calendario eventi  :: 

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14/5/2004

The Cave and the Island

White Columns, New York

Curated by Xandra Eden

David Armstrong Six, Karen Azoulay, Massimo Guerrera, Jay Isaac, Damian Moppett, and Jennifer Murphy, with a live performance by GLN.

The Cave and the Island presents new drawing, sculpture, video and painting by eight Canadian artists who trespass upon the legacies of past art movements. From dark recesses and inky wells to mossy boughs and frothy falls, the exhibition presents formal, conceptual and symbolic manifestations of two types of isolated ecologies to examine the way successive generations utilize and re-interpret the iconography of art history in their work. After its debut at White Columns, The Cave and the Island will travel to Galerie Kunstbuero, Vienna in July 2004.

Damian Moppett's 1815/1962 questions the social and economic role of art through a video work which follows a lone figure in period clothing conceiving of and then assembling a trap, markedly resembling an Anthony Caro sculpture, in the wilderness of a rainforest. Jay Isaac similarly examines the academic and social history of art, but in relationship to kitsch or popular art. Testing the boundaries of contemporary artistic practice and its hierarchical structures, Maritime Frazetta, a series of paintings and a sculptural work, tampers with the popular genre of "fishing village" art and the residue of Surrealism. Jennifer Murphy creates an alternate high/low dynamic through her investigation of the correspondences between popular culture, art and iconic symbols. From Durer's woodcuts to fashion magazines to encyclopedia illustrations, Murphy incorporates imagery from a variety of sources into eight intricate collage works. Karen Azoulay's installation Ruby Bluebell Falls is concocted from junk-drawer items such as coffee filters, pom-poms, yarn and other sundry materials. Her modifications and arrangement of these everyday objects, a practice that may recall the work of Judy Pfaff or Jessica Stockholder, is steeped in an aesthetic of Victorian-era decoration. David Armstrong Six couples an examination of the mutability of thought with meditations of the subject of entropy. For this exhibition, the artist will produce a new quasi-Minimalist sculpture maquette and a new series of ink and gouache paintings. Gordon Matta-Clark's Food kitchen and Heironymous Bosch's worlds of excess combine in Massimo Guerrera's exploration of the social role of gastronomy and the stomach as a hollow waiting to be filled. A selected installation of Guerrera's drawings introduces the sculptural and social aspects of food and eating to a study of the phenomenology of the gallery. For GLN, the green forests of summer, the snow-laden fields of winter and the space of a contemporary art gallery have served as sites for their imaginative interpretations of their surroundings and environment through sound. Comprised of artists Maura Doyle and Tony Romano, GLN will present a series of new works using keyboards and special sound effects to interpret the physical and visual context of The Cave and The Island.

About the curator: Xandra Eden is assistant curator for The Power Plant, Toronto. Recent exhibitions include Republic of Love: Shary Boyle, Jay Isaac, Paul P., Tony Romano, The Power Plant; Christian Jankowski: Rosa, Mercer Union, Toronto; and In Through the Out Door: David Armstrong Six, Germaine Koh, Nestor Krüger, The Power Plant. She has written for Artext, Border Crossings, Flash Art and Parachute among other publications.

Live performance by GLN: Saturday May 15, 5 p.m.

The Cave and the Island is generously supported by Foreign Affairs Canada, Jay Alan Smith & Laura Rapp, and Kaye Beeston. Special thanks to The Power Plant, Toronto.

Image: Karen Azoulay

White Columns
320 West 13th Street
[entrance on horatio street between 8th avenue and hudson street]
New York, NY 10014

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