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29/4/2009

International Art Affairs 2009

Moderno 1939, Washington

Postconceptualism
Curated by Mark Cameron Boyd and Fernando Batista

Postconceptualism addresses art theories as posed by the original conceptual artists in a selection of contemporary artists. Artists selected for this show individually approach many significant issues of conceptualism, albeit through their own unique visions. 12 of the 16 artists in Postconceptualism have studied art theory with Mark Cameron Boyd at Corcoran College of Art + Design and many have exhibited work with Fernando Batista. Together, Boyd and Batista believe this exhibition presents 21st Century artists whose work extends conceptual art and continues its impact as Postconceptualism.

Conceptual art questioned the traditional role of the art object as conveyer of meaning. The subsequent dematerialization of the object results in artists exploring impermanent media and creating ephemeral experiences in time and space. Mr. Mooskoo addresses intangibility by making fragile works that reduce concepts of “painting as object” to the fragility of paint minus its support. Ken Weathersby’s paintings reveal “the disregarded space” behind a painting’s support in two-sided paintings which “require(s) a deciphering experience” to perceive them. Reuben Breslar’s photographs of previous installations comment “on the residue of the process of conceptualism” by circumventing the spatio-temporal context of the original experience. Valerie Molnar works with yarn to make large formalist abstractions, “stripping away form, function, gratuitous yarn textures, ulterior fancy stitchery” to escape knitting’s history as functional craft. Amber Landis blurs the distinctions between fine art and utilitarian function further with her sculptural furniture.

When not avoiding object-making, conceptual art emphasizes repetition and process as non-traditional, anti-compositional ways to manifest the form of a work of art. The drawing by William Brovelli is a fragment of his on-going “Timeline” series about “the deterministic element of art making” that encompasses hundreds of thousands of hand-drawn figures that “serve as reference material for the neurological mapping of the brain's response to repetition within a narrowed format.”

Conceptual art is particularly suspicious of art works becoming commercial “product” and frequently disrupts this commodification in subversive ways. David Williams re-contextualizes the “commercial artifice” of product containers in his “paintings” of recycled soda cans and “places the viewer in the ironic position of appreciating the beauty of objects that were originally used to psychologically entice her or him to purchase and consume.”

Questioning authorship through collaborative art making also opens up participatory practice. Cat Manolis offers us her interactive sculpture that will envelop one-at-a-time participants in an experience of anxious self-reflexivity.

Conceptual artists venture into other fields of knowledge like psychoanalysis and anthropology to address identity issues and socio-cultural studies. Patricia Correa investigates “self-portraiture” and the social construction of female identity through medical statistics, specifically gynecological data that “represent(s) the life of a woman in terms of her menstrual cycles.” Rachel Fick’s narrative video ostensibly documents a generic American family but instead reveals the possibilities of “slippage between the manifested character and the participant's real self."

Language holds a specific (and humorous) fascination for conceptual art as semiotics opened possibilities for the work of art as text. Leah Frankel “replaces(s) text with imagery” through her transformation of a shelf of paperback books visually; Diane Blackwell searches “the basics of language and sculpture: letters and wood” for the elusive meaning among “definitions of work and play;” while Andrej Ujhazy offers “a silly post-conceptual wall drawing about a couple of words.”

Humor is also used in conceptual art’s critique on art history itself and conceptualists often comment on their peers with great wit. Breht O’Hearn’s ironic twist on the totemic in modernist sculpture skillfully pokes fun at the pedestal. Andrew Brown critiques minimalism with his “Tara Donovan reduction experience” and a small monochrome that claims “it's better when you’re not here.” Coincidentally, two Postconceptualism artists have used humor to address differing issues through the same object: a fire hydrant. John James Anderson exhibits a mapping project of bad fire hydrants in the District of Columbia, while Nicholas Carr has created a hydrant “fountain.” Anderson’s work clearly evokes social responsibility given his intent to prod city government into action by “document(ing) the broken hydrants, and later document the walk via a Google Map and an essay.” Nicholas Carr wittily refers to both Marcel Duchamp and Bruce Nauman with his hydrant that confronts creativity as a “state of emergency.”
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Video as Video: Rewind To Form
Curated by Alicia Eler and Peregrine Honig

Nine international artists explore the use of painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, animation and Internet-based coding languages through video art. With this showing of work, we ask a question that challenges art history's rich past: In an increasingly digital world, will videos one day replace paintings?

In Reseed (2007), ROB CARTER (born in Worcester, UK, lives and works in Brooklyn, New York), compresses nine weeks of plant growth into nine crisp minutes. Placing this wild breeding ground inside the Wimbledon tennis stadiums, Carter's manmade "reseeding" presents a surreal world gurgling with household plants that grow endlessly, enveloping everything in their path. Recent exhibitions include Landscaping at Galería Fruella in Madrid, Spain, Paper City at Mixed Greens in New York and This Modern World at General Electric in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Contemporary Korean art represents through the husband-and-wife team MIOON, comprised of Seoul-based Min Kim and Moon Choi, who create a larger collective consciousness with their video documentation of Human Stream (2005), originally installed at Kunstmuseum Berlin. Two giant heads covered in feathers occupy space in a large gallery hall. As the video begins, tiny people begin streaming in, covering the enormous structures and, ultimately, suggesting a mergence of all people regardless of perceived differences. Recent solo exhibitions include Gana Forum Space in Seoul, Korea; Gallery Ruth Leuchter in Duesseldorf, Germany; and Gallery of CEAAC in Strasbourg, France.

ABHISHEK HAZRA's (b. 1972, lives and works in Bangalore, India) Codework (2006) examines issues surrounding PHP, a computer scripting language originally designed for use with dynamic webpages but now used in command line interface. Hazra looks at specific functions, which can be created and defined inside code blocks, and are used for time-based decision-making. Codework gently personifies them, following them until they fizzle out and die. Recent groups shows include First Left, Second Right at Thomas Erben Gallery, New York. Hazra is represented by GALLERYSKE in Bangalore, India.

Chicago-born, Los Angeles-based JULIE ORSER's (b. 1974 in Chicago; lives and works in Los Angeles), Double Bind (Anna Moore), 2007, takes video art into film history, probing female archetypes in the film noir and melodrama genres. Her character, Anna Moore, is caught between the two genres, constantly searching for herself. Instead, she ends up in a seemingly disjointed dimension, creating a triple entendre for the viewer. Orser's recent solo exhibitions include Anna Moore at Changing Role Gallery in Rome, Italy; Anna Moore at Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles; and Anna Moore at Philip Feldman Gallery in Portland, Oregon.

LUANA PERILLI (b. Rome, 1981, lives and works in Rome and Paris) meditates on memory, language and storytelling using video and hand-painted frames. In W Titina! (2005), the artist projects video vignettes into two hanging frames. On the right-hand side, Perilli's grandmother recites a popular cake recipe—the sort of recipe that is a "familiar secret," something shared by families from all different cultures. As Perilli's grandmother fumbles through the recipe, reading off of cards, questioning the camera's presence, and recalling memories, the video on the neighboring frame meanders through the grandmother's home, abstracting otherwise familiar objects, and telling the grandmother's story through them. Her recent solo exhibitions include Tattile Duttile, V.M.21 artecontemporanea in Rome and "Why?" at The Gallery Apart presso Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome. Perilli is represented by the Gallery Apart in Rome, Italy.

Taking the scope back to country-specific issues, TARAS POLATAIKO (born in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, lives and works in Vancouver and New York) draws inspiration from his childhood in Soviet Ukraine to create "Kyiv Classical" (2007). When he was growing up, Ukrainian was spoken only by people in villages and by intellectuals who rebelled against the loss of language and identity. In this video, Polataiko visits the Four Tower Building in the center of the German city of Bad Ems. He plans to place a bird from Kyiv inside of the room where Czar Alexander II signed the edict prohibiting the Ukrainian language. The bird sings songs without words, paralleling the actual historical edict. Recent exhibitions include solo exhibitions at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art in New York and Point of Origin at Artspace in Sydney, Australia. Forthcoming solo shows include Galerie U7 in Frankfurt, Germany. Polataiko is represented by Priska C. Juschka Fine Art in New York, where he lives and works.

In 2007, 2nd Cannons Publications published Québec-born, L.A.-based JULIE LEQUIN's first book and DVD project, The Ice Skating Tree Opéra: Director's Cuts as a Book. A documentation of a performance art piece interspersed with Lequin's own musings on being a Canadian living and working in the U.S., the compilation follows the artist on a whimsical journey that merges art and life. For the show, we selected a track from the book's DVD entitled "Gossips." Lequin lives and works in Los Angeles.

ROCHELLE FEINSTEIN paints disco balls onto vintage televisions, evoking both nostalgia for the 1970s and a call to arms regarding rapidly evolving technology. As static flickers, the screen transforms into the illusion of a spinning disco ball. The news, soap operas, game shows, or other shows appear behind the disco ball screen, they instantly become vintage. But on June 12, 2009, when they end of analog finally strikes, will Feinstein's televisions become obsolete? Feinstein recently exhibited solo shows at Momenta Art in Brooklyn, New York, and The Suburban, Chicago. She teaches in the Yale University Painting Department, and lives and works in New York City.

JAMES GULLIVER HANCOCK's promotional video for LENKA is a heartfelt, though worrisome, animated short for the song "We Will Not Grow Old." As the sole music video in the show, this piece questions distinctions between "video art" and pop culture. James works commercially and independently; recent clients include publishers Simon & Schuster and others.
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TENSION Iranian Artists Reflect on
Curated by Hedieh Ilchi and Fernando Batista

TENSION: At a time of escalating global tension, especially cultural and political antagonisms of East and West, it is vital to pause and reflect on a similitude that brings us closer together as humans: the need for freedom of expression.

The troubling trait of censorship in Iran puts a damper on the flourishing of artistic ambitions of the Iranian youth. The silencing of artistic expression ebbs and flows under the ever shifting rules and regulations of the official radar. This lack of freedom of expression forces many Iranian artists to either suppress or codify their work of art or to seek refuge in other countries in order to self express freely.

Tension unites two Iranian women artists who in separate but interconnected artistic paths explore issues of identity as a collective and personal phenomenon.

Roshanak Tehrani, while residing in Tehran, investigates human behavior and sexuality in her series of diptych photographs. Through careful documentations and observations, she finds parallel connections between eating habits and sexual identity.

Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi, as an Iranian immigrant explores issues of identity as a hybrid, fluid, and fluctuating phenomenon. Through her paintings, Hedieh seeks a collective language that is neither personal nor cultural but somewhere in-between. The dichotomy of her Eastern and Western experiences enables Hedieh to explore and push artistic and gender -related boundaries of the two cultures.

Moderno 1939
12th Street and U Streets Washington
Opening Thursday, April 30, 2009 6:30 – 10 pm

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