Two exhibitions
dal 23/1/2014 al 27/2/2014
Segnalato da
23/1/2014
Two exhibitions
The Drawing Center, New York
"Notes on Creativity" is the first major museum exhibition to focus on the visualization and drawing practices of master chef Ferran Adria'. The installation "Christ You Know it Ain't Easy!!", by Deborah Grant, combines painting, drawing, and collage to recount the fictional meeting between African-American folk artist Mary A.
Deborah Grant
Christ You Know it Ain't Easy!!
Curated by Claire Gilman
For the past decade, artist Deborah Grant has interwoven historical accounts and personal experiences with references to contemporary political and social issues in her ongoing series Random Select.
Grant culls material from a variety of sources including magazine photographs, comic books, published texts, and art historical reference books which she masterfully translates and brings together via her signature drawing method to create highly personal, non-linear narratives that investigate politics, race, and cultural identity.
Grant’s Christ You Know it Ain't Easy!! (the installation takes its title from the Lennon/McCartney song “The Ballad of John and Yoko”) combines painting, drawing, and collage to recount the fictional meeting between African-American folk artist Mary A. Bell and renowned modernist painter Henri Matisse. Mary A. Bell (1873–1941), a deeply devout Catholic domestic servant who produced over a hundred drawings after she had retired from service, never received formal artistic training. Rendered through graphic silhouettes, intricate line drawings, and collaged photographic elements, Grant’s fictionalized narrative provides an alternate account of the legacy of modernist painting, one not told in the history books.
Deborah Grant: Christ You Know it Ain't Easy!! is made possible in part by Steve Turner and Victoria Dailey, Monroe Denton, Dee and Gianna Kerrison, and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn.
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Ferran Adria'
Notes on Creativity
Curated by Brett Littman
The Drawing Center presents Ferran Adrià: Notes on Creativity, January 25 – February
28, 2014, the first major museum exhibition to focus on the visualization and drawing practices of
master chef Ferran Adrià. The exhibition emphasizes the role of drawing in Adrià’s quest to
understand creativity. His complex body of work positions the medium as both a philosophical
tool—used to organize and convey knowledge, meaning, and signification-—as well as a physical
object—used to synthesize over twenty years of innovation in the kitchen. Ferran Adrià: Notes on
Creativity begins an international tour at ACE MUSEUM, Los Angeles, CA, May 4 - July 31,
2014, followed by Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, OH, September 26, 2014 - January
18, 2015; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN, Sept 17, 2015 - January 3, 2016; and Marres House
for Contemporary Culture, Maastricht, The Netherlands, March 20 - June 12, 2016.
Food culture, like any form of culture, requires outliers, and Ferran Adrià is its provocateur. As one
of the most important avant-garde chefs of the twenty-first century, Adrià pushes culinary
boundaries with knowledge and wit, transforming the art of food into an art form all its own.
Hundreds of notebooks have been filled with concepts, ideas, collaged photographs, and loose
sketches for new dishes for elBulli. More straightforward creative methods in the form of lists,
tables of ingredients, and cooking methods have also been used to assemble ingredients and
conceptualize new ways of cooking. The use of drawing to articulate cuisine (as both product and
concept) highlights a creative model that is always in flux and constantly shifting.
Ferran Adrià: Notes on Creativity charts the origins of this innovator’s intellectual and philosophical
ideas about gastronomy that have forever changed how we understand food. These ideas are
presented as wall graphics, framed prints, and related ephemera. The exterior of a large cube in the
center of the Main Gallery features large-scale photographic reproductions of elBulli’s kitchen
during service. A series of vitrines around the cube displays a selection of elBulli notebooks
documenting menu development, product taxonomies, and personal notes; architectural drawings
and a model of the new elBulli Foundation headquarters; elBulli’s plasticine food models; and
drawings and prototypes related to elBulli’s dishware, utensils, menus, and graphic identity. Inside
the cube Adria’s “working boards” lean against large-scale documentary photographs of the elBulli
archive in Barcelona. These boards were used in the elBulli atelier to document and organize
research, menu development, and photography. The “working boards” at The Drawing Center
include drawings from the 2006 and 2008 elBulli menus, abstract plating drawings and drawings,
from Adrià’s Peach Melba project.
The Drawing Center’s Lab gallery screens Documenting Documenta (80minutes, 2011) about
Adrià’s participation in Documenta 12, and debuts 1846, a film produced by The Drawing Center,
elBullirestaurant, and Mogollon that will feature images of every dish that Adrià served at elBulli
(90minutes, 2014). Both works are on a loop that runs continuously during open hours
throughout the exhibition’s run.
Ferran Adrià Acosta (b. 1962 in Barcelona, Spain).
Ferran Adrià: Notes on Creativity begins an international tour at ACE MUSEUM, Los Angeles, CA, May 4 - July 31, 2014, followed by Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, OH, September 26, 2014 - January 18, 2015; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN, Sept 17, 2015 - January 3, 2016; and Marres House for Contemporary Culture, Maastricht, The Netherlands, March 20 - June 12, 2016.
To accompany Ferran Adrià: Notes on Creativity The Drawing Center will produce an extensively
illustrated, 200 page edition in the Drawing Papers series, which features an interview between
Ferran Adrià and Brett Littman and an essay by the artist Richard Hamilton about the
relationship of food to contemporary art that first appeared in the book, Food for Thought:
Thought for Food (2009), which was published following Adrià’s participation in Documenta
12.
Image: Ferran Adrià, Plating Diagram. Ink on paper, 11x17 inches, Courtesy of elBullifoundation.
Press contact:
Molly Gross, Communications Director, The Drawing Center 212 219 2166 x119 mgross@drawingcenter.org
Opening reception Friday, January 24 from 6 to 8pm
The Drawing Center
35 Wooster Street, New York, NY, 10013
Gallery hours are Wednesday-Sunday 12pm–6pm, Thursday, 12pm–8pm.
Tickets: $5 Adults, $3 Students and seniors, Children under 12 are free, and free admission Thursdays 6-8pm.