calendario eventi  :: 

X

15/7/2006

Three expositions

Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago

Scott Wolniak, Ruby Satellite, Jennifer Greenburg

Scott Wolniak: Drawings With Outer Space
July 14 - September 4, 2006, Jackman Goldwasser Catwalk Gallery

Emerging Chicago artist, Scott Wolniak will make a new large-scale cut paper work to fit the glass facade of the Art Center. The artist created a similar work for the Art Center’s inaugural exhibition, Takeover, and due to outstanding construction circumstances the work was not able to be seen. Using the previous piece as a study, Wolniak will design a new image of negative and positive space creating a unique composition inspired by the Art Center’s immediate surroundings.

“This site-specific window drawing involves the construction of an optical visual experience with ambient light and directed views. The composition will be created from photographs of the window’s view, transforming it into pixilated clusters of dots and dashes… By removing sections of paper and allowing one to view masked portions of the outside world, the piece will transform both the interior and exterior spaces, acknowledging the relationship between the Art Center and its environs." (SW)

Scott Wolniak received his MFA from University of Illinois at Chicago in 2002 and his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995. In Chicago, his work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art (12 × 12 series) and Bodybuilder and Sportsman Gallery, among other venues. Wolniak currently teaches video production at the School of the Art Institute and is a visiting professor at the University of Chicago.

Exhibition Reception:
Sunday, July 16, 3-5 pm

---

Ruby Satellite
July 16 — September 17, 2006, Gallery 4

Curated by Ciara Ennis

Ruby Satellite was inspired by the bizarre real-life case of Russell Eugene Weston Jr., who stormed the U.S. Capital in search of the Ruby Satellite, which he believed was capable of destroying the ‘Black Heva’—a disease spread by alien cannibals. Although clearly deranged, Weston was convinced in the supreme authority of the imaginary Ruby Satellite and was willing to do anything to reach it.

The exhibition Ruby Satellite explores the complex drives and magnetism of authority, its many guises, and its ability to assert control—overt or veiled, subtle or overwhelming—with particular emphasis on the obsessive and often perverse behavior linked to such power structures and belief systems. Featuring work by a diverse group of artists—Marc Bijl, Paul Chan, Thomas Dworzak, Kota Ezawa, Wei Guanquin, Nicoline van Harskamp, Mathilde ter Heijne, Janice Kerbel, Annika Larsson, Adam McEwen, Yoshua Okon, and Christine Tarkowski—the exhibition brings together a powerful collection of works that include photography, video, and installation.

Ruby Satellite explores the complex drives and magnetism of authority, its many guises, and its ability to assert control

The relationship between power, submission, fetish and obsession are explored by Swedish artist Annika Larsson in Poliise (2001), a floor-to-ceiling projection presented in a custom built interrogation room. Three policemen dressed in riot gear play suggestively with their accoutrements—gloves, batons, handcuff, and masks—while standing over a fourth man in plain clothes. Through cropping, slow camera movement, and detailed close-ups, Larson stages violent psycho-sexual dramas.

Christine Tarkowski continues the power/domination theme in Exposed Stud, Nuclear Sub, (1998), in a large photo-collage, the repeated pattern of two-by-fours used in drywall construction in feminine pinkish hue, shrouds the overtly phallic half submerged ballistic nuclear submarine. In Yoshua Okon’s large-scale projection Oreillese a la Orilla (Money Will Make the Dog Dance) (1999-2000), corruption and the perversion are suggested in portraits of police and security guards in Mexico City. Bribed by Okon to dance for the camera, they reveal themselves in different ways, some joke or engage in lewd macho posturing, while others run off with the money. In a quieter work Nicoline van Harskamp explores the symbolic power of the uniform in a large wall paper work with repeated patterns of private and public security uniforms worn in London, Amsterdam, and Berlin presenting alternative portraits of cites.

Several artists explore the authority vested in texts and doctrines such as Chinese artist Wei Guanquing who questions the didacticism of his native country in the Extended Virtuous Words (Red Wall series) (1998-1999). Consisting of twelve silk-screen prints the work references popular children’s books from the Ming Dynasty that were designed as moral and ethical instruction manuals. In Lennon, Sontag, Beuys (2004), German artist Kota Ezawa takes archival footage from the three iconic cultural superstars looping extracts from seminal lectures and interviews filmed during the 1970s.

Transforming the footage into simplified cartoon animations, Ezawa diminishes their star status and warns against hero worship. German artist Mathilde ter Heijne tackles a highly emotive subject in Small Things End, Great Things Endure (2002), a single-channel video projection that explores the complicated issue of German collective guilt and self-sacrifice. Based on a film version of a novel by Uwe Johnson, Small Things End, Great Things Endure, pictures a woman bursting repeatedly into flames. The Party is Over (2004), by Dutch artist Marc Bijl, highlights our culture’s obsession with fear in a text work made from plastic inflatable letters that spell out ‘terror’.

Unquestioned power assumed by certain groups allows them to use questionable methods to obtain their ends.

The implicit authority and unquestioned power assumed by certain groups allows them to use questionable methods to obtain their ends. In Now Let us Now Praise American Leftists (2004), Paul Chan employs FACES™—the software program developed by the FBI to generate criminal stereotypes for wanted posters—to create his own visual database of left-wing activists including anarchists, Black Panthers, and Yiddish activists to reveal similar type-casting by leftist groups. The powerful influence of extreme ideologies is explored by Magnum photographer Thomas Dworzak in a series of extraordinary portraits of Taliban members taken in downtown Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2002.

‘Pierre et Gilles,’ style—eyeliner, powered cheeks, and absurdly kitsch backgrounds—the portraits were retouched to present a more flattering image of the revolutionary and sold to Dworzak. Equally bizarre is Adam McEwen appropriation and re-staging of the infamous photograph of the public execution of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci in a village square near Milan. The desire that many of us have at some time or another to defeat faceless corporations is cleverly dealt with by Janice Kerbel in Bank Job (1999), comprising exhaustive plans of how to rob a fortified bank in the City of London, one of the WORLD’S most surveilled centers of capital. Posing as an architecture student Kerbel monitored the bank for eighteen months. The resulting work takes the form of surveillance photographs, detailed maps, and a get-a-way plan.

The powerful photographic and video installations in Ruby Satellite explore some of the different meanings and forms that authority can assume. Bittersweet recollection, wrenching confessional, and frightening realization are just a few of the strategies employed by the diverse group of artists assembled for this exhibition. Ruby Satellite considers our fascination with, and thrall, to the commanding and redemptive seduction of authority.
- Ciara Ennis -

Ciara Ennis is the Curator of Exhibitions at the California Museum of Photography at the University of California, Riverside.

Members Only Preview:
Friday, July 14, 5:30 - 7:30 pm
Ciara Ennis, the curator of the exhibiton, will give members a sneak-peek and explanation of the show.

Opening Reception:
Sunday, July 16, 3-5 pm

Featuring: Marc Bijl, Paul Chan, Thomas Dworzak, Kota Ezawa, Wei Guanquin, Nicoline van Harskamp, Mathilde ter Heijne, Janice Kerbel, Annika Larsson, Adam McEwen, Yoshua Okon and Christine Tarkowski

---

Jennifer Greenburg: Recalling Americana
July 2 — August 20, 2006, Gallery 5

A selection of thirty contemporary portraits by Jennifer Greenburg revealing a community living between two moments in time, will be presented at the Hyde Park Art Center from July 2 to August 20, 2006. For nearly six years the emerging artist has documented the “Rockabilly" community - a subculture that adopts the looks and values of mid-twentieth century America. These powerful photographs of men, women and children consciously posed in their post-war era modeled living rooms, bedrooms and other interior spaces, explore the beliefs and codes of conduct that define this community.

The emerging artist has documented the “Rockabilly" community - a subculture that adopts the looks and values of mid-twentieth century America.

The predetermined view within the frame represents collaboration between the individual and the artist. Using a manual 4 × 5 view camera to produce 4 × 5 inch negatives has allowed Greenburg to capture greater detail than a 35 millimeter camera. None of the work is digital. The methodical process of this photography requires the camera to sit on a tripod, disrupting any possibility of surprise. Cultivating a relationship with her subjects by sharing same interests in the vintage clothing, music and design championed by the Rockabilly culture, Greenburg has vividly captured a unique wedge of contemporary society.

Jennifer Greenburg received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited throughout the Midwest since 2002 and is included in private and public collections, such as the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.

Recalling Americana will be on view from July 2 until August 20, 2006 at the Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell, Chicago, IL. Visit www.hydeparkart.org or call (773) 324-5520 for more information on the exhibition and related events.

Exhibition Reception:
Sunday, July 16, 3-5 pm

Artist’s Talk:
Thursday, July 27, 6 pm

stampa

permanent link