calendario eventi  :: 

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8/5/2008

Two exhibitions

Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis

JOHN ARMLEDER and
OLIVIER MOSSET

alongside

THE FRONT ROOM
Ei Arakawa, Alex Hubbard and Oscar Tuazon, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Jan Estep, Max Schumann, Vlatka Horvat and Eva Weinmayr, Ed Fella, Brent Green, Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, and Dexter Sinister, co-operators.


JOHN ARMLEDER and OLIVIER MOSSET

The Contemporary is proud to present an ambitious exhibition with John Armleder and Olivier Mosset, two of the most influential artists working today, and whose work remains under-recognized in the United States. This widely anticipated exhibition—the inaugural show of the Contemporary’s new curatorial team—introduces the museum’s newest program of exhibitions, publications and events. The exhibition will be on view from May 9 to August 3, 2008.

Signaling its commitment to artist-centered exhibitions, the Contemporary will hand over its galleries to Armleder and Mosset. Jointly conceived by the artists—who have been close for more than twenty years—the exhibition represents neither a curated two-person show nor two independent solo exhibitions, but an active juxtaposition of parallel (and opposite) artistic approaches. Proposing a guiding metaphor of artworks that act as obstacles, and obstacles that act as artworks, the artists will present an installation specifically designed for the museum’s main galleries. Armleder will contribute new pour and pattern paintings, a site-specific 45-foot wall-painting, and an installation of mylar Christmas trees. Mosset, in addition to a series of his infamous “circle paintings” from the 1960s, will present a large-scale installation of several dozen Toblerones, large cardboard sculptures based on anti-tank structures used by the Swiss army.

John Armleder has produced thousands of sculptures, paintings, drawings, books, and staged performances, creating an art of impenetrable surfaces and too much information. Inspired by the Warholian predict that omnipresence is a form of absence, the artist constructs an all-encompassing vocabulary that resists fixed identification. Collapsing categories, he allows pop culture to coexist with abstract formalism; he demands that sculpture align itself with interior design; and he elides the seductive and the trashy. His wallpaper works, drawings, furniture, and overwhelming mixed media installation of scaffolding, televisions, trees, plants, and stuffed animals create an intense proximity between art and decorative design, defying hierarchies and disrupting traditional distinctions between the unique and the generic.

Olivier Mosset, on the other hand, chooses to remain firmly committed to blank abstraction. Following Frank Stella, where empty canvases become fields of infinite reflections, Mosset’s uncompromising aesthetic presents the viewer with nothing to look at, and therefore, with everything to consider. From his “circle paintings”(1966-72), to his appropriations of Daniel Buren’s striped canvases (1973-77), to his most recent monochromes, the artist has continued to express the death, if not the inherent failure, of painting as a meaning-making gesture. Stripped of any identifiable “content,” Mosset’s painting insists on its own autonomy and operates outside of consensus, expectations, or external authorities. Mosset’s decelerated process presents a powerful political stance against our conventional notions of progress and insatiable hunger for the new.

One of the most urgent and relevant directions taken by conceptual art today is its struggle to remain potent within, and despite, late capitalism’s omnivorous information economy. In a post-punk and post-Fordist landscape, faced with relentless information-circulation and endless image-production, many contemporary artists search for ways to defy pre-determined spaces of production and reflection and instead open up spaces for independence and radicality. In this information-saturated climate, John Armleder and Olivier Mosset find opposite escape routes. If Armleder’s gregarious pop ultimately offers a slippery surface of emptied, generic icons, and if Mosset’s unyielding economy is in fact an anti-authoritative act of limitless agency, these two practices transform affirmation into a form of refusal, and vice-versa. In the end, the work of Armleder and Mosset compromises our ability to distinguish “yes” from “no.”

John Armleder & Olivier Mosset is curated by Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis Chief Curator Anthony Huberman. An artist-made publication will accompany the exhibition and be published the summer of 2008.

John Armleder and Olivier Mosset is supported Swiss Re, Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council, and Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation. The publication is supported by Zane Bennett Contemporary Art, Santa Fe. Special thanks to Galerie Andrea Caratsch, Zürich.


THE FRONT ROOM / short exhibitions by artists and others

Running alongside and in contrast with the Main Galleries, The Front Room operates at a different rhythm, with exhibitions lasting anywhere from a day to a few weeks. The Front Room is designed for more reactive, nimble, and experimental exhibitions that test the boundaries of conventional programming and echo the elasticity and simultaneity of contemporary culture. Rooted in a spirit of open and provisional improvisation, the gallery connects the work of a wide range of artists in a restless series of installations, screenings, performances, interventions, and other forms of presentation. By also offering a series of “carte blanches,” this new initiative creates a space of occupation, within the museum’s own walls, for artist-run spaces, cooperatives, artists, curators, and other independent voices from around the world.

The upcoming Front Room season features projects by:
Ei Arakawa (May 9 - 25), Alex Hubbard and Oscar Tuazon (May 27 - June 8), Gardar Eide Einarsson (June 10 - 22), Jan Estep (June 14 - 15), Max Schumann (June 24 - July 6), Vlatka Horvat and Eva Weinmayr (July 8 - 18), Ed Fella, with guest-curator Bruce Burton (July 19 - 25), Brent Green (July 26 - August 10), Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT (August 12 - 31); and Dexter Sinister, co-operators (ongoing).

General Support for the Contemporary’s exhibition program is generously provided by the Whitaker Foundation; William E. Weiss Foundation; Regional Arts Commission; Arts and Education Council, Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; Nancy Reynolds and Dwyer Brown, and members of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.

CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM ST. LOUIS
With a vision of presenting the most relevant and experimental developments in contemporary art and developing successful community partnerships, education programs and outreach initiatives, the Contemporary makes the arts available to wide and diverse audiences throughout the St. Louis metropolitan area. Founded as the Forum for Contemporary Art in 1980, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis re-opened with a new 25,000 square-foot building in 2003.

Press contact
Jennifer Gaby, Manager of Public Relations, Marketing, and Events
314.535.0770 x215 or jennifer.gaby@contemporarystl.org

Opening May 9

The Contemporary Art Museum is located at 3750 Washington Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63108, and is located on the corner of Spring and Washington.

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