calendario eventi  :: 

X

9/1/2007

IAQ-Infrequently asked questions

Ise Cultural Foundation, New York

Group show

Curated by Irina Zucca Alessandrelli

Artists: Peter Brown, Joy Curtis, Alessandro Dal Pont, Patte Loper, Tricia McLauhglin, Kuang-Yu Tsui

Curator's comment: The first time I encountered "Frequently Asked Questions" on an American website, I thought it was a democratic way to welcome an outsider. But when I discovered that I could never find my questions among those listed, many of my inquiries went unanswered. Because I repeatedly came across the same void of response in various contexts, I began to question whether my queries were inordinate or whether the Frequently Asked Questions were, indeed, not so frequent. The FAQs, which, at first glance seemed hospitable and comprehensive, became irritatingly useless. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to provide space to the "Infrequently Asked Questions". An exhibition which fosters unique inquiries and imaginative responses to reality prioritizes the rare, at time surrealistic, point of view of each artist. Attention to such Infrequently Asked Questions forges an attempt to adopt a nonconformist perspective to interpreting everyday life. The invited artists all express through different media a freedom in looking at our surroundings with an ironic and critical approach. The questions that the invited artists raise through works are proudly infrequent.

Peter Brown uses filmed illusion to create scenarios that confuse the reality of the viewers' inhabited space. Manipulating live video images of the gallery, the artist floods the basement and leaves the audience with a real tank of water dripping into a reservoir and an illusion of it collecting on the ceiling.

Joy Curtis uses a do-it -yourself aesthetic to build her bricolage sculptures using structures of plywood, cardboard and decorative acrylic mirror. The artist places the viewer in the middle of an ambiguous landscape where a fake ice column holds a functioning heater and a wood stage combines a giant photo of a shark stomach with a disco ball for a final bewildering effect.

Alessandro Dal Pont is deeply fascinated by the culture of comics. His geometric vision of Donald Duck and his three nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, serve as viewmasters where the audience can look into the private worlds of the characters. Literally looking through the eyes of the famous ducks, the viewer as an added protagonist of the scene sees the landscape these characters inhabit.

In an attempt to give meaning to the surrounding world and to our presence in it, Kuang-Yu Tsui uses himself as the subject of his videos, staging himself in public places in the most unthinkable of ways. On a busy London street, Tsui signals "Go" by waving a checkered flag, or engages pigeons in a game of lawn bowling where they are the target.

Tricia McLaughlin loves to imagine irrational possibilities of living in the world, making small sculptures-toys. Her unusual swimming pools function as a sort of parody of calculated every day human behaviour, creating a surrealistic way of imagining our spare time, hobbies and commodities.

In Patte Loper's oil on paper paintings deer and fawns appear to be spiritual guardians of mysterious encounters with the unknown. A dreamlike clarity characterizes this suspenseful atmosphere, whose aesthetic reference is 19th Century American Hudson River School style of landscape painting.

Image: Alessandro Dal Pont

Opening reception: Friday, January 12, 6-8 pm

Ise Cultural Foundation
555 Broadway, Basement Floor, New York
Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11-6 pm

stampa

permanent link