Hudson (Show)Room Exhibition

01.14.00

About the Exhibition

Makeshift presents video works by three leading international artists: Carlos
Amorales, Vanessa Beecroft and Gillian Wearing. Curated by Sofia Hernandez Chong
Cuy, a graduate student at the Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies in Annandale-
on-Hudson, NY, the exhibition highlights the performative aspects of contemporary
video art.

Makeshift investigates the work of three artists who have reflected on the notion of
personal interaction within existing social frameworks. The works in the exhibition
examine the role of performance in our everyday lives? our actions and behaviors
are predetermined by our environments.

Carlos Amorales has created a fictional character, a wrestler, who wears a mask
designed as the artists' own portrait. In Amorales Interim (1997), an actor, wearing this
mask, performs a set of conditioned and planned scenarios, displacing the artist's
narrative and the contexts, function and audience of Mexican wrestling.

Vanessa Beecroft uses actors bodies as live, standing statues for her performances.
Models almost identical in appearance are motionless and mute for hours. In Piano
Americano (1996), models are united (or "branded") by their uniforms of wigs, high
heels, brassieres and pantyhose, yet camouflaged by the muted colors and modular
arrangement of their bodies in space.

In contrast with Amorales and Beecroft's direction of actors, Gillian Wearing
encourages the participants to "be themselves." In Confess All on Video. Don't worry,
you will be in disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian (1994), the artist placed an ad in a popular
British magazine to attract the participants in her project. The respondents were disguised
and then videotaped while recounting their innermost secrets. Referencing religious
confessionals, therapy sessions and American talk shows, Wearing's piece blurs the line
between personal text and public performance.

About the Artists

Carlos Amorales was born in 1970 in Mexico and currently resides in Amsterdam. His
work in performance and video has been included in solo and group shows in Europe and
Mexico, including Migros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland; Rijksakademie van Beeldende
Kunsten, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and the Museo de Arte Carillo Gil, Mexico City,
Mexico. In 2000, his work will be included in inSITE Tijuana/San Diego and the
exhibition, Let's Entertain, at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.

Vanessa Beecroft was born in 1969 in Italy and currently lives and works in New
York. She has orchestrated her signature performances at venues internationally,
including the Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; the San Diego Museum of
Contemporary Art, CA; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia; and the
Moderna Musset, Stockholm, Sweden. Her work was included in the SITE Santa Fe
Biennial Exhibition (1997) and the 1997 Venice Biennial.

Gillian Wearing, born in 1963 in Birmingham, England, lives and works in London.
Her video and photographic work has been included in numerous solo and group
exhibitions throughout Europe and the U.S., including the 1995 Venice Biennial, Italy;
Brilliant! New Art from London, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and Sensation,
currently at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY. In 1997 she was awarded the prestigious
Turner Prize from the Tate Gallery in London.

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