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8/1/2009

Seen | Unseen

NurtureArt, New York

Curated by Peg Curtin

"Twenties and thirties, it was the role of government. Fifties and sixties, it was civil rights. The next two decades, it's gonna be privacy. I'm talking about the Internet. I'm talking about cellphones. I'm talking about health records . . . in a country born on a will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?" Spoken in 2001 by fictional character Sam Seaborne in the popular television drama The West Wing, this statement rings uncannily true today. Advancing surveillance and communication technologies coupled with a government preoccupied by a perceived increase in terrorist threats are pushing the bounds of our ideas of privacy and protection.

Is the idea of surveillance in the mind of a populace a more powerful tool than the surveillance itself? What does surveillance, or a perception of surveillance, do to us as subjects? How do we now see others, and imagine ourselves to be seen? Even more importantly, how do we come to perform frequent acts of self-surveillance? Blurring lines between observer and observed, the eight provocative emerging artists in Seen | Unseen cross typically taboo lines by openly photographing strangers, directly challenging and mocking surveillance cameras, and willingly placing themselves in the role of the observed, and us in the role of observers. Images are reflected, complicated, and obscured. Installations reconstruct and appropriate in miniature the surveillance of our homes and property, exposing our phobias, and anxiously recontextualizing accepted security methods. Video works invert the supposed anonymity of large crowds and explore our culture's obsession with reality television. Seen | Unseen asks us to question our boundaries and consider the future of a culture increasingly consumed with the need to see and be seen.

Through public performances in front of existing surveillance cameras, the Surveillance Camera Players talk back to the anonymous eye of the lens through the use of signs and gestures. Edin Velez positions himself and his video camera in front of escalators and elevators. He points his lens into the tides of people and captures authentic moments of expression and gesture. Madeline Djerejianconceals her intention of photographing museum visitors by focusing on their reflection in the glass that covers masterworks. Kate Drendel turns the camera on herself and assumes the role of someone who has left herself vulnerable to our gaze. The black and white image of a melancholy woman gazing out the window is reflected onto an old television screen. Hsuan Hsuan Wu's video is staged in the middle of Times Square. Wu remains focused on her journal writing as her cameraman records the pedestrians who gawk and ignore her. Brad Robinson's Public Interest, dealing with those who aspire to be on reality television shows and the American culture that has become obsessed with them, examines our need to observe and the desire to be observed. In the mode of self-conscious examination and re-examination, Futaba Suzuki constructs idealized homes and then places them under surveillance. The images that are pulled from her surveillance cameras are then projected onto the constructed home. Charles Harlan uses the surveillance camera in a way that neutralizes its power. Misusing useful tools inverts the concept of usefulness and leads to new ways of understanding something outside of its prescribed function.

Seen Unseen is a NURTUREart Emerging Curators' Program Collaboration. Directions to NURTUREart Gallery and Emerging Curators' Resource Center: L train to the Grand Street stop. From the exit walk one block east of Bushwick Avenue (past the school) on Grand Street. Look for the NURTUREart Banner at 910 Grand Street, just after the traffic light at Waterbury Street. The gallery is open Thursday through Monday from 12-6. NURTUREart Non-Profit is a 501(c)3 registered charitable organization founded in 1997 by George J. Robinson. NURTUREart is committed to nurturing emerging artists and curators through exposure, enrichment and opportunity. It is funded in part by the Leibovitz Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, and the Milton and Sally Avery Foundation. We appreciate their support.

NurtureArt
475 Keap St., Ground Floor (Williamsburg, Brooklyn) - New York

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