Gary Hill and Nam June Paik at Art Taipei 2008

Gary Hill, Language Willing

At the Art Taipei’s invitation for their 2008 Year Project, “Art & Tech – Wandering”, ZONE: Chelsea Center for the Arts presented Gary Hill’s “Remembering Paralinguay” and Nam June Paik’s “Beuys Voice” for the special exhibition during Art Taipei 2008.

 

George Quasha and Gary Hill gave lecture and Q&A on August 30, 2008 titled “Language Beyond Its Own Limits”

 

Nam June Paik

Beuys Voice

1990

265 x 188 x 95 cm

 

Gary Hill

Remembering Paralinguay

2000 

Single-channel video/sound installation
Video projector and mount, four amplified speakers, DVD player and one DVD (black-and-white; sound)
Performer:  Paulina Wallenberg-Olsson
Dimensions variable
Photo: Courtesy Donald Young Gallery, Chicago

Art Taipei 2008

August 29 – September 2, 2008

Taipei World Trade Center, Taipei

 

Gary Hill, Language Willing

Gary Hill

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“Molly Davies” showcased at Digital & Video Art Paris

ZONE: Chelsea Center for the Arts presented Molly Davies’s Autopsy and Dressing, at Digital & Video Art Fair 2006 Paris – A Tribute to Matthew Barney.

 

Polly Motley performed during the exhibition.

 

Autopsy

1998

Video/sound installation

12 minutes continuous loop

One channel of video projected on the wall, amplified mono sound, using one speaker on the floor.

Performance and concept by Polly Motley, Video manipulation by Molly Davies

DJ by Beth Coleman/ DJ Singe

 

DRESSING

1998

Video/sound installation

Performance by Polly Motley. Sound by Beth Coleman/ DJ Singe.

6 minutes continuous loop

Three channels of color video on 21” monitors on black table, three channels of amplified mono sound, using three speakers on the floor.

 

Molly Davies started making experimental films in the late 1960’s in New York City. For multi media performance pieces she has collaborated with artists including John Cage, David Tudor, Takehisa Kosugi, Lou Harrison, Michael Nyman, Alvin Curran, Fred Frith, Suzushi Hanayagi, Sage Cowles, Polly Motley, Jackie Matisse and Anne Carson. Her work has been presented at such sites as the Venice Film Festival, the Centre Pompidou, Musée de l’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Musée d’Art Contemporain Lyon, The Getty, Theatre Am Turm, the Whitney Museum, the Walker Arts Center, Asia Society, the Kitchen, La MaMa E.T.C., Dance Theatre Workshop, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and the Indonesian Dance Festival. Her video installation work is in the collections of the Getty Research Institute, the Musée Art Contemporain Lyon and the Walker Art Center.  Her major works include “David Tudor’s Ocean” a six-channel piece documenting performances by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and “Sea Tails” a three-channel, six monitor piece integrating film footage of Jackie Matisse’s underwater kites with a score by David Tudor.

 

Polly Motley is a choreographer, performer, collaborator and teacher with more than thirty years of extensive experience in dance, video and performance making. She trained from an early age in classical and contemporary dance forms—ballet, jazz, tap, modern and post-modern styles.  She began improvising and choreographing in 1974 while dancing with experimental dance/theater companies in Houston and Austin, Texas.  She joined the faculty of Loretto Heights College in Denver in 1982.  She worked with Barbara Dilley at  Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado where she studied dance ethnology, contemplative dance, and creative process.  She performed, choreographed, and was a faculty member for Naropa University until she moved from Colorado in 1996.  Her work at Naropa included  dance-theater/video interactions,  multi-media performance meditations (with New York film/installation artist, Molly Davies), and composed vocal/gestural improvisations.

Motley has collaborated with a roster of dance, music, visual and literary artists that includes Steve Paxton, Dana Reitz, Simone Forti, Charles Amirkhanian, Takehisa Kosugi, Fred Frith, Anne Carson, and Jack Collom.  She was the first choreographer from the United States for the Triangle Arts Program, an exchange between the United States, Japan and Indonesia.  Her most recent participation in that program included performing at the Asia Society in New York with Indonesian dance master, Mugiyono, and Japanese performer, Kota Yamazaki. 

Motley’s newest solo, Dancing the Numbers, was recently presented at the Danspace Project in New York to critical praise. Her work is supported by state and National Endowment for the Arts awards and choreography fellowships. It has been presented by the Jack Tilton Gallery, Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen,  Danspace Project , The Colorado Dance Festival, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Bates College Dance Festival, The New York Improvisation Festival, Movement Research at Judson Church, the Edge Festival San Francisco, Tulane University Art Gallery, MousonTurm (Frankfurt), and the Indonesian Dance Festival, Jakarta among other venues. 

Motley received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Colorado, Boulder with a thesis on the interactive relationships of video and performance.

Digital & Video Art Fair 2006 Paris

A Tribute to Matthew Barney

 

October 26 – 29, 2006

 

KUBE

1 – 5 Passage Ruelle

Adjacent à l’Avenue Marx Dormoy

75018 Paris, France

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“Communion Constellation” presented during the 53rd Venice Biennale

ZONE CONTEMPORARY ART is proud to present “Communion/Constellation,” a solo exhibition by gallery artist Yooah Park, on the occasion of the 53rd Venice Biennale. ZONE’s mission of global artistic interchange reflects the main theme of the Biennale, “ Making Worlds.”

 

“Communion/Constellation” establishes an intimate gathering space, exploring the circle form in various mediums. Portraits of family and friends cluster around a communal rice bowl. A universal symbol of plenty, of physical and spiritual nourishment, of vitality and renewal, the ceramic bowel has historically been an integral part of Korean culture. While majestic in scale, Yooah’s vessel seems almost weightless because of the delicacy of its celadon glaze. The gentle irregularities of the bowl are an eloquent reminder of the casting process, in which dynamic forces are guarded by the artist’s shaping hand and eye. The large and small tondo paintings are executed in red on a translucent, skin-like fabric of liquid vinyl. The refined draftsmanship of the portraits is reminiscent of old master drawings, while the luminosity of the materials suggests grisaille stained glass.

 

Trained as a traditional brush painter Yooah extends the gestural language of calligraphy onto these evocations of people vital to her personal constellation. The red ink, or Gyong-myon-ju-sa, is a mineral pigment of cinnabar, mercury and sulfur (HgS). In alchemy, sulfur is considered to be a condensation of positiveness, and mercury is thought to be a condensation of negativeness. Combined, they create a mysterious power that wards off evil. The minerals are mixed with cinnabar and perilla-oil. Unlike many other pigments, Gyong-myon-ju-sa is highly stable: the ink will be permanent until the support disintegrates. Because Yooah used the high-tech liquid vinyl, instead of the traditional paper, her images will last even longer. Like an alchemist, the painter is adept in the art of mixing delicate and dangerous elements. Gyong-myon-ju-sa, also called Inju, is used to create Bujeok, small talismans, carried for protection or posted at certain plays in and around the house: over a door or gate or on the ceiling. The blood-red color and viscosity of Inju also allude to sealing wax and colophon signatures.  In both paintings and ceramics, the artist manipulates raw materials to liberate the spirit within.

 

Parallel Event:

On Saturday, June 6th at 10:00AM, New York based Zone Artists Jack Sal and Yooah Park will present a Dual Performance entitled “East/West” at Caffé Quadri on the historical Piazza San Marco.*  Sal, who has participated in numerous exhibitions, projects, and events for past Biennales, will continue his performances with coffee and other elements and will be joined for the first time by another artist.  In this first occasion, a collaboration has been established with Yooah Park, whose work with tea and other traditional Asian foods creates a contrast/mirror to Sal’s ongoing activities in Venice.

 

* Ristorante Gran Caffé Quadri

Piazza San Marco 121

30124 Venice

Yooah Park

Communion/Constellation

June 5 – June 19, 2009

Opening reception: 6-8pm, June 5

 

Galleria Multigraphic

D.D.S. Vio 728 Venezia, Italy

The frame of needlework, the surface of vinyl, the subtle trace of ink. Drawn from a feminine world, Yooah Park opens an external world, the private. The intimate fabric of relationships based on affection, estimate, and respect that the artist, who has lived in New York these past years, links to her family and close friends.

 

There are her children, Candy e Davis Koh; her father T. J. Park, her mother O. J. Jang and her sister Jinah; her teacher Jong Sang Lee, the celebrated author Jung Rae Cho as well as her dog City represented along with her owner.

 

A flow of reciprocal exchanges with which Yooah Park renders homage by offering of herself, using the metaphor of food (rice), represented indirectly by the large hand-thrown bowl that is then placed in the kiln for its double firing. Always experimenting with techniques and materials, the artist emphasizes here again in her first one-person exhibition in Italy, Communion/Constellation – the matrix of her artistic language: the calligraphic tradition.

 

Black ink –dominated her previous works, including the series Untitled (Small Pulp) from 2000 and, in particular, transposed into metal in Writing in the Void (2006). Here it is “illuminated” (using a term borrowed from the ancient miniaturists) with the substitution of the brilliant tonality of cinnabar, mixed with other natural elements including cooking oil: creating a dense non-toxic liquid (Inju), used for seals. With a fine-point brush, like the needles used in needlework, the artist traces with confidence the outline of the precise identity of her subjects. Memory is represented via the photographs always taken by the artist – an intermediary vehicle important to suspend real time, and to avoid the “staged.” There is not a gaze, amongst the many subjects even though intense, that directly engages the viewer. It does not make for good manners, based on modesty and reserve as used in the East, to look someone directly in the eyes. Nevertheless, the rules of the traditional portrait require that the focal point be the face, rendering as secondary importance all other information.

 

In reference to this stylistic cannon, Park concentrates on the face, leaving clothing and objects that are normally used to describe the subject as sketchy traces. If, in the past, she has created handmade paper on which she paints freely interpreted ideograms, in Communion/Constellation she chooses as a support a light and flexible material – Liquid Vinyl – used as well in the textile industry. Among its fundamental characteristics is its transparency: through its interaction with light, whose source could be from either the front or the back and is revealed in the details (the eyes, the hair, half smiles).

 

Thirteen – a known symbolic number, within both Eastern and Western cultures – is an apparent reference to “The Last Supper.” Thirteen is in fact the number of large circular portraits from this type of a family album, surrounded by a “constellation” of smaller circles as well as some ovals. Using the cinnabar, which is also used in traditional medicine as well as in the creation of amulets against the evil eye, the artist takes on the role of the shaman. Painting the faces of her family and important friends becomes a way of caring for them as well as to protect them. As in her use of the food/nutrition, which is alluded to by the presence of the bowl, and is associated psychologically to giving (or withholding) affection. A dialogue that opens new and more complex thoughts.

 

Manuela de Leonardis is a Rome, Italy based curator, critic, and journalist whose articles and exhibitions feature contemporary art and photography. 

Related:
IN THE ATRIUM Yooah Park  VOID IN WRITING September – December, 2024

VOID IN WRITING

Sept 3 – Dec 28, 2024
Yooah Park Void in Writing (detail), 2024 Stainless steel, plexiglass, piano string A site-specific installation Dimension varies

YOOAH PARK

March 7 - March 29, 2008
Yooah Park, installation view

Yooah Park: “Writing in the Void”

at The Central House of Artists Museum, Moscow & Center for Architecture and Design, Mexico City
June 28 - July 3, 2006 and August 10 - September 4, 2006

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Yooah Park: “Writing in the Void”

ZONE: Chelsea Center for the Arts is pleased to present “Writing in the Void,” a mobile of 280 calligraphic marks forged in black and silver aluminum by artist Yooah Park. Organized by ZONE: Chelsea, the exhibition will be held at the Central House of Artists Museum in Moscow, and travel to the Center for Architecture and Design, Mexico City (Aug. 10-Sept. 4).

 

Trained as a brush painter, Yooah Park explores gestural dynamics in painting and sculpture, combining influences from traditional Korean calligraphy artists, and Western artists such as Franz Kline, Agnes Martin, Brice Marden and Alexander Calder.

 

While Western philosophies typically depict the Void as an infinite absence, the Eastern notion of the Void is frequently described as a “formless field” inexplicably acting as the source and sustenance of all creation. In ancient Korean painting, the artist asserts, negative space is more important than positive space, presumably because of its “pre-rational” shaping intelligence. Following this logic, Park has activated and magnified this dynamism by setting her marks in three-dimensional space, mirroring the guided improvisation of John Cage’s chance techniques.

 

Perpetual motion also conveys the Buddhist belief in spirits inhabiting inanimate objects. Park’s figures cluster together in groups or stand in isolation as human figures do. And since the figures resemble fragments of ideograms, their suspension suggests a primordial arena wherein a language is first coalescing. This suspension reinforces the minimalist esthetic, the slowing down of time, and the sharpening focus – “the mental suspension, not a mental diversion” – experienced in meditation, as noted by Mark Levy in The Void in Art.

 

In the past, Park’s organic minimalism has employed multiples, such as her shifting grid of 63 ceramic cubes presented at ZONE: Chelsea in 2004. Always evident are her intimate calligraphic marks, which also adorned her chamber of hand-made tiles denoting Korean funeral ritual and the shedding of esthetic identities in “Rite of Passage” at the Gana Insa art Center in 2002. In April 2006, Park’s mobile installation appeared in a group exhibition at the Dong San Bang Gallery in Seoul.

 

The Central House of Artists Museum is located at 119049 Krymski val 10 exhibition hall #6, Moscow, Russia.

 

ZONE: Chelsea would like to thank CHA Director Vasily Vladimirovich Bychkov and Senior manager of the exhibition organizing deparment Marina Milishnikova.

 

Yooah Park

Writing in the Void

 

June 28 – July 3, 2006, Moscow

The Central House of Artists Museum

119049 Krymski Val 10 exhibition hall #16, Moscow, Russia

 

 

August 10 – September 4, 2006, Mexico

Galeria Emilia Cohen

Juan Vazquez de Mella No. 481, Col. Los Morales Polanco

Mexico D.F.C.P. 11510

I am pleased to present “Writing in the Void”, a mobile of 280 calligraphic marks forged in black and silver aluminum by artist Yooah Park. Organized by ZONE SATELLITE, a division at ZONE:Chelsea, Center for the Arts, the exhibition will be held at the Central House of Artists Museum in Moscow (June 28- July 3, 2006) and will travel to the Center for Architecture and Design, Mexico City (Aug 10 – Sep 4,2006).

 

Trained as a brush painter, Yooah Park explores gestural dynamics in painting and sculpture, combining influences from traditional Korean calligraphy artists, and Western artists such as Franz Kline, Agnes Martin, Brice Marden and Alexander Calder.

 

While Western philosophies typically depict the Void as an infinite absence, the Eastern notion of the Void is frequently described as a “formless field” inexplicably acting as the source and sustenance of all creation. In ancient Korean painting, the artist asserts, negative space is more important than positive space, presumably because of its “pre-rational” shaping intelligence. Following this logic, Park has activated and magnified this dynamism by setting her marks in three-dimensional space, mirroring the guided improvisation of John Cage’s chance techniques.

 

Perpetual motion also conveys the Buddhist belief in spirits inhabiting inanimate objects. Park’s figures cluster together in groups or stand in isolation as human figures do. And since the figures resemble fragments of ideograms, their suspension suggests a primordial arena wherein a language is first coalescing. This suspension reinforces the minimalist esthetic, the slowing down of time, and the sharpening focus ‘The mental suspension, not a mental diversion” experienced in meditation, as noted by Mark Levy in The Void in Art.

 

In the past, Park’s organic minimalism has employed multiples, such as her shifting grid of 63 ceramic cubes presented at ZONE: Chelsea, Center for the Arts in 2004. Always evident are her intimate calligraphic marks, which also adorned her chamber of hand-made tiles denoting Korean funeral ritual and the shedding of esthetic identities in “Rite of Passage” at the Gana lnsa Art Center in 2002. In April 2006, Park’s mobile installation appeared in a group exhibition at the Dong San Bang Gallery in Seoul.

 

I would like to thank Director Vasily Vladimirovich Bychkov and Marina Milishnikova, Senior Manager of the Exhibition Organizing Department at Cental House of Artists in Moscow. I would also like to thank Consul General Ramon Xilolt, Karina Escamilla, Program Coordinator at Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, Emilia Cohen, Director of Emilia Cohen Collection and Center for Architecture and Design in Mexico City. Special thanks to Erika Vilfort and Beatrize Ezban for their initial efforts in facilitating Yooah Paws Mexico exhibition and Kiril Milinishikov for his translations for the Moscow exhibition.

 

Jennifer Baahng ED.D

Director

ZONE: Chelsea, Center for the Arts

“Tonight he feels the potency of every word: words are only an eye-twitch away from the things they stand for.”   —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

 

 

 

In his sprawling third novel, Pynchon grasped a tectonic shift in the modern era, as the industrial revolution yielded to the age of information. His international cast of misfits roams the shattered landscape of Europe at the close of World War II, no longer trading black-market cigarettes for weapons, machinery, or other tangible goods, but instead bartering with raw data—documents, patents, and even early computer codes, those ephemeral strings of 1’s and 0’s. One implication of this 1973 masterpiece is that humanity as a species is in danger of drifting from its moorings in the physical world, a condition that has come to pass with the alternate reality of cyberspace (a word that already sounds quaint, though it was coined only 20 years ago in William Gibson’s equally prescient novel, Neuromancer).

 

Yooah Park works in words as well, her art derived from expressive, calligraphic brushstrokes grounded in those immemorial ideograms first laid down millennia ago in ink on rice paper. Yet her newest work is disembodied; she has dispensed with any supporting surface, leaving her laser-cut steel brushstrokes hanging in midair. But like Pynchon’s “eye-twitch,” they remain beautifully corporeal, images that do double duty as “the things they stand for.”

 

How did Park arrive at this nexus of ancient symbols and (literally) cutting-edge technology?

 

One factor, no doubt, is travel, from her native Korea, where she received a degree in Oriental Painting, to graduate study in art history at Harvard and drawing at Columbia University. Another is her exploration of various surfaces as vehicles for her art, which has spanned drawing, painting, and sculpture. In the early nineties Park did a series of drawings that traversed the netherworld between figurative expression and pure abstraction, the form and subject reminiscent of Matisse’s bold dancers. Her images from this period are vibrant—leaping, pirouetting, twisting, and landing forms that spread across five-foot sheets of paper, and crouching, bending, lounging shapes compressed into smaller, one-foot squares. Quick arabesques and spatters of ink breathe life into the figures, and also work entirely as nonobjective form, both contained by and pushing at the boundaries of the paper, compositions that create exquisite tension.

 

Then came her work on clay tiles—calligraphic flourishes baked into the ash-colored mud, the litheness of her gestures mitigated somewhat by the elegiac gray surface. The stiff brushes she uses leave deeply incised ridges in the wet clay that feel, after being fired in a traditional Korean kiln, like fossils, giving both the image she has inscribed and the idea it conveys a sense of deep time, a shrouded past before the invention of writing, drawing, ink, or paper. Sometimes Park sculpts hexagons from this material: small smoky boxes in rows or scattered on the ground, her brushstrokes like weathered, mysterious inscriptions on tombstones. These shapes revisit her square drawings, retaining their coiled tension between the idea and its expression.

 

Park’s 2002 installation, Rite of Passage,went even further in this journey through idea and form, eschewing any sense of figuration or ideogram, leaving only walls of ashen tiles and hanging strips of handmade pulp paper to envelope the viewer. This tomblike enclosure returned her to art’s most basic element: a bare surface on which to project one’s imagination. In this case, the idea was writ large—the surface became an environment that at once enclosed and expressed a conscious negation of her earlier tools and techniques. A blank slate, in other words.

 

Fast-forward to the present. Other artists have hung objects from the ceiling—think of the colorful, playful geometries of Calder’s mobiles and Eva Hesse’s gloppy ropes and distended blobs suspended in mesh bags. More recently, the Spanish artist Jaume Plensa filled a New York gallery with curtains of stainless-steel letters that at a distance overlapped into a shimmering tower of Babel, an incomprehensible jumble of characters; only on closer inspection did it become apparent that the letters spelled out excerpts from the Bible’s Song of Songs.It is the curse of language that letters and words must be joined together to express thought, and that those sentences, paragraphs, and entire books remain intellectual abstractions— symbols—of what they represent.

 

Park, though, has the advantage over writers (or artists using letter forms) of translating thought and emotion into emphatic form through the bodily gestures of her brushstrokes. This is why the athletic traceries of her earlier drawings and clay pieces feel so alive; like those macho “action painters” the abstract expressionists, the movements of her arms, shoulders, torso—her entire body—come across in her energetic strokes of ink, her forceful scoring of clay. Now she has taken her gestures and removed them from any friction with a ground, be it paper or clay, to exist simply in the air. Cut from dark, shiny steel, these palpable strokes are hung in groups, and work on several layers. First, they are individual shapes, each filled with the verve of the original painted stroke (which is used as a template for the laser). But they also work as a whole, coalescing into various shapes as the viewer walks around and within this fragmented aerie. From some angles they seem a single entity that has burst apart and been frozen in time; from others it is as if they desire to gather together, like filings around a magnet. Always, though, they are physical manifestations of the artist’s search for form—idea, thought, and emotion transformed into a graceful dance.

 

 

 

R.C. Baker is a writer and artist who lives in New York City. His column, Best In Show,appears weekly in the Village Voice.

Related:
IN THE ATRIUM Yooah Park  VOID IN WRITING September – December, 2024

VOID IN WRITING

Sept 3 – Dec 28, 2024
Yooah Park Void in Writing (detail), 2024 Stainless steel, plexiglass, piano string A site-specific installation Dimension varies

YOOAH PARK

March 7 - March 29, 2008
Yooah Park, installation view

Yooah Park: “Writing in the Void”

at The Central House of Artists Museum, Moscow & Center for Architecture and Design, Mexico City
June 28 - July 3, 2006 and August 10 - September 4, 2006

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“Scents” presented during the 58th Venice Biennale

In celebrating 58th Venice Biennale 2019, Baahng & CO. presents SCENTS, a solo exhibition, by GuGu Kim.  The exhibition runs from May 9 to July 21, located at Santa Croce 556, 30135 Venezia VE, Italy.  Opening reception and the Artist Talk will be held at the exhibition site on Thursday, May 9, Noon – 3 PM.

 

Showcasing a group of finger paintings depicting nature, people, and various manifestations of Buddha, SCENTS offers a glimpse of journey to enlightenment in life by conferring pleasure of labor and humility.  Presenting scrims made up of endless finger stamps and illuminating lights from inwards, SCENTS is an artist’s attempt to visualize scents of universal beings and deities.  GUGu Kim is primarily known for finger paint art and uses his own recipe of medium; mixture of powdered quartz, soot, graphite, pastel, and India ink. Born 1970 in Korea and studied metallurgical engineering, spatial and interior design, he has shown in China, Germany, Japan, and USA. 

 

Review:

Venezia News reviews SCENTS

Venezia News reviews SCENTS

Venezia News June 2019 Vol. 235

GuGu Kim

Scents

Finger Stamping Paintings

May 9 – July 21, 2019

Thursday through Mondays

10 AM – 6 PM

 

Opening reception: Noon – 3pm

Thursday May 9th, 2019

 

San Simeon Space

Santa Croce 556

30135 Venezia VE Italy

(on the Grand Canal opposite to the train station)

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“In Defense of Sloth: An Eclectic and Entertaining Series of Presentation About that Most Philosophical of Vices: A Primer”

In Defense of Sloth: An Eclectic and Entertaining Series of Presentations About that Most Philosophical of Vices: A PRIMER

 

Theories and polemics about sloth have figured widely in Western thought in the work of artists, philosophers, and cultural critics as diverse as Aquinas, Nietzsche, and Malevich, as well as Marx, Kierkegaard, and Wilde. In Dante’s Purgatorio, for example, sloth is described as being the “failure to love God with all one’s heart, all one’s mind, and all one’s soul.” A more secular viewpoint on sloth is provided by Paul LaFargue, Karl Marx’s son-in-law, who authored the influential The Right to be Lazy(1883) and tirelessly campaigned for a three-hour work day. Likewise, in his manifesto “The Praise of Laziness” (1988), Zagreb-based artist Mladen Stilinovic suggests that Western artists are too preoccupied with promotion and production, and are thus less artists than producers.

 

The project has been organized in conjunction with Slought in New York, an archival exploration into the activities of the Philadelphia-based Slought Foundation, on display from November 29-December 15, 2007 at Zone:Chelsea Center for the Arts. The “In Defense of Sloth” project is collaboratively organized by Aaron Levy, Slought Foundation, and Sina Najafi, Cabinet Magazine, in association with undergraduate students in the 2007-2008 Russell Bergman Foundation Curatorial Seminar in the University of Pennsylvania Departments of English and Art History.

In Defense of Sloth: An Eclectic and Entertaining Series of Presentations About that Most Philosophical of Vices: A PRIMER

6:30 – 8:30PM, November 29, 2007

Organized by Cabinet Magazine and Slought Foundation

Related:
Slought in New York, installation view

Slought in New York at ZONE: Chelsea Center for the Arts

Curated by Aaron Levy, Jean-Michel Rabaté, and Osvaldo Romberg
November 29 - December 15, 2007

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“Should Art Abolish Art?” A conversation with Arakawa + Gins, Arthur C. Danto, Don Idhe and others

In conjunction with opening of Slought in New York at ZONE: Chelsea Center for the Arts

 

“Should Art Abolish Art?”

Thursday, November 29th, 7-8pm

A conversation with Arakawa + Gins, Arthur C. Danto, Don Idhe and others on the problematics of cultural production after Duchamp.

Moderated by Jean-Michel Rabate and Aaron Levy; Introduced by Osvaldo Romberg

Should Art Abolish Art?

7-8pm, November 29, 2007

 

Since 1963, artists-architects-poets Arakawa and Madeline Gins(b. 1936/1941) have worked in collaboration to produce visionary, boundary-defying art and architecture. Their seminal work, The Mechanism of Meaning, has been exhibited widely throughout the world. A sequel to that, To Not To Die, appeared in 1987. As a means of financing the design and construction of works of procedural architecture that draw on The Mechanism of Meaning, extending its theoretical implications into the environment, Arakawa and Gins founded the Architectural Body Research Foundation. The Foundation actively collaborates with leading practitioners in a wide-range of disciplines including, but not limited to, experimental biology, neuroscience, quantum physics, experimental phenomenology, and medicine. Architectural projects have included residences (Reversible Destiny Houses – Mitaka; Bioscleave House – East Hampton, Long Island; Shidami Resource Recycling Model House), parks (Site of Reversible Destiny – Yoro) and plans for housing complexes and neighborhoods (Isle of Reversible Destiny – Venice and Isle of Reversible Destiny-Fukuoka, Sensorium City, Tokyo). The Second International Conference on the work of Arakawa and Gins will take place at Slought Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania from April 6-8, 2007 (here for more information). Responding to A + G’s two recent works of theory, Architectural Body (University of Alabama Press, 2002) and Making Dying Illegal (Roof Books, 2006), philosopher Jean-Jacques Lecercle declared this pair to be the successor philosophers to Marx and Engels.

 

Arthur C. Danto(b. 1924) is an American art critic and philosopher. From 1949 to 1950, Danto studied in Paris on a Fulbright scholarship under Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and in 1951 returned to teach at Columbia University, where he is currently Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy Emeritus. Danto is the author of numerous books on aesthetics and philosophy, including Nietzsche as Philosopher, Mysticism and Morality, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Narration and Knowledge, Connections to the World: The Basic Concepts of Philosophy. He has also published several collections of art criticism, including Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism; Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992); Playing With the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe (University of California, 1995); and The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000). Art critic for The Nation, he has also published numerous articles in other journals.

 

Don Ihde(b. 1934) is a philosopher of science and technology, and a post-phenomenologist. In 1979 he wrote what is often identified as the first North American work on philosophy of technology, Technics and Praxis. Ihde is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Ihde is the author of thirteen original books and the editor of many others. Recent examples include Chasing Technoscience (2003), edited with Evan Selinger; Bodies in Technology (2002); Expanding Hermeneutics: Visualism in Science (1998); and Postphenomenology (1993). Ihde lectures and gives seminars internationally and some of his books and articles have appeared in a dozen languages. He is currently working on Imaging Technologies: Plato Upside Down. Ihde is also the Director of the Technoscience Research Group in the Philosophy Department, where he directs ongoing graduate and post-graduate research seminars around the study of technoscience and cutting-edge work in the fields of the philosophies of science and technology and science studies.

Related:
Slought in New York, installation view

Slought in New York at ZONE: Chelsea Center for the Arts

Curated by Aaron Levy, Jean-Michel Rabaté, and Osvaldo Romberg
November 29 - December 15, 2007

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Gallery Discussion with Richard Mayhew, co-hosted by The MacDowell Colony

In honor of Richard Mayhew’s artistic achievements, and his 2009 retrospective solo exhibition at ZONE: Contemporary Art — The MacDowell Colony and ZONE: Contemporary Art  hosted a gallery discussion on December 6, 2009 for National Benefit guests.

Gallery Discussion with Richard Mayhew

co-hosted by The MacDowell Colony

3-5pm, December 6, 2009

Related:
Monument: solo exhibition by Richard Mayhew, installation view

RICHARD MAYHEW: Monument

June 18 - August 15, 2009

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ZONEMA 2006

ZONE: Chelsea Center for the Arts is proud to present ZONEMA 2006 honoring Mexican independent cinema.  Over three days, we will show about thirty films—scheduled features, continuous screenings of shorts and displays of video art. 

 

In recent decades, Mexican directors such as Guillermo del Toro (Cronos,Pan’s Labytinth), Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama, Children of Men) and Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Babel) have become international superstars.  In this exciting festival, we will be featuring a documentary on the making of Babel by González Iñárritu, as well as “Mexico,” his contribution to the anthology film 11’09”01.  But we are also shifting focus to examine the work of independent Mexican filmmakers, presenting many films in their United States premiere.  Highlights include Roberto Rochín’s Ulama, Carlos Armella and Pedro Gonzalez’s Toro Negro, Carlos Reygada’s (Japón) second short film Maxhumain,Rodrigo Pla’s El ojo en la nuca(with Gael Garcia Bernal), Enrique Arroyo’s short El otro sueño americanoand Olallo Rubio’s Jodorowsky’s Interviews.  Reflecting ZONE’s indisciplinary mission, we will also present documentaries on artists Gabriel Orozco (by Fernanda Romandia) and Javier Marin (by Luis Rochin Naya).  Programs are curated by Jose Alvarez(chief curator)and distinguished artists Pilar Goutas, Silvana Agostini and Martin Delgado.

 

In conjunction with the screenings, ZONE will be presenting an exhibition of inks and digital prints by Pilar Goutas.  In addition, the gala opening night reception will feature a performance by Ximena Sariñana Rivera, a celebrated singer who has appeared in films, theater and television.

 

ZONEMA 2006 is made possible by the generous contribution of Row 26, with additional support by the International Morelia Film Festival, Estación Indianilla, Mantarraya Producciones, Codigo 06140, De mi Arte a Tu Arte, Esto es Tech Mex and the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York.

ZONEMA 2006

Screenings honoring Mexican independent cinema

December 7 – 9, 2006

 

Opening reception 6-10pm, December 7

 

 

December 8, 2006

 

2 pm

Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu                 11’09”01                                12 min

Amat Escalante                                     Ammarrados                             15 min

Pablo Aldrete                                          Human Sashimi                          20 min

Victor Orozco                                           La Letra con sangre entra9 min

Berenice Manjares                                   Camino                                      30 min

Luis Rochin                                             Retrospectiva                             

Javier Marin Escultura                                                                             14 min

3:40 pm

Enríque Arroyo                                        El otro sueno americano              10 min  

Alejandro Ezpeleta                                   Zayak                                        11 min

Daniela Schneider                                    Pescador                                    9 min

Cairy Joji Fukunaga                                 Victoria para chino                       13 min

Rene Villareal                                          Sus demonios                             10 min

Jose Alvarez                                          Venus                                       20 min

Rodrigo Pla                                             El ojo en la nuca                         25 min

 

5:20 pm

Roberto Rochin                         Ulama                                       100 min

 

7 pm

Gabriela Monrroy                         Un viaje                                     10 min

Jaime Romandía                                    Homeward Bound                     8 min

Olallo Rubio                                          Jodorowsky Interviews40 min

Julio Fons                                               Benjamín                                   20 min

Carlos Reygadas                                     Maxhumain                                7 min

Teresa Suarez                                         Quién mató a Tarantino                18 min

Michel Lipkes                                          Spitting Against the Wind  2 min

 

8:20 pm

Pedro Gonzalez and Rubio Armella        Common Ground                       87 min                         The Making of Babelby Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu

 

 

 

 

December 9, 2006

 

12 pm

Pedro Gonzalez and Rubio Armella        Common Ground                       87 min                         The Making of Babelby Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu

 

1:30 pm

Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu                 11’09”01                                12 min

Amat Escalante                                     Ammarrados                             15 min

Pablo Aldrete                                          Human Sashimi                          20 min

Victor Orozco                                           La Letra con sangre entra9 min

Berenice Manjares                                   Camino                                      30 min

Luis Rochin                                             Retrospectiva                             

Javier Marin Escultura                                                                              14 min

 

3:10 pm

Gerardo Naranjo                                    The last attack of the beast       14 min

Carlos Cuaron                                         Noche de bodas                          5 min

Luis Felipe Hernandez,

Gerardo Ballester and Laurette Flores          Coma                                        2 min

Fernanda Romandía                              Fénix                                        9 min

Eugenio Polgovsky                                   Trópico de Cáncer                        52 min

Ernesto Contreras                                    El Milagro                                   15 min                                      

4:50 pm

Enríque Arroyo                                        El otro sueño Americano               10 min  

Alejandro Ezpeleta                                   Zayak                                        11 min

Daniela Schneider                                    Pescador                                    9 min

Cary Fukunaga                                       Victoria para chino                       13 min

Rene Villareal                                          Sus demonios                             10 min

Jose Alvarez                                          Venus                                       20 min

Rodrigo Pla                                             El ojo en la nuca                         25 min

 

6:30 pm

Gabriela Monrroy                         Un viaje                                    10 min

Jaime Romandía                                    Homeward Bound                     8 min

Olallo Rubio                                          Jodorowsky Interviews40 min

Julio Fons                                               Benjamín                                   20 min

Carlos Reygadas                                   Maxhumain                                  7 min

Teresa Suarez                                         Quién mató a Tarantino                18 min

Michel Lipkes                                          Spitting Against the Wind  2 min

 

8:20 pm

Pedro Gonzalez and Rubio Armella        Common Ground                       87 min                                     The Making of Babelby Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu

 

Martin Delgado

Martin Delgado was born in Mexico City in1965. Since 1984 has worked extensively in radio and advertising both as creative director and producer.

In 1990, Martin began producing records and lived in Los Angeles from 2000 to 2005 producing tracks for different artists.

Today, back in Mexico City, he is producing experimental music and video.

 

Silvana Agostoni

Born in Mexico City in 1968, received a BFA in graphic design from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana  in 1994, and an MFA in photography at the School of Visual Arts, New York,  in 1997. She has shown her photographic work both individually and collectively in Mexico, USA, Spain, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Japan, Italy, Canada and Cuba.  Silvana was an artist in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada (2006), and since 1996 has received  several awards from the FONCA  (national council for the arts in Mexico) such as the Jóvenes Creadores grant in 1998 and 2002.

 

Alfredo Salomón

TECH-MEX artist born in Puebla, México, in 1968. His work has been shown at festivals in México, Canada, Finland, Malaysia, France and Brasil. At present his work revolves around the performing arts and video installation.

 

Amaranta Sanchez

México City, 1976. Enrolled at “La Esmeralda” College of Fine Arts, with a specialization at the Multimedia Center of the National Center for the Arts. Recipient of the Jóvenes Creadores grant of the FONCA in visual arts/video, 2001-2002. Her work has screened at the Vid@rte International Festival, México, 2001; Crash, México, 2001; University Museum of Arts and Sciences, México, 2001; Central Gallery and Multimedia Center, CNART, México, 1999, 2000; Videoformes, France, 2002; Interferences, France, 2001, Medioarte, Germany, 2002.

 

Fernando Llanos

Visual artist from México City, born on May 28th, 1974. He works mainly in video, the internet and drawing. His videos have participated in various festivals such as the Festival of New Film and New Media of Montreal, World Wide Video Festival (Amsterdam), Transmediale (Berlin), Interference (France), Viart (Venezuaela), INPUT (Panama), Vid@rte (México), Videochroniques (Marseille), Video do Minuto (Brazil), etc.

For the last few years he has been creating internet videoart and live presentations of video manipulation and mixing. At present he is profesor of Digital Art at the Universidad Iberoamericana and of Video at “La Esmeralda”.

 

Iván Edeza

Born in México City in 1967. Graduate of the “La Esmeralda” College of Fine Arts and curator of electronic media for the University Museum of Sciences and Art (MUCA).

 

Sarah Minter

Sarah Minter since 1982 is working in 16 mm. independent film , video and video installations, which  emphasize: San Frenesi, None is Innocent, Alma Punk, El Aire de Clara, and  more recently Intervalos a video installation with 20 screens.

Her  work has been exhibited  in diverse museums, art galleries, universities, festivals, mainly  in America and Europe. In places like MOMA, Museum of the Bronx, N.Y.   Museum of contemporary art, Boston, Haus to der   Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Canal Plus in France, International Film and Video Festival of La Havana, Celda de Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City.

She has been  fellowship holder  at the Rockefeller  Foundation, MacArthur foundation and FONCA. She has been jury and curator in diverse national and international  festivals, as well as  cultural foundations.  In the 2003 she made an artistic residence in Berlin. In 2006 she made an artistic residence in Christiania, Copenhagen, Denmark. Where she began the first of six parts of her project Multiverse about utopian communities around the world.

 

Ricardo Nicolayevsky

Born in Mexico City. At an early age, started to paint, write and play

music. When he turned 20, he moved to New York City, where he studied Cinema

Studies at NYU. After getting his BFA from NYU, studied music under

different teachers. He premiered his own compositions for piano twice (1987

& 1988) at the Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall. Since the beginning of

the 80’s to this date, he has composed music for short films, theatre plays

and radio, and has also been involved in cabaret and performance.

His film and video work includes a vast series of portraits in movement,

generally of artists. He himself has created the soundtracks to accompany

these portraits. His collection entitled “Lost Portraits” from the 80’s has

ensured him a couple of prizes in the festival circuit. He has showed

individually and collectively in galleries, museums, festivals and

universities in Mexico, United States, Canada, Brazil, Peru, France, Spain,

Holland, Germany and Belgium. In 2003 he became a fellow of the Media Arts

Program (Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation). In February of 2006

was invited by MoMA to show his film and video work in a solo event called:

“A Night with Ricardo Nicolayevsky”.

 

Héctor Falcón

1973 -Culiacán Sinaloa, México.

Multidisciplinary artist, he obtained his B.A. in visual arts in México and Japan. He has had approximately 15 solo shows in México, the US and Asia, and has participated in more than 150 collective exhibitions in México and the rest of the world. Falcón’s work often has references to embodiment , personality and social conventions regarding beauty and systems of power.

 

Rodrigo Loyola

Born in Mexico City on May 4th 1979, studies Visual Arts and Photography. He is benefited in 2000 with the Young Creators scholarship offered by the Arts and Culture Council of México with what he made Flatland. In 2002 he receives the scholarship again with what he made Graphic Work on studies of the Infinite. In the same year he had the Creators scholarship offered by the Arts Council of Querétaro to work on Multimedia and Digital Art. During these years he begins to make electronic Music. In 2005 he went to do an artistic residence in the Fundación Antonio Gala in Córdoba, Spain. He Lives in Querétaro, Mexico.

Colectivo Doble A

 

Andrea Robles Jiménez

México City (1976)

Studied communications at the Universidad Iberoamericana. During this period produces Sarna en la Cabeza,  for UNICEF this work won first prize at el Festival of TV and Video ANUIES, in May  2000.

In the year 2002 forms  Doble A with Adriana Bravo.

 

Adriana E. Bravo Morales

La Paz, Bolivia (1972)

Studies fine arts at UMSA in La Paz, Bolivia and postgraduate studies in art criticism also in Bolivia. Works in printmaking and drawing. Her work has been shown at the X Bienal Iberoamericana de Arte Grabado Iberoamericano Palacio de Bellas Artes, México D.F.

Since 1997 she has received several awards in drawing and printmaking in Bolivia and Colombia. In the year 2000 se moves to México and since 2002 has been working with Andrea Robles.

The work of colectivo doble A has been screened in numerous venues like VIDEOFEST 2K4, Baja California México, 2006, 22nd Hamburg International Short Film Festival 2006, 15th International Electronic Festival Videobrasil, Sao Paulo Brasil, 2005.

Maru de la Garza,

Studies fine arts at  the  Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, UNAM in Mexico City.

To date she has five solo exhibitions lincluding “Episodio Femenino” fotografía + video + instalación Galería de CESIMAC 2006 and “Vivencia / En Paralelo”  en el Museo Regional de Querétaro-INAH, 2005. Has participated i n 12 group shows including “Cercanos y distantes” en la Galería José María Velasco en la Ciudad de México y en el 2003 “Our eyes: origen y pasión” en el Centro Cultural Somart in San Francisco California.

 

Adriana Calatayud

 (b. 1967, Mexico City)

Graduated as graphic designer from the UNAM Visual Arts School. From 1996 to 2001 she worked at the Digital Graphics Workshop at the Centro Multimedia, Centro Nacional de las Artes doing research projects about the image. From 2004 to 2005 she worked coordinating technology research area and the Sala del Cielo at the Centro de la Imagen. She now holds the National Creators System grant, from the FONCA (mexican fund for culture and the arts).  Among her solo exhibitions in Mexico and abroad are:  2003 PROTOTIPOS 2.1 Antropometría cyborg, presented in the Caja Negra, MUCA, and in the Instituto de México in Paris, France.   Photo España, in the Instituto de México in Madrid, Spain, curated by Alejandro Castellote. In 1998 El Hombre Ilustrado, in the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno, Mexico and then in Galería Belia de Vico Arte Contemporáneo in Guatemala.

 

Maria Jose Cuevas

Born in Mexico City in 1972.  Graphic designer with a very personal signature that revises popular culture. She started making video in 2005, her videos are ironic acid views of society and personal dramas Her video work has been shown in several countries like Spain, Germany, Argentina, France, Canada, Colombia, The United States, South Africa, Venezuela and Mexico. She got a mention for her video “Mal de amores”  in the Cuadro Festival of Short Films in Mexico City.

 

Daniel Monroy

Born in México city in 1980

Studied visual arts at the Centro de Artes Audiovisuales en Guadalajara, Jalisco.

His work has been screened at festivals such as the 2nd Festival de Cine de Morelia 2004 , festival Cuadro in Mexico City. 2005, and  Festival Internacional de Cine Contemporanero(FICCO) 2006.

 

Yoshua Okón

(born in Mexico City, 1970 Lives and works in Mexico City and Los Angeles)

Yoshua Okón’s work, like a series of near-sociological experiments executed for the camera, blends staged situations, documentation and improvisation and puts into question habitual perceptions of reality and truth, selfhood and morality.  For example, in Oríllese a la Orilla (1999), Okón convinced cops to perform absurd tasks (twirling their nightsicks, dancing). In another video-taped performance, Coyotería(2003), he re-enacted Joseph Beuys’ 1974 cohabitation with a coyote by confining himself with a human “coyote” hired to act like the canine coyote (“coyote” is Mexican slang for the unsavory middlemen who facilitate interactions between the government and civilians and who also smuggle migrants across the Mexico-US border).  Okón has shown his work at the Kunstwerke in Berlin, P.S.1-MoMA and the New Museum in NY, the Istanbul Biennial, Galleria Francesca Kaufmann in Milan, The Project in NY and Galería Enrique Guerrero in Mexico City amongst others.

In1994, he co-founded La Panadería, an independent space dedicated to the exhibition and discussion of contemporary culture, a project which he directed for 8 years. Since 2002, Okón has also been a visiting teacher at the University of California, San Diego.

 

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“Molly Davies” showcased at Digital & Video Art New York

Molly Davies at DIVA NY

ZONE: Chelsea Center for the Arts presented Molly Davies’s two-channel video/sound installation, Bars, on view in Digital & Video Art The Streets’ shipping container located at 531 West 26th Street(between 10th and 11th Avenues) from February 17-24, 2007.  .


Bars is a six-minute continuous loop work which features images of caged Siberian tigers on two 8’ x 7’ screens, with sound by Charlemagne Palestine and Tuva throat singers. Digital & Video Art The Streets, produced by Frere Independent, is presented in conjunction with DiVA New York 2007, showcasing the most challenging and innovative work created in new media and video today.

 

 

About Molly Davies:
Molly Davies started making experimental films in the late 1960’s in New York City. For multi media performance pieces she has collaborated with artists including John Cage, David Tudor, Takehisa Kosugi, Lou Harrison, Michael Nyman, Alvin Curran, Fred Frith, Suzushi Hanayagi, Sage Cowles, Polly Motley, Jackie Matisse and Anne Carson. Her work has been presented at such sites as the Venice Film Festival, the Centre Pompidou, Musée de l’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Musée d’Art Contemporain Lyon, The Getty, Theatre Am Turm, the Whitney Museum, the Walker Arts Center, Asia Society, the Kitchen, La MaMa E.T.C., Dance Theatre Workshop, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and the Indonesian Dance Festival. Her video installation work is in the collections of the Getty Research Institute, the Musée Art Contemporain Lyon and the Walker Art Center.  Her major works include “David Tudor’s Ocean” a six-channel piece documenting performances by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and “Sea Tails” a three-channel, six monitor piece integrating film footage of Jackie Matisse’s underwater kites with a score by David Tudor.

Digital & Video Art The Streets

February 17 – 24, 2007

 

Container was located at 531 West 26th St (Between 10th and 11th Avenues).

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