Press Release: Artpace San Antonio Announces 2005 Exhibition Schedule
01.26.05
Media Contact: Libby D. Tilley
t 210 212 4900 x122
f 210 212 4990
ltilley@artpace.org
www.artpace.org
San Antonio, TX – As Artpace San Antonio turns 10 in 2005, the organization is reflecting on its impact in a city with a rich cultural heritage by deliberately highlighting something that has inherently revealed itself in their residency program: more than 30% of Artpace's resident artists are of Latin American descent. For their high-profile anniversary celebration?the nation's ninth largest city, with a population that is itself over 50% Latino?pace is devoting the entire year to guest curators whose philosophical and academic interests are focused on Latin American art.
These curators –Victor Zamudio-Taylor, Independent Curator and Scholar, Mexico City, Mexico and New York, NY; Gabriel PŽrez-Barreiro, Curator of Latin American Art, Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin; Berta Sichel, Director of the Department of Audiovisuals and Film and Video Curator, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain?ng multiple viewpoints from the field, with emphasis on current practice as reflected through the tradition of the mestizaje, conceptual art, and feminist theory.
Continuing this focus, Artpace Executive Director Kathryn Kanjo and Assistant Curator of Education and Exhibitions Kate Green have programmed a season of four exhibitions in the Hudson (Show)Room (HSR). Named for the facility?former function, a Hudson auto dealership, the Hudson (Show)Room features exhibitions that showcase work reflecting the Artpace?international scope. The 2005 HSR exhibitions include works by Diana Guerrero-Maci‡, Trisha Donnelly, and John Pilson. The final exhibition, Spanglish, brings together artists whose works explore the hybrid linguistics and culture found along the US-Mexico border and beyond.
About Artpace
Artpace San Antonio serves as an advocate for contemporary art and as a catalyst for the creation of significant art projects. We seek to nurture emerging and established artists and to provide opportunities for inspiration, experimentation, and education. Our programs support the evolution of new ideas in contemporary art and cultivate diverse audiences while providing a forum for ongoing dialogue.
Artpace is located downtown at 445 North Main Avenue, between Savings and Martin streets, San Antonio, Texas. Free parking is available on the corner of Savings and N. Flores streets. Artpace is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday, 12-5 PM, Thursday, 12-8 PM, and by appointment. Admission is free.
Artpace San Antonio is supported by individual and corporate donors as well as The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, Kronkosky Charitable Foundation, Texas Commission on the Arts, and the City of San Antonio's Office of Cultural Affairs.
International Artist-in-Residence Schedule
New Works: 05.1
March 23 – May 8, 2005
Opening Reception and Artists' Dialogue: March 23, 6:30–8:30pm
Resident artists Daniel Joseph Martinez (Los Angeles, CA), Cruz Ortiz (San Antonio, TX), and Bojan Sarcevic (Paris, France), selected by Victor Zamudio-Taylor, Independent Curator and Scholar, Mexico City, Mexico and New York, NY.
About The Artists
Daniel Joseph Martinez, Los Angeles, California
Through photographic, sculptural, and multimedia works, Daniel Joseph Martinez infuses the tradition of self-portraiture with contemporary political, social, and aesthetic concerns. Using the body as a site for understanding the psychological dynamics of private and public identity, his works incorporate graphic images of self-inflicted wounds and witty attempts to clone mental disorders. The resulting pieces capitalize upon the power of performance art by engaging in illusion to critique apathy.
Cruz Ortiz, San Antonio, Texas
Cruz Ortiz uses print, performance, and video to embrace issues relating to Chicano culture. Replacing classical icons with symbols of contemporary pop culture such as taco trucks, canned beans, and an alter ego named Spaztek, Ortiz?work maintains a tense relationship consumerism. One is never sure whether he is selling an idea, a product, or a revolution. With a methodological approach that often forsakes institutional space for guerilla tactics and public outreach, Ortiz?work is multi-layered, cross-cultural, and unconventionally charged.
Bojan Sarcevic, Paris, France
Bosnian artist Bojan Sarcevic investigates displacement (both as an idea and a literal experience), in the form of travel. Deeply interested in the function of space, Sarcevic?interventions take the form of installations, videos, printed material, and works on paper. His projects transfer materials from one space to another to create a sense of the uncanny, and to emphasize the exchange between old and new, local and foreign.
About The Curator
Victor Zamudio-Taylor is an international curator of Latin American art whose work adresses historical and contemporary issues. Recently appointed Chief Curator of the Museo Americano Smithsonian, San Antonio, TX, Zamudio-Taylor is co-producing The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo for broadcast on PBS and has co-organized project spaces for ARCO 2004. Zamudio-Taylor has been a Rockefeller Foundation Senior Research Fellow and served as a member of the curatorial team of the Institute of Visual Arts (Inova), University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Recent curatorial endeavors include Ultra Baroque: Aspects of Post-Latin American Art, which opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA in 2000; and The Road to Aztl‡n: Art from a Mythic Homeland, which debuted at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA in 2001.
New Works: 05.1 is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Etant donnŽs: the French-American Fund for Contemporary Art.
New Works: 05.2
July 7 – September 11, 2005
Opening Reception: July 7, 6:30–8:30pm
Artists' Dialogue: July 8, 6:30–8:30pm
Featuring resident artists Jorge Macchi (Buenos Aires, Argentina); Anton Vidokle (New York, NY), Hills Snyder, (San Antonio, TX) selected by Gabriel PŽrez-Barreiro, Curator, Latin American Art, Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, TX.
About The Artists
Jorge Macchi, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Multi-media artist Jorge Macchi explores the ideas of fate, chance, and impossibility in his work. Utilizing everyday objects in installations, video, painting, collage, and photography, his projects derive power from absence: a newspaper headline devoid of words, a musical score with notes deleted. With a poetic muteness, Macchi?pieces capitalize upon the tension between coincidence and contrivance.
Hills Snyder, San Antonio, Texas
Texas native Hills Snyder adopts cultural symbols and styles them into sculptural objects and installations. Incorporating light, audio, and interactive components, his projects are performative, often indicating presence through that which is missing. In Snyder?work familiarity is marked by a sense of the uncanny as human consciousness is merged with larger social, cultural, and existential realms.
Anton Vidokle, New York, New York
Anton Vidokle manipulates the traditions of architecture and design to question the cultural specificity of visual meaning. Blending film, photography, performance, print, and paint in public projects, Vidokle focuses on the dialogue between actual social space and utopian theories identified with the Bauhaus, Russian Constructivism, and Minimalism. His projects decontextualize the familiar by resignifying commercial elements in the socio-political sphere.
About The Curator
Gabriel PŽrez-Barreiro, was born in Spain and educated in Britain, where he received a PhD in Art History and Theory from the University of Essex, England in 1996. Since 2002 he has served as the Curator of Latin American Art at the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin, where he recently curated Lo feo de este mundo: Images of the Grotesque. Previously, he served as the Director of Visual Arts at the Americas Society, New York, NY and while there organized projects with Iran do Espirito Santo, Rivane Neuenschwander, Lygia Pape, Geraldo de Barros, and others. Prior to his appointment in New York, PŽrez-Barreiro worked at the Casa de AmŽrica in Madrid, Spain.
New Works: 05.3
November 10, 2005 – January 22, 2006
Opening Reception: November 10, 6:30–8:30pm
Artists' Dialogue: November 11, 6:30–8:30pm
Featuring resident artists Harrell Fletcher (Portland, OR); Katrina Moorhead (Houston, TX); Melik Ohanian (Paris, France), selected by Berta Sichel, Director of the Department of Audiovisuals and Film and Video Curator, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Spain.
About The Artists
Harrell Fletcher, Portland, Oregon
Harrell Fletcher?relational approach to art-making often involves other artists and collaborators. Past projects have featured footage of people explaining how they received their scars, displays of works by emerging artists at neighborhood restaurants, and a co-created website (www.learningtoloveyoumore.com) that showcases reader-proposed assignments such as, ?ow a garden in an unexpected spot.?is inclusive approach seems to affirm that art can and will make a difference.
Katrina Moorhead, Houston, Texas
Katrina Moorhead?drawings, objects, and installations pause on the ordinary. Whether creating delicate structures out of Styrofoam and brightly-hued tiles, translating bathroom graffiti into a planted garden, or painting a billboard the color of the sky, the artist approaches each project with a delicate, spare sensibility. Moorhead's works consistently reclaim the familiar to cast it anew.
Melik Ohanian, Paris, France
Using film and photography, Melik Ohanian explores scientific, social, and cultural communities. While the artist begins with research and documentation (of star-gazers in Utah, of rap-enthusiasts outside of large cities), each project is ultimately realized in poetic, sculptural installations that involve the viewers. Each work connects to the next like a constellation that describes who we are and how we interact.
About The Curator
Originally from Brazil, Berta Sichel received her MA in Media Ecology from New York University, NY in 1984, and has worked toward her doctorate from the same institution. She is the Director of the Department of Audiovisuals and Film and Video Curator at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain and has organized projects with Jeremy Blake, Fluxus Films, Michael Snow, and many others. Sichel was the curator of Aztl‡n Today: The Chicano Post-Nation, which was shown at the Canal de Isabel II, Madrid, Spain, and Virgin Territory: Women, Gender and History in Contemporary Brazilian Art at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
2005 Hudson (Show)Room Schedule
Diana Guerrero-Maci‡
January 27 – April 17
Reception: March 31, 6:30–8pm
Diana Guerrero-Maci‡ (Chicago, Il) investigates the linguistic and visual lives of found objects, beginning each work with a solitary item (a student-made color wheel, a childhood painting, a battered soccer ball), which is flattened, framed, and studied from multiple perspectives in colorful drawings and collages. Guerrero-Maci‡'s projects culminate with large-scale painting or sculpture that, together with the studies from which they were derived, are exhibited alongside the original object, indicating that exploration is as important as that which is finally realized.
Trisha Donnelly
April 28 – July 17
Reception: April 28, 6:30–8pm
Trisha Donnelly (San Francisco, CA) stretches notions of absolute truth while shifting the act of art viewing through videos, drawings, photos, sound pieces, and performative demonstrations that are equal parts viewing and explanation. Past pieces have included a barely-there drawing which a gallery attendant reveals as the antiquated gesture of buttoning a garter, a video of the artist intently repeating hand movements intended to produce precipitation in specific part of Canada, and an appearance by Donnelly herself dressed as Napoleon riding horseback into the gallery to deliver a message of surrender. While diverse in their media, Donnelly?works consistently dip into romanticism and myths about what art, and the artist, is and can do.
John Pilson
July 28 – October 16
Reception: September 15, 6:30–8pm
John Pilson's (New York, NY) videos and photos address the relationship between people and their everyday surroundings. The artist wryly explores the psychology of architecture through videos staged in banal office buildings; in one employees break the monotony by leaping over partitions, in another a superintendent humanizes his charge by turning out the lights and retiring to his quarters. These works, as well as Pilson?still images of nature and things cohabiting with modernist structures, reveal hidden histories, and the way that spaces can define and shape.
Spanglish
October 27, 2005 – January 22, 2006
Opening Reception: October 27, 6:30–8pm
Spanglish brings together artists whose works explore the hybrid linguistics and culture found along the US-Mexico border and beyond. Works included are amalgamations?ther in English nor Spanish, rooted in neither America nor Mexico?y cross borders and barriers, retaining pieces from both cultures to form a new way of being. While the works in this exhibition reflect a biculturalism particular to the US and Mexico, they speak more broadly to the fluency of borders worldwide, and to a cultural phenomena increasingly visible in the global era.
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© 2005 Artpace San Antonio