M i d - M a n h a t t a n L i b r a r y
Presents
Paradox
art:21
ART IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
SEASON Four
and
BOMB MAGAZINE
Charles Atlas interview by Lia Gangitano
Artists: Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla,
Mark Bradford, Robert Ryman and Catherine Sullivan
Monday, April 7th, 2008
6:30 p.m. on the 6th floor
Mid-Manhattan Library
The New York Public Library
40th Street and 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10016
212-340-0871
How do contemporary artists address contradiction, ambiguity, and truth? Paradox explores these questions in the work of the artists Allora & Calzadilla, Mark Bradford, Robert Ryman, and Catherine Sullivan. The artists investigate the boundaries between abstraction and representation, fact and fiction, order and chaos. Creating juxtapositions that are at times disorienting, playful, and unexpected, these artists engage with the uncertain and plumb accepted assumptions of meaning in art. The Art:21 episode Paradox was shot on location in New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Los Angeles, CA; Chicago, IL; Miami, FL; San Juan, Puerto Rico; São Paulo, Brazil; Warsaw, Poland; Paris and Avignon, France. After the screening Lia Gangitano, director of Participant Inc. will join Charles Atlas, the filmmaker, video artist and Consulting Director for Art:21, to discuss the production of Art:21 and his own work.
Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla often arguing and questioning each other’s ideas in order to reach common ground, explain two projects that took place on the island of Vieques, previously used as a bombing range by US military forces and only recently returned to the jurisdiction of Puerto Rico.
Mark Bradford uses a combination of signage from the city streets, including business advertisements and merchant posters, twine, and glue; and he produces wall-sized paintings and installations that are a reflection of “the conditions that are going on at that particular moment at that particular location,” he says.
Robert Ryman says, “In all of my paintings, I discover things. Sometimes I’m surprised at the result but I know what I’m doing.” Using white paint on square forms, he creates works such as Philadelphia Prototype, highlighting the subtle nuances of a surface and exploring the role that context and perception play in a visual experience.
Viewers follow Catherine Sullivan from a workshop with actors and students in Poland, to an exhibition space in Avignon, to a Polish-American social hall in Chicago to observe her performance-based films, many of which are influenced by popular film, real-life conflict, or ritual.
Richard Atlas was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1958. Atlas is a filmmaker and video artist who has created numerous works for stage, screen, museum, and television. Atlas is a pioneer in the development of media-dance, a genre in which original performance work is created directly for the camera. Atlas worked as filmmaker-in-residence with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for ten years. Many of the Atlas’s works have been collaborations with choreographers, dancers, and performers, including Yvonne Rainer, Michael Clark, Douglas Dunn, Marina Abramovic, Diamanda Galas, John Kelly, and Leigh Bowery. Television Dance Atlas—the artist’s critically acclaimed prime-time event on Dutch television—was a four-hour montage of original and found footage incorporating dance styles as varied as ballet, burlesque, and figure skating. Atlas also creates video installation works. The Hanged One—a work inspired by symbolism from the Tarot and foot-fetish culture—incorporated numerous video elements as well as rotoscopes, motorized mannequins, and theatrical lighting. Atlas is the recipient of three Bessie (New York Dance and Performance) Awards. His feature-length film Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance won the Best Documentary Award at Dance Screen 2000 in Monaco. His work has been shown at international institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Museum of Modern Art; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Geoerges Pompidou, Paris; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Atlas acted as Consulting Director for Art:21 (Seasons 2-4), creating the original Program Opens for each hour-long segment of Season 2, as well as supervising the Stories, Loss & Desire, Memory, Play, Protest, and Paradox episodes. Charles Atlas lives and works in New York City and Paris.
In 2001, Lia Gangitano founded PARTICIPANT INC, a not-for-profit art space in New York City, presenting exhibitions by Virgil Marti, Charles Atlas, Kathe Burkhart, Lutz Bacher, and Renée Green, among others. As former curator of Thread Waxing Space, NY, her exhibitions, screenings, and performances included Spectacular Optical (1998), Luther Price: Imitation of Life (1999), The Life Casts of Cynthia Plaster Caster: 1968-2000 (2000), Børre Sæthre: Module for Mood (2000) and Sigalit Landau (2001). She is editor of the forthcoming anthology, The Alternative to What? Thread Waxing Space and the '90s. As an associate curator, she co-curated Dress Codes (1993) and Boston School (1995) for The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and edited the publications New Histories (with Steven Nelson, ICA Boston, 1997) and Boston School (ICA Boston, 1995). She has contributed to publications including TRANS>arts.cultures.media, The Sharpest Point: Animation at the End of Cinema, Lovett/Codagnone, and Whitney Biennial 2006-Day for Night. She is currently a Curatorial Advisor for P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center.
Elevators access the 6th floor after 6p.m.
All events are FREE and subject to last minute change or cancellation.
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