Pictures from the Moon
dal 4/7/2012 al 29/9/2012
Segnalato da
4/7/2012
Pictures from the Moon
New Museum, New York
Artists' Holograms 1969-2008. In the current age of techno-dependency, the exhibition offers a view of the persistent attempts by artists to wrest something more from technology than that for which it was invented. It celebrates an alternative history of virtually unknown images by artists experimenting on the edge of visual technology and features works by Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, Bruce Nauman, Eric Orr, Ed Ruscha and James Turrell.
curated by Jenny Moore
New York, NY...In conjunction with the Museum-wide
summer exhibition “Ghosts in the Machine,” the New
Museum will present “Pictures from the Moon” in the
Lobby Gallery, which will feature a focused selection of
holograms from the 1960s to the present by several
leading, contemporary artists. The 1960s ushered in new
technologies and new frontiers for image production. The
development of laser technology in 1962 enabled the
creation of holograms that displayed three-dimensional
images on a two-dimensional surface. Artists were drawn
to holography, hailed as a medium of the future that
turned space inside out, for its spatial, volumetric, and
sequential qualities, and to the creative possibilities it
offered in contrast to photography, film, and early video.
“Pictures from the Moon”—its title inspired by photographs
of earth taken by astronauts on the first mission to the moon that also expanded our way of seeing—
celebrates an alternative history of virtually unknown images by artists experimenting on the edge of
visual technology.
“Pictures from the Moon: Artists’ Holograms 1969–2008” will be on view from July 5–September 30,
2012, and is curated by Jenny Moore, Assistant Curator.
One of the earliest pioneers in the holographic medium is Bruce Nauman, whose holograms from the
late 1960s furthered the physical manipulations and explorations of the body as a medium that he was
conducting at the time. Nauman produced two sets of holograms between 1968 and 1969. The second
set displays his body compressed, coerced, and contorted into the picture plane. “Pictures from the
Moon” will include Nauman’s Hologram H from the “Second Hologram Series: Full Figure Poses (A-J)”
(1969), marking one of the first times this work has been shown in New York.
A surprising number of established artists soon followed with experimentations in holography that have
continued over the last four decades. Artists as diverse as Louise Bourgeois, Eric Orr, Ed Ruscha,
and James Turrell have all made holographic works that draw on the medium’s ability to replicate three-
dimensionality and deep space to expand upon themes they so successfully mined in other formats. The
haunting, domestic objects and sinister interiors that define Bourgeois’s work appear wholly present in her
untitled holograms from 1998. In Ed Ruscha’s series of holograms produced the same year, the phrase
“The End” floats at various depths in the picture plane, set against animated lines scratched into a celluloid
surface, and offering a new twist on the interplay between text, landscape, and spatial representation for
which Ruscha is known. Eric Orr and James Turrell, in whose works light and space function as artistic
mediums, both created holograms that synthesize color, shape, illumination, and form. Turrell, who has
made an extensive body of holographic work and who continues to work in the medium pushing it forward
into challenging new realms, produced the largest and most recent hologram in the exhibition.
In this current age of techno-dependency, “Pictures from the Moon” offers a view of the persistent attempts
by artists to wrest something more from technology than that for which it was invented. As advancements
in 3-D technologies are demonstrated in new formats of television and film production, the enduring
hologram continues to mesmerize by expanding the artistic and visual fields that lay before our eyes.
Exhibition Support
“Pictures from the Moon” is made possible, in part, by the Producers Council of the New Museum.
About the New Museum
The New Museum is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art. Founded
in 1977, the New Museum is a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists
from around the world. From its beginnings as a one-room office on Hudson Street to the inauguration of
its first freestanding building on the Bowery designed by SANAA in 2007, the New Museum continues to
be a place of ongoing experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.
Image: Bruce Nauman, Hologram H from “Second Hologram Series: Full Figure Poses (A-J),” 1969. Holographic image on glass, 10 x 8 in (20.3 x 25.4 cm). © 2012 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Reproduction, including downloading of Nauman works is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
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