Hudson (Show)Room Exhibition

06.30.99

Exhibition dates: July 15 ?tober 3, 1999

Some Other Narratives is a selection of works from a larger exhibition organized by
the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston earlier this year and curated by Dana Friis-
Hansen, Senior Curator at the CAM. The exhibit at ArtPace includes sculpture by Felix
Gonzalez-Torres, prints by Glenn Ligon, a cut-paper installation by Kara Walker and a
large photo-mural by Pat Ward Williams.

The artists in this exhibit emerged out of the intellectual climate influenced by the art
and cultural studies of the 1980s and early 1990s. At the end of the 1990s,
multiculturalism, feminism and queer studies have left an indelible impact on art. The
politics of cultural images and representation in mass media and the roles played by race,
class, gender and sexuality in shaping identity and society continue to inform the work of
contemporary artists. The artists in Some Other Narratives explore these issues,
working from their own experiences as well as a desire to provide revisions to the
broadly accepted "official history." The results include a diverse range of styles and
narratives, indicative of the complexities surrounding the strategies and texts employed
by each artist.

For Felix Gonzalez-Torres, the apparent bias in the news published by The New
York Times was cause for frequent frustration; his broadside "stack" works presented
at ArtPace cleverly juxtapose clippings from the newspaper in order to provoke
discussion. Glenn Ligon's prints appropriate the form of slave narratives or runaway
slave posters?erature and mass media forms from eras past. Kara Walker blows up the
genteel form of the cut-paper silhouette to recast race relations in a large-scale
installation placed directly on the gallery wall. Pat Ward Williams blasts a lineup of
young African-American men to billboard scale to interrogate race representation.

About the Artists

Felix Gonzalez-Torres was born in Cuba in 1957 and died in Miami in 1996. His career
included numerous international solo and group exhibits, as well as a major retrospective
held at the Guggenheim Museum, New York in 1995. In the same year, he participated in
ArtPace's inaugural residency.

Glenn Ligon was born in 1960 in the Bronx, NY and currently lives and works in
Brooklyn, NY. His work has been exhibited internationally, including the influential
exhibit, Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American
Art and a survey show at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia in 1998.
Ligon has also participated in our International Artist-in-Residence Program.

Kara Walker was born in 1969 in California and currently lives and works in
Providence, Rhode Island. The recipient of a 1997 MacArthur "genius" grant, her work
has been seen by audiences throughout the U.S. and Europe, notably her large installation
for The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago in 1997.

Pat Ward Williams, born in 1948 in Philadelphia, PA, lives and works in Los
Angeles, CA. Her work has been seen in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including
the 1995 and 1997 Johannesburg Biennials and the Whitney Museum's 1994
exhibit, Black Male.

Events

Opening reception: Wednesday, July 14, 1999, 6:30-8:00 PM

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