Moving Wall | Pictures goes Disney

  

Matinee, 2009. dir. Liliana Porter (clip from full video)

 

 On Wednesday night we rolled out the wall and transformed Rotunda Gallery into an intimate screening room. The focus of the evening were short films which addressed the strange tensions of make-believe spaces.

 Liliana Porter’s Matinee elicited chuckles when its use of vintage toys and kitschy figurines created poignantly human tableaux. James June Schneider’s 16mm shorts from his Dystopian Trilogy gave a (perhaps unsurprisingly) sinister tour of Euro Disney and a gated suburban community in the American west, a reminder that one man’s utopia is another’s dystopian corporate nightmare. Kenneth Anger’s Mouse Heaven rounded out the evening, diving into the seemingly depthless waters of Mickey Mouse memorabilia. The jerky movements, off-kilter angles, and strange juxtapositions revealed a sinister undercurrent beneath the toys’ playful innocence.

The screening inspired questions about the nature of kitsch and art and sent me hunting for that dog-eared copy of Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Any common definition suggests that kitsch is the death of art,  but on the contrary, I was impressed by the artists’ ability to reimbue wind-up chickens, theme park performers, and tin Mickeys with real sentiment, humor, and meaning.

Thanks to all who attended! Keep your eyes on the blog for upcoming programs and events or check in at the public programs page.

Related links:

Liliana Porter

Kenneth Anger

James June Schneider

Moving | Wall Pictures Presents: Heterotopias

On Wednesday, February 3, 7 pm FREE

@ BRIC Rotunda Gallery 33 Clinton Street, Brooklyn

Join us for Heterotopias, a Moving Wall | Pictures screening of short videos and films by Kenneth Anger, Liliana Porter, and James Schneider. Music pins this evening together with aural nostalgia confusing our senses with a gentle suggestions of both childhood and a time of new prosperity. These videos/films are at first humorous tapestries of fairgrounds, fantasy realms, and their artifacts, but quickly reveal the sardonic relationships occurring within make-believe spaces. In the context of our current exhibition, the no place, these films become metaphors for the ever-present desire to deviate from reality amidst crisis and conflict. Liliana Porter’s Matinee, employs vintage toys and figurines in a series of vignettes that offer a poetic interpretation of the human condition. Kenneth Anger stages a collaged accumulation of antique Mickey Mouse memorabilia in Mouse Heaven to examine the dark undercurrent present in playful aspects of popular culture.  In his Faerie-Monition segment of The Dystopian Trilogy, James Schneider creates an atmospheric portrait of Euro Disney, questioning whether the theme park is a new utopia or a dystopian corporate project.

Secret, Hidden, or Imaginary? Exploring the no place

Nathan Kensinger, A Kissproof World, 2009

Opening the door to BRIC Contemporary Art’s Rotunda Gallery you are immediately surrounded by strange landscapes and asked a puzzling riddle: what or where is “the no place”? It is a question variously illuminated by the 6 artists whose works of photography, sculpture, video, drawing, and architectural intervention now populate the gallery space.

At first look it’s clear that the no place of the show’s title is secret, furtive and remote. From abandoned factories in Brooklyn, to the DMZ, to Argentinean prisons, we are shown hidden spaces, denied by governments, made inaccessible by political conflict, or simply restricted from view.

Blane De St. Croix’s Landscape Sections include a diorama of one of the world’s most restricted zones: the borderland of North and South Korea. A miniature fence topped with razor wire divides the landscape, yet on either side nature is flourishing. In an ironic twist, the area which is uninhabitable by humans has become a chance nature preserve, where birds migrate freely across the border.

Jenny Polak, Escape from San Pedro Detention Center, Terminal Island, CA, 2005-2009

No less political are Jenny Polak’s images from the series Escape from San Pedro Detention Center, Terminal Island, CA, which show the interior of a U.S. immigration detention center, closed since 2007 due to its egregious conditions. The drawings seem at once authoritative and unfinished, like architectural plans for an imagined building. Polak’s drawings are based entirely on the sketches and descriptions of former detainees, since such centers are all but inaccessible to the outside world. If you follow the installation of these images up the wall, you may discover another secret space, cut into the structure of the gallery itself.

Places that exist practically in our own backyard, but remain secret and restricted, are the subject of Nathan Kensinger’s photographs, which the artist has termed a kind of “transgressive documentation.” His images of decaying and abandoned spaces transcend the typical documentary aesthetics of urban blight, transforming the ruined interiors of Admiral’s Row in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and other local sites into locations of surprising beauty. A Kissproof World and Dome Lights both show brilliant rectangles of light cast into dark of hidden spaces. These glowing apertures suggest the workings of the camera and its ability to illuminate places that are hidden or overlooked.

J.G. Zimmerman, Dystopia Series: Oil Tanks, 2008.

These artists and others each shed a light on places that are secret, denied, and occasionally invented or fantastical. In doing so they open these places up to inquiry, using them as a platform from which to explore issues ranging from geo-political conflict to human rights to urban development.  Join us in exploring these questions and discovering the “what” and “where” of the no place.

The No Place (conjuring the unseen, the inaccessible, and politically charged spaces) is on view at BRIC Contemporary Art @ Rotunda Gallery from January 21st – March 6th 2010.

Opening Reception Pictures

Last Wednesday, two exhibitions opened at BRIC Rotunda Gallery: the no place (curated by Director of Contemporary Art Elizabeth Ferrer) and ACCENTED (curated by Lori Ledis Emerging Curatorial Fellow Murtaza Vali). Together they attracted a large crowd of people to check out the art and discuss the shows.  Both are on view until Saturday, March 6.

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J.G. Zimmerman and [dNASAb

Paula Luttringer talks about her work

Opening Tomorrow! the no place and ACCENTED

We’re excited. Currently the final touches are being completed to install the next two exhibitions. Painting a wall, touching up labels, working on lighting. Plus the wine has just arrived which means we are ready for the opening!

Opening Reception: the no place and ACCENTED

Wednesday, January 20 from 7 to 9 pm

Featuring a pre-opening dialogue, 6 pm

Exhibition artist and social activist Paula Luttringer talks about art and the depiction of trauma by enforced political disappearance.

Paula Luttringer, #1 from the series, El Lamento de los Muros (The Wailing of the Walls), 2000/2010. Inkjet print on archival paper, 33 x 33 in.

Bringing in 2010 with two new exhibtions

On Wednesday, January 20 we will be opening two exhibitions at BRIC Rotunda Gallery.

In the Main Gallery, the no place features the work of six contemporary artists who conjure utopian and dystopian environments in distinct ways to explore such issues as geo-political conflict, human rights, urban development, the environment, and most broadly, how we comprehend and utilize physical space. the no place is curated by Elizabeth Ferrer.

In the Project Room is our first Lori Ledis Emerging Curatorial Fellow exhibition of the season, ACCENTED. With people, culture and information circulating globally at accelerating rates, it might be said, that our day-to-day interactions are increasingly accented. As the aural component of language, the accent embellishes script sonically and yet it can also be visual. Accent marks indicate how text is to be enunciated. An accent is also understood as a feature that contrasts with or complements a decorative style, the key element that makes an interior come to life or a fashion outfit come together. Inspired by the attention to issues of language and translation precipitated by postcolonial theory, ACCENTED brings together recent work in video, painting and photography that examine the different ways in which accents might operate in our contemporary moment.

Join us for the opening reception from 7 to 9 pm, and come early for a special conversation with artist and activist Paula Luttringer at 6pm. Both exhibitions will be on view through March 6, 2010.

A look at the visual trends in Revelatory Tension

The subtitle of the Revelatory Tension show is “New Assertions on Divine Form.” Curator Kalia Brooks writes that the “work [in the exhibition] is an exploration into the spatial, lingual, formal, and material qualities that signify a contemplation of the divine.” What might those formal qualities be that suggest divinity? Below are some visual trends we noticed in the show.

Color: Much of the work in this show is black and white, which evokes the biblical creation of light and separation of light from darkness. There are lots of blues in the show, suggestive of the sky and water.

Light: Several of the works in the show allude to stained glass windows. Selzer’s sculptures contain pieces of colored glass and Irwin’s installation on the gallery façade mimics stained glass in a cathedral.

Architectural Features: Irwin’s installation contains classical columns; one of Adams’ collages depicts a building flanked by statues of lions; Selzer’s sculptures resemble simple dwellings.

Revelatory Tension – Final Week!

Check out some images from our current exhibition about aesthetics. It ends next Friday!

Revelatory Tension: New Assertions on Divine Form

Updates on the artists from Revelatory Tension

Catch the artists from Revelatory Tension in their next shows.

A collaborative, multimedia dance performance featuring the work of Lindsay Benedict and three other artists will show at Dixon Place NYC next Tuesday night (December 15) at 8 pm. Click here for tickets.

Shane Aslan Selzer is currently participating in 1969 at P.S. 1, on view through April, 2010. The show’s curators culled MoMA’s collection for works by major artists from that pivotal time in American history, and invited contemporary artists to create five “interruptive” installations reflecting on the period. Click here for more information.

Since the opening of Revelatory Tension last month, Derrick Adams traveled to the NADA Art Fair in Miami, December 3-6, with the Lower East Side-based Collete Blanchard Gallery, and received a Fountainhead Residency in Miami, FL, for next year. He has an upcoming solo show at Collete Blanchard Gallery, January 23 – February 28, 2010.

Revelatory Tension Artist Derick Adams Inspires Family Day Program

Works on wall are by Adams. Left: Everything Real and Imaginary Occupying the Same Space. Right: The Bigger the Lie, the More They Believe. Photo Jenna Salvagin, 2009

Last Saturday, BRIC artist educator extraordinaire Angela Earley led a kid-friendly art-making workshop inspired by Derick Adams’ mixed media pieces currently on view in the Revelatory Tension exhibition.

Photo Arlene Kriv, 2009

It seems especially apt that Adams’ collages served as the kids’ inspiration because much of Adams’ work references childhood experience and “edutainment” for young people.