http://601artspace.org 601Artspace Fri, 25 Jan 2013 15:43:35 +0000 http://601artspace.org en http://www.601artspace.org/The-Unspecific-Index http://www.601artspace.org/following/601artspace.org/The-Unspecific-Index Fri, 25 Jan 2013 15:43:35 +0000 601Artspace 4206323 The Unspecific IndexNovember 15, 2012-February 2, 2013Curated by Erin SicklerView Installation ImagesJOHN BALDESSARI JANET CARDIFF & GEORGE BURES MILLER ALEJANDRO CESARCO JOHN DIVOLA MELISSA DUBBIN & AARON DAVIDSON THE GOLDING INSTITUTE LUIGI GHIRRI JOSH FAUGHT R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER ALICE HUTCHINS GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG RIVANE NEUENSCHWANDER PAUL RYAN ZEN GORILLA Related events coming soon. Contact Anya Pantuyeva at info@601artspace.org for more information The Unspecific IndexNovember 15, 2012-February 2, 2013Curated by Erin SicklerView Installation ImagesJOHN BALDESSARI JANET CARDIFF & GEORGE BURES MILLER ALEJANDRO... http://www.601artspace.org/Open-Closed http://www.601artspace.org/following/601artspace.org/Open-Closed Fri, 05 Oct 2012 15:37:23 +0000 601Artspace 3354985 <img src="http://payload52.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/3354985/Ozawa-Veg-Weapon.jpg" width="670" height="493" width_o="1605" height_o="1181" src_o="http://payload52.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/3354985/Ozawa-Veg-Weapon_o.jpg" data-mid="17239915" border="0" align="left"/> Open::ClosedCurated by David HoweMay 17-September 29, 2012 Opening reception: May 17, 6-9pmView Installation Images DAVID DIAO YEVGENIY FIKS RAINER GANAHL ROBERT GOBER & SHERRIE LEVINE DAN GRAHAM ANDREAS GURSKY KENNETH TIN-KIN HUNG CRAIG KALPAKJIAN EVA & FRANCO MATTES aka 0100101110101101.org JENNIFER & KEVIN MCCOY TSUYOSHI OZAWA KRISTINE POTTER WILLIAM POWHIDA HIROSHI SUGIMOTO KERRY TRIBE MARTIN WEBER Where are the rifts and fractures, the pivots and hinges, the tilts and balances between open and closed systems? People do need to know that Polaris, the North Star, is always in the North. But in today's world, daily life is increasingly digital, binary, polarized, on-off. At risk are the pleasures of ambiguity, possibility, change, and imagination. Seeking the terrain that lies between open and closed, fixed and flexible, Open::Closed offers the viewer multiple vantage points from which to view the exhibition, disrupting the seemingly neutral experience of looking at art. At the same time, the exhibition focuses on works that explore the conflict between open and closed systems. It is with this double move--one that takes place first in the artworks themselves and then in the way those works are represented--that we ask the viewer and the works to anticipate the arrival of the unexpected. Image: Tsuyoshi Ozawa,Vegetable Weapon-Mutton Hot Pot/Beijing, 2002, Unique c-print, 44 1/2 x 61 7/16 in., Courtesy Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo Open::ClosedCurated by David HoweMay 17-September 29, 2012 Opening reception: May 17, 6-9pmView Installation Images DAVID DIAO YEVGENIY FIKS RAINER GANAHL ROBERT... http://www.601artspace.org/Re-Encounters http://www.601artspace.org/following/601artspace.org/Re-Encounters Mon, 07 May 2012 12:34:22 +0000 601Artspace 2878051 <img src="http://payload28.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/2878051/re_encounters_smoke.jpg" width="600" height="723" width_o="600" height_o="723" src_o="http://payload28.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/2878051/re_encounters_smoke_o.jpg" data-mid="14746311" border="0" align="left"/> http://www.601artspace.org/Globalissimo http://www.601artspace.org/following/601artspace.org/Globalissimo Thu, 22 Sep 2011 06:21:47 +0000 601Artspace 1980745 <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/1980745/thumb_for_website_2.jpg" width="670" height="499" width_o="700" height_o="522" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/1980745/thumb_for_website_2_o.jpg" data-mid="22136754" border="0" align="left"/> GlobalissimoCurated by David Howe and Erin SicklerJuly 8-September 8, 2011View Installation Images VIJA CELMINS MICHAEL RAY CHARLES ALLAN D'ARCANGELO OSKAR DAWICKI TOM FRIEDMAN LUIGI GHIRRI ANDREAS GURSKY JEPPE HEIN CHRISTIAN MARCLAY EVA AND FRANCO MATTES aka 0100101110101101.org MR. ERNESTO NETO THOMAS SCHEIBITZ In which the World is once again shown to be Spherikal. The Army of Sir Clement the Flat is scattered to the Four Winds by the Knights Errant of the Object Round, only to be returned to the Field of War by the Dark Wizard of Space-Time. To the surprise of the Wandering Viewer, worlds collide. GlobalissimoCurated by David Howe and Erin SicklerJuly 8-September 8, 2011View Installation Images VIJA CELMINS MICHAEL RAY CHARLES ALLAN D'ARCANGELO OSKAR... http://www.601artspace.org/Installation-View http://www.601artspace.org/following/601artspace.org/Installation-View Wed, 31 Aug 2011 11:16:54 +0000 601Artspace 1278309 <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/1278309/MCCOY_POSTCARD1.JPG" width="670" height="418" width_o="1280" height_o="800" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/1278309/MCCOY_POSTCARD1_o.JPG" data-mid="9832334" border="0" align="left"/> Installation ViewCurated by Jennifer and Kevin McCoySeptember 22, 2011-January 21, 2012View Installation Images WILLIAM EGGLESTON FISCHLI & WEISS SUSAN HAMBURGER LOUISE LAWLER ABELARDO MORELL GABRIEL OROZCO RICHARD SERRA STEPHEN SHORE THOMAS STRUTH HIROSHI SUGIMOTO JEFF WALL For Installation View, the McCoys bend their artistic practice of revealing how meaning is made, to focus on how meaning is displayed. Their curatorial effort here aims to discover the private lives of art works. As an intervention into 601’s affiliated collection, they have created a site-specific exhibition out of non-site-specific art. Whether situated outdoors, in a guesthouse, or in an artist’s studio, Installation View shows artworks the way they more frequently exist, instead of in a state of exhibition. Playing off of Louise Lawler’s ongoing practice of capturing art behind the scenes, the McCoys will project images from a network of live feed cameras in order to better observe the natural habitats of art. About the Curators: The McCoys have been artistic collaborators since 1990. Together they have made a wide range of film, video, installation, and performance works. Their joint projects have been shown in numerous exhibitions throughout the US and Europe including SITE Santa Fe Biennial–The Dissolve, Santa Fe, NM, 2010; Automatic Update, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2007; Soft Rains, FACT Liverpool, UK, 2003. Recent solo exhibitions include: Abu Dhabi Is Love Forever, one step past the airport, Postmasters Gallery, New York, 2011; Soft Rains #6: Suburban Horrors, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto Film Festival, Toronto, Canada, 2010; Constant World, Beall Center for Art + Technology, University of California, Irvine, CA, 2008; Tiny, Funny, Big and Sad, British Film Institute Galleries Southbank, London, UK, 2007. Jennifer McCoy was born in the USA in 1968. Her work includes video, performance, installation and multimedia. Her work involves the minutiae of physical experience and its interface with everyday, domestic reality. She completed her MFA in 1994 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where she studied Electronic Art. She is an Assistant Professor of Computer Graphics at Brooklyn College. Kevin McCoy was born in 1967. He is a media artist who works with interactive multimedia, video, computer graphics, installation, and performance. His work addresses the interface of perception, communication and technology, and explores the rhetoric of the new media economy. He completed his MFA in Electronic Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, in 1994. He is an Assistant Professor of Multimedia in the Art Department at the City College of New York. The McCoys currently live and work in New York City, USA. Installation ViewCurated by Jennifer and Kevin McCoySeptember 22, 2011-January 21, 2012View Installation Images WILLIAM EGGLESTON FISCHLI & WEISS SUSAN HAMBURGER... http://www.601artspace.org/Narrative-Objects http://www.601artspace.org/following/601artspace.org/Narrative-Objects Tue, 21 Jun 2011 11:23:06 +0000 601Artspace 1624370 Narrative Objects<img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/1624370/DMaroto_Illusion.jpg" width="670" height="502" width_o="2048" height_o="1536" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/1624370/DMaroto_Illusion_o.jpg" data-mid="7962058" border="0" align="left"/> When you open a novel—and I mean of course the real thing—you enter into a state of intimacy with its writer… Such a writer has power over distraction and fragmentation, and out of distressing unrest, even from the edge of chaos, he can bring unity and carry us into a state of intransitive attention. -Saul Bellow, The Distracted Public, 1994 601 West 26th St., Suite 1755, New York, NY June 14, 2011 7:30 p.m. 601Artspace presents Narrative Objects: A discussion about the artist’s novel, audience, and protracted engagements. In its most common form, the novel involves a coherent sequence that unfolds around an interrelated set of characters. Taking his novel Illusion as a starting point, artist David Maroto proposes a dual purpose for the artist’s novel: For the artist, the novel serves as a conceptual proposition, linking narratives within other art projects and generating new ideas, but as an artwork in and of itself, the artist’s novel acts as a more humble contribution to the sweeping history of literary prose. Joined by Christopher K. Ho (artist, curator and author) and Alexander Campos (Center for Book Arts), the panel will discuss how the artist’s novel measures up against other novels and whether increasing interest in the novel among visual artists is intended to counteract tendencies of perpetual distraction. The panel will be moderated by Erin Sickler (601Artspace). Related books and other materials from the participants will be available at the event. Synopsis of Illusion: Illusion is an art project in the form of a novel. Tarot Arcane VI, The Lover, is a lost young man caught in a state of indecision between two options. Even his clothes, a multicolored doublet, reflect his state of internal division. Similarly, the protagonist of Illusion is immersed in a process of progressive fragmentation. He is always in the need of a model to imitate. The problem is that, the closer he gets to that model, the more he enters in competition with it in order to attain the object of their mutual desires. Image: David Maroto, Illusion, Paperback, 220 pages, 5.25” x 8” We gratefully acknowledge the Consulate General of Spain for their support of this event. Bios: Alexander Campos has over 20 years experience in Arts Management, with positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning. Since 2004 he has serve as executive director of the Center for Book Arts, during which time he has organized numerous major exhibitions and overseen the expansion of the Center’s Visual Arts Program. He has served on committees for strategic and master facility planning at several of these organizations. Throughout his career, he has organized numerous public programs and exhibitions. His education includes an MA from New York University in Arts Administration and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in the History of Art. He has served on advisory commissions and review panels, including the New York State Council on the Arts, Department of Cultural Affairs, IMLS, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. Christopher K. Ho’s conceptual work examines the possibilities and parameters of advanced art today. For his 2010 solo exhibition at Winkleman Gallery, Regional Painting, Ho created a series of paintings and an eponymous memoir under the guise of a fictional alter ego, painter Hirsch E.P. Rothko, all while living for a year in a license plate covered shed in the southwest mountains of Colorado. The recourse to a romantic tradition was both an earnest attempt to rediscover painting and a response to the exhaustion of conceptual art. Recent projects include Busan 2020 for the 2008 Busan Biennial, One World One Dream for the 2009 Chinese Biennial, and Monumental Compost Heap for MASS MoCA at the Berkshire Botanical Gardens. Solo exhibitions include Et in Arcadia Ego at Galeria EDS in Mexico City (2009) and Happy Birthday at Winkleman Gallery in New York (2008), the latter reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, and other publications. He has exhibited at the Queens Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, Franconia Sculpture Park, Dallas Contemporary, and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art; and internationally at the Freies Museum in Berlin, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Srpska, and the Other Gallery in Shanghai. He was born in Hong Kong and is based in New York. He received his B.F.A. and B.S. from Cornell University and his M.Phil from Columbia University. David Maroto is a Spanish artist based in The Netherlands. His work has been shown internationally in solo and group exhibitions: S.M.A.K. (Ghent, Belgium), ECAT (Toledo, Spain), EFA Project Space (New York), Tina B Festival (Prague), TENT. (Rotterdam), W139 (Amsterdam). His wide-ranging practice has led him to exhibit his work on psychoanalysis at the Freud Dreams Museum in St Petersburg, whereas his 8-year project to create a board game lead to the inclusion of his project Disillusion at the Internationale Spieltage in 2006 (Essen, Germany) and other game fairs worldwide. Currently, he is preparing a number of public events around the recent publication of his novel Illusion, as well as a solo show in Gallery Sign (Groningen, The Netherlands). Erin Sickler is Director of Curatorial Programs at 601Artspace. Narrative Objects When you open a novel—and I mean of course the real thing—you enter into a state of intimacy with its writer… Such a writer has power over... http://www.601artspace.org/Cultural-Memory-Matters http://www.601artspace.org/following/601artspace.org/Cultural-Memory-Matters Mon, 14 Mar 2011 08:51:23 +0000 601Artspace 645724 <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/645724/weber_rodriguez_website_image1.jpg" width="670" height="302" width_o="670" height_o="302" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/645724/weber_rodriguez_website_image1_o.jpg" data-mid="3204109" border="0" align="left"/>Cultural Memory MattersJoseph Rodriguez and Martín WeberOctober 22, 2010-March 12, 2011 Curated by Robert BlakeView Installation ImagesView Artist and Curator Bios Special EventsOpening Reception: October 21, 6-9pm601: In Dialogue Robert Blake and Martín Weber: Thursday, October 28, 2010, 7-9pm Ruben Martinez and Joseph Rodriguez: Friday, December 3, 2010, 7-9pm Closing Reception: March 10, 2011, 6-9 PM 6:30-7:30 PM: Joseph Rodriguez and Martín Weber talk about their new and ongoing projects including Rodriguez’s work amongst Muslim youth in Sweden, featured as part of the BBC series Open Eye, and Weber’s (re)exploration of A Map of Latin American Dreams, this time in video format. Cultural Memory Matters brings together over 50 photographs by two distinguished storytellers, Joseph Rodriguez and Martín Weber. Their images allow us to see the cracks, ruptures, and fissures in the representational fabric, exposing how cultural subjects are framed and naturalized. Presenting their photographs within a larger context - here in the form of a physical and digital archive - we establish renewed relationships between documentary practice, journalism and contemporary art. Photographic journeymen are often "field workers". They seek access, establish relationships, extract portraits, and make frequent return visits. Personal motives nurture, filter and fuel their work. On rare occasions they are exalted, but often theirs is an exhausting and difficult daily practice. For more than three decades, Joseph Rodriguez has chronicled the stories and lives of Latino American individuals, families, and groups. Spanish Harlem, Rodriguez’s earliest color project, is an anthem that continues to guide his methodology and practice. It is a deeply troubling, melancholic love song for a community the artist seeks to redeem through images. Compassionate and critical, East Side Stories: Gang Life in East LA, documents the conflicts and contradictions of everyday ghetto life through images, essays, journal entries and interviews. Projected images of Still Here: Stories After Katrina, and Re-Entry introduce further iterations of Rodriguez’s work. Rodriguez’s practice is emotional, participatory, and patterned like jazz: he shares, interacts, gets close, talks back, brings out, reflects and leaves, only to return again. He works with accomplished writers, community leaders, activists, media makers, and social workers. His motivation is profoundly personal, and political. In his images and texts one experiences a deeply felt, resilient, cultural and human resistance. Rodriguez states: "I have a searing memory of returning home from my Catholic elementary school to find my stepfather nodding off, with a needle in his arm. I relived that memory in my own body—as a young adult I became a 'user.' Raised in violence, I enacted my own violence upon the world and myself. What saved me was the camera—its ability to gaze upon, to focus, to investigate, to reclaim, to resist, to re-envision. Over many years I have been imaging myself through the photographing of troubled adolescents, in prison and on the street. In doing so, I have tried to redeem both the other and myself, finding the other always capable of redemption." The photographs in Martín Weber's, A Map of Latin American Dreams, were made over the course of fifteen years, 1992 through 2007. Weber made trips to Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru. His subjects were invited to participate producing a collaborative picture, which includes the request: "Can you write down a wish or a dream?" Writing on small blackboards, their words offer testimony of traumatic memories of the past and hopes for the future, within the shared encounter of the present. Weber writes: "Sharing their stories, these "dreamers" restore our awareness of individual and collective experience. In a globalized world, dreams are often reduced to commodity status. Countries and continents are frequently exploited as mere sources of trade. The histories of our communities can be made visible…Our destiny will change when we allow ourselves to imagine differently from what we were given." Martín Weber has an uncanny ability to form new variations of collective memories. Slowing down the time it takes to make a single picture, Weber historicizes the present—photographing survivors young and old, while providing literal and lyrical evidence for the traumas and aspirations of Latin Americans. The lives chronicled by Rodriguez in the United States, and Weber's A Map of Latin American Dreams draw attention to alternative representations of the American continent, creating a new public record. Robert Blake is an artist, photographer, and educator who directed The General Studies Program of the International Center of Photography, New York, 1985-2008. He is Founder of Lightaxe, a multimedia research and production company, New York/Paris. Blake is Director of Special Projects, 601Artspace, New York. Images: (left) Joseph Rodriguez, Untitled (Arm in Sky, Spanish Harlem), 1987, color photograph, 11 13/16 x 17 3/4 in. (right) Martín Weber, Mi sueño es morirme (My dream is to die), Medellin, Colombia, 2007, b/w Photograph, 50 x 40 in. Cultural Memory MattersJoseph Rodriguez and Martín WeberOctober 22, 2010-March 12, 2011 Curated by Robert BlakeView Installation ImagesView Artist and Curator Bios... http://www.601artspace.org/Plastic-Summer http://www.601artspace.org/following/601artspace.org/Plastic-Summer Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:55:40 +0000 601Artspace 648054 <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/648054/ZombieApocalypse.jpg" width="670" height="377" width_o="670" height_o="377" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/648054/ZombieApocalypse_o.jpg" data-mid="3030709" border="0" align="left"/> Plastic Summer VIDEO SCREENING August 26, 7-10pm Curated by Stamatina Gregory and Erin Sickler ELIA ALBA KIM COLLMER ETEAM JENNIFER LEVONIAN JILLIAN MCDONALD TEA MÄKIPÄÄ TOM PNINI JAYE RHEE CARRIE SCHNEIDER Yellow sun, white sand, blue ocean. Ice cream cones and sprinklers, sweet breezes, shady trees, crickets and fireflies. A series of associated and interchangeable tropes, geographically ambiguous, intertwined in the construction and marketing of leisure. In the annual abdication of work, school, life, and ethics (at least for some), beaches and boats, summer houses and amusement parks become the projection for a fantasy of escape and absence of responsibility. As constructed as a screensaver, as ubiquitous as a discounted package holiday, this idea of summer can seem infinitely plastic and artificial. With a nod to playfulness and a wink at the surreal, the nine videos in Plastic Summer both embrace and interrogate the visual language of summer. Image: Jillian McDonald, Apocalypse Zombie (video still), 2009, high definition video, 5:44 Plastic Summer VIDEO SCREENING August 26, 7-10pm Curated by Stamatina Gregory and Erin Sickler ELIA ALBA KIM COLLMER ETEAM JENNIFER LEVONIAN JILLIAN MCDONALD TEA... http://www.601artspace.org/Nowhere-Near http://www.601artspace.org/following/601artspace.org/Nowhere-Near Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:55:40 +0000 601Artspace 648051 <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/648051/nowhere_near5_4.jpg" width="670" height="450" width_o="670" height_o="450" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/648051/nowhere_near5_4_o.jpg" data-mid="3231756" border="0" align="left"/>Nowhere NearNovember 17, 2009-March 9, 2010 Curated by Vera LutterView Installation Images MAURIZIO CATTELAN VIJA CELMINS FISCHLI AND WEISS LUIGI GHIRRI CANDIDA HÖFER LIZ LARNER ROBERT LONGO GEORGIA O'KEEFE THOMAS RUFF HIRAKI SAWA THOMAS STRUTH HIROSHI SUGIMOTO Nowhere Near is an exploration of the various ways in which artists have questioned the experience and understanding of place. What is topos or the idea of topography as it applies to art? Through my curatorial selection, the viewer is invited to consider the topography of the artists’ mind as they first envision their work, thereby giving evidence to something nonexistent; the idea of topography within an image itself; and the topography of the ubiquitous—of that existing, common place that the artist turns alien through depiction or abstraction. So often, it seems, the artist presents a cerebral vision of a place nowhere near. In my first language, German, the word for place is Ort. A related verb is verorten, which can best be translated as mapping or locating. Verorten is the attempt to assign a place to something or the attempt to place something within a context that is meaningful to our mind. The artistic investigation of Ort, or in Greek, topos, can arrive at countless conclusions or lead us nowhere. The artistic practice of creating imagery of places that do not exist in reality applies above all to painting and drawing—the original art of illusion. Installation art and digitally rendered imaging also belong to this group. The works of Vija Celmins, Liz Larner, Robert Longo, Georgia O’Keefe, and Hiraki Sawa propose a topos envisioned by the artist prepared to be invaded by our minds. Through viewing, we inhabit these illusions, continuing the path of imagination prepared and set forth by the artist. The idea of topography within an image or the exploration of the geography of a transitional and temporal place can be seen in the work Airport by Peter Fischli and David Weiss. We are presented with an intangible situation that existed only for that short moment while it was being seen by the two artists. This momentary place is now fixed into imagery. While once it was real, it now exists as topographical memory. The most obvious images, those that can be mistaken for an objectified document, often convey a bleakness and cold solitude that is daring to look at, triggering different idiosyncratic responses in each individual. Thomas Ruff’s image of Haus Nr. 12 IIIA arrests me as if inside a time tunnel that is equally absolute and impossible to escape, freezing a moment of desolate culture that is hard to endure. Thomas Struth’s metropolitan cityscape, Dallas Parking Lot, provides a similar yet more cosmopolitan and international experience. Meditations of light and darkness, like the Sugimoto seascapes, or the framed section of sky and sea in Luigi Ghirri’s Marina di Ravenna, are all renderings of how these artists see a location that actually exists in reality but by means of their depiction isolate it into something entirely new. The topography of suspense is also a part of my investigation. While the artists try to assign, investigate, create, or alter places, the works still leave us the notion that something may not have a place or is in-place-able; that is, something that only exists in our imagination. Each artwork has a tenuous path by which we can trace its root to reality before we get lost in suspense. Most often I find that art raises questions instead of giving answers and we are either left in suspense with the question that imposes doubt or forced to find an answer ourselves. More often than not, we are left with more questions still. Vera Lutter New York, 2009 Nowhere NearNovember 17, 2009-March 9, 2010 Curated by Vera LutterView Installation Images MAURIZIO CATTELAN VIJA CELMINS FISCHLI AND WEISS LUIGI GHIRRI CANDIDA... http://www.601artspace.org/It-s-About-Time http://www.601artspace.org/following/601artspace.org/It-s-About-Time Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:55:38 +0000 601Artspace 648050 <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/648050/Its_about_time2.jpg" width="670" height="503" width_o="670" height_o="503" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/53870/648050/Its_about_time2_o.jpg" data-mid="3203386" border="0" align="left"/>It's About TimeMarch 1 - August 25, 2009Curated by Jay E. Cantor View Installation Images DOUG AITKEN PHILIP-LORCA diCORCIA WILLAIM EGGLESTON RICHARD ESTES OMER FAST FISCHLI AND WEISS ROBERT GOBER AND SHERRY LEVINE NAN GOLDIN ANDREAS GURSKY NAOYA HATAKEYAMA SABINE HORNIG CRAIG KALPAKJIAN VERA LUTTER ABELARDO MORELL RIVANE NEUENSCHWANDER GABRIEL OROZCO MIMMO ROTELLA THOMAS RUFF CINDY SHERMAN HIROSHI SUGIMOTO JEFF WALL This is an installation. It is not an exhibition. It has a theme, but not a goal, and is, therefore, best viewed randomly. It is not meant to impose a series of ideas or a specific viewing sequence to highlight the special significance of an individual artist’s vision. It began as a meditation on notions of time, considered in a personal rather than in a cosmic sense. I first thought to title it 15/15, a riff on the popular investigative program 20/20. The jokey notion of 15/15 lies in the gulf between the 15 seconds that, documentably, most art viewers spend looking at a work in a museum and at the far end are the 15 minutes purportedly allotted to us all for fame. Fame implies a public arena, but is that fame achieved in real time or in a self-fulfilling state of being ‘with it’? Does recognizing an artist’s work and engaging in a breezy dialogue about it, no matter how challenging the art, provide a path to fame or guarantee some notion of belonging in the modern world? This installation represents a personal vision and point of view. Although the works have been juxtaposed for scale and visual compatibility, they are part of a larger dialectic, butting up against each other and often contradicting their neighbors or, sometimes, themselves. There is no linear movement, but rather a series of trajectories. And, like the hapless silvered sphere in a pinball machine, the visitor here will hopefully engage in similarly random encounters without any ambition to make a high score or to become famous. Many of the works have the appearance, at least outwardly, of being documentary. Most are photographic, although the power to manipulate the photograph has stripped photography of any claim to representational reality, according it full recognition as a creative medium. In some sense then, there is little difference between oil, acrylic and film or digital imaging in the artist’s arsenal. The difference lies in the viewer’s expectation. The public has, in fact, become an accomplice in a new artistic landscape. People who have never looked seriously at a work of art, old or new, have likely spent many hours looking at photography, film and television. And since in those media, time is manipulated without questioning or complaint, the modern viewer has, wittingly or not, accepted disjuncture in both narrative and experience. This is the world of experience as sound bite, freestanding, self-justifying and assertive. Many of the works in this installation have a filmic quality, as though the artist has simply hit the pause button for a moment, raising the necessity for further action and ultimate closure. That chosen moment may engage us in a drama within the scene itself or, in fact, set up a confrontation between the viewer and the real or implied action. In other works we are clearly on the outside looking in; we are forbidden entry and denied a voice. Some images suggest a dreamy reverie, engaging the viewer and encouraging participation through an emotional response or by framing a narrative or completing an implied action. Alternatively, the viewer may back away from, or even recoil, in a personal reaction to the image itself or at a recollection that the image conjures. There are ever present questions: “what is going on and what is this about?” In the understanding and answering of those questions, scale has a great impact. Intimate scenes become monumental and vice versa. And so it is, like our experience of a dream, the meaning of scale and the measure of time in some of these works are lost or distorted, begging to be resolved to be fully understood. Light, an important player in dreams and in the conjuring of emotion, has a significant role here. Traditional photography is a light based art: early photographs were dubbed sun pictures. The relation to light in more recent works is complex. Light might come from within rather than from any external source. The dependence on light for structure and meaning is countered in works which intentionally deny it. Artificial light has become a paradigm for the tyranny of repressive forces in modern life. Otherworldly experiences are now associated with brilliant light emanating from an undefined source. In contrast to the redemptive power of light for the 19th century romantic, bright light takes us into an alien world. The digital world analytically measures and subdues light, potentially creating a neutral field between subject, record and emotion. It is largely unencumbered by film’s selective response to color and contrast. Light here is sometimes a messenger of content but, it can become a subverter of reason as well. The camera reaches out to grab the data that becomes fact in a genetically reconfigured world. The image, lacking film’s modulation, appears as a seemingly irrefutable icon. The works in the installation range from the most sophisticated digital renderings, enhanced and manipulated by computer alchemy which has cannily expelled the momentary in favor of a super reality, to pictures taken with a camera obscura where prolonged focus on a scene has suspended all notions of instantaneous time. In both, time is thus contorted and the search for compelling imagery outdistances the conventional notion of photograph as snapshot. Composition transcends the artificially arranged tabletop still life or literary tableau. The moment has been overturned by the search for a classical equipoise, but one without philosophical hierarchy. These thoughts may have little to do with the artist’s intent but confirm, for me, a notion that the initial and often visceral response by a viewer is to the image itself. The game of recognition, of appraising the work as a credible or even significant example by the artist comes later. That is a different game. The one played here is entirely subjective. Viewers might not need, or want, to know anything more about the artist, but they may end up knowing more about themselves. In a curious way this show does not ask one to think but, rather to indulge in a world of thoughts. Time - well spent. JAY E. CANTOR It's About TimeMarch 1 - August 25, 2009Curated by Jay E. Cantor View Installation Images DOUG AITKEN PHILIP-LORCA diCORCIA WILLAIM EGGLESTON RICHARD ESTES OMER...