Aziz + Cucher
dal 11/4/2012 al 20/10/2012
Segnalato da
11/4/2012
Aziz + Cucher
Indianapolis Museum of Art IMA, Indianapolis
Some People. Four new video installations. Working together since 1992, Anthony Aziz and Sammy Cucher are widely recognized as pioneers in the field of digital imaging. Through the use of digital animation, performance, video, and sound, the exhibition situates recent and current conflicts into a never-ending narrative that exists outside of a specific place and time.
The Indianapolis Museum of Art will premiere four
newly commissioned video installations by the collaborative team of Anthony Aziz and Sammy
Cucher in April 2012 that reflect the artists’ complex relationship with the political conflict in the
Middle East. Developed by the artists following extensive research and travel to the region, the
works in the exhibition explore the longstanding conflict between Arabs and Jews through digital
animation, performance, sound, and video documentation. Marking twenty years of collaboration
for the artists, Aziz + Cucher: Some People will be on view from April 13, 2012, through October
21, 2012, in the McCormack Forefront Galleries.
Aziz + Cucher have been profoundly affected by outbreaks of conflict in the Middle East—the result
of contested land ownership, extreme nationalist and religious ideologies, and historical prejudices.
This personal connection to the region stems from their familial and cultural roots in the Middle
East—Cucher’s entire family recently emigrated to Israel and his nephews serve in the Israeli army,
while Aziz has cousins and extended family scattered across Lebanon—as well as the conflict’s
broader impact on the world today. The artists have distilled their findings into four video
installations titled The Time of the Empress, In Some Country Under a Sun and Some Clouds,
Report from the Front, and By Aporia, Pure and Simple.
“Aziz + Cucher’s work speaks to the most pressing issues of our time,” said Maxwell L. Anderson,
The Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO of the IMA. “These commissions mark the first time
Aziz + Cucher’s work has addressed the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, providing detailed
personal insight into a challenging subject with global resonance.”
“Through these works, Aziz + Cucher seek to create a poetic and emotional space that brings
together ancient tribal attachments to land with the realities of living in a contemporary age of
global terror,” said Lisa Freiman, senior curator and chair of the IMA’s Department of
Contemporary Art.
Until this series of works, Aziz + Cucher had kept the violent engagements between Israel and its
Arab neighbors outside the realm of their artistic practice. However, the increasing conflict in the
region and its hopeless display of destructive power affected both of their psyches in unexpected
ways. After witnessing first-hand the terror of 9/11 in New York, as well as the subsequent barrage
of images of violence unleashed by the catastrophic war in Iraq, they began to understand the
2006 war in Lebanon as emblematic of a cycle of tragic and absurd inevitability that continues
today.
In 2009, Aziz + Cucher researched and traveled extensively in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon. Then
during a residency in Berlin, the artists translated their thinking into four independent video
installations:
• The Time of the Empress consists of three large projections of digitally animated architec-
tural drawings in a constant cycle of construction and decay. These images are
accompanied by a multi-channel sound environment in which female voices can be heard
reflecting on the quotidian details of everyday life and the eternal and inevitable passage of
time. The title of this work refers to a passage from Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of
Hadrian.
• In Some Country Under a Sun and Some Clouds presents a series of six monumental
figures, projected onto landscapes, and seemingly caught in a state of paralysis and
indecision, endlessly repeating gestures that seem to prevent them from exiting history or
entering some future and straddling the awkward divide between the comic and the tragic.
For this work the artists collaborated with six dancers who perform a series of tasks and
choreographed gestures recorded in front of a green screen and digitally inserted into
biblical, timeless landscapes.
• Report from the Front is a single-channel video with soundtrack that turns an
archeological excavation site into a potential battlefield whereby viewers are confronted
with themes of land ownership, history, and the search for traces of belonging. This video
uses documentary footage that depicts the ethnographic implications of archeological
excavation from a distance, and without emotion. The forceful voice-over narration of an
“archeological despot” adds a layer of humor preparing for the tragic and comical ending in
the final video.
• By Aporia, Pure and Simple is a multi-channel video installation in which Aziz + Cucher
appear in an absurdist, clownish performance that alludes to the daunting and seemingly
futile task of engaging with existential questions as they piece together video footage from
their travels for the exhibition. This is the first time that the artists appear in their work,
suggesting Aziz + Cucher’s intense personal identification with the topics addressed
throughout the exhibition.
About the catalogue
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated 125-page catalogue with an essay by the
curator, Lisa D. Freiman that will document this new body of work, elucidating it in relation to Aziz +
Cucher’s previous experiments in digital art, dating back to the early 1990s. The catalogue will also
include an essay by Tami Katz-Freiman, who was until 2010 the Chief Curator at the Haifa
Museum of Art in Israel; as well as a newly commissioned interview between Los Angeles-based
art historian Richard Meyer and the artists, which focuses on the origins of their collaboration in
San Francisco where they met as graduate students at the San Francisco Art Institute. The
catalogue will be co-published by the IMA and Hatje Cantz, Germany.
About Aziz + Cucher
New York-based Anthony Aziz (American, b. 1961) and Sammy Cucher (Venezuelan, b. 1958) are
widely recognized as pioneers in the field of digital imaging and have created an accomplished
body of work over the past two decades. While Some People consists solely of video installations,
Aziz + Cucher’s body of work includes photography and sculpture. Their work has been widely
exhibited internationally and they have been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Herzliya Museum
of Art, Israel; Stiftelsen Art Center, Bergen, Norway; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia,
Madrid; the Photographer’s Gallery, London; and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art,
Kansas City. In 1995, Aziz + Cucher represented Venezuela at the Venice Biennale.
Aziz + Cucher have participated in numerous group exhibitions, including exhibitions at the Museo
Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of
Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan; Hayward Gallery, London; International Center of Photography
(ICP), New York; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Rijksmuseum Twenthe, The
Netherlands; List Visual Arts Center, M.I.T., Cambridge, Massachusetts; Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, Los Angeles; and Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
Works by Aziz + Cucher are held in permanent museum collections, including the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; San
Jose Museum of Art, San Jose; Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland; MUSAC, Museum of
Contemporary Art, Leon, Spain; Maison Européene de la Photographie, Paris; Museo Nacional
Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; National
Gallery of Australia; Denver Museum of Art; and Galeria de Arte Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela.
Aziz + Cucher have received numerous awards, including the Ruttenberg Award from the Friends
of Photography/Ansel Adams Center in San Francisco, as well as grants from the Pollock-Krasner
Foundation, Etants Donnés/The French-American Fund for Contemporary Art, the New York
Foundation for the Arts, Art Matters Inc. and Western States Art Federation/NEA.
Image: Aziz + Cucher By Aporia, Pure and Simple, 2011 multi-channel video, sound.
Media Contacts:
IMA Katie Zarich / Candace Gwaltney 317-920-2650 / 317-923-1331 x 239 kzarich@imamuseum.org / cgwaltney@imamuseum.org
Resnicow Schroeder Associates Ilana B. Simon / Molly Kurzius 720-746-9552 / 212-671-5163 isimon@resnicowschroeder.com / mkurzius@resnicowschroeder.com
Opening Thursday, April 12, 6-8 pm
Reception: 6–7 pm | The Toby Lobby Artist’s Lecture: 7–8 pm | The Toby
McCormack Forefront Galleries
Indianapolis Museum of Art
4000 Michigan Road, Indianapolis
open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.;
Thursday and Friday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.
closed Mondays and Thanksgiving