SanArt

Betty Cuningham Gallery
541 West 25th Street, 212 242 2772

Chelsea

February 18 – March 27, 2010
Web Site

Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by William Bailey, including recent still-life and figure paintings as well as a selection of works on paper. This will be the artist’s third exhibition at the gallery.

Bailey is known particularly for his still-life paintings. Although unlike other still-life painters, Bailey composes his paintings on the canvas from his imagination, adjusting the light source and relative scale of each object as he paints.

Also included in this exhibition are six figure paintings (four on canvas, two on paper). Like the objects in the still-lifes, the figures are painted from Bailey’s imagination and have a strange, dreamlike presence. Unlike the major works in this exhibition, Bailey’s drawings of the figure begin from direct observation.

William Bailey’s work can be seen in a host of public and private collections, most notably the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Bailey is the subject of two monographs, one by Mark Strand and the other by John Hollander and Guiliano Briganti.

William Bailey was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa. After serving in the United States Army during the Korean War, he studied under Josef Albers at Yale where he received both his B.F.A. and M.F.A degrees. He has been exhibiting in New York since the late 1960’s. He lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut and Umbria, Italy.

An essay by Alexi Worth will accompany the exhibition.

LPM 2010 – LIVE PERFORMERS MEETING
LIVE VIDEO PERFORMERS, VISUAL ARTISTS AND VJ MEETING
27 28 29 30 May – Rome

LPM – Live Performers Meeting: international meeting of live video performers, visual artists and vjs is back with a new 8th edition.

Rome 2009 edition, registered the presence of 362 artists from Italy, Portugal, France, Germany, Canada, Hungary, United Kingdom, Poland, Spain, Uruguay, Latvia, Switzerland, Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Mexico, Greece, Denmark, United States, Austria, Australia, Turkey. During four days, 289 performances, workshops and showcases gave life to the 900 square meters of Brancaleone, setup with 15 projectors and screens.

For the second consecutive year, LPM takes place in an exclusive location, the long-standing Brancaleone that with its structure, perfectly fit the growing needs of a meeting which year after year has definitely broadened its range of contents, artists and audience.

The new edition is coming soon, and we only miss your contribution!

For the LPM 2010 themes, along with further background infos, check the ‘concept’ page on the LPM homepage:

LPM 2010 maintains the spirit of a meeting, which has been its main characteristic since the very first edition. It is conceived to be a place for comparison and exchange of informations and ideas, experimentation is one of the founding elements of its ideology. LPM is a non-profit organization, every gained fund is invested back to support the research and development of the live visual field.

Subscription to join LPM is FREE and is open since now until the 10th of April, 2010. For further details about subscription, check the “participate” webpage:

Please check out the LPM website for further informations about this edition and to surf through the archive of previous editions:

The LPM team is ready to answer your questions, and hope you can come to Rome and contribute: its going to be the best edition ever!

LPM is produced by Flyer Communication , organized by , , and FLV , thanks to the corporation of our international partners.

Birgit Jürgenssen
Ich möchte hier raus! / I want out of here! 1976
B&W photograph
© Estate of Birgit Jürgenssen / VBK, Vienna, 2009 / Sammlung Verbund, Vienna

Sammlung Verbund, Vienna
Exhibition at the
Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna, Rome
19 February – 16 May 2010

Since its inception in 2004 the Sammlung Verbund focuses on the feminist art movement of the 1970s as one of the main areas of collecting. In keeping with its maxim, “Depth before Breadth”, the fruits of this particular focus are now for the first time presented in Italy. The Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna in Rome shows an exhibition entitled DONNA: FEMINIST AVANT-GARDE OF THE 1970s from Sammlung Verbund, Vienna.

Read Full Article

World of Giving, by Jeffrey Inaba and C-Lab*
(available on Amazon USA and UK.)

Lars Mu?ller Publishers says: In this important exploration of the sentiments of our time, World of Giving explains the motivations for why we give and offers examples of individuals, foundations, governments, multinationals and NGOs helping others. Jeffrey Inaba and C-Lab provide an understanding of the process of working toward a greater good by describing actions that build bridges between goodwill and need, intention and realization. The authors show that gifts form the foundation of all kinds of human interaction with each one establishing a unique relationship between giver and receiver. They illustrate that the gift too alters in meaning and value, detailing how it transforms as it circulates through what are at times a complex series of transactions.

In place of the pursuit of personal wealth, World of Giving presents a mindset that is based on generosity and revolves around the gesture of giving. The book argues that giving is a powerful act that gains social momentum, benefiting not just the immediate recipient but typically others as well. Acknowledging that each of us is inclined to give, this illuminating publication reveals how a beneficent deed contributes to an environment of increasing generosity in addition to enhancing the capabilities of its recipient. As a shared value, giving can grow to be a meaningful collective force that affects the world in surprising ways.

Read also the introduction to the book by Jeffrey Inaba.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie donated $ 1 million to aid Haiti quake relief, Swiss supermarket Migros bestows 0.5 % of its retail and 1 % of its wholesale turnover to art and culture as part of a programme called Migros Culture Percentage.

On the other end of the generosity spectrum, Italy’s billionaire prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, had proposed to put up in three of his own houses some of the thousands of people made homeless by the earthquake that shake Abruzzo in April last year. The offer has often been regarded as nothing more than a PR move (rumours has it that he never even respected his promise.)

The book World of Giving navigates the world of generosity with brio and erudition. Whether they are good old christian charity, sincere kindness or corporate philanthropy, acts of generosity are everywhere you’d care to look.

From the velvet monkey that puts its own life at risk by emitting calls to warn other troop members of the approaching predator to the welfare pioneers of the Calvinist Dutch Republic. From the rise of US philanthropy to Communism’s re-conceptualization of the act of giving, etc. World of Giving explores generosity through times and cultures.

Philosopher, and historian David Hume described men as being fundamentally altruistic. Philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Adam Smith believed that men are motivated chiefly by self-interest, even when they display some generosity. World of Giving has a more balanced approach. Far from being a mere attempt to substitute Gordon Gekko’s ‘Greed is good’ with a call for openhandedness, the book uncovers the mechanisms and strategies of giving. And its economics, as anyone involved in thebusiness of giving away free digital goods can confirm.

Jeffrey Inaba / INABA / C-Lab, Donor Hall (detail), 2007

* i can’t recommend enough their Volume magazine.

Related: Open City: Designing Coexistence – Part 3, Reciprocity.

Giacobetti Paul Gallery
111 Front Street, No. 220, 917-548-8107

DUMBO

March 4 – March 28, 2010
Opening: Thursday, March 4, 6 – 9 PM
Web Site

Planes and Patterns features the paintings of Andrea Goldsmith, Marcie Paper, Jaclyn Mednicov, Brandon Whightsel and Tina Sarquiz and an installation by Crystal Gregory.

There is something soothing about Plains and Patterns. Perhaps it is the unpretentiousness of the work. There is little energy spent on representation.The interaction with the work might be purely sensual. But Marcie’s work deals with short term memory, brain disorders and the recording and experiencing of every single moment. Jaclyn is dealing with the fragility of the urban environment in competition with natural forces. Tina’s work is inspired by the infinite and Pascal. Andrea’s work is inspired by very real places and experiences in Italy and Barcelona. It is quite enjoyable to walk through this exhibition and bathe in the patterns and colors. But there is a depth to this work that demands that the viewer look further, to engage each of the works and begin a dialogue with the artists. To share their experience.

My first stop in Tokyo, once i had dropped my suitcase at the hotel was for the Mori Art Museum. The Roppongi art space has opened Medicine and Art, an exhibition which, despite its grandiloquent sub-title “Imagining the Future for Art and Love”, was every bit as brilliant as i had hoped.

Prosthetics, anatomical drawings by Michelangelo, an ornate amputation saw from ca. 1650, disturbing prints by Patricia Piccinini, diagrams by René Descartes, Tibetan anatomical figures, a painting by Damien Hirst, etc. Some 150 medical artifacts from the Wellcome Collection in London and works of old Japanese and contemporary art are exhibited side by side. Without any hierarchy nor anxiety. Each and everyone of them offers the most seducing spectacle about life.

Paolo Mascagni, Anatomical Illustration. Credit: Wellcome Library, London

From ancient times humans have sought to unravel the secret mechanisms of the body, developing in the process a wealth of medical expertise. At the same time we have seen our own bodies as vessels for the representation of ideals of beauty, and long sought to depict our bodies in paintings and drawings.

The exhibition is bold, provoking and it has the merit of bringing together oriental medicine and our own western idea of the art and science of healing.

The first part of the exhibition is all about Discovering the Inner World of the Body: How did people around the world first acquire understanding of the mechanisms of the human body and the vast world it contains? The first section of the exhibition answers that question by tracing various scientific developments through a vast array of artefacts. One of the highlights of the show is a series of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci. For the Renaissance man, understanding the human body was a first step towards uncovering the mysteries of the outside world. Besides, his work epitomizes the spirit of the Tokyo exhibition. Da Vinci, better than anyone, managed to combine a scientific and an artistic approach to the study of the human body.

Exhibition view (image Mori Art Museum) featuring Bal Yiluo, Recycling, 2009

Iron model of the joints in a human skeleton, Italy, 1570-1700. Credit: Science Museum, London

This 30-cm tall, fully articulated iron manikin is thought to have been used at mediacal schools during the 16th and 17th centuries for demonstrating the structure of joints and for teaching joint-related how to treat joint-related diseases.

Maruyama Okyo, Skeleton Performing Zazen on Waves, c.1787 (Daijoji Temple, Hyogo, Japan)

The second section, Fighting Against Death and Disease covers the way people have tried to fight against death and disease through the ages. In addition to presenting the history of medicine, pharmaceuticals, artificial limbs and organs, life sciences and scientific technology, this section poses philosophical questions about the nature of life and death with the various memento mori works.

Alvin Zafra, Argument from Nowhere, 2000

One of the most striking pieces in the show is Alvin Zafra’s ‘Argument from Nowhere’. It doesn’t look like anything else but an abstract painting. Until you read the notice and see the video of how the artwork came to life. Zafra vigorously grounded a human skull to powder against a seven-meter long panel of sandpaper, leaving a soft gradient of grey monotones. The operation took 14 days. Zafra said his motivation was “to paint a beautiful image of death.”

Tetsuya NOGUCHI, “Target Marks 1580″ and “Target Marks 1610″, 2009

Tetsuya Noguchi crafted two figures. The first one represents a young warrior wearing armor in the style of the Warring States period, the second sculpture represents the same man, only he is thirty years older and lives therefore in the Azuchi-Momoyama period.

The armour worn by the figures is ambivalent. Made to protect the body and relieve warriors’s fear of death and misery, this armour also features several targets that invites death or injury to the body.

Ernst Pohl, Omniskop X-ray apparatus, 1910. Science Museum, London

In the early 1920’s, Ernst Pohl created the ground-breaking Omniscope. This X-ray machine could be rotated completely around the patient which greatly enhanced the diagnostic and therapeutic potential. By the end of World War II, around 400 units had been manufactured and delivered throughout Europe, the USA, Japan and the Soviet Union (via.)

Set of fifty artificial eyes, Liverpool, England, 1900-1940

Damien Hirst, Surgical Procedure (Maia), 2007

Kamata Keishu, Surgery for Breast Cancer, 1851. Credit: Wellcome Library, London

In 1851, Kamata Keishu compiled a ten-volume medical treatise called Geka kihai in which he described and illustrated the surgical techniques pioneered by his teacher, surgeon, Hanaoka Seishu. The illustration above shows the excision of a cancerous growth from a woman’s breast, an operation which Hanaoka Seishu first carried out in 1804 using general anesthetic.

Custom built iron lung, Cardiff, Wales, 1941-1950

The picture above shows the ancestor of respiratory nasal masks. The patient with respiratory problems was encased in the wooden box up to their neck. The air pressure inside the box was alternated by operating the giant leather bellows. This caused the lungs to inflate and deflate so the person could breathe. During black outs or period of unstable electrical power supply, nurses were said o have operated it by pushing the bellows with their hands.

To be continued…

The exhibition Medicine and Art runs until February 28, 2010 at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.

Franklin 54 Gallery + projects
526 West 26th Street, No. 403, 917.821.0753

Chelsea

March 3 – March 31, 2010
Opening: Thursday, March 11, 6 – 8 PM
Web Site

Franklin 54 Gallery + projects is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings and mosaics by Java. A lover of “breaking china”, Java has mastered the use of these broken pieces in creating colorful and fun imagery. Mosaics go back more than 4,000 years and the process is a physical one; the actuality of breaking up pieces and juxtaposing them together for a composition is intriguing and self-involving. Irregular chipped surfaces and edges dominate as the materials are carefully adhered to the surface. As the artist notes he appreciates the mosaics as he is able to fix what has been broken.

Staying within this realm, Java’s paintings have a primitive, Cubist quality but again are quite involved and color continues to be important. Each one tells a story and here there is much symbolism to build on. “Still Life” is a colorful piece titled appropriately. The asymmetrical faces are sadly confrontational and the 2 tilting sideways become part of the still life. The lying figure’s head becomes enmeshed in the fruit and the chest almost becomes the outside of the watermelon on top. Color is lush and the simple thick handling of the paint heightens the texture and works well for this artist. In contrast to the mosaics, his paintings have a deeper more serious side.

Java is a self taught artist, born and raised in Cuba, now living and working in Brooklyn. Using recycled materials in his mosaics and sculptures leads him to endless possibilities as he continues the exploration with these new works. His attitude of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” is a wonderful one that he takes seriously in his dedication to the work. He has completed many commissions both private and public including portraits, patios and a recent commission in 2009 for National Payroll Week. Works have been included in exhibitions in Cuba, Italy, Miami and New York City.

"Thriller Kitty Impresses", Source: icanhascheezburger.com

• What are your manners? Where and how did you learn them? According to Ben Street’s most recent letter to us contemporary art and the Mannerist Movement could be holding hands at the table. What do you see? Peter Schjeldahl, in his review at the new exhibition of Bronzino’s drawings at the Met says, “Mannerism, the most commonly despised period in Western art history…[is] the one that best befits creative culture today. We are mostly Mannerists now…” Jerry Saltz calls Mannerism calls Bronzino, “sixteenth-century Italy’s Joey Ramone”. There’s a lot to consider here: READ this post.
• Is art your friend? Why not, it should be. John Menil says: “Art: Take it off its marble pedestal and show it as a daily companion, refreshing, human and rich: witness of its time and prophet of times to come.”For more check out this post on The Menil Collection.
• Art is Murder. Scary. But Insightful.
• Teaching with Contemporary Art is taking a break this week in order to complete special two-part interview with Esopus editor, Tod Lippy, which will be published here on the Art21 blog starting next Wednesday. Stay tuned for this unique look into a very, very distinct art magazine that has wonderful potential for art educators.
• This President’s Day roundup begins with a hotly debated exhibition and ends with a divine duo in this week’s Round-Up.
• How do you conserve a work of art that is fleeting in time? Richard McCoy speaks to Jeff Martin in this post Collaborations in Conservation: A Conversation and A Colloquium
• Do you know how to argue responsibly? How does the recent thoughts shared between Jerry Saltz and  John Yau measure up? In this week’s, FLASHPOINTS: Must art be ethical? |The Puppy Wars, Catherine Wagley writes, there are unethical ways of arguing. It’s a critic’s responsibility to try to glance past his own worldview—not to escape it (that would be impossible and uninteresting)—and invite conversation about more than what he thinks. Writing that settles for voluptuous, only half-substantiated opinion-making, however, does break the rules.
• This past Tuesday  an event at UCLA’s Hammer Museum dealt with death in a way that was less discriminating than blogger Catherine Wagley would have liked. The Museum joined forces with PEN USA to present a reading titled, “I Am Neda.” The event promised to bring together dissident poets and to celebrate freedom fighters in Iran. I went because, like so many others, I found the video of Neda Agha-Soltan, the unknown makers of which just received a George Polk Award for Videography, emotionally searing. I also went because the Neda phenomenon seems so heavily visual that I wanted to see how poetry could claim her image….READ more here.
• What better way to soundtrack an art and pop culture event than to invite an in-tune-with-pop-culture artist to curate a selection of their favorite music? Check out Culture Wars: Trivial Tunes with Mary Heilmann and Mark your calendars: The next Culture Wars night is on Wednesday, March 24, at the 92YTribeca.
• Grand Canyon Journal 4: Critique as a Destruction of Joy…”CityCenter is the biggest thing to happen to art in Las Vegas since Steve Wynn put his finger through a Picasso. The mixed-use, residential, gambling, fine dining, clubbing, high-end retail, luxury hotel behemoth opened in December with the explosive fanfare usually reserved for the demolition of buildings in Vegas.”
• VIDEO EXCLUSIVE | William Kentridge’s “Return”; Shot in his Johannesburg studio in South Africa, William Kentridge reveals the process and unusual presentation of the video work Return — a component of the larger project (REPEAT) from the beginning / Da Capo (2008) — which had its debut on the fire screen of Teatro La Fenice opera house in Venice, Italy.
• Raiding, Mining and Resurrecting: Maurizo Cattelan at the Menil Collection
• Why art school? Why now? Why does it matter? | Art21 is seeking Graduate Student Writers for Open Enrollment

Skylight Gallery
538 West 29th Street, Second floor, 212-629-3131 x248

Chelsea

February 25 – April 2, 2010
Opening: Thursday, February 25, 6 – 9 PM
Web Site

Skylight Gallery presents three solo exhibitions by artists Mark Weiss, Barbara Galazzo and Sharon Falk.

Mark Weiss has been a painter for 34 years. He has exhibited extensively throughout the USA and internationally. His content revolves around an interest in the “ interior world, the language of the psyche.

Mark has a degree in Psychology from Albany University and studied art at The Art Students League in NYC. He received a fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundaton to paint in Italy for a year and recently has completed a series of books on his 34 years of artmaking. Currently, he’s working on a collaborative project with the poet Robert Bly, combining poems and paintings.

Robert Bly says of Mark Weiss’s work: “I regard him as one of the most brilliant of the younger American painters. He is moving with great courage in a direction that few others find themselves able to go. Mark Weiss, by his tremendous skill in color and gesture, is able to move convincingly into places where demons and the divinities can can be seen by us all.”

Barbara Galazzo is a fused glass artist originally from New Orleans, LA. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally in numerous galleries, museums, and commercial installations.
Her work has been auctioned at the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia; Urban Glass in New York, and WGBY Public Television. Some of her exhibitions include Bullseye Glass at WG@BEII, Portland, Oregon; the Art Institute of Chicago Museum, Chicago, ILL; the Chicago S.O.F.A. show, Chicago, ILL; the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville, KY. In 2003 her “Boat – Collage Series” was a Niche award nominee and in 2004 the “Ribbon
Sculpture – Collage Series” won a Niche Magazine Award.

In addition to creating her own work, Sharon Falk is a graphic artist for ABC News, and worked at NBC for several years on The Today Show, and The Montel Williams Show. She has taught drawing at Bergen Community College, and painting at Pace University, and Westchester Community College; and has been the recipient of artist residencies in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Woodstock, New York; and Gatlinburg Tennessee; Sharon Falk received the Paula Rhodes award from the School of Visual Arts, and her work is collected widely in numerous private and corporate collections.

The AC Institute Presents 4 New Exhibitions:
Toby Milman and Tirtza Even: Palestine Revisited
Linda Post: Approach
Apple: A group exhibition curated by John R. Neeson and Elizabeth Gower
Lawrence F. Mesich: At Work

March 25 – May 1, 2010
Opening Event: Thursday, March 25, 2010 6-8pm

Palestine Revisited:
Tirtza Even and Toby Millman each translate their experiences of personal encounters in Palestine in their collaborative exhibition, Palestine Revisited. The two projects, Once a Wall, or Ripple Remains by Tirtza Even and Access and Closure by Toby Millman each result from extensive stays in Palestine – on both sides of the borders dividing the occupied territories and Israel – during several periods spanning 1998 to 2008. These stays were translated into a body of visual and written material and include paper cutout maps, drawings, photographs, 3-D animations and video loops, as well as two individual book renderings of the same and expanded material.

The two records, in very distinct ways, aim to incorporate the images’ passage through media and through the history impacting their perception. Thus they utlizize everyday experience and history to address signs of forceful partitioning and containment beginning with the 1948 war and leading to the current construction of the wall, and most recently, the continued violent assaults in Lebanon and Gaza.

Using text that reflects on and questions the coherence and perception of the visual material, incorporating both humor and nuanced prose, the exhibition attempts to address the characteristics and consequences of the ongoing Israeli occupation on life in Palestine.

About Toby Millman:
Trained as a photographer, Toby Millman also works with printmaking, audio, drawing and paper-construction to explore issues of mapping, borders, identity, and movement as they relate to geopolitics and civil society in and around Palestine. She recently completed an artist book at the Oregon College of Art and Craft titled, Access and Closure: stories from in and out of an occupied Palestine, which is in numerous collections nationwide including the Getty Research Institute, Yale University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US and internationally.

Toby Millman received a BA from Hampshire College and a MFA from the University of Michigan. She currently lives in Detroit, Michigan.

About Tirtza Even:
A practicing video artist and documentary maker for the past ten years, Even has produced both linear and interactive video work representing the less overt manifestations of complex and sometimes extreme social/political dynamics in specific locations (e.g. Palestine, Turkey, Spain, the U.S. and Germany, among others). Her work has appeared at the Modern Art Museum, NY, at the Whitney Biennial, the Johannesburg Biennial, as well as in many other festivals, galleries and museums in the United States, Israel and Europe, and has been purchased for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Jewish Museum (NY), the Israel Museum (Jerusalem), among others. She has been an invited guest and featured speaker at numerous conferences and university programs, including the Whitney Museum Seminar series, the Digital Flaherty Seminar, Art Pace annual panel, ACM Multimedia, The Performance Studies International conference (PSI), The Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts conference (SLSA) and others.

APPROACH:
Continuing her investigations into the sculptural application of time-based media, Linda Post creates a site-specific installation for the AC Institute’s Chapel space. APPROACH uses choreographed video to activate the long narrow room that dead-ends at an arched window. One approaches the work physically, as with sculpture. Phantom scenarios activate the simple act of walking into the space, approaching, engaging the work, and finally choosing to leave. These actions, the path available and the sound of movement in the space all become charged in the encounter.

About Linda Post:
Linda Post explores the sculptural limits of time-based media with installations that address site and viewer while avoiding spectacle. She has exhibited at MOMA, PS1, and the Sculpture Center in New York and in solo exhibitions in New York, London, and Turin, Italy. Her work is included in the publication fast forward: Media Art Sammlung Goetz. She participated in the exhibitions ‘Regarding Beauty’ at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; ‘NowHere’ at the Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst, Denmark; and ‘Young & Restless’ at MOMA, NY.

Imaging the Apple:
In the jargon of American jazz musicians a gig was an ‘apple’, and a gig in New York City was the “big apple.” A Jazz interpretation of a standard or popular tune (in itself as iconic as an apple) takes advantage of the listener’s familiarity with the melody to elucidate improvisation. Artists, using different media, have reflected on the mundane image or word, and finding pictorial associations with it, the matching is rational or (in the tradition of Dada and Surrealism) paradoxical.

Curated by John R. Neeson and Elizabeth Gower, Imaging the Apple features the work of 60 artists, including Yoko Ono’s celebrated Apple. The group show presents apple themed artwork, each piece no larger than 12 cubic inches, in a multimedia installation on the AC’s temporary 6th floor exhibition space.

Imaging the Apple will be accompanied by a catalogue (documenting the works and including a project essay) published by AC and distributed by Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Imaging the Apple has received a grant through the Dame Joan Sutherland Fund from the Australian American Association.
The Melbourne based art materials company Chapman & Bailey have also provided generous in kind support.

At Work:My work explores the dynamic relationships between bodies, behavior and the built environment. At Work investigates the specific relationship between the interstitial spaces of institutional interiors –lobbies, waiting areas, and hallways – and the routines of the people employed to inhabit them. The piece consists of video monitors mounted in enclosures that mimic the infrastructure of spaces they inhabit. The spaces depicted in the videos are at once foreign and familiar, reminding us of many different spaces while remaining essentially unplaceable. The behaviors depicted, the repetitive and unconscious actions that occur in the ‘down time’ of a work day, are similarly familiar and alienating. The repetition of these familiar architectural tropes and physical gestures creates a zone of liminal discomfort; the normally ignorable or invisible spaces and gestures are given explicit focus. Simultaneously, the monitor enclosures reemphasize the invisibleness and mundanity of those spaces and gestures. This tension implicates the viewer, asking them to reevaluate the spaces they inhabit and the behaviors those spaces help engender.

About Lawrence F. Mesich:
Lawrence Mesich’s media work explores the political and social ramifications of intersections between bodies, the built environment, and unconscious human behavior. Most recently, he has created videos and installations that document his often eccentric relationships to institutional interiors. His work has been shown in several US cities including Chicago and New York, and his performances have occurred in public spaces throughout the US, much to the delight, outrage and bewilderment of passers-by.

Lawrence was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His fascination with and exploration of the spaces created by the city’s rapid development and abandoned industrial infrastructure continue to inform his work.

About AC Institute : AC’s mission is to advance the understanding of art through investigation, research and education. It is a lab and forum for experimentation and critical discussion. We support and develop projects that explore a performative exchange across visual, verbal and experiential disciplines. We encourage critical writing that challenges conventional expectations of meaning and objectivity as well as the boundaries between the rational and subjective.

Art Currents is a non-profit 501(c)3. AC Institute 547 W. 27th St, 5th Floor New York, NY 10001 5th Floor – #519-529 & North Alcove
www.artcurrents.org / email: info@artcurrents.org Gallery Hours: Wed., Fri. & Sat.: 1-6pm, Thurs.: 1-8pm