calendario eventi  :: 

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4/9/2014

Three exhibitions

Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis

Carla Klein
On view September 5, 2014–January 3, 2015

July 9, 2014 (St. Louis, MO) – The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) presents a selection of recent large-scale paintings by acclaimed Dutch artist Carla Klein that, together, will occupy the Museum’s sixty-foot-long project wall. On view September 5, 2014 through January 3, 2015, the exhibition features such expansive, desolate landscapes as airport runways and sprawling roads beneath cloud-filled skies. Working primarily in her signature aqueous blue-gray palette, Carla Klein portrays what she calls “non-places”: spaces constructed with the sole purpose of being passed through. Typically associated with activity and noise, the scenes are absent of people, presented as unchanging, abandoned landscapes.

Often working from her own photographs, Klein explores the physical properties of film, embracing its imperfections. The artist incorporates her negatives’ scratches into the work, transforming them into painterly distortions that draw attention to the surface of the picture plane. The resulting effect is a sense of distance between the viewer and the landscape, almost as if we were looking through a smeared pane of glass. This exhibition introduces Klein’s recent implementation of color; notably, what appears to be a red curtain in Untitled (pictured above) further emphasizes the experience of mediated viewing. The works navigate between illusions of vast depth and a reinforced awareness of the picture plane—not only as a painted surface but as a perceived barrier.

Carla Klein (b.1970, Zwolle, Netherlands) has had solo exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in California (2005) and Jarla Partilager in Stockholm (2007). Her paintings have also been shown in group exhibitions at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami in Florida; the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam; the Denver Art Museum; and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, among others. Recipient of the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Charlotte Köhler Award in 1999, Klein was also shortlisted for Rotterdam’s 2012 Dolf Henkes Award. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Berkeley Art Museum, Miami Art Museum, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Gemeentemuseum, and Thermenmuseum.

Carla Klein is organized for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis by Jeffrey Uslip, Chief Curator.

This exhibition is generously supported by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.

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Mark Flood: Another Painting
On view September 5, 2014–January 3, 2015

July 9, 2014 (St. Louis, MO) – The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) presents the first solo museum exhibition of Houston-based artist Mark Flood. On view September 5, 2014 through January 3, 2015, Another Painting features key examples of Flood’s recent text, lace, and corporate logo paintings. With a deadpan and confrontational tone, Flood’s work interrogates the verbal, visual, and written language of institutions—such as government, Wall Street, and the art market—that influence everyday life. Appropriating the vernacular of these establishments, Flood seeks to reveal what he believes to be their inherent absurdity and desire to control.

In his text-based paintings, Flood stencils imperatives onto various materials, including cardboard, canvases, vintage metal signs, and even World War II training missiles. Acerbic wordplay and satirical statements— such as “FEEL NOTHING,” “UNFRIEND YOUR PARENTS,” and “VOTE DEMON REPLICANT”—incite viewers to create their own, more daring interpretations of the messages that pervade our consumer culture. Similarly, Flood’s logo paintings overlay corporate emblems and seals of government agencies on crackled, disintegrating surfaces, perhaps reflecting a fracturing capitalist facade.

In Flood’s now iconic lace paintings, the artist stencils paint-soaked, torn lace onto the canvas, simultaneously destroying and memorializing the tattered fabric. The paintings merge the beautiful and the abject. Flood transforms lace—a textile historically linked to the decorative arts—into a charged presence that is at once corporeal, surgical, and sculptural.

Mark Flood (b. 1957, Houston, Texas) lives and works in Houston. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Zach Feuer Gallery, New York; Peres Projects, Berlin; Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich; and Stuart Shave Modern Art, London. His work has been featured in numerous national and international exhibitions, including shows at Galerie Perrotin, Paris; Utah Museum of Contemporary Art; and Marlborough Gallery, New York. In 2009 Flood’s work was featured at REMAP2, Athens, Greece, during the Athens Biennale. Flood received the Engelhard Award in 1991 and is represented in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art; the Menil Collection, Houston; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Mark Flood: Another Painting is organized for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis by Jeffrey Uslip, Chief Curator.

This exhibition is generously supported by Zach Feuer Gallery, New York, and Peres Projects, Berlin.

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Mel Chin: Rematch
On view September 5–December 20, 2014

July 9, 2014 (St. Louis, MO) – The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) presents Mel Chin: Rematch, the most expansive presentation of conceptual artist Mel Chin’s work to date. On view September 5–December 20, 2014, the exhibition features approximately fifty works from the past forty years—including sculpture, video, drawing, painting, and rarely seen documentation of Chin’s public land art and performance works. Rematch provides an overview of Chin’s complex and diverse body of work, stressing the collaborative nature of many of the artist’s endeavors and exploring his engagement with social justice and community partnerships.

Encompassing a wide variety of media, Chin’s work evades easy classification and often includes multi- disciplinary and cross-cultural teamwork. Chin frequently inserts art into unlikely places, including destroyed homes, toxic landfills, and even popular television shows, investigating how art can provoke greater social awareness and responsibility. Chin has also produced a body of sculpture and drawings steeped in the legacy of Dada and Surrealism. Rematch highlights the thematic strands that run throughout Chin’s broad range of subject matter, materials, and formal approaches.

In addition to large-scale installations like The Funk and Wag from A to Z (2012)—a surrealist large-scale arrangement of collages culled from the Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedia—the exhibition includes examples of Chin’s intersections into the realm of popular culture and politics, including In the Name of the Place: GALA Committee (1995–97), for which Chin collaborated with the TV series Melrose Place to place socially engaged content into the show’s sets and props. Documentation of major land-based projects like The Earthworks: See/Saw (1976) will be on view, as well as ecological, science-based projects like Revival Field (begun in 1990), which played a seminal role in promoting the field of phytoremediation, or the use of plants in treating toxic soil.

Rematch also features Chin’s recent venture, Operation Paydirt, and the accompanying Fundred Dollar Bill Project, begun in 2006 in New Orleans. These nationwide interdisciplinary projects generate thousands of children’s drawings in an effort to garner funding and support for the development of an effective national method of remediating lead-contaminated soil. They have led to collaboration with the Environmental Protection Agency and a major grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to scientists who are testing soil remediation methods in New Orleans.

This summer and fall, CAM will participate in Operation Paydirt by partnering with local organizations to host a variety of related programs, including workshops on gardening, lead contamination, and soil remediation; discussions on socially engaged art practices; and Fundred Dollar Bill drawing workshops. CAM is also collaborating with the local Sunflower+ Project: StL team—winners of the 2012 Sustainable Land Lab competition—who are working to address issues of land vacancy and soil contamination in St. Louis. Sunflower+ Project: StL leaders Don Koster of Washington University and Richard Reilly of the Missouri Botanical Garden will plant sunflowers—which remove soil contaminants—in the Museum’s courtyard, to bloom this fall.

Mel Chin (b. 1951, Houston, Texas) has had solo exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (1989), Walker Art Center (1990), The Menil Collection (1991), and Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston (2006). He has received numerous awards and grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts, Art Matters, Creative Capital, the Penny McCall Foundation, the Pollock/Krasner Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, among others. Chin received a Bachelors of Arts from Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee.

Mel Chin: Rematch is organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art. The exhibition is coordinated at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis by Lisa Melandri, Executive Director, and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog. Major support for the exhibition is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Creating A Living Legacy Program of the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Suzanne Deal Booth and David G. Booth, the Bertuzzi Family Foundation, Susan and Ralph Brennan, and Stephen Reily.

About the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) presents, supports, and celebrates the art of our time. It is the premier museum in St. Louis dedicated to contemporary art. Focused on a dynamic array of changing exhibitions, CAM provides a thought-provoking program that reflects and contributes to the global cultural landscape. Through the diverse perspectives offered in its exhibitions, public programs, and educational initiatives, CAM actively engages a range of audiences to challenge their perceptions. It is a site for discovery, a gathering place in which to experience and enjoy contemporary visual culture.

Image: Mark Flood, Cottonwoods, 2010. Acrylic on canvas. 78 x 48 inches. Courtesy the artist and Zach Feuer Gallery, New York.

Press contact: Ida McCall
314.535.0770 x311 / imccall@camstl.org

Press & Patron Preview: Fall Exhibitions
Friday, September 5, 10:00 am
Join exhibiting artists and CAM curators for an exclusive introduction to the exhibitions.
RSVP to Ida McCall at 314.535.0770 x311 or imccall@camstl.org.

Opening Night: Fall Exhibitions
Friday, September 5
Member Preview: 6:00 pm
Public Reception: 7:00–9:00 pm

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
3750 Washington Blvd / St. Louis, MO 63108
Hours: 11–6 Wed / 11–9 Thu & Fri / 10–5 Sat
Free admission compliments of the Gateway Foundation

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