Abrons Art Center Gallery presents
Posing
September 18 - November 11, 2007
OPENING RECEPTION: Wednesday September 19, 2007 6-8 pm
PANEL DISCUSSION "New Positions": Tuesday, September 25, 2007 6:30-8pm
Panelists: Rebecca Schneider, Titia Hulst, Valerie Lamontagne Panelists will discuss the historical portraiture, reenactment, and feminist implications of the gaze.
New York, August 6, 2007... Curated by Andrea Cote and Joelle Jensen, Posing is a multimedia group exhibition of works by eight emerging artists: Yi Chen, Nikhil Chopra, Kate Clark, Alex Forman, Yoshio Itagaki, Chris Kaczmareck, Valerie LaMontagne, and Amy Talluto. Utilizing mimicry, repetition, and imitation, the exhibition looks at various approaches to the act of posing from historical portraiture to contemporary snapshots. The artists in this exhibition examine the relationships between artist, model, viewer, history, culture and media.
Alex Forman photographs miniature figurines of the American Presidents. They share gestures of entitlement, stature and perfected public bearing. Her photographs hold the formation of masculinity up for scrutiny, embodying expectations about power and leadership.
Valerie Lamontagne and Amy Talluto expand the discussion of gender roles using images of the female body, acting as both artists and models. Lamontagne looks to historical precedent by overlaying her own photographic image onto Balthus' paintings of adolescent women. In her classically skillful renderings, Talluto mimics the poses of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models. As she vulnerably exposes her own "imperfections" Talluto subverts accepted cultural standards and re-possesses the female body.
Like Talluto, Yi Chen and Yoshio Itagaki create works that expose the practices of an image-conscious civilization. Chen paints figures from the back pages of popular Chinese magazines. Despite their blurred faces, westernized clothing and postures, the young teens appear fragile in their purchased identities. Itagaki uses computer montage to exaggerate the disconnection between person, place and presentation. He places his smiling subjects, whose dress signifies participation in culturally defined roles (bride/groom/geisha), in the incongruous locale of the moon. Itagaki's images highlight the fabrication of experience.
Kate Clark and Nikhil Chopra utilize conventions of portraiture, drawing on the genre's seductive attempts to extend time and mortality. Clark reconstructs the faces and postures of animals that have undergone taxidermy to mimic human gestures and expressions. The confrontational sculptures demand attention with their arresting presence. In Chopra's performance (presented on video) the artist sits motionless inside an exquisite vanitas painting, a reminder of the death present in every moment's passing. In contrast to these classic treatises on morality, Chopra's still character invites contemplation on the past and present issues of colonialism, exoticism, and excess.
Chris Kaczmarek's interactive video installation ruptures the relationship between observer and observed. Kaczmarek's timely installation provokes questions about current surveillance methods. Push Button incites consideration of the ways in which citizens participate (knowingly or otherwise) in the collection of information and the undefined parameters of how that information can be used.
Catalog available for purchase at http://www.lulu.com/content/1078020
