calendario eventi  :: 

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11/9/2007

Two exhibition

Swiss Institute - Old location, New York

Shirana Shahbazi - Meanwhile

Shirana Shahbazi's solo show at the Swiss Institute will be the largest exhibition of her work to date in the United States. On view at the Swiss Institute, Shahbazi presents a selection of sumptuous color photographs from her growing catalogue of projects, and a painting transcribed from one of her photographs by a team of Iranian artists. Cross-mixing geographic origins and pictorial formats from the monochrome to the propaganda poster, Shahbazi’s installation offers an image bank of the placeless and an anti-iconography of everyday life.

Born in Tehran in 1974 and educated in Germany and Switzerland, Shirana Shahbazi currently lives and works in Zurich. With roots in the conceptualist photography that flourished in Europe in the 1990s, Shahbazi's practice mines the gap between the epic and the everyday, testing the capacity of archetypal genres – still life, portrait, landscape, snapshot – as carriers of pictorial information. With imagery taken from around the world, Shahbazi's photographs trade in the variability of the ordinary, whether through representation of the commonplace or via abstraction. Overturning conventional photographic strategies - and in the process thwarting preconceptions of Iranian art and society - Shahbazi poses questions of translation that defy easy answers.

A book accompanies this exhibition, published by JRP Ringier, in association with the Swiss Institute, New York and the Barbican Art Gallery, London. Lavishly illustrated, the book focuses on Shirana Shahbazi’s photographic works with forewords by Kate Bush, Head of Barbican Art Galleries and Gianni Jetzer, Director of the Swiss Institute in New York, and an essay by Ali Subotnick, Curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

The Swiss Institute is pleased to present this exhibition in cooperation with Salon 94, New York.

The exhibition is generously supported by the LUMA Foundation and Fogal, Switzerland.

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Wilhelm Sasnal - Untitled

Sasnal’s new installation “Untitled” consists of a 16-mm film loop with sound, based on found footage of several Elvis performances. Rather than splice together archival film, Sasnal presents clips from YouTube filmed on the screen of a laptop. The film begins with an early performance and is followed by a recording of one of Elvis’ last onstage appearances. In this later clip, the King has aged visibly, and while he retains a portion of his former grace, the hesitation and tremble in his voice and posture hint at his imminent demise. As a counterpoint to the Elvis footage, American outsider musician Daniel Johnston appears onscreen in a performance of his song “Casper the Friendly Ghost.” As the film goes on, the laptop begins to rotate slowly on its own axis. With multiple levels of presentation - found footage, browser window, moving pedestal and film projection – Sasnal crafts a complex document of isolation and melancholia, accentuating the loneliness of a rock icon in decline.

Born in Poland in 1972, Sasnal has forged an outstanding career and today ranks as one of the most successful contemporary artists internationally. Besides his paintings, for which he has utilized a variety of media, including news photographs, snapshots, films, comic strips and imagery from his own drawings, Sasnal has created numerous installations and films that reflect his bricoleur’s approach to the invention of an artistic brand or style.

Image: Shirana Shabazi

Opening september 12, 2007

Swiss Institute
495 Broadway - New York

stampa

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