Zero Tolerance: exhibition chronicles the vital legacy of artists from across the globe who address tensions between freedom and control. For "Art Amnesty" Bob and Roberta Smith invited the artists to deposit their art in dumpsters located in the museum's courtyard before to be destroyed. Francesco Vezzoli collaborated with a team of archaeologists and polychrome specialists to paint 5 ancient Roman busts in the manner in which they would originally have been decorated.
Zero Tolerance
MoMA PS1 presents
Zero Tolerance,
an exhibition that chronicles the vital legacy of
artists from across the globe who address
tensions between freedom and control.
Zero Tolerance
will be on view in the First Floor Main
galle
ries at MoMA PS1 from
October 26, 2014 through March 08, 2015
and brings together
over twenty works by twenty artists.
Over the past two decades, some local and national governments have garnered attention for
imposing draconian laws that restrict the rights of citizens under t
he guise of improving
quality of life. Rio de Janeiro has “cleaned up” slums by imposing a militarized police force
and Istanbul has put pressure on minority communities by gentrifying the neighborhoods in
which they reside. In Russia, the arrest of two me
mbers of the art band Pussy Riot for
speaking against President Vladimir Putin, along with the passage of anti-gay legislation, has
generated international ire. Such restrictive policies have marked everyday life in major cities
around the world.
Through their work, artists such as Halil Altindere (Turkish, b. 1971) and Amal
Kenawy (Egyptian, 1974
-
2012) address
themes such as the freedom of expression
and the role of the artist within society.
Altindere’s
Wonderland
(2013)
explores the
anger and frustration
of a group of youths from the Sulukule neighborhood of
Istanbul, a historic area home to Romani communities since the Byzantine Empire
that has been increasingly demolished since 2006 as part of an “urban renewal”
development project. Kenawy’s
The Silence
of Sheep
documents
a short performance
the artist orchestrated in downtown Cairo
on December 14, 2009 and is a
commentary on
people’s submissiveness to local living conditions and cultural norms.
Named for the 1990s policy under which New York City took a
tough stance against vice and
crime,
Zero Tolerance
brings together works by artists from across the globe that address
tensions between freedom and control. Many of the works combine elements of political
demonstration and celebratory parades to create a
rt of a charged and ambivalent nature,
responding to concerns specific in place and time.
FEATURED ARTISTS:
Igor Grubic, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Oyvind Fahlstrom, Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Asco, Lorraine
O’Grady, Harun Farocki, Song Dong, Francis Alys, Francis
Alys, The Radek Community,
Mircea Cantor, Sharon Hayes, Zhao Zhao, Amal Kenawy, Artur Zmijewski, Ahmed Basiony,
Chim Pom, Voina, Pussy Riot, and Halil Altindere.
Zero
Tolerance
is organized
by Klaus Biesenbach, Director, MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at
Large, The Museum of Modern Art, with Mia Locks, Curatorial Associate, MoMA PS1 and
Margaret Aldredge, Curatorial Assistant, MoMA PS1.
----------
Art Amnesty
MoMA PS1 presents
Bob and
Roberta Smith’s
Art Amnesty
from October 26, 2014, to March 8, 2015.
Bob and Roberta Smith
are issuing a call to Artists. Pack it in.
Bob and Roberta Smith
are delighted to offer an Amnesty for your Bad Art.
Turn in
your brushes and video
cameras.
Hand in your chisels and marble.
Bob and Roberta Smith are offering an opportunity for artists to dispose of their
artwork at MoMA PS1,
and to retire from making art. Beginning October 2, a
rtists are
invited to deposit their art in dumpsters located in the museum’s courtyard, which
will be emptied as needed throughout the period
of
the
Art
Amnesty.
Those who wish
to exhibit their work one final time before it is destroyed may bring their art to the
2nd
Floor Main Galleries, where museum staff will install it for public view. The
museum will accept work under the
Art
Amnesty
during regular hours, subject to
certain restrictions
that
will be published at
momaps1.org.
The exhibition reprises
and expands
upon their
Art Amnesty
originally
presented at Pierogi Gallery in 2002.
As part of the
Art
Amnesty, the Smiths will also make available a pledge form at the
museum that can be signed by any artist or member of the public:
I PROMISE NEVER
TO MAKE ART AGAIN. Those who commit themselves will receive an official
I AM NO
LONGER AN ARTIST
badge designed by Bob and Roberta Smith, and shall be invited
to create one final drawing for inclusion in the
Art
Amnesty
gallery exhibition, using
materials provided onsite.
Those wishing simply to discard a work will be asked to
sign a pledge
that
reads
I NEVER WANT TO SEE THIS WORK OF ART AGAIN.
While the
Art
Amnesty
provides an occasion for artists to clear out their studios, it
also serves other needs. Those who have bee
n the victims of gifts of art, for
example, are invited to dispose of these unwanted aesthetic presents at the
museum. And as the Smiths note, “Many successful artists have recently voiced
embarrassment that their work commands high prices. Artists may als
o use the
opportunity of the
Art
Amnesty
to expel certain works of art from the art market and
demote them to objects unburdened by grand expectations and dashed dreams.”
The Smiths will be the first to contribute to the
Art
Amnesty, discarding
a batch of
work previously exhibited in New York.
At the conclusion of the
Art
Amnesty, the museum will securely dispose of all art
works contributed to the exhibition and dumpsters.
At the opening of the exhibition on October 26, Bob and Roberta Smith will also
organize an
Art Party
at MoMA PS1, at which children will be encouraged to make art
with their families using art materials available at the event. Beginning at the
Art
Party
and throughout the run of the
Art
Amnesty, a third pledge form will be
available f
or signing, which states
I WILL ENCOURAGE CHILDREN TO BE ALL THAT
THEY CAN BE. CHOOSE ART AT SCHOOL. These pledges will be collected, along with
"first drawings" children make and wish to contribute, and mailed to local politicians
to encourage
arts funding and arts education.
“The personal journey for most artists starts with enthusiasm and joy, and ends, if
the artist does not have huge success, in embarrassed children taking their dead
parents' work to the dump,” the Smiths explain. “Taken together, the
Art Amnesty
and
Art Party
explore the full arc of the life of an artist.”
The
Art Party
was initiated in Brooklyn in 2011 “to provide a creative yet critical
discourse of hope in response to the Tea Party’s discourse of austerity and des
pair.”
As the Smiths stated at its inception: “The
Art Party
stands for stimulus and sensible
long
-
term measures to rebuild American confidence. The
Art Party
says singers make
America sing and dancers make America dance. The
Art Party
celebrates that
innovation comes from sheets of blank paper and pencils. The
Art Party
has a
broadly liberal and humanistic agenda on other issues. Where the Tea Party is
hawkish the
Art Party
is peaceful. The
Art Party
is opposed to the death penalty and
supports women’s rights. The
Art Party
is not a formal political party but rather a
pressure group and natural home for progressive liberal people to unite on issues of
agreement.” The Smiths have subsequently organized
Art Party
events throughout
the United Kingdom to protest the British government’s proposed eradication of art
from the British school syllabus.
A film that depicts the story of the
Art Party, directed by the Smiths with Tim
Newton, will also be screened at the opening. A feature documentary about the work
of
Bob and Roberta Smith,
Make Your Own Damn Art: the World of Bob and Roberta
Smith
(2012), directed by John Rogers, will be shown throughout the run of the
Amnesty.
Drawing equally from conceptual performance history and nonsense literature, as
well as te
nets of British empiricism and the rhetoric of political campaigns, Bob and
Roberta Smith's allergy to pretension and preciosity can lend an offending bluntness
or seeming nihilistic absurdity to their actions. The Smiths ask:
Why are some people artists
while others are not? Was Joseph Beuys an idiot when
he said everyone is an artist? Do artists think they are a cut above the rest of us?
Are the arts a good in themselves, or is it much, much, more complicated than
that?
Many artists delude themselves into believing that they are promising, productive
artists when they would live much more fulfilled and useful lives engaged in proper
employment.
I PROMISE NEVER TO MAKE ART AGAIN
provides a baptism of
necessary real life and allows artists to "Get Real."
Ditch a life of poverty and
precarious self-
employment! Don't miss a life
-changing opportunity.
Bob and Roberta Smith
The work of Bob & Roberta Smith (b. 1963) has been widely exhibited
internationally, including at Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn in 1998, 20
02,
and 2011.
The
Smiths
were
born in London and received a BA from the University of Reading and
an MA from Goldsmiths College, London.
They
currently live
and work
in London,
where
they
also served as a Tate Trustee and as an artist member of the
Tate
Modern Council.
The
Smiths
perform
regularly with the Ken Ardley Playboys, which
they
cofounded. A monograph,
Bob and Roberta Smith: I Should Be In Charge
, was
published in 2011 by Black Dog Publishing.
How to Let an Artist Rifle Through Your
Archive
was published in 2013 to commemorate the Bob and Roberta Smith’s
residency at The New Art Gallery Walsall. A feature documentary about the work of
Bob and Roberta Smith,
Make Your Own Damn Art: the World of Bob and Roberta
Smith, directed by John Rogers,
premiered at the East End Film Festival in 2012.
Art Amnesty
is organized by
Peter Eleey, Curator and Associate Director of
Exhibitions and Programs, MoMA PS1, with Jocelyn Miller, Curatorial Assistant.
The
exhibition is
made possible by the MoMA PS1 Annual Exhibition Fund.
----------
Francesco Vezzoli
Teatro Romano
MoMA PS1 presents an exhibition of works by
Francesco Vezzoli
(Italian, b. 1971).
Drawing on extensive research about the use of
color in antiquity, Vezzoli collaborated with a team of archaeologists, conservators and
polychrome specialists to paint five ancient Roman busts in the manner in which they
would originally have been decorated.
While white marble remains the quintessential material of ancient Greek and Roman
statuary, extensive research has confirmed that ancient sculpture was painted in a vivid
palette of yellows, blues, reds and greens. Dating from the first and second centuries A.D.,
Vezzoli’s Roman Imperial busts restore to contemporary imagination the decorated
surfaces that have faded away over nearly two thousand years.
Vezzoli
collabora
ted with
Dr.
Clemente Marconi,
Professor in the History of Greek Art and
Archaeology at NYU and Director of the Institute of Fine Art’s excavations at
Selinunte and
Dr.
Andrew Wallace
-
Hadrill, former Director of the British School at Rome, Master of
Sidney
Sussex College, Cambridge and Director of
Rese
arch in the Faculty of Classics,
Cambridge.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
In much of his work,
Francesco
Vezzoli has mined Hollywood cinema, celebrity, and
religion for inspiration. His 2011 exhibition
Sacrilegio
was presented in a church
-
like
environment and incorporated digital copies of Madonna and Child paintings, in which the
faces of Mary were replaced by those of supermodels. He has also created a fake trailer
based on Gore Vidal’s
Caligula, a mock political
campaign featuring Sharon Stone and
philosopher Bernard
-
Henri Lévy, and a narrative of
his
own death in the manner of the TV
program
E! True Hollywood Story. Complicating this is the artist’s vested interest in
architecture, craft, and design, and in part
icular in Anni Albers, one of the Bauhaus’ key
figures, who influences Vezzoli’s own work with textiles. Working in video, installation,
embroidery, and other media, Vezzoli combines the sacred, profane, and popular with a
generous sense of humor and critical eye.
Francesco Vezzoli (b. 1971, Brescia, Italy) studied at the Central St. Martin's School of Art
in London and currently lives and works in Milan. His work has been exhibited at many
institutions including The Whitney Museum of American Art, New Yor
k; The New Museum,
New York; MAXXI, Rome; Tate Modern, London; Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte
Contemporanea, Turin; Fondazione Prada, Milan; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and the
Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow. Vezzoli lives and works in Milan.
Francesco Vezzoli: Teatro Romano
is organized by Klaus Biesenbach, Director, MoMA PS1,
and Chief Curator at Large, The Museum of Modern Art, with Margaret Aldredge, Curatorial
Assistant, MoMA PS1
SPONSORSHIP
The exhibition is made possible
by the MoMA PS1 Annual Exhibition Fund.
Image: Francesco Vezzoli: Teatro Romano
Press Contact:
Allison Rodman, (718) 786-3139 or allison_rodman@moma.org
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