Cheyney Thompson / Akram Zaatari
dal 8/2/2012 al 7/4/2012
Segnalato da
8/2/2012
Cheyney Thompson / Akram Zaatari
MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge
Thompson employs rational structures, technological processes, and generative devices as part of "thinking through problems that organize themselves around the terms of painting". The work of Zaatari explores the role of images, memory, and desire in situations of war. Describing his artistic practice as "field work," the artist addresses the cultural and political conditions of postwar Lebanon and the Middle East.
Cheyney Thompson
metric, pedestal, landlord, cabengo, recit
curated by João Ribas, curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center
Cheyney Thompson (b. 1975, Baton Rouge, LA) has made the technology, production, and distribution of painting the subject of his work for over a decade. Thompson employs rational structures, technological processes, and generative devices as part of “thinking through problems that organize themselves around the terms of painting.” With such a rigorous approach to the medium, Thompson produces work that addresses varieties of abstraction, including pictorial, economic, and technological.
The first U.S. museum survey of the artist’s work, the exhibition includes Thompson’s Chronochromes (2009-2011), which are composed using the color system devised by Albert H. Munsell in the early 1900s. Thompson grafts this system onto a calendar: each day is assigned a complementary hue pair, with every hour changing the value, and every month changing the saturation, of each brushstroke. Thompson’s Chromachromes (2009), depict motifs drawn from a scan of the underlying canvas, merging digital reproduction with the materiality of painting. Thompson’s use of a typology of canvas formats—including the Renaissance tondo—continues his engagement with the history of painting, from still life to the chromatic variation on a single motif. The artist’s interest in the circulation of painting, and the artwork as commodity, is evident in works that comment on the historical relations—artist and market, labor and value—of artistic production, and the distribution of commodities and information. Other works reframe or reiterate motifs from previous paintings, reflecting his interest in the conceptual and material conditions of image production. Recent pedestal sculptures turn sculptural volumes into surfaces. Evading the convention of presenting artworks, these sculptures self-reflexively address their function by presenting information and supplemental materials related to the exhibition.
A monograph on the artist will be published by Walther König featuring essays by Yve-Alain Bois, Ann Lauterbach, Simon Baier, and MIT List Visual Arts Center curator João Ribas.
About the Artist
Cheyney Thompson was born in 1975 in Baton Rouge, LA, and currently lives and works in New York City. He received his BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1997. He cofounded Oni Gallery, along with Count Zero guitarist Brendon Downey, in an artist-occupied space at 84 Kingston St, Boston, MA, in 1998. Recently, his work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Sutton Lane, Brussels (2010), Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin (2009), and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York (2009). His work has also been featured in significant exhibitions such as Slow Painting, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany (2009), Collatéral, Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers Cedex, France (2009) Compass in Hand: Selections from the Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009), Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008), TBA: Cheyney Thompson and Eileen Quinlan, Arnolfini, Bristol, England, and Greater New York, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island, NY (2005).
Funding for this exhibition has been provided by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Council for the Arts at MIT. Media sponsorship has been provided by the Phoenix Media Communications Group. Major support provided by MIT and the Office of the Associate Provost at MIT. Special thanks to the MIT List Visual Arts Advisory Committee and the Friends of MIT List.
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Akram Zaatari
Tomorrow Everything Will Be Alright
curated by João Ribas, curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center
The work of Akram Zaatari (b. 1966, Saida, Lebanon) explores the role of images, memory, and desire in situations of war. Describing his artistic practice as “field work,” the artist addresses the cultural and political conditions of postwar Lebanon and the Middle East. Along with the events of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) and the history of conflict and resistance in the region, Zaatari’s work also focuses on representations of sexuality and intimacy.
In Tomorrow Everything Will Be Alright (2010), two men separated ten years before express their desire to meet again. A story of longing and reunion, it revisits the legend of Jules Verne’s “green ray,” a flash of light said to occur after sunset or before sunrise, and thought to be a sign of fortune and love for those who see it. Nature Morte (Tabiaah Samitah) (2008) is what Zaatari calls a “poetic document that is not a fiction, but not a documentary either.” In the film, two men sit in a darkened room as one methodically assembles an explosive device. Red Chewing Gum (Al Ilka al-Hamra) (2000) takes the form of a “video-letter,” in which a narrator revisits an incident that occurred years earlier on Hamra Street, a commercial and tourist center of Beirut. With the sound of gunshots behind them, he and his lover meet a young street vendor in an alley who sits chewing the gum he is supposed to be selling—a single red piece frozen in memory among the white ones.
Several of the artist’s works screened throughout the exhibition explore the mediating role of images and text in personal, archival, and historical narratives. In This House (Fi Hatha al-Bayt) (2005) focuses on a letter written, and then buried in a mortar bomb, by a Lebanese resistance fighter. This Day (Al Yaoum) (2003) explores the production and circulation of images across the Middle East, from romantic photographs of camels and Bedouins, to television footage of war-torn Beirut. All is Well on the Border (Al-Shareet bi-Khayr) (1997) presents three testimonies reflecting the experiences of prisoners held in detention centers during the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.
Zaatari is the also the co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation (Beirut, 1997) a Beirut-based nonprofit association founded in 1997 with photographers Fouad Elkoury and Samer Mohdad. The Foundation’s mission is to collect, preserve, and study photographs from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Arab diaspora. By collecting, archiving, and analyzing this visual history of the Middle East, the foundation situates the production and circulation of images in the context of a geographically divided Middle East as a register of social and political history.
Tomorrow Everything Will Be Alright is organized by João Ribas, Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center
About the Artist
Akram Zaatari was born in Saida, Lebanon, in 1966. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from The American University of Beirut and a Master of Arts in Media Studies from The New School University in New York. His works have been shown in various solo exhibitions, including at the Museo del Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (León, Spain); Kunsternes Hus (Oslo, Norway); Moderna Galerija Ljubljana (Slovenia) Galerie Sfeir-Semier (Beirut); Kunstverein München, (Munich); The Townhouse Gallery, Cairo; La Caixa, (Barcelona), Portikus, (Frankfurt); and The Photographer's Gallery (London) among others. His work has also been featured in the Istanbul Biennial; the Venice Biennale; the Sharjah Biennial; the Sao Paulo Biennial; the Gwangju Biennial; and the Sydney Biennale.
Funding for this exhibition has been provided by Ghassan and Manal Saab, The Agha Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Council for the Arts at MIT. Media sponsorship provided by the Phoenix Media Communications Group. Major support provided by MIT and the Office of the Associate Provost at MIT. Special thanks to the MIT List Advisory Committee and the Friends of MIT List.
Image: Tomorrow Everything Will Be Alright, 2010, Lebanon/UK, HD Digital, Color, 12 minutes, Commissioned by LUX and the Independent Cinema Office, UK.
Press Contact
Mark Linga - Public Relations Officer Telephone 617 4523586 mlinga@mit.edu
Opening: February 9, 6-8pm
MIT List Visual Arts Center
20 Ames Street Building E15 - Cambridge
Hours: Tuesday-Wednesday 12-6PM, Thursday 12-8PM, Friday-Sunday 12-6PM, closed Mondays