery of a meteorite in Colombia. Spurred by the realization that museums often omit important historical information about objects in the name of science, Maria Elvira Escallón set to recover the sordid and messy details of the meteor’s history. Displayed as a mini-museological display, historical photographs, drawings, and didactics offer a guide to rectifying the wrongs of the past.
The exhibition’s name comes from El Club de Protesta, an installation of ephemera and recorded protest songs by Pablo Helguera (b.1971, Mexico) in collaboration with composer Carlo Nicolau. El Club de Protesta focuses on traditions of the protest song and on current issues surrounding immigration. As part of the exhibition’s public programs, Helguera will host a free night of performances around his installation on Wednesday, May 15th at 6 PM, at EFA.
Rashwan Abdelbaki’s (b.1984, Syria) large paintings are haunted by figures with one eye open and one eye closed. They huddle, sit, stand and lie down with a sense of urgency and discomfort. Growing up in Damascus, Syria, Abdelbaki’s early life was filled with sounds, food, and community – all of which are now existing in a constant state of fear and uncertainty, with control firmly in the hands of political and military factions.
Richard Jochum’s (b.1967, Austria) Survey is a participatory wall installation presenting viewers with an imaginary choice about their projected attitude toward the world around them. Marking the electoral success of right-wing governments across the globe, Survey has been translated into a number of languages.
Ava Ansari’s (b.1982, Iran) curated video project, Little Syria, orchestrates both an uncovering of forgotten history and a fantastical reenactment of memory. Before the construction of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and the World Trade Center an area called Little Syria was home to one of the largest and earliest communities of Arab and Eastern European immigrants in the US. The organizers and participants celebrate the invisible neighborhood and ask for support to preserve its three remaining buildings: a church, a community center, and a tenement house.
Saya Woolfalk’s (b.1979, Japan) site-specific installation, ChimaCloud Crystal Body C, is part of a larger fictional utopian universe, called the Empathics, where virtual beings inhabit women-centric worlds. Woolfalk combines visual and ontological strategies found in sci-fi fantasy and cultural anthropology as a counter to the violent and harsh realities of contemporary life.
Karina Skvirsky (b.1969, USA) physically cuts, bends, and folds images of contemporary landscapes taken in Ecuador in her series, Los obreros del ferrocarril, revealing an overlooked history of indigenous workers, Jamaicans and Chinese migrants who labored constructing the railroads across the country.
Salar Ansari’s (b.1990, Iran) Binaural Collection forges a relationship in the artist’s work between his newly fraught immigration status and his current home in Detroit, Michigan. It is at once a deeply personal and collaborative series of 3D sound works that tease out some of the heaviest subjects facing immigrants and Americans alike in today’s political climate.
About
EFA International Partnerships is a program which hosts artists from around the world in EFA’s NYC studios for a period of six months to a year. Artists are nominated and supported by international partner organizations, with additional benefits and programming provided by the EFA Studio Program. The EFA Studio Program was founded in 1998 as a program of The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts to provide affordable private studio spaces, facilitate career development, and promote public and critical exposure for our members. We host curated exhibitions featuring studio member artists on the third floor.
EFA Studios is located at 323 W. 39 St., 3nd Floor, Manhattan.
Hours: Tue – Fri, 11-6 pm
www.studios-efanyc.org
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10. Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik, FF Alumns, at Nam June Paik Art Center, Gyeonggi-do, Korea, thru Sept. 26
Nam June Paik Art Center
More than 30 minutes
February 15-September 26, 2018
Nam June Paik Art Center
10 Paiknamjune-ro, Giheung-gu
Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do
17068
Korea
Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 10am-6pm
press@njpartcenter.kr
njp.ggcf.kr
Artists: Gregory Battcock, Nam June Paik, Shigeko Kubota, Aldo Tambellini, Allan Kaprow, Otto Piene, James Seawright, Thomas Tadlock
Curated by Jeong-hwa Goo
Organized and Hosted by Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation, Nam June Paik Art Center
More than 30 minutes is an exhibition that sheds new light on Nam June Paik’s video art in the context of the Counterculture that swept America and Europe in the 1960s. Nam June Paik’s work was also influenced by such a cultural background of American society in the ’60s, a decade in which reflections on the Western civilization gradually grew into a movement against the established values. Behind Nam June Paik’s progressive video art exists a new vision of communication sought in the midst of the Countercultural upheaval. It was also Paik’s urgent solution for contemporary people who just entered the age of commodification and automation.
The title More than 30 minutes came from the text “Afterlude to the Exposition of Experimental Television”(1963) written by Paik, in which he encouraged viewers to watch his television more than 30 minutes. The exhibition interpreted the meaning of 30 minutes as a requisite for sympathy with others as well as a journey of communication. According to Paik, video art is not only a passage of “harmonious chaos” to escape from now and here, but also a starting point of imagination to move into there and beyond. We hope that his video art will melt our heart overwhelmed by the flood of information into a strong bond of sympathy.
The exhibition consisting of four sections features 22 works of video, video sculpture and drawing as well as 40 related materials.
The first section “Flower Children” showcases three video works and a video sculpture Flower Child that Paik created for Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), a leading icon of counterculture movement, the experimental theatre group Living Theatre and musician John Cage (1912-1992). “Flower Children” is a term referring to the American hippie generation. Hippies who enjoyed using flowers as a symbol of “peace” and “love” dreamed of a new global community where labor and play are creatively combined, while making fun of the established order and values. Paik’s witty and innovative video works are a tribute to counterculture heroes, expressing his love and respect for them.
In the second section titled “Psychedelic + Cybernetics = ??,” Nam June Paik’s experimental TV series and video works using the broadcast system are on display. His TV series are an attempt to break new ground in art by merging psychedelic culture of the hippies, which was a major keyword in American society in the 1960s, with cybernetics that announced the advent of technological advancement. This section provides opportunities to experience Nam June Paik’s creative and powerful disturbing tactics regarding the television system, which is a substitute for a network of products. Among the works in this section are 9, 23, 69 Experiment with David Atwood, The Medium is the Medium, Video Synthesizer and Video Commune.
“Turn on, Tune in, Drop out” is a popular slogan used by hippies in the 1960s as well as a message that contemporary video artists paid attention to. This section includes Paik’s interesting works showing the effects of psychedelic experience created during the process of examining the human brain and mind through the mediums of television and video. Autography No.1 Diary inside Womb including his conversations with parents, Danger Music for Dick Higgins and Merce by Merce by Paik, an innovative video performance offering video effects transcending the boundaries of time and space are on view.
The last section “Video Telepathy” introduces Nam June Paik’s communication art that connects the human mind and behavior at the level of simultaneity, based on the feedback mechanism of cybernetics that cause and effect are connected to each other. The section shows the video works for broadcasting as follows: You Can’t Lick Stamps in China, a cultural, anthropological video travelogue; Wrap around the World for the 1988 Seoul Olympics, a proof of both unity between East and West and of the end of Cold War confrontation; Tiger Lives representing a wish for the new millennium for the Korean people suffering from ideological conflicts. Nam June Paik sowed the seeds of the new medium of video in this tough global community based on the belief that heartfelt communication could create a new meaning. Ultimately it is up to each of us to sprout the seeds and form a forest.
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11. Brian O’Doherty, FF Alumn, at University College Cork, Ireland, thru July 8
Double Take
Collections and Context
March 30-July 8, 2018
The Glucksman
University College Cork
Cork
Ireland
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 10am-5pm
T +353 21 490 1844
info@glucksman.org
www.glucksman.org
Facebook / Twitter / Instagram
Artists: Amanda Coogan, Martin Healy, Fiona Kelly, Alice Maher, Suzanne Mooney, Brian O’Doherty, Garrett Phelan, The Project Twins, Sonia Shiel
Curated by Chris Clarke and Fiona Kearney
Over the past 14 years, the Glucksman has been privileged to show ambitious site-specific works by Irish contemporary artists. Double Take looks back to some of these innovative moments within our exhibition history. From dramatic gallery interventions to intimate architectural responses, past installations are reproduced and presented alongside the artist’s work from the University College Cork Art Collection.
In 2012, The Project Twins created three large-scale paintings as part of the exhibition Living/Loss: the experience of illness in art. Their bold graphic designs explore the relationship of illness to self-esteem and depression with wit and empathy, and this sensibility is evident in their screenprints in the UCC art collection. As part of the 2008 exhibition Getting Even, Garrett Phelan invited 26 individuals to read excerpts from a prepared script. As the audio recordings reverberate through the gallery, his dark black painting casts an improbable shadow on the wall. The Hide Suite feature Phelan’s detailed drawings of birds recorded at a site in Fingal where the artist has built a permanent, functional monument in the form of an observation point to view birds at the local estuary. In Suzanne Mooney’s photographs, previously exhibited in Everything Must Go: art and the market, the artist depicts stands, platforms, backdrops and arrangements used in commercial displays yet without the clutter of the actual items for sale. Devoid of their luxury goods, the emphasis is directed towards empty spaces that resemble abstract, formal compositions of light and colour.
Double Take features a large wall drawing by Brian O’Doherty. Using rope to create a three-dimensional drawing, O’Doherty first created one of these site-specific works for the Glucksman in 2009 and his work here similarly invites visitors to walk in and around the artwork to experience its subtleties from different angles. O’Doherty’s ongoing interest in language, text and writing is also represented through a series of intaglio prints from the UCC Art Collection. Martin Healy’s neon work Fata Morgana represents the coordinates to a land mass sighted during an expedition to the Arctic in 1906. Believed to be an undiscovered continent, an expedition was dispatched to map the region, where it was subsequently discovered to be a “fata morgana,” a form of mirage. In his photographic work in the UCC art collection, Healy explores the mind’s eye of a child. A young boy holds aloft a toy gun as an imagined scenario plays out in his head. Alice Maher’s video animation continues the artist’s interest in metamorphosis. Through a process of drawing, erasure, and overdrawing on the same sheet of paper, Maher creates a world where the boundaries of the human body are constantly shifting and evolving with other bodies, animals and objects.
Amanda Coogan’s triptych of photographs first exhibited in the exhibition 2116 capture one of her performance-based artworks: the artist’s head (with miner’s headlamp attached) breaches a sheet of taut, blue fabric, ploughing a path through the material to explore her new and unfamiliar environment. In Fiona Kelly’s Dust Breeding, an image of strewn rubble and cluttered refuse has been printed in tar on plywood as part of a large, free-standing billboard structure created for I Went to the Woods: the artist as wanderer. As with many of the restaged works in Double Take, it is presented in the same space as its original exhibition location. Sonia Shiel’s Mise en Abyme was commissioned in 2014 by the Glucksman as part of the Fieldworks exhibition. The sculpture suggests an anxiety about environmental pollution and its impact on natural habitats. Her paintings too have a dark romanticism, often framing the vulnerability of both humans and nature.
Double Take is funded by University College Cork, the Arts Council of Ireland, and private philanthropy through Cork University Foundation.
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12. Javier Téllez, FF Alumn, at Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Y, thru June 17
Javier Téllez
NOSFERATU (The Undead)
April 22-June 17, 2018
Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester
500 University Avenue
Rochester, NY
United States
mag.rochester.edu
The Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester (MAG) is pleased to announce NOSFERATU (The Undead), a film installation by New York-based artist Javier Téllez that focuses on cinema and mental illness. The work will premiere at MAG on April 22 and remain on view through June 17. NOSFERATU (The Undead) is the first exhibition to be presented as part of “Reflections on Place,” a series of media art commissions inspired by the City of Rochester, New York, and curated by world-renowned authority on the moving image John G. Hanhardt.
Téllez’s film was inspired by Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, the expressionist silent masterpiece directed by F. W. Murnau in 1922. Téllez made the work in collaboration with people living with mental illness after a series of workshops that he conducted on the subjects of vampirism and the representation of psychiatric institutions in film. Combining black-and-white 16mm and color digital film, NOSFERATU (The Undead) was shot at the Eastman Kodak factory, the Dryden Theatre of the George Eastman Museum, and at the Main Street Armory, all in Rochester. “We chose a vampire for the main character of the film,” said Téllez, “because we wanted to reflect on light and darkness as the fundamental principles of cinema, and to focus on those who are stigmatized by being different and condemned to invisibility.”
The mise en scène of NOSFERATU (The Undead) comprises a “film inside a film,” juxtaposing scenes from Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens with additional scenes the artist developed with his collaborators who act as fictional patients in a set representing a ward at an insane asylum circa 1960. Téllez shows them simultaneously as actors and spectators of their own film. This reversal of roles is a recurrent motif in Téllez’s work, and it is a way to destabilize preconceived notions about the perception of mental illness. NOSFERATU (The Undead) also mixes documentary and fiction, including aspects of the manufacturing of celluloid film at the Kodak factory. It documents a performance of the internationally renowned silent film accompanist Philip C. Carli, the George Eastman Museum’s resident musician, who provides a superb piano accompaniment for Murnau’s silent film.
Javier Téllez’s film projects involve close collaborative ventures with disenfranchised communities, such as psychiatric patients or people with disabilities, allowing them to participate in the creative process in order to produce a dignified and non-stereotyped image of themselves. Combining different approaches to filmmaking, Téllez opens a dialogue that provides a fresh interpretation of classical myths, private and collective memories, and historical references.
“Javier Téllez is an innovative artist who has created a distinguished body of work. He has made a major contribution to the art of the moving image,” said MAG’s Consulting Senior Curator of Media Arts John G. Hanhardt. “His work is risk-taking and full of surprises, and is the result of a great deal of research, of really plumbing a place, its stories, and people. For this project he explores Rochester’s contributions to and influence on global culture as the historical epicenter of the filmic medium.”
In advance of the launch of this first of three new media art commissions, MAG’s Mary W. and Donald R. Clark Director Jonathan P. Binstock stated, “the series ‘Reflections on Place’ is a crowning achievement of John Hanhardt’s work as a pioneering curator of media art. He was born, raised, and educated in Rochester. With his deep knowledge of the region, John identified three extraordinary artists to be inspired by our history, politics, and culture. We are proud to present the first of these commissions, a new installation by the internationally renowned artist, Javier Téllez.”
For Téllez’s project, MAG has constructed a theater with rear-screen 4K projection, Dolby 5.1 surround sound, and theater seating in its newly renovated Docent Gallery.
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Goings On is compiled weekly by Harley Spiller
