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16/5/2013

Sharon Lockhart

Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle - CCA Warsaw, Warsaw

Curator Adam Budak

Sharon Lockhart’s works are the result of indepth studies on reality, with particular emphasis on emotional aspects, typically human, and more measurable perceptions like, for example, time. Living in Los Angeles on an everyday basis, the photographer and film author, already in the 1990s, had become one of the central figures of the American art scene, exhibiting since then at, amongst others, MoMA in New York and the Kunsthalle in Zurich.

Lockhart’s experimental films and photographs are often an analysis of the ontological status of the image. The exhibition’s ambition – says the curator Adam Budak - is to show an experiment of the oscillation between film images, which by definition are mobile and a photographic image, which obtains an almost sculptural quality. At the exhibition there will be an opportunity to see a photographic series confronted with large-format installations, composed of moving images, sound, as well as performative elements.

MILENA, MILENA is the first in over 10 years, cross-sectional presentation of film and photographic works from Sharon Lockhart, demonstrating the evolution of the artist’s conceptual thinking in the course of 20 years. Lockhart's work is situated in the traditions of structural film. Her works are Warhol-like minimalist videos of reduced actions, in which the protagonist is time, as in Double Tide (2009), a meditative portrait of a working woman, who yanks clams on the banks of the Atlantic Ocean.

The counterpoint to Double Tide, which refers to the fascination with work and the ritual of passing time, is a film implemented for the Festival of Dialogue of Four Cultures in Łódź, entitled Podwórka [Backyards] (2009). It’s composed of poetic sequences of children's play amid desolate areas, in yards typical of the post-Jewish tenement buildings of Łódź, on the first day of summer vacation. The eponymous heroine of the exhibition is a 14-year-old girl from Łódź, which Sharon Lockhart met during the implementation of Podwórka.

Milena does not appear in the film; in the course of its implementation, a strong bond between the artist and the girl developed. Her character is an inspiration and simultaneously, a bridge between the current exhibition and Lockhart’s ensuing project, already fully devoted to her. It is not shown what Milena looks like – she is present in one of the photos in the exhibition, although she covers her face. This symbolic gesture, summons the key theme of absence in Lockhart’s work, which resumes in the film Theatro Amazonas (1999); the film will be screened on May 14th for a one-time show within the frames of the Planete+ Doc Film Festival, much the same as another important film by Lockhart - Goshogaoka (1997).

Among the productions shown as a part of the exhibition, the video Four Exercises in Eshkol- Watchman Movement Notation (2011) will be displayed as well - one of the parts of the monumental installation Noa Eshkol (2011). Furthermore, as a part of the screenings at KINO.LAB, there will be occasions to view Khalil, Shaun, A Woman Under the Influence - a key piece for Lockhart's later works as well as Pine Flat (2005), portraying the lives of teenagers in a small California town.

The photographic portion of the exhibition comprises of the premiere show of the series Untitled Studies, resulting in an autobiographical diary of Lockhart’s; made up of 16 small-format photos from a family album, which were re-photographed, as well as a selection of photographs from the artist’s 20-year period of artistic work.

Sharon Lockhart (born in 1964 in Norwood, Massachusetts) – is an American artist and film author. She studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and the San Francisco Art Institute. She lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work has been presented at numerous exhibitions in the United States, Europe as well as Japan, amongst others, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Kunsthalle in Zurich. Lockhart is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and many others. Her films NO, Theatro Amazonas and Pine Flat were shown at the Berlinale. She is a professor at the University of Southern California, the Roski School of Fine Arts.

Press contacts:
Klaudia Piwowar, Business&Culture, kom. +48 534 919109 tel. +48 22 4648397, csw@businessandculture.pl
Zofia Chojnacka, CCA Press Office, mobile. +48 510160637 tel. / fax +48 22 6250522, biuroprasowe@csw.art.pl

Opening of the exhibition: May 17, 2013 at 6 p.m.
The monographic exhibition is accompanied by screenings of Lockhart’s films within the frame of the Planete+ Doc Film Festival.

The Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle
ul. Jazdów 2, 00-467 Warsaw, Poland
Hours:
Tuesday-Sunday from 12 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Friday from 12 a.m. to 9 p.m.* Last visitors admitted one half hour before galleries close.
Thursday free admission
Tickets:
regular 12 zł
discounted 6 zł
family 20 zł
Library and reading room
open Tuesday thru Saturday from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m.

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