Press Release: Carolee Schneemann

02.15.99

THE INTERNATIONAL ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM

New Works: 99.1

George Cisneros, SAN ANTONIO, TX

Simryn Gill, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Carolee Schneemann, NEW PALTZ, NY

Exhibition: March 12, 1999 pril 18, 1999

Opening: Thursday, March 11, 1999, 6:30-8:30 PM

Artists' Dialogue: Friday, March 12, 1999 at 6:30 PM

ArtPace, A Foundation for Contemporary Art | San Antonio presents New Works:
99.1, a series of installations by the current participants of our International Artist-in-
Residence Program. An opening celebration will take place on Thursday, March 11, and
the following evening, Eleanor Heartney, a contributing editor for Art in
America, will moderate an artists' dialogue.

Carolee Schneemann

Emerging in the early 1960s world of experimental film, music, poetry, dance and
Happenings, Carolee Schneemann's multimedia work addresses the interrelationship
between postmodern issues and broader cultural concerns. Her work is characterized by
research into archaic visual traditions, pleasure wrested from suppressive taboos and the
body of the artist in dynamic relationship with the social body. Using a vivid range of
materials and sources, she has incorporated painting, drawing, performance, video and
installation in her work. Throughout her long and influential career, Schneemann has
consistently attempted to transform the definition of art, especially in regard to the body,
sexuality and gender.

At ArtPace, Schneemann has made a new video installation, Vespers Pool.
Upon entering the gallery space, the viewer examines a corridor lined with illuminated
niches that contain artifacts?ead dove, a bloody nightgown, a deer tail, a piece of
splintered wood from a tree struck by lightning. As one rounds the corner of the gallery,
seven video projections display a stream of images of Schneemann's cat kissing her,
which flows vertically down a scrim into a projected pool of water. These continuously
kissing faces were spontaneously photographed by the artist over an eight-year period. In
Vespers Pool Schneemann confronts the viewer with questions of inter-species
communication and unexpected cultural taboos.

Carolee Schneemann was born in 1939 in Fox Chase, PA and holds a BFA from Bard
College and an MFA in painting from the University of Illinois. She currently lives in
New Paltz, NY and works in New York City. Her distinguished exhibition history
includes a retrospective at New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art in 1997,
curated by Dan Cameron, as well as solo shows at the Kunstraum, Vienna, Austria;
Frauen Museum, Bonn, Germany; and the Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York, NY. Her
works have been included in many group exhibitions including Anima, Animal,
Animus at P.S.1., Long Island City, NY; Out of Actions: Between Performance
and the Object 1949-1979 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
(which traveled to Vienna, Barcelona and Tokyo); Film as Art at the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Feminin/Masculin: le sex de l'art at the
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; and Beat Culture and the New America:
1950-65 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

Schneemann was selected by: Dan Cameron, Annette Carlozzi, Amada Cruz, Kellie
Jones, Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Nancy Rubins

445 North Main Avenue San Antonio TX 78205 t 210 212 4900 f 210 212 4990 www.artpace.org