Tagged installation:

Survival motifs haunt ceramic sculpture exhibit.
Mary McKenzie, Adaptations: Gestures of Survival is in the lobby of the Gardiner Museum, 111 Queen’s park, Toronto, Ontario, until July 10, 2011 
Mary McKenzie incorporates unusual materials into her ceramic sculptures. She dips plants, stuffed toys and other materials in clay and fires them in the kiln. Her figurative pieces on bricks reflect her personal observations on how people adapt to survive. “Clay’s unique ability to be reshaped gives it the tendency to slump in response to gravity. I often insert wires as a means of keeping the clay vertical while it dries. Metal, clay and glaze expand and contract at different rates, which may cause cracks or limbs to break. I love that clay comes with the unexpected as well as the innate contradictions of strength and fragility. I embrace this as content in my work.”
Jun 21
Survival motifs haunt ceramic sculpture exhibit. Mary McKenzie, Adaptations: Gestures of Survival is in the lobby of the Gardiner Museum, 111 Queen’s park, Toronto, Ontario, until July 10, 2011 Mary McKenzie incorporates unusual materials into her ceramic sculptures. She dips plants, stuffed toys and other materials in clay and fires them in the kiln. Her figurative pieces on bricks reflect her personal observations on how people adapt to survive. “Clay’s unique ability to be reshaped gives it the tendency to slump in response to gravity. I often insert wires as a means of keeping the clay vertical while it dries. Metal, clay and glaze expand and contract at different rates, which may cause cracks or limbs to break. I love that clay comes with the unexpected as well as the innate contradictions of strength and fragility. I embrace this as content in my work.”

Japanese artist SASAKI working on Heartbeat Drawing project.
May 13
Japanese artist SASAKI working on Heartbeat Drawing project.

On Thursday April 28 Miriam Simun transforms the exterior of Michael Mut Gallery into The Lady Cheese Shop, inviting visitors inside to sample Human Cheese, cheese made from human milk.  Inside the gallery is an exploration of the complex and messy truth of what it means to make food from human body products.  Visitors will move from the imaginary fantasy of such a proposal to the very real process of procuring virus-free human milk, and turning it into cheese.  Three delicious different human cheeses will be available (made from the milk of three different women), accented with food pairings inspired by the terroir of each cheese, created in collaboration with Chef Sarah Hymanson.  Over cheese and wine participants will be invited to consider and discuss this immodest proposal.

The Human Cheese Project raises questions about the ways in which biotechnology transforms the possibilities of the human body as a site of production and commodity, through a radical reframing of the possibilities of urban food production.  Technologies that make use of the body in strange and intimate ways come to be accepted by societies and markets for their life-giving promises.  Amidst a very real crisis of our food systems, the use of hyper-local reproductive human excess located here in New York City offers a real possibility to ‘give life.’  By inviting participants to taste human cheese, Simun appeals to the full range of human senses to consider this proposal.  

Apr 17
On Thursday April 28 Miriam Simun transforms the exterior of Michael Mut Gallery into The Lady Cheese Shop, inviting visitors inside to sample Human Cheese, cheese made from human milk.  Inside the gallery is an exploration of the complex and messy truth of what it means to make food from human body products.  Visitors will move from the imaginary fantasy of such a proposal to the very real process of procuring virus-free human milk, and turning it into cheese.  Three delicious different human cheeses will be available (made from the milk of three different women), accented with food pairings inspired by the terroir of each cheese, created in collaboration with Chef Sarah Hymanson.  Over cheese and wine participants will be invited to consider and discuss this immodest proposal. The Human Cheese Project raises questions about the ways in which biotechnology transforms the possibilities of the human body as a site of production and commodity, through a radical reframing of the possibilities of urban food production.  Technologies that make use of the body in strange and intimate ways come to be accepted by societies and markets for their life-giving promises.  Amidst a very real crisis of our food systems, the use of hyper-local reproductive human excess located here in New York City offers a real possibility to ‘give life.’  By inviting participants to taste human cheese, Simun appeals to the full range of human senses to consider this proposal.  

Art PR Wire

Posted on Wednesday September 21st 2011 at 05:07pm. Its tags are listed below.

Still Counting …                          Sept. 11 - Dec 3 2011                                                   Reception Friday Oct. 21, 6-8pm Installation created by Michael Mut Beginning in 2004, “…and counting…” was my reaction to the violence and murder of the devastating incidents of 9/11 and the ongoing reports of death in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was an opportunity to put myself and others through the tough questions that surround violence and murder.  I arrived at a conundrum: “I am opposed to killing and war, I love my country, but my government wages war… I pay taxes, and those dollars are used for warfare…I am ultimately inextricably connected to the whole process. I am killing innocent people with my money” “…still counting…” expands my focus to include all acts of murder committed around the globe. To commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I’ll begin the next phase of the installation in New York City.  I’ll place tagged mummies in various locations throughout the city, and I invite you to find and follow these objects to my website for more information and opportunities for participation. From September to December 2011, Michael Mut Gallery will host an installation exposing the horrors of genocide.  Over 9000 mummies in heaps and piles confront the insanity of murder.  New mummies will be created daily to commemorate the murders that take place every day around the globe. 
Still Counting …                          Sept. 11 - Dec 3 2011                                                   Reception Friday Oct. 21, 6-8pm Installation created by Michael Mut Beginning in 2004, “…and counting…” was my reaction to the violence and murder of the devastating incidents of 9/11 and the ongoing reports of death in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was an opportunity to put myself and others through the tough questions that surround violence and murder.  I arrived at a conundrum: “I am opposed to killing and war, I love my country, but my government wages war… I pay taxes, and those dollars are used for warfare…I am ultimately inextricably connected to the whole process. I am killing innocent people with my money” “…still counting…” expands my focus to include all acts of murder committed around the globe. To commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I’ll begin the next phase of the installation in New York City.  I’ll place tagged mummies in various locations throughout the city, and I invite you to find and follow these objects to my website for more information and opportunities for participation. From September to December 2011, Michael Mut Gallery will host an installation exposing the horrors of genocide.  Over 9000 mummies in heaps and piles confront the insanity of murder.  New mummies will be created daily to commemorate the murders that take place every day around the globe. 

Still Counting …                          Sept. 11 - Dec 3 2011

                                                  Reception Friday Oct. 21, 6-8pm

Installation created by Michael Mut

Beginning in 2004, “…and counting…” was my reaction to the violence and murder of the devastating incidents of 9/11 and the ongoing reports of death in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was an opportunity to put myself and others through the tough questions that surround violence and murder.  I arrived at a conundrum: “I am opposed to killing and war, I love my country, but my government wages war… I pay taxes, and those dollars are used for warfare…I am ultimately inextricably connected to the whole process. I am killing innocent people with my money”

“…still counting…” expands my focus to include all acts of murder committed around the globe.

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I’ll begin the next phase of the installation in New York City.  I’ll place tagged mummies in various locations throughout the city, and I invite you to find and follow these objects to my website for more information and opportunities for participation.

From September to December 2011, Michael Mut Gallery will host an installation exposing the horrors of genocide.  Over 9000 mummies in heaps and piles confront the insanity of murder.  New mummies will be created daily to commemorate the murders that take place every day around the globe. 


Art PR Wire

Posted on Friday September 9th 2011 at 06:31pm. Its tags are listed below.

Thursday September 8 - October 1, 2011Curated by Andréa Picard16mm anamorphic film, 45 minutesSlow Action will be screened every hour at 12:00 | 1:00 | 2:00 | 3:00 | 4:00 pmPresented in collaboration with the Future Projections program of the Toronto International Film Festival.Note special hours for this exhibition during the film festival only: open every day, September 8 –18, 2011 from 12:00 - 5:00 pm.A heady mix of lingering beauty and offbeat humour, Ben Rivers’ four-part, 16mm film, Slow Action extends the artist’s interest in hermetic, rural existence by investigating four parallel worlds in an ostensibly utopian, post-apocalyptic universe. Media ContactKim SimonCurator
Thursday September 8 - October 1, 2011Curated by Andréa Picard16mm anamorphic film, 45 minutesSlow Action will be screened every hour at 12:00 | 1:00 | 2:00 | 3:00 | 4:00 pmPresented in collaboration with the Future Projections program of the Toronto International Film Festival.Note special hours for this exhibition during the film festival only: open every day, September 8 –18, 2011 from 12:00 - 5:00 pm.A heady mix of lingering beauty and offbeat humour, Ben Rivers’ four-part, 16mm film, Slow Action extends the artist’s interest in hermetic, rural existence by investigating four parallel worlds in an ostensibly utopian, post-apocalyptic universe. Media ContactKim SimonCurator

Thursday September 8 - October 1, 2011
Curated by Andréa Picard
16mm anamorphic film, 45 minutes
Slow Action will be screened every hour at 12:00 | 1:00 | 2:00 | 3:00 | 4:00 pm

Presented in collaboration with the Future Projections program of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Note special hours for this exhibition during the film festival only: open every day, September 8 –18, 2011 from 12:00 - 5:00 pm.

A heady mix of lingering beauty and offbeat humour, Ben Rivers’ four-part, 16mm film, Slow Action extends the artist’s interest in hermetic, rural existence by investigating four parallel worlds in an ostensibly utopian, post-apocalyptic universe.

Media Contact
Kim Simon
Curator

Art PR Wire

Posted on Wednesday September 7th 2011 at 03:30pm. Its tags are listed below.

Press Release for You First You First at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, October 1 through October 29. Opening night reception 5:00 p.m. Performances begin at 7:00 p.m. For more information visit www.occca.org and www.uforafest.com. OCCCA is open Thursdays and Sundays from noon to 5:00 p.m and until 9:00 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays. Located at 117 N. Sycamore, Santa Ana, California, in the Santa Ana Artists’ Village. Contact: Rob Mintz or Dalibor Polivka , Email:uforafest@yahoo.com   Ph: 714.667.1517  Artists Rob Mintz and Dalibor Polivka present You First, an exhibit arriving with more than fifty attractions! Dive into the think tank if you dare! Featuring young partisans of the real from the nation’s top schools —-  plus a cadre of international art luminaries* —- You First presents authentic & genuine Relational Aesthetics: art in the here and now! See it, feel it, think it through! The great dream belongs to everyone! Glimpse the new paradigm. It’s no longer business as usual. (Exhibit may contain language not suitable for children under eighteen years of age.) See poets, slaves, soap-sellers, lovers, inmates, outcasts, scientists, city planners, a guy reading a newspaper, a woman in a tree! See artists, documentarians and photojournalists at the height of their game. Art is more than just another facet of life: it’s the name of a hope, reaffirming the social bond.  During the opening, choreographer Sheron Wray and her dance troupe will improvise interactively with the audience. On the same night, You First will present Zoe Gruni’s performance piece, Urban Jackalope, first seen at the Biennale di Venezia, plus the dance stylings of Derek Fleming of Soul Train fame. Milan Kovac, the Consulate General of the Slovak Republic, will present documentation of  Slovakia’s humanitarian aid in troubled regions of the world.  You First has received the kind endorsement of the French critic and curator Nicolas Bourriaud who coined the term, “relational aesthetics.”Another true art luminary, Alfredo Cramerotti, a UK-based artist, author and curator, represents himself with a collaborative blog and videos about the radical European art fair Manifesta. Best-selling social visionaries Michiel Schwarz & Joost Elffers’ will reveal new symbols for a sustainable future. NYC’s favorite rock and roll fashionista, Jordan Betten, will demonstrate how to dress for the party. Marc Pally, a high-power hyphenate, is both the artistic director of Glow (an all night event held in Santa Monica) and an LA-based artist showing sensitive, stylized drawings of a human face, wry, melancholy and somehow heroic. Max Presneill, mercurial director of the Torrance Art Museum, exhibits brooding, painterly explorations of cognition and experience. Arie Galles, a professor at Soka University, artist and gallery director, bears witness to the Holocaust in a series of large-scale drawings of maps and aerial photographs from military archives. Art collectives are a fascinating phenomenon —- and there is none more elusive than Finishing School, masters of street-smart provocation.  The artists in You First are graduates of the most prestigious art programs in the nation, among them Art Center, Art Institute of Chicago, Cal Arts, California College of the Arts, Cornell, Cranbrook, Harvard, Mills College, MIT, New York Academy of Art, Otis, Rhode Island School of Design, Rutgers, San Francisco Academy of Art, and Yale. The participants in You First come from the United States, Italy, France, England, Sweden, and Slovakia, nomadic citizens of the planet Art. A complete exposition about You First, the ideas and personalities that shaped it —- and the Ufora project in general —- will be unpacked in a forthcoming book by the curators. * The art luminaries include: Base Design, Jordan Betten, Nicolas Bourriaud, Finishing School, Derek Fleming, Arie Galles, Zoe Gruni, Milos Koptak, Marc Pally, Max Presneill, Michiel Schwarz & Joost Elffers, Karen Smith & Ida Hledikova,  Stealthart,  Wolfgang Steahle, Ta Tu, and Sheron Wray.
Press Release for You First You First at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, October 1 through October 29. Opening night reception 5:00 p.m. Performances begin at 7:00 p.m. For more information visit www.occca.org and www.uforafest.com. OCCCA is open Thursdays and Sundays from noon to 5:00 p.m and until 9:00 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays. Located at 117 N. Sycamore, Santa Ana, California, in the Santa Ana Artists’ Village. Contact: Rob Mintz or Dalibor Polivka , Email:uforafest@yahoo.com   Ph: 714.667.1517  Artists Rob Mintz and Dalibor Polivka present You First, an exhibit arriving with more than fifty attractions! Dive into the think tank if you dare! Featuring young partisans of the real from the nation’s top schools —-  plus a cadre of international art luminaries* —- You First presents authentic & genuine Relational Aesthetics: art in the here and now! See it, feel it, think it through! The great dream belongs to everyone! Glimpse the new paradigm. It’s no longer business as usual. (Exhibit may contain language not suitable for children under eighteen years of age.) See poets, slaves, soap-sellers, lovers, inmates, outcasts, scientists, city planners, a guy reading a newspaper, a woman in a tree! See artists, documentarians and photojournalists at the height of their game. Art is more than just another facet of life: it’s the name of a hope, reaffirming the social bond.  During the opening, choreographer Sheron Wray and her dance troupe will improvise interactively with the audience. On the same night, You First will present Zoe Gruni’s performance piece, Urban Jackalope, first seen at the Biennale di Venezia, plus the dance stylings of Derek Fleming of Soul Train fame. Milan Kovac, the Consulate General of the Slovak Republic, will present documentation of  Slovakia’s humanitarian aid in troubled regions of the world.  You First has received the kind endorsement of the French critic and curator Nicolas Bourriaud who coined the term, “relational aesthetics.”Another true art luminary, Alfredo Cramerotti, a UK-based artist, author and curator, represents himself with a collaborative blog and videos about the radical European art fair Manifesta. Best-selling social visionaries Michiel Schwarz & Joost Elffers’ will reveal new symbols for a sustainable future. NYC’s favorite rock and roll fashionista, Jordan Betten, will demonstrate how to dress for the party. Marc Pally, a high-power hyphenate, is both the artistic director of Glow (an all night event held in Santa Monica) and an LA-based artist showing sensitive, stylized drawings of a human face, wry, melancholy and somehow heroic. Max Presneill, mercurial director of the Torrance Art Museum, exhibits brooding, painterly explorations of cognition and experience. Arie Galles, a professor at Soka University, artist and gallery director, bears witness to the Holocaust in a series of large-scale drawings of maps and aerial photographs from military archives. Art collectives are a fascinating phenomenon —- and there is none more elusive than Finishing School, masters of street-smart provocation.  The artists in You First are graduates of the most prestigious art programs in the nation, among them Art Center, Art Institute of Chicago, Cal Arts, California College of the Arts, Cornell, Cranbrook, Harvard, Mills College, MIT, New York Academy of Art, Otis, Rhode Island School of Design, Rutgers, San Francisco Academy of Art, and Yale. The participants in You First come from the United States, Italy, France, England, Sweden, and Slovakia, nomadic citizens of the planet Art. A complete exposition about You First, the ideas and personalities that shaped it —- and the Ufora project in general —- will be unpacked in a forthcoming book by the curators. * The art luminaries include: Base Design, Jordan Betten, Nicolas Bourriaud, Finishing School, Derek Fleming, Arie Galles, Zoe Gruni, Milos Koptak, Marc Pally, Max Presneill, Michiel Schwarz & Joost Elffers, Karen Smith & Ida Hledikova,  Stealthart,  Wolfgang Steahle, Ta Tu, and Sheron Wray.

Press Release for You First

You First at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, October 1 through October 29. Opening night reception 5:00 p.m. Performances begin at 7:00 p.m. For more information visit www.occca.org and www.uforafest.com. OCCCA is open Thursdays and Sundays from noon to 5:00 p.m and until 9:00 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays. Located at 117 N. Sycamore, Santa Ana, California, in the Santa Ana Artists’ Village. Contact: Rob Mintz or Dalibor Polivka , Email:uforafest@yahoo.com   Ph: 714.667.1517 

Artists Rob Mintz and Dalibor Polivka present You First, an exhibit arriving with more than fifty attractions! Dive into the think tank if you dare! Featuring young partisans of the real from the nation’s top schools —-  plus a cadre of international art luminaries* —- You First presents authentic & genuine Relational Aesthetics: art in the here and now! See it, feel it, think it through! The great dream belongs to everyone! Glimpse the new paradigm. It’s no longer business as usual. (Exhibit may contain language not suitable for children under eighteen years of age.) See poets, slaves, soap-sellers, lovers, inmates, outcasts, scientists, city planners, a guy reading a newspaper, a woman in a tree! See artists, documentarians and photojournalists at the height of their game. Art is more than just another facet of life: it’s the name of a hope, reaffirming the social bond.  During the opening, choreographer Sheron Wray and her dance troupe will improvise interactively with the audience. On the same night, You First will present Zoe Gruni’s performance piece, Urban Jackalope, first seen at the Biennale di Venezia, plus the dance stylings of Derek Fleming of Soul Train fame. Milan Kovac, the Consulate General of the Slovak Republic, will present documentation of  Slovakia’s humanitarian aid in troubled regions of the world.  You First has received the kind endorsement of the French critic and curator Nicolas Bourriaud who coined the term, “relational aesthetics.”Another true art luminary, Alfredo Cramerotti, a UK-based artist, author and curator, represents himself with a collaborative blog and videos about the radical European art fair Manifesta. Best-selling social visionaries Michiel Schwarz & Joost Elffers’ will reveal new symbols for a sustainable future. NYC’s favorite rock and roll fashionista, Jordan Betten, will demonstrate how to dress for the party. Marc Pally, a high-power hyphenate, is both the artistic director of Glow (an all night event held in Santa Monica) and an LA-based artist showing sensitive, stylized drawings of a human face, wry, melancholy and somehow heroic. Max Presneill, mercurial director of the Torrance Art Museum, exhibits brooding, painterly explorations of cognition and experience. Arie Galles, a professor at Soka University, artist and gallery director, bears witness to the Holocaust in a series of large-scale drawings of maps and aerial photographs from military archives. Art collectives are a fascinating phenomenon —- and there is none more elusive than Finishing School, masters of street-smart provocation.  The artists in You First are graduates of the most prestigious art programs in the nation, among them Art Center, Art Institute of Chicago, Cal Arts, California College of the Arts, Cornell, Cranbrook, Harvard, Mills College, MIT, New York Academy of Art, Otis, Rhode Island School of Design, Rutgers, San Francisco Academy of Art, and Yale. The participants in You First come from the United States, Italy, France, England, Sweden, and Slovakia, nomadic citizens of the planet Art. A complete exposition about You First, the ideas and personalities that shaped it —- and the Ufora project in general —- will be unpacked in a forthcoming book by the curators.

* The art luminaries include: Base Design, Jordan Betten, Nicolas Bourriaud, Finishing School, Derek Fleming, Arie Galles, Zoe Gruni, Milos Koptak, Marc Pally, Max Presneill, Michiel Schwarz & Joost Elffers, Karen Smith & Ida Hledikova,  Stealthart,  Wolfgang Steahle, Ta Tu, and Sheron Wray.

Art PR Wire

Posted on Wednesday August 10th 2011 at 03:10am. Its tags are listed below.

September 8 – October 8, 2011 Opening Event: Thursday, September 8, 2011 6-8pm AC Institute 547 W. 27th St. #610 and the AC (Exit) Project Space New York, NY 10001 Graham Dunning: Loss Sheds a Light on What Remains “Loss sheds a light on what remains, and in that light all that we have and all that we have had glows more brightly still.”  - Michael Bywater, Lost Worlds. Sound is temporal and temporary; a reproduced sound recording is a physical, analogue approximation of a thing that once was. Hauntology can be defined as something which is simultaneously backwards- and forwards-looking. As Dunning’s first solo show outside the UK, this exhibition collates some early, non-site-specific works establishing these as some of the main themes in his practice. Untitled with Records and Hammer (2009) Viewers are invited to smash a vinyl record with a hammer, on a workbench. The diminishing pile of unbroken records and the growing amount of detritus form part of the installation. The records used were each carefully considered and bought by the artist in an attempt to become a professional DJ. As such it is a personally cathartic piece and an autodestructive rebirth, acting as a meditation on ambition and failure. Untitled (2008) Found bottles are hung at heights determined by the numbers on their bases, in an order prescribed by chance-determination; a corresponding composition consists of the pitched-down sound of each bottle being tapped, assigned to a note according to the same numbers. The work is the culmination of a pseudo-archaeological investigation through an imagined narrative, questioning the “objectivity” of an object. Stutter (2009) Visitors are invited to read into a microphone from a children’s book while wearing headphones: The sound from the microphone is delayed and fed back to the readers, causing them to stutter and slur their speech. The nostalgic use of a children’s story book clashes with the frustration of impeded reading. Chris Stockbridge: Relative Space, Son/Husband Relative Space looks at a family relationship shown in an expanded moment of time. It is made up of a series of still images extended with film editing software and looped. The still camera becomes a witness to time passing rather than the index of an event. The time which emanates in the work relates to the ‘crystal image’ described by Deleuze where the image somehow fuses the past of its subject with the present of its viewing. Yve Lomax has it as time escaping chronology which is uniquely rich with unlimited potential. ‘When the present is thrown into question an interval opens up in time …it is when the present of a moment splits and gapes open; when the present itself becomes an interval.’ (‘Sounding the event’ P94) Time is stretched and distorted in the repetition and resequencing of single frames. Elements of recognisable gestures trigger memory and take on disquieting echoes of the claustrophobia and frustration of family life. The viewer is held by the shifting gazes of the subjects replacing the viewpoint of the artist. It is a performance witnessed by her, played out under her gaze as wife and mother. A space between stillness and movement, between the photographic and cinematic, is created outside of time’s normally perceived linearity, where expectations of the narrative of family relationship are subverted. It is a time where thought slows and the mind might wander allowing the unconscious to surface and the possibility of new understanding of the familiar and familial to emerge.

September 8 – October 8, 2011

Opening Event: Thursday, September 8, 2011 6-8pm

AC Institute

547 W. 27th St. #610 and the AC (Exit) Project Space

New York, NY 10001

Graham Dunning: Loss Sheds a Light on What Remains

“Loss sheds a light on what remains, and in that light all that we have and all that we have had glows more brightly still.”

 - Michael Bywater, Lost Worlds.

Sound is temporal and temporary; a reproduced sound recording is a physical, analogue approximation of a thing that once was. Hauntology can be defined as something which is simultaneously backwards- and forwards-looking. As Dunning’s first solo show outside the UK, this exhibition collates some early, non-site-specific works establishing these as some of the main themes in his practice.

Untitled with Records and Hammer (2009)

Viewers are invited to smash a vinyl record with a hammer, on a workbench. The diminishing pile of unbroken records and the growing amount of detritus form part of the installation. The records used were each carefully considered and bought by the artist in an attempt to become a professional DJ. As such it is a personally cathartic piece and an autodestructive rebirth, acting as a meditation on ambition and failure.

Untitled (2008)

Found bottles are hung at heights determined by the numbers on their bases, in an order prescribed by chance-determination; a corresponding composition consists of the pitched-down sound of each bottle being tapped, assigned to a note according to the same numbers. The work is the culmination of a pseudo-archaeological investigation through an imagined narrative, questioning the “objectivity” of an object.

Stutter (2009)

Visitors are invited to read into a microphone from a children’s book while wearing headphones: The sound from the microphone is delayed and fed back to the readers, causing them to stutter and slur their speech. The nostalgic use of a children’s story book clashes with the frustration of impeded reading.

Chris Stockbridge: Relative Space, Son/Husband

Relative Space looks at a family relationship shown in an expanded moment of time. It is made up of a series of still images extended with film editing software and looped. The still camera becomes a witness to time passing rather than the index of an event.

The time which emanates in the work relates to the ‘crystal image’ described by Deleuze where the image somehow fuses the past of its subject with the present of its viewing. Yve Lomax has it as time escaping chronology which is uniquely rich with unlimited potential.

‘When the present is thrown into question an interval opens up in time …it is when the present of a moment splits and gapes open; when the present itself becomes an interval.’ (‘Sounding the event’ P94)

Time is stretched and distorted in the repetition and resequencing of single frames. Elements of recognisable gestures trigger memory and take on disquieting echoes of the claustrophobia and frustration of family life. The viewer is held by the shifting gazes of the subjects replacing the viewpoint of the artist. It is a performance witnessed by her, played out under her gaze as wife and mother.

A space between stillness and movement, between the photographic and cinematic, is created outside of time’s normally perceived linearity, where expectations of the narrative of family relationship are subverted. It is a time where thought slows and the mind might wander allowing the unconscious to surface and the possibility of new understanding of the familiar and familial to emerge.

Art PR Wire

Posted on Tuesday August 9th 2011 at 11:10pm. Its tags are listed below.

Gary DiBenedetto:  Sweat Equity September 8 – October 8, 2011 Opening Event: Thursday, September 8, 2011 6-8pm Exhibitions are free and open to the public.   Special Performances of Sweat Equity: Saturday, October 1, 2011 Doors open at 1pm, Performance begins at 3pm Thursday, October 6, 2011 Doors open at 7pm, Performance begins at 7:30pm Admission: $20   During his early years as a struggling musician, Gary DiBenedetto also worked as a carpenter. During this time, he began collecting antiques. Both of these pursuits cultivated an affinity for craftsmanship and history that have impacted his artistic endeavors. The past ten years have culminated with two solo electroacoustic composition CDs and numerous multimedia interactive installations. The original purpose of the antiques incorporated within DiBenedetto’s installations was to increase the efficiency and ease of everyday life. Foot pedals on sewing machines sped the process of garment-making. Hand-operated clothing agitators eliminated the need for washboards.  The artist’s neo-constructivist sculptures reconfigure these tools and bring them into an artistic forum. Each of DiBenedetto’s sculptures has a moving component, powered manually or by electric motors.  An audio processing feature brings the sound generated by these machines to life. As a result, the spectators are able to explore the operations of the many tools that comprise these sculptures. Sweat Equity (Performance) DiBenedetto has developed a performance to accompany his interactive installation.   Sweat Equity expresses outrage over the negative impact of capitalist exploitation as a means of production.  With an increasing globalized economy accompanied by ravenous consumption of natural resources, will we lose an opportunity to recognize the futility of capitalist pursuit and the need to change our direction and gain respect for the preservation of human dignity? Sweat Equity is a non verbal staged performance where dancers operate kinetic sculptures. Each sculpture is a machine that generates sound. Each dancer’s relationship to their sculpture becomes increasingly complex.  Tension is exemplified during a sequence of three acts. Each act presents changes in the actor’s physical appearance and operating procedures. An electroacoustic composition unfolds, increasing tension and directing the dancer’s actions. All proceeds from DiBenedetto’s interactive Coin Delivery System and donation box will be donated to Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen in Chelsea.   HOLY APOSTLES SOUP KITCHEN 296 Ninth AvenueNew York, New York 10001(212) 924-0167  
Gary DiBenedetto:  Sweat Equity September 8 – October 8, 2011 Opening Event: Thursday, September 8, 2011 6-8pm Exhibitions are free and open to the public.   Special Performances of Sweat Equity: Saturday, October 1, 2011 Doors open at 1pm, Performance begins at 3pm Thursday, October 6, 2011 Doors open at 7pm, Performance begins at 7:30pm Admission: $20   During his early years as a struggling musician, Gary DiBenedetto also worked as a carpenter. During this time, he began collecting antiques. Both of these pursuits cultivated an affinity for craftsmanship and history that have impacted his artistic endeavors. The past ten years have culminated with two solo electroacoustic composition CDs and numerous multimedia interactive installations. The original purpose of the antiques incorporated within DiBenedetto’s installations was to increase the efficiency and ease of everyday life. Foot pedals on sewing machines sped the process of garment-making. Hand-operated clothing agitators eliminated the need for washboards.  The artist’s neo-constructivist sculptures reconfigure these tools and bring them into an artistic forum. Each of DiBenedetto’s sculptures has a moving component, powered manually or by electric motors.  An audio processing feature brings the sound generated by these machines to life. As a result, the spectators are able to explore the operations of the many tools that comprise these sculptures. Sweat Equity (Performance) DiBenedetto has developed a performance to accompany his interactive installation.   Sweat Equity expresses outrage over the negative impact of capitalist exploitation as a means of production.  With an increasing globalized economy accompanied by ravenous consumption of natural resources, will we lose an opportunity to recognize the futility of capitalist pursuit and the need to change our direction and gain respect for the preservation of human dignity? Sweat Equity is a non verbal staged performance where dancers operate kinetic sculptures. Each sculpture is a machine that generates sound. Each dancer’s relationship to their sculpture becomes increasingly complex.  Tension is exemplified during a sequence of three acts. Each act presents changes in the actor’s physical appearance and operating procedures. An electroacoustic composition unfolds, increasing tension and directing the dancer’s actions. All proceeds from DiBenedetto’s interactive Coin Delivery System and donation box will be donated to Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen in Chelsea.   HOLY APOSTLES SOUP KITCHEN 296 Ninth AvenueNew York, New York 10001(212) 924-0167  

Gary DiBenedetto:  Sweat Equity

September 8 – October 8, 2011

Opening Event: Thursday, September 8, 2011 6-8pm

Exhibitions are free and open to the public.

 

Special Performances of Sweat Equity:

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Doors open at 1pm, Performance begins at 3pm

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Doors open at 7pm, Performance begins at 7:30pm

Admission: $20

 

During his early years as a struggling musician, Gary DiBenedetto also worked as a carpenter. During this time, he began collecting antiques. Both of these pursuits cultivated an affinity for craftsmanship and history that have impacted his artistic endeavors. The past ten years have culminated with two solo electroacoustic composition CDs and numerous multimedia interactive installations.

The original purpose of the antiques incorporated within DiBenedetto’s installations was to increase the efficiency and ease of everyday life. Foot pedals on sewing machines sped the process of garment-making. Hand-operated clothing agitators eliminated the need for washboards.  The artist’s neo-constructivist sculptures reconfigure these tools and bring them into an artistic forum.

Each of DiBenedetto’s sculptures has a moving component, powered manually or by electric motors.  An audio processing feature brings the sound generated by these machines to life. As a result, the spectators are able to explore the operations of the many tools that comprise these sculptures.

Sweat Equity (Performance)

DiBenedetto has developed a performance to accompany his interactive installation.   Sweat Equity expresses outrage over the negative impact of capitalist exploitation as a means of production.  With an increasing globalized economy accompanied by ravenous consumption of natural resources, will we lose an opportunity to recognize the futility of capitalist pursuit and the need to change our direction and gain respect for the preservation of human dignity?

Sweat Equity is a non verbal staged performance where dancers operate kinetic sculptures. Each sculpture is a machine that generates sound. Each dancer’s relationship to their sculpture becomes increasingly complex.  Tension is exemplified during a sequence of three acts. Each act presents changes in the actor’s physical appearance and operating procedures. An electroacoustic composition unfolds, increasing tension and directing the dancer’s actions.

All proceeds from DiBenedetto’s interactive Coin Delivery System and donation box will be donated to Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen in Chelsea.

 

HOLY APOSTLES SOUP KITCHEN

296 Ninth Avenue
New York, New York 10001
(212) 924-0167

 

Art PR Wire

Posted on Tuesday June 21st 2011 at 04:13pm. Its tags are listed below.

Survival motifs haunt ceramic sculpture exhibit. Mary McKenzie, Adaptations: Gestures of Survival is in the lobby of the Gardiner Museum, 111 Queen’s park, Toronto, Ontario, until July 10, 2011 Mary McKenzie incorporates unusual materials into her ceramic sculptures. She dips plants, stuffed toys and other materials in clay and fires them in the kiln. Her figurative pieces on bricks reflect her personal observations on how people adapt to survive. “Clay’s unique ability to be reshaped gives it the tendency to slump in response to gravity. I often insert wires as a means of keeping the clay vertical while it dries. Metal, clay and glaze expand and contract at different rates, which may cause cracks or limbs to break. I love that clay comes with the unexpected as well as the innate contradictions of strength and fragility. I embrace this as content in my work.”

Survival motifs haunt ceramic sculpture exhibit.
Mary McKenzie, Adaptations: Gestures of Survival is in the lobby of the Gardiner Museum, 111 Queen’s park, Toronto, Ontario, until July 10, 2011 
Mary McKenzie incorporates unusual materials into her ceramic sculptures. She dips plants, stuffed toys and other materials in clay and fires them in the kiln. Her figurative pieces on bricks reflect her personal observations on how people adapt to survive. “Clay’s unique ability to be reshaped gives it the tendency to slump in response to gravity. I often insert wires as a means of keeping the clay vertical while it dries. Metal, clay and glaze expand and contract at different rates, which may cause cracks or limbs to break. I love that clay comes with the unexpected as well as the innate contradictions of strength and fragility. I embrace this as content in my work.”

Art PR Wire

Posted on Thursday May 26th 2011 at 07:23pm. Its tags are listed below.

Sebastian Mahaluf presents “Gravity, inversion of the matter” at the AC Institute June 30-July 30, 2011.
Sebastian Mahaluf presents “Gravity, inversion of the matter” at the AC Institute June 30-July 30, 2011.

Sebastian Mahaluf presents “Gravity, inversion of the matter” at the AC Institute June 30-July 30, 2011.

Art PR Wire

Posted on Wednesday May 25th 2011 at 02:59pm. Its tags are listed below.

Twist and turns or change, 2010, rope, clothing, string, plumbers tape
Twist and turns or change, 2010, rope, clothing, string, plumbers tape

Twist and turns or change, 2010, rope, clothing, string, plumbers tape

Art PR Wire

Posted on Saturday May 14th 2011 at 01:23am. Its tags are listed below.

RAW ME: June 18 – July 9, Opening Reception Saturday June 18, 7 - 10 pm - Sarah Hunter, Francis Luta, Nickolas Hadzis, Fariz Kovalchuk, Donald Vaillancourt, Olena Sullivan, and Drasko Bogdanovic - an eclectic group show exposing a collection of intimate stories of coming out, self-acceptance, self-identity and sexuality. The exhibit includes paintings, drawings, photography, video, collages, installations, and hand-painted shirts. Must be 18+ to attend. Admission: Free.The reception will be followed by a Party Night with the artists - from 10 pm till 5 am, exquisite compilation of music, the bar will stay open till 1 am. Admission: Free.
RAW ME: June 18 – July 9, Opening Reception Saturday June 18, 7 - 10 pm - Sarah Hunter, Francis Luta, Nickolas Hadzis, Fariz Kovalchuk, Donald Vaillancourt, Olena Sullivan, and Drasko Bogdanovic - an eclectic group show exposing a collection of intimate stories of coming out, self-acceptance, self-identity and sexuality. The exhibit includes paintings, drawings, photography, video, collages, installations, and hand-painted shirts. Must be 18+ to attend. Admission: Free.The reception will be followed by a Party Night with the artists - from 10 pm till 5 am, exquisite compilation of music, the bar will stay open till 1 am. Admission: Free.

RAW ME: June 18 – July 9, Opening Reception Saturday June 18, 7 - 10 pm - Sarah Hunter, Francis Luta, Nickolas Hadzis, Fariz Kovalchuk, Donald Vaillancourt, Olena Sullivan, and Drasko Bogdanovic - an eclectic group show exposing a collection of intimate stories of coming out, self-acceptance, self-identity and sexuality. The exhibit includes paintings, drawings, photography, video, collages, installations, and hand-painted shirts. Must be 18+ to attend. Admission: Free.

The reception will be followed by a Party Night with the artists - from 10 pm till 5 am, exquisite compilation of music, the bar will stay open till 1 am. Admission: Free.

Art PR Wire

Posted on Friday May 13th 2011 at 09:23pm. Its tags are listed below.

Japanese artist SASAKI working on Heartbeat Drawing project.

Japanese artist SASAKI working on Heartbeat Drawing project.

Art PR Wire

Posted on Sunday May 8th 2011 at 09:31am. Its tags are listed below.

echo: Art Fair Launch and Call For Submissions: A new juried fine art event in Buffalo, echo: Art Fair (www.echoarfair.com) will take place on July 9th in Buffalo’s Central Terminal. The deadline for art submissions is Friday, May 13th. 
echo: Art Fair Launch and Call For Submissions: A new juried fine art event in Buffalo, echo: Art Fair (www.echoarfair.com) will take place on July 9th in Buffalo’s Central Terminal. The deadline for art submissions is Friday, May 13th. 

echo: Art Fair Launch and Call For Submissions: A new juried fine art event in Buffalo, echo: Art Fair (www.echoarfair.com) will take place on July 9th in Buffalo’s Central Terminal. The deadline for art submissions is Friday, May 13th. 

Art PR Wire

Posted on Thursday May 5th 2011 at 06:57pm. Its tags are listed below.

Lauren Hall: Sail Fast Cloud-Shadows and SunbeamsYYZ Artists’ OutletSaturday 30 April 2011 - 23 July 2011Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11:00 am to 5:00 pmYYZ 140 - 401 Richmond Street WToronto, ON M5V 3A8
Lauren Hall: Sail Fast Cloud-Shadows and SunbeamsYYZ Artists’ OutletSaturday 30 April 2011 - 23 July 2011Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11:00 am to 5:00 pmYYZ 140 - 401 Richmond Street WToronto, ON M5V 3A8

Lauren Hall: Sail Fast Cloud-Shadows and SunbeamsYYZ Artists’ OutletSaturday 30 April 2011 - 23 July 2011Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11:00 am to 5:00 pmYYZ 140 - 401 Richmond Street WToronto, ON M5V 3A8

Art PR Wire

Posted on Sunday April 17th 2011 at 10:04am. Its tags are listed below.

On Thursday April 28 Miriam Simun transforms the exterior of Michael Mut Gallery into The Lady Cheese Shop, inviting visitors inside to sample Human Cheese, cheese made from human milk.  Inside the gallery is an exploration of the complex and messy truth of what it means to make food from human body products.  Visitors will move from the imaginary fantasy of such a proposal to the very real process of procuring virus-free human milk, and turning it into cheese.  Three delicious different human cheeses will be available (made from the milk of three different women), accented with food pairings inspired by the terroir of each cheese, created in collaboration with Chef Sarah Hymanson.  Over cheese and wine participants will be invited to consider and discuss this immodest proposal. The Human Cheese Project raises questions about the ways in which biotechnology transforms the possibilities of the human body as a site of production and commodity, through a radical reframing of the possibilities of urban food production.  Technologies that make use of the body in strange and intimate ways come to be accepted by societies and markets for their life-giving promises.  Amidst a very real crisis of our food systems, the use of hyper-local reproductive human excess located here in New York City offers a real possibility to ‘give life.’  By inviting participants to taste human cheese, Simun appeals to the full range of human senses to consider this proposal.  

On Thursday April 28 Miriam Simun transforms the exterior of Michael Mut Gallery into The Lady Cheese Shop, inviting visitors inside to sample Human Cheese, cheese made from human milk.  Inside the gallery is an exploration of the complex and messy truth of what it means to make food from human body products.  Visitors will move from the imaginary fantasy of such a proposal to the very real process of procuring virus-free human milk, and turning it into cheese.  Three delicious different human cheeses will be available (made from the milk of three different women), accented with food pairings inspired by the terroir of each cheese, created in collaboration with Chef Sarah Hymanson.  Over cheese and wine participants will be invited to consider and discuss this immodest proposal.

The Human Cheese Project raises questions about the ways in which biotechnology transforms the possibilities of the human body as a site of production and commodity, through a radical reframing of the possibilities of urban food production.  Technologies that make use of the body in strange and intimate ways come to be accepted by societies and markets for their life-giving promises.  Amidst a very real crisis of our food systems, the use of hyper-local reproductive human excess located here in New York City offers a real possibility to ‘give life.’  By inviting participants to taste human cheese, Simun appeals to the full range of human senses to consider this proposal.  

Art PR Wire

Posted on Wednesday April 13th 2011 at 10:45pm. Its tags are listed below.

An AC Institute Curated Event  May 12 – June 18, 2011  Opening Event: Thursday, May 12, 2011 6-8pm   Featuring: Joseph Farbrook:  Strata-Caster Michael Georgetti: THE DUTY FREE SHOP IS ON THE 3RD FLOOR AS YOU PASS THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE Jonathon Keats: QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENTS The Kit Collaboration + Robert Saucier: Virutorium   Contact: info@artcurrents.org   Joseph Farbrook: Strata-Caster Scantly a generation ago, moving image screens were restricted to television and cinema and the content was nearly exclusively generated by corporations and conglomerates that dictated the form and aesthetic of what should and should not be seen by the masses.   The content was restricted almost entirely to news and entertainment and limited in scope to what could be sold as a commodity.  Presently, technological advances have given moving image screens an explosion of new forms and possibilities of content.   Adding up the hours we spend staring into screens, it could be argued that we are seeing an ever-greater part of our lives mediated by this device.   Virtual Reality has quietly emerged on this side of the screen and embedded itself into our psyches.  The collective imagination is to an ever-greater extent being co-opted and aligning itself to the operational workings of this new prosthetic.   It is now a critical time for artists to temper this overwhelming involvement and offer insights into this reality, complete with new paradigms of perception, new ways of seeing into, and through, the ubiquitous screen.   “Strata-Caster” is an installation that explores the topography of power, prestige, and position.   It exists in the virtual world of Second Life, a place populated by approximately 50,000 people at any given moment. Although virtual and infinite, it continues to mirror the physical world, complete with representations of prestige and exclusivity. Even without the limitations of the physical, why are borders and separation still prized so highly?  Entry into this installation is by wheelchair, an unfamiliar interface to the limitless expanse of virtual space, but one that continuously calls attention to limitation and position. Michael Georgetti: THE DUTY FREE SHOP IS ON THE 3RD FLOOR AS YOU PASS THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE Materials: Paraffin wax, ply wood, industrial pine, halogen light, tape, elastic cord, glitter, plastic toy soldiers, floating devices, rope, paint strippers, hair dryers, indoor heaters, fluorescent light and skipping rope. Dimensions variable, 2011. Michael Georgetti makes installations and sculptures that usually move or fall apart. Using a combination of painting, kinetics and found objects these structures are made with an emphasis on poetics, play and deconstruction in order to create precarious relationships between ephemeral sculpture and the everyday world. These sculptures often collapse to imitate the way things don’t work or inevitably fall apart. Engine parts and electric machines are dismantled and re-coordinated to create relationships between inanimate objects and social behavior. These constructions are often dysfunctional and usually border on being precarious. In their making, tape, rope, elastic cord and cling-wrap are used as bandages and stabilizing devices. In this sense, a relationship between repairing and constructing occurs where these works become provisional. Often they appear anthropomorphic because they manifest from ideas that have personalities.  A broad range of commercial and industrial materials are deployed in these structures: bathtubs, tennis balls, arrows, electric toy cars, paint, cement, hockey sticks, pool cues, crack pipes, wax, yoga mats, garment steamers, hair dryers, alcohol, water and portable swimming pools. These materials are chosen for the way they can mimic human behavior and expose the materiality of the world we construct around us. In a gallery context, Georgetti sets up scenarios that have a short-durational quality in order to create readings of the way people deal with impermanence. But often these ideas manifest in a slapstick and humorous way to generate experiences of absurdity and the imperfect nature of human behavior. Through painting, sculpture, installation and film, Georgetti explores the duality of behaviour and technology; the way thoughts and feelings manifest within the mechanical and constructed environments we create around us. Jonathon Keats: QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENTS With five millennia of history, and a plethora of religious and civil ceremonies, marriage is a popular means of producing families. Yet matrimony isn’t the only method of uniting people, nor even is it the most effective technique. Modern science suggests a far more profound alternative, one that does not operate by religious tradition or civil mandate, but rather bonds couples by a law of nature: quantum entanglement. According to quantum mechanics, when two or more particles are entangled, they behave as if they were one and the same. Any change to one instantaneously and identically changes those entangled with it even if they’re a universe apart. While the phenomenon has been applied to fields such as military encryption, Jonathon Keats has put entanglement to work for the more worthy purpose of fostering human relations. The technology is straightforward: Exposed to solar radiation, a nonlinear crystal entangles photons. Pairs of entangled photons are divided by prisms. The photoelectric effect translates their entangled state to the bodies of a couple who wish to be united, entangling them in a quantum wedding. There are no restrictions on who may be entangled to whom. The process is unsupervised. No records are kept. Even those who get entangled will have to take their entanglement on faith, as any attempt to measure a quantum system disentangles it: A quantum marriage will literally be broken up by skepticism about it. The potential of quantum marriage will be fulfilled by those who choose to engage it. After five thousand years of manmade laws, often exclusionary or punitive, science promises to liberate marriage through technology freely offering entanglement to everybody.   The Kit Collaboration + Robert Saucier: Virutorium Virutorium is the second joint project by The Kit Collaboration + Robert Saucier. Their first project named Infrasense was a large-scale sound installation that toured 11 galleries in Canada, UK, USA and Belgium between 2004 to 2006 and dealt with the cultural economy of paranoia surrounding the word ‘virus’ in its biological (sexual), computational (coding) and capital (marketing) forms. Virutorium is an interactive robotic sound installation, a kinetic and aural work that advances themes originated in the Infrasense project. This new project explores the extensive and pervasive cultural dynamics of the ‘virus’ and seeks to highlight how far viral systems and models are influencing bodily and computer based communication systems, modes of capitalism and socio-sexual relations, ultimately contemplating how we construct cultural memories about transient entities that we consider detrimental to our livelihoods. Artist Biographies:   Joseph Farbrook grew up in New York City and Santa Fe, raised by his father, a concrete poet, and his mother a painter. Farbrook recieved his MFA at the University of Colorado, where he wrote electronic music, poetry, and fiction. Becoming interested in a more immersive approach to narrative, he began using computers and the Internet as creative media. Farbrook began creating electronic installations, interactive video, and virtual reality narratives. He also developed media-reflexive live performances mixed with interactive screen projections. Farbrook’s latest work explores the intersections between video, video games, and sculpture. Farbrook exhibits both nationally and internationally. Recent venues include SIGGRAPH2010, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, La Fabrica Arte Contemporaneo in Guatemala, Museo De Arte Contemporaneo in Columbia, as well as venues in the Netherlands, China, Czech Republic, and the USA. Farbrook is presently an assistant professor of interactive media and game development at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Michael Georgetti completed his Masters of Fine Art at RMIT University in Melbourne in 2007. Using a combination of film, installation, painting and a range of found objects, Georgetti has exhibited his kinetic and ephemeral works in many commercial and artist-run spaces in Australia and abroad including West Space, Anna Pappas Gallery and the AC Institute.     Acclaimed as a “poet of ideas” by the New Yorker, Jonathon Keats is an experimental philosopher, artist, and writer based in the United States and Italy. Recently he opened the first restaurant for plants, serving gourmet sunlight to rose bushes, at the Crocker Art Museum. He has also screened travel documentaries for flora at venues including the AC Institute and the Berkeley Art Museum, exhibited extraterrestrial abstract artwork at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, and attempted to genetically engineer God in collaboration with scientists at the University of California. Exhibited internationally, his projects have been documented by PBS, Reuters, and the BBC World Service, garnering favorable attention in periodicals ranging from The Washington Post to Nature to Flash Art. He has been awarded fellowships by Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, and the MacNamara Foundation, and is represented by Modernism Gallery in San Francisco.     The KIT Collaboration has produced numerous interactive robotic installations for galleries and museums, sound and video projects for new-media festivals, and site-specific works for offsite locations across Europe, the Middle East, North America, Australasia, and Japan. It has also been producing internationally touring exhibitions and has been curated into group shows for galleries and biennials since its conception as a collaborative unit in 1995. Invited to undertake residencies in universities, sculpture parks, production units, to research its work, the KIT collaboration develops its projects from a wide range of situated practices.       Originally from the province of New Brunswick, Robert Saucier currently lives and works in Montréal, Canada, where he is a professor of sculpture and media art at the University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM). Since he began his professional practice in 1979, Saucier has produced artworks for many solo exhibitions and has been curated into group exhibitions for galleries, museums, and festivals in Canada, USA, and Europe. He is an active member of Hexagram, (Art and Technology Research and Development Centre) in Montréal, which funded portions of his recent research in the robotic arts.
An AC Institute Curated Event  May 12 – June 18, 2011  Opening Event: Thursday, May 12, 2011 6-8pm   Featuring: Joseph Farbrook:  Strata-Caster Michael Georgetti: THE DUTY FREE SHOP IS ON THE 3RD FLOOR AS YOU PASS THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE Jonathon Keats: QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENTS The Kit Collaboration + Robert Saucier: Virutorium   Contact: info@artcurrents.org   Joseph Farbrook: Strata-Caster Scantly a generation ago, moving image screens were restricted to television and cinema and the content was nearly exclusively generated by corporations and conglomerates that dictated the form and aesthetic of what should and should not be seen by the masses.   The content was restricted almost entirely to news and entertainment and limited in scope to what could be sold as a commodity.  Presently, technological advances have given moving image screens an explosion of new forms and possibilities of content.   Adding up the hours we spend staring into screens, it could be argued that we are seeing an ever-greater part of our lives mediated by this device.   Virtual Reality has quietly emerged on this side of the screen and embedded itself into our psyches.  The collective imagination is to an ever-greater extent being co-opted and aligning itself to the operational workings of this new prosthetic.   It is now a critical time for artists to temper this overwhelming involvement and offer insights into this reality, complete with new paradigms of perception, new ways of seeing into, and through, the ubiquitous screen.   “Strata-Caster” is an installation that explores the topography of power, prestige, and position.   It exists in the virtual world of Second Life, a place populated by approximately 50,000 people at any given moment. Although virtual and infinite, it continues to mirror the physical world, complete with representations of prestige and exclusivity. Even without the limitations of the physical, why are borders and separation still prized so highly?  Entry into this installation is by wheelchair, an unfamiliar interface to the limitless expanse of virtual space, but one that continuously calls attention to limitation and position. Michael Georgetti: THE DUTY FREE SHOP IS ON THE 3RD FLOOR AS YOU PASS THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE Materials: Paraffin wax, ply wood, industrial pine, halogen light, tape, elastic cord, glitter, plastic toy soldiers, floating devices, rope, paint strippers, hair dryers, indoor heaters, fluorescent light and skipping rope. Dimensions variable, 2011. Michael Georgetti makes installations and sculptures that usually move or fall apart. Using a combination of painting, kinetics and found objects these structures are made with an emphasis on poetics, play and deconstruction in order to create precarious relationships between ephemeral sculpture and the everyday world. These sculptures often collapse to imitate the way things don’t work or inevitably fall apart. Engine parts and electric machines are dismantled and re-coordinated to create relationships between inanimate objects and social behavior. These constructions are often dysfunctional and usually border on being precarious. In their making, tape, rope, elastic cord and cling-wrap are used as bandages and stabilizing devices. In this sense, a relationship between repairing and constructing occurs where these works become provisional. Often they appear anthropomorphic because they manifest from ideas that have personalities.  A broad range of commercial and industrial materials are deployed in these structures: bathtubs, tennis balls, arrows, electric toy cars, paint, cement, hockey sticks, pool cues, crack pipes, wax, yoga mats, garment steamers, hair dryers, alcohol, water and portable swimming pools. These materials are chosen for the way they can mimic human behavior and expose the materiality of the world we construct around us. In a gallery context, Georgetti sets up scenarios that have a short-durational quality in order to create readings of the way people deal with impermanence. But often these ideas manifest in a slapstick and humorous way to generate experiences of absurdity and the imperfect nature of human behavior. Through painting, sculpture, installation and film, Georgetti explores the duality of behaviour and technology; the way thoughts and feelings manifest within the mechanical and constructed environments we create around us. Jonathon Keats: QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENTS With five millennia of history, and a plethora of religious and civil ceremonies, marriage is a popular means of producing families. Yet matrimony isn’t the only method of uniting people, nor even is it the most effective technique. Modern science suggests a far more profound alternative, one that does not operate by religious tradition or civil mandate, but rather bonds couples by a law of nature: quantum entanglement. According to quantum mechanics, when two or more particles are entangled, they behave as if they were one and the same. Any change to one instantaneously and identically changes those entangled with it even if they’re a universe apart. While the phenomenon has been applied to fields such as military encryption, Jonathon Keats has put entanglement to work for the more worthy purpose of fostering human relations. The technology is straightforward: Exposed to solar radiation, a nonlinear crystal entangles photons. Pairs of entangled photons are divided by prisms. The photoelectric effect translates their entangled state to the bodies of a couple who wish to be united, entangling them in a quantum wedding. There are no restrictions on who may be entangled to whom. The process is unsupervised. No records are kept. Even those who get entangled will have to take their entanglement on faith, as any attempt to measure a quantum system disentangles it: A quantum marriage will literally be broken up by skepticism about it. The potential of quantum marriage will be fulfilled by those who choose to engage it. After five thousand years of manmade laws, often exclusionary or punitive, science promises to liberate marriage through technology freely offering entanglement to everybody.   The Kit Collaboration + Robert Saucier: Virutorium Virutorium is the second joint project by The Kit Collaboration + Robert Saucier. Their first project named Infrasense was a large-scale sound installation that toured 11 galleries in Canada, UK, USA and Belgium between 2004 to 2006 and dealt with the cultural economy of paranoia surrounding the word ‘virus’ in its biological (sexual), computational (coding) and capital (marketing) forms. Virutorium is an interactive robotic sound installation, a kinetic and aural work that advances themes originated in the Infrasense project. This new project explores the extensive and pervasive cultural dynamics of the ‘virus’ and seeks to highlight how far viral systems and models are influencing bodily and computer based communication systems, modes of capitalism and socio-sexual relations, ultimately contemplating how we construct cultural memories about transient entities that we consider detrimental to our livelihoods. Artist Biographies:   Joseph Farbrook grew up in New York City and Santa Fe, raised by his father, a concrete poet, and his mother a painter. Farbrook recieved his MFA at the University of Colorado, where he wrote electronic music, poetry, and fiction. Becoming interested in a more immersive approach to narrative, he began using computers and the Internet as creative media. Farbrook began creating electronic installations, interactive video, and virtual reality narratives. He also developed media-reflexive live performances mixed with interactive screen projections. Farbrook’s latest work explores the intersections between video, video games, and sculpture. Farbrook exhibits both nationally and internationally. Recent venues include SIGGRAPH2010, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, La Fabrica Arte Contemporaneo in Guatemala, Museo De Arte Contemporaneo in Columbia, as well as venues in the Netherlands, China, Czech Republic, and the USA. Farbrook is presently an assistant professor of interactive media and game development at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Michael Georgetti completed his Masters of Fine Art at RMIT University in Melbourne in 2007. Using a combination of film, installation, painting and a range of found objects, Georgetti has exhibited his kinetic and ephemeral works in many commercial and artist-run spaces in Australia and abroad including West Space, Anna Pappas Gallery and the AC Institute.     Acclaimed as a “poet of ideas” by the New Yorker, Jonathon Keats is an experimental philosopher, artist, and writer based in the United States and Italy. Recently he opened the first restaurant for plants, serving gourmet sunlight to rose bushes, at the Crocker Art Museum. He has also screened travel documentaries for flora at venues including the AC Institute and the Berkeley Art Museum, exhibited extraterrestrial abstract artwork at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, and attempted to genetically engineer God in collaboration with scientists at the University of California. Exhibited internationally, his projects have been documented by PBS, Reuters, and the BBC World Service, garnering favorable attention in periodicals ranging from The Washington Post to Nature to Flash Art. He has been awarded fellowships by Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, and the MacNamara Foundation, and is represented by Modernism Gallery in San Francisco.     The KIT Collaboration has produced numerous interactive robotic installations for galleries and museums, sound and video projects for new-media festivals, and site-specific works for offsite locations across Europe, the Middle East, North America, Australasia, and Japan. It has also been producing internationally touring exhibitions and has been curated into group shows for galleries and biennials since its conception as a collaborative unit in 1995. Invited to undertake residencies in universities, sculpture parks, production units, to research its work, the KIT collaboration develops its projects from a wide range of situated practices.       Originally from the province of New Brunswick, Robert Saucier currently lives and works in Montréal, Canada, where he is a professor of sculpture and media art at the University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM). Since he began his professional practice in 1979, Saucier has produced artworks for many solo exhibitions and has been curated into group exhibitions for galleries, museums, and festivals in Canada, USA, and Europe. He is an active member of Hexagram, (Art and Technology Research and Development Centre) in Montréal, which funded portions of his recent research in the robotic arts.

An AC Institute Curated Event 

May 12 – June 18, 2011 

Opening Event: Thursday, May 12, 2011 6-8pm

 

Featuring:

Joseph Farbrook:  Strata-Caster

Michael Georgetti: THE DUTY FREE SHOP IS ON THE 3RD FLOOR AS YOU PASS THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE

Jonathon Keats: QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENTS

The Kit Collaboration + Robert Saucier: Virutorium

 

Contact: info@artcurrents.org

 

Joseph Farbrook: Strata-Caster

Scantly a generation ago, moving image screens were restricted to television and cinema and the content was nearly exclusively generated by corporations and conglomerates that dictated the form and aesthetic of what should and should not be seen by the masses.   The content was restricted almost entirely to news and entertainment and limited in scope to what could be sold as a commodity. 

Presently, technological advances have given moving image screens an explosion of new forms and possibilities of content.   Adding up the hours we spend staring into screens, it could be argued that we are seeing an ever-greater part of our lives mediated by this device.   Virtual Reality has quietly emerged on this side of the screen and embedded itself into our psyches.  The collective imagination is to an ever-greater extent being co-opted and aligning itself to the operational workings of this new prosthetic.   It is now a critical time for artists to temper this overwhelming involvement and offer insights into this reality, complete with new paradigms of perception, new ways of seeing into, and through, the ubiquitous screen.  

“Strata-Caster” is an installation that explores the topography of power, prestige, and position.   It exists in the virtual world of Second Life, a place populated by approximately 50,000 people at any given moment. Although virtual and infinite, it continues to mirror the physical world, complete with representations of prestige and exclusivity. Even without the limitations of the physical, why are borders and separation still prized so highly?  Entry into this installation is by wheelchair, an unfamiliar interface to the limitless expanse of virtual space, but one that continuously calls attention to limitation and position.

Michael Georgetti: THE DUTY FREE SHOP IS ON THE 3RD FLOOR AS YOU PASS THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE

Materials: Paraffin wax, ply wood, industrial pine, halogen light, tape, elastic cord, glitter, plastic toy soldiers, floating devices, rope, paint strippers, hair dryers, indoor heaters, fluorescent light and skipping rope. Dimensions variable, 2011.

Michael Georgetti makes installations and sculptures that usually move or fall apart. Using a combination of painting, kinetics and found objects these structures are made with an emphasis on poetics, play and deconstruction in order to create precarious relationships between ephemeral sculpture and the everyday world.

These sculptures often collapse to imitate the way things don’t work or inevitably fall apart. Engine parts and electric machines are dismantled and re-coordinated to create relationships between inanimate objects and social behavior.

These constructions are often dysfunctional and usually border on being precarious. In their making, tape, rope, elastic cord and cling-wrap are used as bandages and stabilizing devices. In this sense, a relationship between repairing and constructing occurs where these works become provisional. Often they appear anthropomorphic because they manifest from ideas that have personalities.

 A broad range of commercial and industrial materials are deployed in these structures: bathtubs, tennis balls, arrows, electric toy cars, paint, cement, hockey sticks, pool cues, crack pipes, wax, yoga mats, garment steamers, hair dryers, alcohol, water and portable swimming pools.

These materials are chosen for the way they can mimic human behavior and expose the materiality of the world we construct around us. In a gallery context, Georgetti sets up scenarios that have a short-durational quality in order to create readings of the way people deal with impermanence. But often these ideas manifest in a slapstick and humorous way to generate experiences of absurdity and the imperfect nature of human behavior.

Through painting, sculpture, installation and film, Georgetti explores the duality of behaviour and technology; the way thoughts and feelings manifest within the mechanical and constructed environments we create around us.

Jonathon Keats: QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENTS

With five millennia of history, and a plethora of religious and civil ceremonies, marriage is a popular means of producing families. Yet matrimony isn’t the only method of uniting people, nor even is it the most effective technique. Modern science suggests a far more profound alternative, one that does not operate by religious tradition or civil mandate, but rather bonds couples by a law of nature: quantum entanglement.

According to quantum mechanics, when two or more particles are entangled, they behave as if they were one and the same. Any change to one instantaneously and identically changes those entangled with it even if they’re a universe apart. While the phenomenon has been applied to fields such as military encryption, Jonathon Keats has put entanglement to work for the more worthy purpose of fostering human relations.

The technology is straightforward: Exposed to solar radiation, a nonlinear crystal entangles photons. Pairs of entangled photons are divided by prisms. The photoelectric effect translates their entangled state to the bodies of a couple who wish to be united, entangling them in a quantum wedding.

There are no restrictions on who may be entangled to whom. The process is unsupervised. No records are kept. Even those who get entangled will have to take their entanglement on faith, as any attempt to measure a quantum system disentangles it: A quantum marriage will literally be broken up by skepticism about it.

The potential of quantum marriage will be fulfilled by those who choose to engage it. After five thousand years of manmade laws, often exclusionary or punitive, science promises to liberate marriage through technology freely offering entanglement to everybody.

 

The Kit Collaboration + Robert Saucier: Virutorium

Virutorium is the second joint project by The Kit Collaboration + Robert Saucier. Their first project named Infrasense was a large-scale sound installation that toured 11 galleries in Canada, UK, USA and Belgium between 2004 to 2006 and dealt with the cultural economy of paranoia surrounding the word ‘virus’ in its biological (sexual), computational (coding) and capital (marketing) forms. Virutorium is an interactive robotic sound installation, a kinetic and aural work that advances themes originated in the Infrasense project. This new project explores the extensive and pervasive cultural dynamics of the ‘virus’ and seeks to highlight how far viral systems and models are influencing bodily and computer based communication systems, modes of capitalism and socio-sexual relations, ultimately contemplating how we construct cultural memories about transient entities that we consider detrimental to our livelihoods.

Artist Biographies:

 

Joseph Farbrook grew up in New York City and Santa Fe, raised by his father, a concrete poet, and his mother a painter. Farbrook recieved his MFA at the University of Colorado, where he wrote electronic music, poetry, and fiction. Becoming interested in a more immersive approach to narrative, he began using computers and the Internet as creative media. Farbrook began creating electronic installations, interactive video, and virtual reality narratives. He also developed media-reflexive live performances mixed with interactive screen projections. Farbrook’s latest work explores the intersections between video, video games, and sculpture.

Farbrook exhibits both nationally and internationally. Recent venues include SIGGRAPH2010, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, La Fabrica Arte Contemporaneo in Guatemala, Museo De Arte Contemporaneo in Columbia, as well as venues in the Netherlands, China, Czech Republic, and the USA. Farbrook is presently an assistant professor of interactive media and game development at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Michael Georgetti completed his Masters of Fine Art at RMIT University in Melbourne in 2007. Using a combination of film, installation, painting and a range of found objects, Georgetti has exhibited his kinetic and ephemeral works in many commercial and artist-run spaces in Australia and abroad including West Space, Anna Pappas Gallery and the AC Institute.

 

 

Acclaimed as a “poet of ideas” by the New Yorker, Jonathon Keats is an experimental philosopher, artist, and writer based in the United States and Italy. Recently he opened the first restaurant for plants, serving gourmet sunlight to rose bushes, at the Crocker Art Museum. He has also screened travel documentaries for flora at venues including the AC Institute and the Berkeley Art Museum, exhibited extraterrestrial abstract artwork at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, and attempted to genetically engineer God in collaboration with scientists at the University of California. Exhibited internationally, his projects have been documented by PBS, Reuters, and the BBC World Service, garnering favorable attention in periodicals ranging from The Washington Post to Nature to Flash Art. He has been awarded fellowships by Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, and the MacNamara Foundation, and is represented by Modernism Gallery in San Francisco.

 

 

The KIT Collaboration has produced numerous interactive robotic installations for galleries and museums, sound and video projects for new-media festivals, and site-specific works for offsite locations across Europe, the Middle East, North America, Australasia, and Japan. It has also been producing internationally touring exhibitions and has been curated into group shows for galleries and biennials since its conception as a collaborative unit in 1995. Invited to undertake residencies in universities, sculpture parks, production units, to research its work, the KIT collaboration develops its projects from a wide range of situated practices.

 

 

 

Originally from the province of New Brunswick, Robert Saucier currently lives and works in Montréal, Canada, where he is a professor of sculpture and media art at the University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM). Since he began his professional practice in 1979, Saucier has produced artworks for many solo exhibitions and has been curated into group exhibitions for galleries, museums, and festivals in Canada, USA, and Europe. He is an active member of Hexagram, (Art and Technology Research and Development Centre) in Montréal, which funded portions of his recent research in the robotic arts.

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