calendario eventi  :: 

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17/9/2014

Two exhibitions

The Drawing Center, New York

Thread Lines

Curated by Joanna Kleinberg Romanow, Assistant Curator.

New York – The Drawing Center presents Thread Lines, September 19–December 14, 2014, a group exhibition that disabuses the tradition of drawing as simply putting pen to paper, framing it instead as an open-ended act in which lines can be woven, stitched, even embodied.

Spanning the period from the mid-1960s to the present, Thread Lines features sixteen artists who engage sewing, stitching, and weaving to create works that activate the expressive and conceptual potential of line and illuminate affinities between the mediums of textile and drawing. For some artists, line functions as a direct extension of the body—a performative act or participatory event. Others work in abstraction; and still others use line as a means of addressing personal narrative, gender identity, and politics. Multi-generational in scope, Thread Lines brings together those pioneers who first unraveled the distinction between textile and art with a new wave of practitioners who have inherited and expanded upon their groundbreaking gestures. Curated by Joanna Kleinberg Romanow, Assistant Curator.

SPECIAL PROJECTS
Anne Wilson’s To Cross (Walking New York), 2014 in the Main Gallery
Performance Times: Select Thursdays 2:30-7:30pm; Saturdays 12:30-5:30pm; Sundays 12:30- 5:30pm. Exact dates are noted on our website.

After discovering that The Drawing Center’s SoHo building was originally built in 1866 for the Positive Motion Loom Company, Chicago-based artist Anne Wilson conceived of her latest site- specific performance that will use the main gallery’s four central columns as a weaving loom. Recalling the physical structure and operations of the loom itself, the piece’s four participants “walk” around the twelve foot columns, carrying a spool of thread to form a standard weaving cross (a method used to keep warp threads in order). The durational performance, which takes place over the course of two months, will result in the fabrication of a five by thirty-four foot sculpture: a colorful cross composed of innumerable strands of thread.

Kimsooja’s Thread Routes - Chapter I, 2010 in The Lab
On view September 18 – October 2, Wednesday-Sunday
Korean artist Kimsooja premieres the first in a series of six 16mm films that document the performative elements of varied forms of indigenous textile construction. Thread Routes - Chapter I, 2010 explores the Peruvian weaving culture set amid the highlands of Machu Picchu.

Participating Artists: Mónica Bengoa (b. 1969, Santiago, Chile), Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911, Paris, France–d. 2010, New York, NY), Sheila Hicks (b. 1934, Hastings, NE), Ellen Lesperance (b. 1971, Minneapolis, MN), Kimsooja (b. 1957, Taegu, Korea), Beryl Korot (b. 1945, New York, NY), Maria Lai (b. 1919, Ulassai, Sardinia–d. 2013, Cardedu, Sardinia), Sam Moyer (b. 1983, Chicago, IL), William J. O'Brien (b. 1975, Eastlake, OH), Robert Otto Epstein (b. 1979, Pittsburgh, PA), Jessica Rankin (b. 1971, Sydney, Australia), Elaine Reichek (b. 1943, New York, NY), Drew Shiflett (b. 1951, Chicago, IL), Alan Shields (b. 1944, Herington, KS–d. 2005, Shelter Island, NY), Lenore Tawney (b. 1907, Lorain, OH–d. 2007, New York, NY), and Anne Wilson (b. 1949, Detroit, MI).

PUBLIC PROGRAM
Thursday, September 25 at 6:30pm
An evening walkthrough of Thread Lines with Curator, Joanna Kleinberg Romanow and participating artists Robert Otto Epstein, Sam Moyer, Jessica Rankin, Elaine Reicheck, and Drew Shiflett.

PUBLICATION
To accompany Thread Lines The Drawing Center will produce an edition in the Drawing Papers series, featuring color illustrations of the artworks and an essay by the exhibition’s curator.

LIMTED EDITION PRINT
In honor of the exhibition, New York-based artist Jessica Rankin has created a limited edition print, fabricated by Richloom Fabrics Group and Solo Impression. The print is an edition of five and will retail for $1,500. All proceeds will benefit The Drawing Center.

CREDITS
Thread Lines is made possible by the support of Richloom Fabrics Group, Fiona and Eric Rudin, Daniel Romanow, The Capital Group, the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation, Ambach & Rice, Galería Isabel Aninat, and Lesley Heller.

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Xanti Schawinsky: Head Drawings and Faces of War

New York – The Drawing Center presents Xanti Schawinsky: Head Drawings and Faces of War, a look at first generation Bauhaus artist Alexander ‘Xanti’ Schawinsky’s prolific oeuvre, which encompasses a range of social and political investigations. Schawinsky played a key role in the school's vital social life and was a member of the Bauhaus Band. He studied graphic design and experimental photography and was also deeply engaged in the Bauhaus's theater workshop as an actor, set and costume designer, creator of performances, and teacher.

The exhibition at The Drawing Center focuses on two bodies of work Schawinsky made between 1941 and 1946, Faces of War and the Head Drawings. The former are man-machine hybrids that could represent either an aggressive enemy or a powerful avenger—or perhaps an identity that encompasses both. The Faces of War break from the utopian optimism of the early Bauhaus and reveal the existential struggle of an artist coping with identity and the devastation of war. The Head Drawings allowed Schawinsky to literally remake his own “portrait” out of such detritus of the natural world as thread, crystals, rope, and rocks.

ABOUT XANTI SCHAWINSKY
The son of Polish Jews, Alexander (“Xanti”) Schawinsky was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1904. In 1924, he enrolled at the Bauhaus, placing him in contact with legendary figures such as Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Josef Albers, Oskar Schlemmer, and László Moholy- Nagy.Starting in the late 1920s, he took on a series of independent exhibition and commercial design commissions, but—fleeing fascism—Schawinsky left Germany in 1933, for Italy, where he used his talents as a graphic designer to create advertising for a variety of companies including Illy Caffe, Cinzano, Olivetti, and Motta. As Mussolini's ties with Hitler strengthened, Schawinsky emigrated once more—to the United States and Black Mountain College, in North Carolina, in 1936, where Josef Albers had invited him to teach drawing, color theory, and stage design. In 1938, Schawinsky settled in New York City, where he remained until 1966, working as a teacher, an exhibition and graphic designer, a sculptor, and a photographer. That year, Schawinsky relocated to Laggio Maggiore, Italy. He died in Locarno, Switzerland, in 1979.

In 1938 Schawinsky was included in the seminal Museum of Modern Art, New York, exhibition Bauhaus 1919–1928. During the 1940s and 50s, humankind, in all its deformation and fantastic transformation, became Schawinsky‘s major topic. His work was shown in numerous exhibitions throughout the next decades, including, in 1986, the first Xanti Schawinsky retrospective, held by the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Thursday, October 30 at 6:30pm
An evening walkthrough of Xanti Schawinsky: Head Drawings and Faces of War with Brett Littman, curator and Executive Director of The Drawing Center.

PUBLICATION
The 120-page edition of the Drawing Papers series in conjunction with this exhibition includes an introduction by Brett Littman, curator and Executive Director of The Drawing Center as well as essays by UK based cultural critic Michael Bracewell and art historian Juliet Koss.

CREDITS
Xanti Schawinsky: Head Drawings and Faces of War is made possible by the support of The Kind World Foundation, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Daniel Schawinsky and the Xanti Schawinsky Estate, and Fiona and Eric Rudin.

Special thanks to Anke Kempkes and BROADWAY 1602.

ABOUT THE DRAWING CENTER
The Drawing Center is the only not-for-profit fine arts institution in the country to focus solely on the exhibition of drawings, both historical and contemporary. It was established in 1977 to provide opportunities for emerging and under-recognized artists; to demonstrate the significance and diversity of drawings throughout history; and to stimulate public dialogue on issues of art and culture.

Image: Xanti Schawinsky , The Warrior (Faces of War), 1942 , Mixed media, watercolor, and black pen on paper, 29 x 21 3/8 inches (73.7 x 54.2 cm), Copyright and courtesy of The Estate of Xanti Schawinsky, Switzerland.

For further information and images, please contact Molly Gross, Communications Director, The Drawing Center 212 219 2166 x119 | mgross@drawingcenter.org

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 18, 6–8pm

The Drawing Center
35 Wooster Street between Broome and Grand Streets in SoHo, New York.
Gallery hours are Wednesday-Sunday 12pm–6pm, Thursday, 12pm–8pm.
Tickets: $5 Adults, $3 Students and seniors, Children under 12 are free, and free admission Thursdays 6-8pm.
The Drawing Center is wheelchair accessible.

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