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30/1/2010

Five Exhibitions

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield

Paying a Visit to Mary: 2008 Hall Curatorial Fellowship Exhibition
curated by Maxine Kopsa

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is pleased to present Paying a Visit to Mary, an exhibition organized by Canadian curator Maxine Kopsa, a resident of the Netherlands, who is the second recipient of the Hall Curatorial Fellowship.

Paying a Visit to Mary refers to a line from Tell Me, a 1979 play about language by French artist Guy de Cointet that questions how reality is perceived and interpreted. The exhibition will open on January 31 and remain on view through June 6, 2010.

Like the play, the exhibition explores language as it relates to personal narrative and contemporary storytelling. Constructed as a “call and response” between different voices represented by a group of carefully selected contemporary artists, Paying a Visit to Mary tells a romantic, conceptual, and highly specific story of our time and our present human condition. The exhibition is seen as a conversation amongst both the artists and the audience with whom their work engages.

Paying a Visit to Mary is comprised of approximately twenty works by both emerging and more established artists, including Marc Camille Chaimowicz (France); Guy de Cointet and Robert Wilhite (France, United States); Paul Elliman (United Kingdom); Melissa Gordon (United States); Gary Hill (United States); Experimental Jetset (Netherlands); Jonas Ohlsson (Netherlands); Willem Oorebeek (Netherlands); Dexter Sinister (United Kingdom, United States); Guido van der Werve (Netherlands) and Emily Wardill (United Kingdom).

The exhibition utilizes a broad range of media—including performance, film, painting, sculpture, and installation. Curator Maxine Kopsa explains, “As a character in a Balzac short story perfectly summed up, ‘Life is simply a complication of interests and feelings’—or, a trusting and somewhat cynical network. Paying a Visit to Mary is an attempt to create a seductive setting of various persuasive ‘interests,’ qualifying our present human condition.”

The Aldrich will celebrate the opening of Paying a Visit to Mary on Sunday, January 31, 2010, from 3 to 5 pm. Following the opening, patrons are invited to join the artist and curator for a live performance of the de Cointet/Wilhite play IGLU and a private reception from 5:30 to 8:30 pm. Reservations are required for the performance.

FREE on-site parking is available, as is continuous round-trip transportation from the Metro North Katonah Train Station to the Museum.

The Aldrich is supported, in part, by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Paying a Visit to Mary: The 2008 Hall Curatorial Fellowship Exhibition has been made possible by the generous support of the Andrew J. and Christine C. Hall Foundation and Étant donnés, The French-American Fund for Contemporary Art. The official media sponsors of exhibition openings are Ridgefield Magazine and WSHU Public Radio.

The Curator: The second Hall Curatorial Fellow, Maxine Kopsa (born Toronto, 1972) is an independent Canadian curator who has been based in Amsterdam since 1993. Kopsa is co-founding director of Kunstverein, Amsterdam, an international curatorial franchise, associate editor of the contemporary art magazine Metropolis M, and a tutor at the Werkplaats Typografie, Arnhem. She has contributed to publications such as Frieze, Dot Dot Dot, Framework, and Art on Paper, as well as to various catalogues. Recent exhibitions include Word Event at Kunsthalle Basel and Just in Time, at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

The Fellowship: The Hall Curatorial Fellowship, made possible by the generous support of the Andrew J. and Christine C. Hall Foundation, is a biennial program intended to bring an international perspective to The Aldrich’s curatorial practice. The program continues to generate world-wide interest, gaining momentum with the success of the first exhibition, Voice & Void. The 2008 Hall Fellow was selected by an independent jury of distinguished art world professionals, including Carlos Basualdo, curator of contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Bonnie Clearwater, director and chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; and Sir Norman Rosenthal, former exhibitions secretary of the Royal Academy, London. The jurors selected Kopsa from a pool of applicants that included curators from Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Pakistan, Norway, Romania, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

January 31 to June 6, 2010

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Jeanne C. Finley and John Muse: Sleeping Under Stars, Living Under Satellites

The collaborative team of Jeanne C. Finley and John Muse have based their first major project in the northeast on the sweep of over 200 years of Ridgefield, Connecticut’s, history. The exhibition will debut on Sunday, January 31, 2010.

The exhibition, entitled Sleeping Under Stars, Living Under Satellites, explores different ways of keeping time and moving through space by presenting the wanderings of legendary historical figures from Ridgefield, Sarah Bishop and the Leatherman. The paths of these figures will be traced by the artists through the use of multi-channel video projection, sculptural elements, and geo-caching, an online, GPS-driven treasure hunt.

Finley and Muse have created three new Ridgefield-centric geo-caching circuits. One is based on the Three Hundredth Anniversary Parade Route, which passes several historic buildings in town; and the other two simulate routes traveled by the historical figures: Bishop, a hermit who lived for over 30 years after the Revolutionary War in a small cave on the east side of West Mountain between North Salem and Ridgefield; and a wandering vagrant who was nick-named the Leatherman because of his 60-pound handmade animal-skin suit. The Leatherman completed a 365-mile clockwise circuit through parts of New York and Connecticut with rigid regularity every 34 days between the years of 1856 and 1889.

Viewers will discover elements of the exhibition both in the Museum’s gallery and on routes taken by Bishop, the Leatherman, and the artists—who will place artifacts in local caches to commemorate and repeat the journeys of the historical figures. The project comes into focus in the gallery—a cache included on all of the routes—where there will be a replica of Sarah Bishop’s cave as well as an observatory where various video components create visual and sonic rhythms that regulate the relations of the three circuits. The hermit’s life is based on changing seasons; the vagrant ticked off the days, year after year, on his industrious regimented route; and the days of contemporary Ridgefield inhabitants are marked by the minutes and seconds of their hand-held devices.

The Aldrich will celebrate the opening of Jeanne C. Finley and John Muse: Sleeping Under Stars, Living Under Satellites on Sunday, January 31, 2010, from 3 to 5 pm. FREE on-site parking is available, as is continuous round-trip transportation from the Metro North Katonah Train Station to the Museum. Members and special guests are invited to join the artists for a private preview and short presentation of the new exhibition on Friday, January 29, from 6 to 8 pm at Behind the Scenes.

The Aldrich is supported, in part, by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The official media sponsors of exhibition openings are Ridgefield Magazine and WSHU Public Radio.

The Artists: Since 1988, Jeanne C. Finley and John Muse have worked collaboratively on numerous experimental documentaries and installations. These works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, at festivals and museums, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Biennial, San Francisco International Film Festival, Berlin Video Festival, and World Wide Video Festival. In 2001 they received a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship. Additional awards include a Creative Capital Foundation Grant and an Artists Residency at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.

January 31 to June 6, 2010

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Chad Kleitsch: White Box-Photographs of the Unseen Museum

The public seldom gets behind the scenes to view artworks submerged in packing peanuts, propped against gallery walls, and wrapped in blankets inside large empty galleries. The exhibition Chad Kleitsch: White Box—Photographs of the Unseen Museum invites visitors to The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum to experience “show change,” an industry term for the intense and exciting period of time from the point when artworks arrive on site—sometimes following transatlantic voyages—to the time an exhibition is ready to make its public debut.

Working in various capacities in art museums over the years, Chad Kleitsch has experienced this hidden side of the institutional space. In 2001 he began to ask museums for open access with his camera during exhibition changes, initiating a project that has now encompassed over fourteen museums and nonprofit exhibition spaces, including The Aldrich, The Menil Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art, and The Cleveland Museum of Art. Through the camera lens, visitors are afforded a glimpse of what happens out of sight and are invited to reconsider the objects in unusual situations. According to Richard Klein, Aldrich exhibitions director, “Kleitsch’s photographs often exhibit a deadpan humor, reveling in the accidental juxtapositions that occur outside the public’s view.”

The photographs reveal the complex relationship between art and the space in which it is presented, lifting a curtain on a provisional environment where institutional hierarchy is missing or turned upside down, where the division between art and the circumstances of its presentation is blurred, and where the installation processes themselves are aestheticized.

The Aldrich will celebrate the opening of Chad Kleitsch: White Box—Photographs of the Unseen Museum on Sunday, January 31, 2010, from 3 to 5 pm. FREE on-site parking is available, as is continuous round-trip transportation from the Metro North Katonah Train Station to the Museum. Patrons are invited to join exhibitions director Richard Klein and artist Chad Kleitsch during the installation period for a revealing discussion about his fascinating photographs and the show change process on Sunday, January 24, from 2 to 3 pm.

The Aldrich is supported, in part, by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The official media sponsors of exhibition openings are Ridgefield Magazine and WSHU Public Radio.

January 31 to March 14, 2010

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Tom Molloy
curated by Joseph R. Wolin

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is pleased to announce the first museum survey of the work of Tom Molloy to be presented outside of his native Ireland. The exhibition of approximately twenty key works will feature sculptures, photographs, and drawings—including several large, multipart installations—created by the artist over the last decade.

The Aldrich will celebrate the opening of Tom Molloy on Sunday, January 31, 2010. In advance of the opening, scheduled from 3 to 5 pm, patrons are invited to join the artist and exhibition curator Joseph R. Wolin from 2:30 to 3:30 pm for a conversation about the work on view. FREE on-site parking is available, as is continuous round-trip transportation from the Metro North Katonah Train Station to the Museum.

Tom Molloy’s art engages with global events, and in particular with America and America’s place in the new world order. With economical means, the artist manipulates found materials and images to explore the interaction of politically charged symbols.

Some of the artist’s best known works will be included, such as the cut dollar bill Map (2004)—a double-edged metaphor of American might and hegemony—and the fifty drawings of stars of Allegiance (2004)—hung on the wall to evoke Old Glory, the drawings form a wan and equivocal emblem of union and patriotism.

The exhibition will also include Dead Texans (2002), a grid of fifty small drawings of mug shots of men executed in the Lone Star State while George W. Bush was governor, as well as a drawing entitled Sweep, depicting the cleanup after terrorist violence, with the artist’s own blood dripping from behind the frame.

Curator Wolin says, “Molloy operates on these potent icons with surgical precision, excising hidden motives and overlooked similarities that resonate through recent history. His work is simple yet deeply incisive, sly yet bluntly political, funny yet deadly serious.”

Tom Molloy was born in Waterford, Ireland, and now lives in County Clare, where he is Head of Painting at the Burren College of Art. He attended The National College of Art & Design in Dublin, earning his B.A. in Fine Art in 1987 and his M.A. in Fine Art in 1992. A survey exhibition of his work was held at the Limerick City Gallery of Art in 2005 and at the Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, County Meath, in 2008. Molloy’s work is included in the permanent collections of The Irish Museum of Modern Art and The Blanton Museum of Art, Texas, and is represented by Rubicon Gallery in Dublin and Lora Reynolds Gallery in Austin.

The Curator:
Joseph R. Wolin is an independent curator and critic in New York. A frequent contributor to Modern Painters, Time Out New York, and Canadian Art, he has also contributed essays and interviews to many exhibition catalogues. He was co-curator of the exhibition The Royal Art Lodge: Ask the Dust, which during 2003–2005 traveled to six venues in four countries, including The Drawing Center, New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Tom Molloy has been generously underwritten by Culture Ireland, Promoting Irish Arts Worldwide.

The Aldrich is supported in part by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Panel discussions are supported in part by the Harry Zarin Fund. The official media sponsors of exhibition openings are Ridgefield Magazine and WSHU Public Radio.

January 31 to June 13, 2010

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Jo Yarrington: Ocular Visions

New York artist Jo Yarrington will utilize cutting edge ophthalmologic technology to transform The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum’s Leir Atrium into a gigantic human eye for her exhibition Ocular Visions which opens on January 31, 2010.

Using floor-to-ceiling red transparencies—a color which represents good medical health—created by magnifying a tiny photograph of the inside of her eye, Yarrington will create an ethereal installation which is activated by changing light.

As visitors enter the physical space, they will also gain access to her mind’s eye—or as Yarrington puts it, “the place from where we create.”

The structure of the project works nicely as a metaphor for vision and interpretation, just as the human eye serves as an intermediary between the exterior and the interior for processing experiences. The eye detects light and sends messages to the brain, as the Museum’s windows admit light to the building and illuminate the installation. Yarrington will also utilize the Museum’s only permanent fixture, the camera obscura, for the site specific project to further explore how we see.

Yarrington says, “I’ve always been interested in liminal places, areas of the mind or reality that blur definition, that exist somewhere in between. I work with various transparent photographs that function as both a physical framework and symbolic membrane. Light enters through the human eye as it does through the museum’s windows to decipher form. The perpetual shifting of image and light alters the relationship between building and viewer. Transformation on many levels seems a possibility as the interior and exterior fold into one another, and the boundary between the two begins to dissolve.”

Museum director Harry Philbrick comments, “It seems only fitting that an optical exhibition will utilize the facility in a way that could only happen at The Aldrich. The Museum’s tag line, look. look again., which encourages people to look carefully during their visits, seems even more appropriate in the context of this exhibition.”

The Aldrich will celebrate the opening of Jo Yarrington: Ocular Visions on Sunday, January 31, 2010, from 3 to 5 pm. FREE on-site parking is available, as is continuous round-trip transportation from the Metro North Katonah Train Station to the Museum.

The Aldrich is supported, in part, by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Special thanks to Fairfield University, Jose Vargas, exhibit design and fine art director at Duggal Visual Solutions, and Topcon America Corporation. The official media sponsors of exhibition openings are Ridgefield Magazine and WSHU Public Radio.
January 31 to June 6, 2010

Image: Guido van der Werve, Nummer twee–Just because I’m standing here, doesn’t mean I want to., 2003

Exhibition Reception: Sunday, January 31, 2010

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
258 Main Street, Ridgefield, CT 06877
Hours Tuesday - Sunday, 12 noon to 5 pm
Closed on Mondays and New Year's Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day
Special Holidays: The Museum is open on the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and Labor Day.
Admission: Adults $7, seniors & college students $4

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