calendario eventi  :: 

X

20/4/2007

Three exhibitions

Art in General, New York

Heman Chong
Common People and Other Stories
Residency: April 17–May 30, 2007
Exhibition: April 21–June 30, 2007

New York, NY (March 28, 2007) For his residency at Art in General, Heman Chong will create Common People and Other Stories, a new project inspired by Quantum Leap, a short-lived American science-fiction television program about an imaginary physics experiment gone awry and its consequent ethical dilemmas. The name of the TV show’s protagonist, Dr. Sam Beckett, is a thinly veiled allusion to the Irish playwright known for his pessimistic outlook on the human condition. In what has now become a television cult classic, Sam travels through time, randomly “leaping,” or “Swiss-cheesing” into the bodies of other people (including men, women, and once, a chimpanzee), attempting to prevent history-altering catastrophes all the while trying to make his way back to his own place and time.

Heman takes the stories of Sam’s travels and expands them by bringing them into the context of Art in General’s ground-floor Project Space, which he will use as a studio as well as a venue where visitors may see the ongoing development of his new work. There, Heman plans to explore the often humorous narratives and serious moral underpinnings of Quantum Leap, which aired on NBC from 1989 until 1993 but remains an active fixation for many. He also explores the aspects of the TV show that have caused it to become an underground craze as it touched on a range of gripping themes such as the order of the universe, family drama, nostalgia, coincidence and a seemingly sentient supercomputer named Ziggy. Common People and Other Stories also stems from Heman’s broad research on literary and visual representations in science-fiction literature and film.

Art in General has also comissioned Heman to create a world map, which will be published in the spring edition of INSIDE, Art in General’s periodic publication announcing and elaborating on its programs. Rather than a traditional map that outlines topographies and territories, Heman’s contribution is a diagrammatic chart of the years and places Sam Beckett visited in his time travels. This is the third in a series of maps that Art in General has published this year. The first was a map by artist Andrea Geyer (Fall 2006) and the second by Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri (2007).

For more information on Heman Chong’s work, please visit: www.hemanchong.com

Heman Chong was born in 1977, and is based in Singapore. He graduated from Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore with a diploma in visual communication, and received his master's degree in art in communication and design at the Royal College of Art in London. Heman came to public notice with the exhibition of his video installation Molotov Cocktails at the Singapore Art Museum (2000). This work subsequently represented Singapore at the 10th India Triennale (2001) and was awarded the Triennale Prize. In 2003, Heman was given a one-year grant by the National Arts Council to participate in the International Studio Programme at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. In the same year, he was also selected for the President's Young Talents exhibition held at the Singapore Art Museum. Between 2003 and 2004, Heman was invited to show his work at various international exhibitions, including the 50th Venice Biennale (2003) and the 5th Busan Biennale (2004). Heman has also produced artworks for the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (The Social Seduction, 2003), the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands (God Bless Diana, 2004) and Rhizome.org in New York (Real Estate, 2005). In addition to more than 50 group exhibitions, Heman's curatorial project Old Habits Die Hard (2003) has been presented in venues around the world, including The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, the Norwich Gallery in the UK and Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo. In Singapore, Heman has been active as an associate artist at The Substation, where he has had two solo exhibitions, The End of Traveling (2002) and Snore Louder if You Can (2004). In line with the multidisciplinary nature of his work, Heman has collaborated with talents including the poet/playwright Alfian Sa'at (Geograffiti, 1999), theater director Ong Ken Sen (The Global Soul, 2003) and Yoko Ono (Water Event, 2005).

Heman Chong's residency is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support has been provided by the National Arts Council in Singapore.

---

Melanie Crean
The Luminists
Exhibition: April 21–June 30, 2007


Melanie Crean's new work, The Luminists is based on conversations she had with three artists who have lost their sight but continue to make artwork: Alice Wingwall, a photographer; Carol Saylor, a painter turned sculptor; and Tara Inmon, a painter turned writer. They discussed a range of topics, including what vision means to them now that they have no optical sight, how they visualize the world around them despite their lack of vision and how optical influences continue to inform their work.

Each of the three artists Melanie consulted reveals a unique aspect of the experience of seeing. Wingwall, for instance, speaks of how her body's relationship to space is integral to her creation of a mental image, referencing the mental database she utilizes to access memories. Inman relates her continuing need to see after going blind, and how she organizes her life through sets of internal visual maps. Saylor speaks about her waking dream life, and the abstract visual patterns projected by the remnants of her optical nerve that inspired her to return to her art after going blind.*

Based on her conversations with Wingwall, Saylor and Inman, and in collaboration with composer Paul Geluso, Melanie has created a 5.1 surround-sound audio installation to accentuate the visual references brought up in the piece. Additionally, Melanie and three collaborators Kuni Chang, Enrique Maitland and Luba Drozd have created an experimental video inspired by the sound installation. The video will be presented in programs held in conjunction with the exhibition.

*In adults who go blind, the visual cortex, after being deprived of external stimulation, often receives information from other parts of the brain to form visualizations. Some individuals have described apparitions of small points of light with odd shapes, moving in a form of abstract geometric animation.

Melanie Crean is an artist, teacher, curator and producer who has exhibited media art in the United States and Europe. As Director of Production at Eyebeam, she created and managed a cooperative studio that supported the production of socially-based media, working with new forms of moving image, sound, public art and open-source software. Previously, Melanie worked at the MTV Digital Television Lab, managing a team of artists while designing special effects, performance animation, motion capture and speech recognition systems. She produced documentaries in Nepal, India and the United States on subjects that include the trafficking of women and the spread of HIV/AIDS along trucking routes in South Asia. Melanie received a BA in semiotics and film production from Brown University, and a MFA in computer art from the School of Visual Arts.The Luminists marks a significant shift in Melanie's practice, as she has never created work that relies so heavily on sound. The project also investigates an area between documentary and installation that she will continue to explore in future works.

The New Commissions Program is made possible by The Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent federal grant-making agency dedicated to creating and sustaining a nation of learners by helping libraries and museums serve their communities; the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and the Booth Ferris Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, Peter Norton Family Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, Jerome Foundation and George Mills.

---

Piotr Lutynski
Second Life
Residency: March 15–April 30, 2007
Exhibition: April 21–May 30, 2007

Piotr Lutynski tends to involve animals in his work, and has in the past installed living goats, birds, horses and carp in galleries. He juxtaposes these creatures with unexpected elements such as music and food as well as the more traditional gallery fare of geometric paintings. His installation at Art in General includes live fish, a video projection of the glittering New York City skyline at night and a gilt mural reminiscent of medieval or early Renaissance painting. The opening of the exhibition will also be accompanied by a performance by Diana Dyjak Montes de Oca and a series of concerts given by the artist and other invited musicians.

Through his work which intentionally incorporates an absurd yet evocative mélange of elements Piotr pays homage to Dadaism, in particular its practitioner Kurt Schwitters. He cites an epiphany several years ago that profoundly changed his practice: he was wading through grain one sunny day during harvest season in Germany while considering abstract painting, and the relationship between nature and culture presented itself as his muse. Since then, through the uncanny combination of unconventional components in his art, Piotr has been exploring a litany of metaphysical questions: What exactly is perception? What constitutes the experience of art? What is the relationship between egg shells, grains, bees, beeswax and abstraction? What is the difference between an art gallery, a zoo and nature? And how is it that animals improve human observational faculties and cause people to focus, and as a result see more?

Piotr Lutynski was born in 1962 in the hills of southern Poland. He attended the Antoni Kenar Fine Arts Lyceum in the mountain resort of Zakopane and specialized in graphic design at the University of Silesia, from which he graduated in 1990. A painter, sculptor, installation artist, performer and composer, Piotr creates 'total musical and visual shows.' Goats and birds appeared in his exhibition Bird Column Project (2003), horses in Between a horse and a painting (2003) and carp in Music for Fish (2005). He is fascinated by natural materials, folklore and the first avant-garde. Piotr has participated in numerous group exhibitions and had solo exhibitions in Krakow's leading venues, including the Bunkier Sztuki, Starmach and Zderzak galleries, and at Warsaw's Foksal Gallery. He lives and works in Krakow, Poland.

Piotr Lutynski's residency is part of Art in General's Eastern European Residency Exchange, which gives artists the opportunity to create a new work and to meet and interact with art communities in Eastern Europe and New York City. His exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Bunkier Sztuki gallery in Krakow, Poland.

Eastern European Residency Exchange
The Eastern European Residency Exchange is made possible by the Trust for Mutual Understanding and the National Endowment for the Arts. Support of New York artists is provided by the Jerome Foundation.

Additional support for Piotr's residency has been provided by the PolishCultural Institute


Image: Melanie Crean

Art in General
79 Walker Street New York, NY 10013-3523
Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 12-6pm

stampa

permanent link