calendario eventi  :: 

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26/6/2008

Two exhibitions

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Paul McCarthy: Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement
Three Installations, Two Films
June 27-October 12, 2008

The exhibition brings together a group of new and rarely seen works by Paul McCarthy (b. 1945), one of the most influential American artists of his generation. Curated by Chrissie Iles, the Whitney’s Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Curator, the show addresses a core element of McCarthy’s work: the disorientation of the viewer’s sense of perception through reflective surfaces, mirrors, rotating walls, live feed projections, and altered space. The exhibition opens on the same day as the Whitney’s retrospective Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe.

Two of the three installations are being made specifically by McCarthy for the exhibition, including the realization of a 1971 proposal for a projective installation. The show also includes two recently rediscovered early 16mm films from 1966 and 1971, shown on loops in the gallery, both of which draw attention to the camera’s voyeuristic engagement with physical space and the body. The exhibition remains on view in the third-floor Peter Norton Family Galleries through October 12, 2008.

As Chrissie Iles notes in her essay for the exhibition catalog, “Of all the artists who emerged out of the transformative period of the 1960s in America, Paul McCarthy arguably expresses the existential neurosis released by that moment in its most extreme form…In McCarthy’s disorientating environments we become unsure of where the boundary between authority and freedom lies, and where the real world ends and fantasy begins. In McCarthy’s work, the body is symbolized by architectural forms that function as both the container and producer of internal anxiety. Unlike the preoccupation with volume that characterized the approach of other West Coast artists emerging in the 1960s, such as James Turrell, Larry Bell, and Robert Irwin, McCarthy’s spaces explore not open-ness but a sense of being physically and psychologically trapped inside a void.”

In Spinning Room (2008), first conceived in 1971, and being realized for the first time for this show, live images of viewers are rotated and projected onto double-sided screens that appear infinitely reflected on all four surrounding walls of a large mirrored room, enclosing the viewer in a wildly disorienting space. In Mad House (2008), a new work also being made especially for this show, a room spins disconcertingly on its axis. Inside the room, a separate revolving platform contains a single chair that also revolves, in which the viewer can sit and participate. In Bang Bang Room (1992), shown most recently at the 2006 Berlin Biennial but never before in the United States, the space almost seems to come alive as the walls of a free-standing domestic room move slowly in and out, the doors in each wall wildly slamming open and shut.

In addition to the three installations, two recently rediscovered early films by McCarthy will be shown, projected in loops on the gallery walls. Both films reveal the artist’s interest in film and perceptual ideas from the beginning of his career. In Couple, (1966) McCarthy pans a camera around a semi-darkened room containing a naked couple. Close-up shots reveal unexpected details, such as the woman’s profile, or the contents of a shelf in the adjacent bathroom. In the second film, Spinning Camera, Walking (Onion Film, Version 1), made in 1971, a man (Mike Cram) walks in a circle around the edge of a room with windows on three sides. The camera moves in a circle in the middle of the room, so that two circles are being described, one made by the man, the other by the camera. Whenever the camera comes across the window, light comes flooding in, evoking the idea of the room as the interior of a camera.

McCarthy Film Series
In conjunction with the exhibition, Paul McCarthy is curating a film series, to be presented in the Whitney’s second-floor Kaufman Astoria Studios Film & Video Gallery, which includes a wide range of films that are important to the artist’s own work and reveal the significance of film to his thinking. The series features films by Stan VanDerBeek, Francis Picabia, Alfred Hitchcock, Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Bruce Conner, and Stan Brakhage, among others.


Buckminster Fulle
Starting with the Universe
June 27 - September 21, 2008

Explores the legacy of visionary American inventor, designer, environmentalist, and humanitarian

“Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.” R. Buckminster Fuller, "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth" (1969)

One of the great American visionaries of the twentieth century, R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) endeavored to see what he, a single individual, might do to benefit the largest segment of humanity while consuming the minimum of the earth's resources. Doing "more with less" was Fuller's credo. He described himself as a "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist," setting forth to solve the escalating challenges that faced humanity before they became insurmountable.

Fuller's innovative theories and designs addressed fields ranging from architecture, the visual arts, and literature to mathematics, engineering, and sustainability. He refused to treat these diverse spheres as specialized areas of investigation because it inhibited his ability to think intuitively, independently, and, in his words, "comprehensively."

Although Fuller believed in utilizing the latest technology, much of his work developed from his inquiry into "how nature builds." He believed that the tetrahedron was the most fundamental, structurally sound form found in nature; this shape is an essential part of most of his designs, which range in scale from domestic to global. As the many drawings and models in this exhibition attest, Fuller was committed to the physical exploration and visual presentation of his ideas.

The results of more than five decades of Fuller's integrated approach toward the design and technology of housing, transportation, cartography, and communication are displayed here, much of it for the first time. This exhibition offers a fresh look at Fuller's life's work for everyone who shares his sense of urgency about homelessness, poverty, diminishing natural resources, and the future of our planet.

As curators Hays and Miller write in their catalogue introduction, “Fuller sought to produce comprehensive anticipatory design solutions that would benefit the largest segment of humanity while consuming the fewest resources…Starting as he did from the universe and ending up with visual-spatial models with which to ponder universal philosophical problems in the here and now, it is not surprising that Fuller has had a tremendous impact on the visual arts and architecture. His sensibilities and modes of working were deeply aesthetic and many of his closest friends and supporters were artists. Today, his lessons take on an even greater relevance. Fuller’s concepts are ripe for reexamination by artists, architects, designers, scientists, and poets…The exhibition and catalogue also are intended for an entire generation who know little or nothing about Fuller but share his curiosity about nature’s structures or his sense of urgency about economies, ecologies, and their interactions.”

The show is co-curated by Michael Hays, Adjunct Curator of Architecture, and Dana Miller, Associate Curator at the Whitney; the curators are working in association with the Department of Special Collections of the Stanford University Libraries and with the cooperation of the Fuller family. The exhibition travels to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, in the summer of 2009.

Press Contact:
Whitney Museum of American Art Stephen Soba, Leily Soleimani 212-570-3633 pressoffice@whitney.org

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street New York, NY 10021
Museum hours are: Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m., closed Monday and Tuesday.
Admission is $15 for adults; Members, children (ages 11 and under), and New York City public high school students are admitted free. Senior citizens (62 and over) and students with valid ID: $10. There is a $6 admission fee for a pass to the Kaufman Astoria Studios Film & Video Gallery only

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