15/9/2003
Sam Durant
Union, London
Upside down: Pastoral scene. Durant makes installations, photographs, drawings and models that cite, re-site, reflect, invert and juxtapose various cultural and political situations from the past thirty years. His output has often engaged the work of Robert Smithson, particularly his writings on entropy.
UPSIDE DOWN: PASTORAL SCENE
UNION announces Los Angeles artist Sam Durant's first one person exhibition
in the UK.
Durant makes installations, photographs, drawings and models that cite,
re-site, reflect, invert and juxtapose various cultural and political
situations from the past thirty years. His output has often engaged the work
of Robert Smithson, particularly his writings on entropy. Smithson himself
can be seen as a figure linked emblematically to the collapse of the
countercultural ambitions of the late 60s and early 70s, a theme that Durant
revisits through much of his work.
Durant will present a major work entitled Upside Down: Pastoral Scene. The
installation traces a variety of links and connections both within musical
compositions and through the multiple symbolic meanings of the tree in
American culture and history. It comprises a ¼field' of 12 inverted tree
stumps, roots uppermost, placed on mirrors. Ideas of the family tree, the
tree of knowledge and the symbolic significance of the parts of a tree;
roots, the trunk and branches are re-oriented in Durantx{2122}s presentation of the
upside down stumps. Each stump is fitted with an audio speaker and the
entire field of upside down trees is animated by a musical composition.
Durant ¼composed' a 70 minute musical narrative, which plays through the
installation and ranges from Billie Holiday's ¼Strange Fruit' to John Lee
Hooker's ¼Blues for Abraham Lincoln' to Public Enemy's ¼Fear of a Black
Planet. The careful selection of break-through songs, all by African
American artists, creates a politically charged, social comment allowing the
exploration of issues around U.S. history from slavery to civil rights
struggles.
In addition to Upside Down: Pastoral Scene, Durant will present a series of
large scale photographs that engage many of the installation's themes.
The next exhibition at UNION will be a group show curated by Milovan
Farronato including works by Jan De Cock, Liam Gillick, Katharina Grosse,
Bernhard Martin, Marco Papa, amongst others.
Private View 16/09/03 6-9pm
Opening hours
Monday to Friday 10am-6pm
Saturday 12pm-5pm
For more information please contact Lucinda Clark on (0)20 7928 3388
UNION
57 Ewer Street
London SE1 0NR
Telephone +44 (0) 20 7928 3388
Facsimile +44 (0) 20 7928 3389