USEFUL INFORMATION

by Giuseppe Lippi
space Juliet
Via Madonna del mare 6
Trieste (Trieste) - Friuli Venezia Giulia
+39 040313425
http://martinaditrapani.tumblr.com

from 01/03/2012 to 31/03/2012
vernissage 01/03/2012 at 18.30
Tuesday 18-20 or by appointment
free admission

Max Weber on Long Island is curated by Weber scholar Percy North, Ph.D.

The current installation features a broad range of works, including 19th-century landscape and figure painting by American and European artists, as well as Cubist, Surrealist, and Abstract Expressionist works from the 20th century.  Of particular interest is Etienne Berne-Bellecour’s monumental Embarkation Maneuver, 1882, which factually documents the departure of a regiment of cuirassiers (armoured cavalry) following the Franco-Prussian War, in contrast to the acerbic commentary on the Weimar Republic seen in George Grosz’s equally monumental Eclipse of the Sun, 1926.

Rogenes affords as much care and attention in the treatment of his abundantly available material as a sculptor working in marble or alabaster would. Piece by individually carved piece is assembled into a complex structure, thoughtfully fit together according to the rules of his artistic vision. The result is not only a creative way of looking at everything in our environment beyond assigned functions and limitations but also an opportunity to reimagine ourselves with open eyes for endless possibilities.

Conceptually related to the sculptural work are his drawings, which represent a two-dimensional translation of the sculptural work, created either as preparatory studies or as documentation following an installation. Executed in ink and watercolor on paper, they illustrate a determined technology, connected to the natural world in the form of colorful planets.

Jason Rogenes was born in 1971 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He holds an MFA from the University of California at Santa Barbara (1996) and a BA from University of California, San Diego (1993). His work has been shown at Big Light Show, Anderson Ranch, Snowmass, CO (2010); Manuf®actured: The conspicuous transformation of everyday objects, Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR (catalogue) (2008); Site-specific Installation at Navy Pier Walk, Chicago, curated by David Pagel (2003).

The earliest works in the exhibition, executed in France in the 1990s before her move to the US, include an installation of chewed licorice sticks as well as photographs and video documentation of performances and sculptural work made from foraged foods, fruit peelings, and nut shells. For a series of Pickles from the early 2000s, Le Courtois filled over 200 jars with various liquids and random objects in memory of her then recently-deceased mother, who had a tendency to keep pickle jars long after the contents had been consumed.

A series of etchings employing the naturally occurring acids of the kombucha mushroom continues to fascinate Le Courtois, who has created over forty different plates since developing the process in 2004. A number of these prints, as well as the mushrooms used to create them, will be on view alongside large-scale sculptures from a series of works created from junk food such as chips, candy, and marshmallows. These include the Cheetovore, Shane The Obese Marshmallow Teenager, a group of Little Fat Kids – small figurines made from melted and cast candy, and the Venus of Consumption, a crocheted sculpture of an obese, reclining woman.

Since 2010, Le Courtois has become increasingly interested in aspects of interaction and participation and has organized a number of events for which she prepared and served meals for a large number of guests, including How to Eat An Artichoke, held at RedLine Denver in 2010, and a curry dinner for the exhibition Do It! at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design in 2011.

The Garden of Earthy Delights, a living interactive installation created for BMoCA, is envisioned as a space for people to relax, think, and interact. Herbs such as mint, verbena, thyme, sage, and rosemary are arranged throughout the gallery in miniature gardens for consumption in tea, in reference to the ancient process of growing, collecting, and consuming plants. Every Saturday between 1pm and 3pm, the artist will tend to the plants, serve tea, and offer samples of sprouts, microgreens, and baby greens, grown inside the museum as part of the exhibition.

Viviane Le Courtois was born in France in 1969. She moved to the US in 1994 and currently lives in Denver, Colorado. She received her Diplôme National Supérieur d’Expression Plastique (MFA) in Sculpture/Installations from the International School of Art and Research in Nice, France in 1992 and an MA in Art History from the University of Denver in 2000. In 2009 Westword presented Le Courtois with the Mastermind Award in Visual Arts. She was a resident artist at RedLine Denver from 2008 to 2011. She regularly exhibits in the US and Europe and has shown her work at the Passerelle Art Center in France, Mobius in Boston, and at many venues in Colorado, including Rocky Mountain School of Art + Design, Regis University, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver during the 2010 Biennial of the Americas.

Denny’s recent works have included investigations into the form and “architecture” of the TV set itself (the physical depth of which, we are reminded, has shrunk along with the medium’s loss of dominance as a content provider), the genre conventions of documentary, and the myriad processes by which content is translated from one medium to another. Other works explore the aesthetics of the glitch, moments of interference where the smooth flow of content breaks down, while still others mine the seemingly banal world of trade shows and industry publications.

Simon Denny (born 1982 in Auckland, New Zealand) graduated from the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Städelschule) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Recent solo exhibitions include Cruise Line, NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany; 7 Unreachable Elevators, IMO, Copenhagen; Chronic Expectation: CFS/ME Documentary Restoration, T293, Rome; Corporate Video Decisions, Michael Lett, Auckland, and Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York (2011); Negative Headroom: The Broadcast Signal Intrusion Incident, Halle für Kunst, Lüneburg, Germany; and Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2010). Recent group exhibitions include That’s the way we do it: The Techniques and Aesthetic of Appropriation from Ei Arakawa to Andy Warhol, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria; and Based in Berlin, KW Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2011).

This exhibition is organized by the AAM and funded in part by the AAM National Council. Exhibition lectures are presented as part of the Questrom Lecture Series and educational outreach programming is made possible by the Questrom Education Fund.

Artists in the exhibition include Kristoffer Akselbo, John Baldessari, Andrea Bowers, Phil Collins, Bruce Conner, Roberto Cuoghi, Simon Evans, Lara Favaretto, Paul Graham, Karl Haendel, Susan Hiller, Pierre Huyghe, Friedrich Kunath, Glenn Ligon, Teresa Margolles, Richard Misrach, Richard Prince, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Doris Salcedo, Kaari Upson, Anna Von Mertens, and Jeff Wall.

Santa Monica Museum of Art Deputy Director Lisa Melandri is curator of Vermilion Sands and Other Stories from the Neon West, in which the artist utilizes commonplace, and largely domestic materials, to create site-specific environments, including a mixture of altered and embroidered t-shirts, live plants, paper, pearls, yarn constructions, and cast concrete sculptures.

During a 2007 residency at Villa Aurora—a nonprofit organization located in Pacific Palisades dedicated to German-American cultural exchange—Melsheimer became interested in Los Angeles’s landscape and architecture, as well as the fictional and historical characters that inhabit these spaces.

Influenced by classic Hollywood films such as David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, and the stories of James Graham Ballard, Melsheimer examines the affects of architecture and location on Los Angeles’s glamorized cinematic figures; as well as the demise of those figures from lifestyles of fame and financial success. Melsheimer is particularly drawn to examples such as the Salton Sea, a former glamorous resort area new Palm Springs that has since degenerated into a kind of wasteland, and the character Norma Desmond—and her shabby mansion—from Wilder’s iconic film.

With Vermilion Sands and Other Stories from the Neon West, Melsheimer wants viewers to be aware that architecture is always representative—of ideas or subjects that permeate society. She asks viewers to consider: Which fictional and historical subjects are admired within Los Angeles? Why do residents emigrate from Los Angeles? What aesthetics characterize Los Angeles’s buildings; and what sentiments manifest in the region’s architecture?

Melsheimer (b. 1968) was born in Neuss, Germany, and lives and works in Berlin. She attended the Hochschule der Künste (Academy of Fine Arts), Berlin, and completed a master class with painter Georg Baselitz.

Melsheimer’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout Europe, including in Paris at Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, in Nîmes at Musée d’Art Contemporain, in Vienna at Galerie Nächst St. Stephan, in Berlin at Esther Schipper Gallery, in Switzerland at Kunsthaus Langenthal, in Maastricht, Netherlands at Bonnefantenmuseum, and in Marfa, Texas at The Chinati Foundation. Melsheimer’s work has also been presented in numerous group exhibitions, including in Chamarande, France, at Domaine Départemental de Chamarande, in Berlin at Kunsthalle Autocenter, in Copenhagen at the Institute of Contemporary Art, in Istanbul at BM SUMA Contemporary Art Center, in Mexico City at Museo Tamayo, and in Philadelphia at Cereal Art Project Room.

Support for Isa Melsheimer: Vermilion Sands and Other Stories from the Neon West has been provided in part by Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V.

Thomas is best known for her bold enamel and acrylic paintings adorned with rhinestones, glitter, and “bling.” Her subjects seem to have stepped directly from a 1970s Blaxploitation film, yet Thomas’s influences extend far beyond. Her oeuvre stems from her long study of art history and the classical genres of portraiture, landscape, and still life. Thomas’s layered facture process begins with a photographic portrait that is translated into a collage, and ultimately reenvisioned as a painting. Her imagery comprises careful borrowings from art history and from contemporary popular culture.

For Origin of the Universe, Thomas examines art historical constructs of feminine identity, sexuality, beauty, and power in 15 works in a variety of sizes, shapes, and media. Taking cues from Marcel Duchamp’s Étant Donnés: 1° la chute d’eau, 2° le gaz d’éclairage (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas) and Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde (The Origin of the World), Thomas presents the female figure as the origin of the universe, focusing on how the female body both engenders and inhabits landscape. The works on view are in communication with one another—portraits of Qusuquzah and Din gaze out at modernist interiors and plein-air landscapes, all confronted by the artist’s arresting recreations of Courbet’s Origin.

In nineteenth-century visual culture, black female sexuality functioned as something to be rejected or disparaged, but Thomas reconfigures these historical tropes into contemporary statements of empowerment. By casting African American women as the “heroines” of her works, she makes a profound statement regarding gender and racial identity. Thomas’s dialogue with Courbet and Duchamp is a strong reclamation of history, reasserting the subjective nature of beauty. In addition to her paintings and photographs, she will create an installation in SMMoA’s Project Room 1, to reinvent Étant Donnés, where the “peep show” reveals the true surprise of a 70s-style paneled interior in the place of Duchamp’s splayed female body.

Mickalene Thomas was born in 1971. She earned a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree from Pratt Institute and a Master’s of Fine Arts from Yale University. She has participated in residency programs at the Versailles Foundation Munn Artists Program, Giverny, France, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, The Renaissance Society, Chicago, and MoMA PS1, New York, and is included in the important collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; The Museum of Fine Arts Boston; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe is organized by the Santa Monica Museum of Art; SMMoA Deputy Director Lisa Melandri is the exhibition curator. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of free, engaging public programs and a full-color, illustrated catalog published by SMMoA and distributed by DAP. The publication includes an interview with the artist by Melandri; an essay that contextualizes Thomas’s work by writer/curator Sarah Lewis, Professor at Yale University School of Art; and an in-depth investigation of Thomas’s nineteenth-century influences by scholar Denise Murrell, a 2011 PhD Dissertation Fellow at Reid Hall of Columbia University in Paris.

Generous support for this exhibition has been provided by The National Endowment for the Arts, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support has also been provided by Janine and Lyndon Barrois.