Between Your Hand And My Head @ Western Front
Dave Muller, This Is A Rise and Fall (Small), 2005
Image courtesy the artist
BETWEEN YOUR HAND AND MY HEAD
John Baldessari, Joseph Grigely,
Dave Muller, Sara Mameni
Curated by Mark Soo
December 2, 2006 - January 27, 2007
Opening Friday, December 1 at 7pm
Please note: the gallery will be closed from December 15th, 2006 – January 2nd, 2007.
Please check our website for updates on public programmes in relation to this exhibition.
Western Front Exhibitions is pleased to present Between Your Hand and My Head, a group exhibition that explores artistic representations of “handwritten” text. While negotiating areas between communicative, transformative, semiotic and social functions of the written word, handwritten text is as much an expressive and meandering marker of identity and subjectivity as it is a device of strict formal and aesthetic convention. Attuned to the shifting indeterminacies between private conception and public interpretation, works in this exhibition navigate the multiple roles of handwritten text, finding overlaps between strategies of design and information, expression and conceptual investigation.
John Baldessari’s I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art (1971) was originally realized by students at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design as a handwritten wall text performed in the artist’s absence. Exhibited here as a lithograph, this version of Baldessari’s seminal injunction complicates notions of authorship and authenticity, further questioning the primacy of the original performance with its reproduction through print. Deaf since the age of ten, much of Joseph Grigely’s practice makes use of written notes passed to him during the course of everyday conversation. Produced in collaboration with artist Amy Vogel, You (2001) is comprised of enlarged notes of handwritten names along with an audio installation. Sara Mameni’s video Credits (2004) reanimates the scrolling mechanics and end text of the Hollywood movie Babe, Pig in the City through the idiosyncratic inflections of her hand-rendered illustration. In contra to his own admittedly difficult handwriting, Dave Muller’s meticulous drawings This Is A Rise and Fall (Small) (2005) appropriates musicologist Reebee Garofalo’s rock ‘n’ roll chart as a speculative portrait, an index of popular music (and perhaps of Muller himself) and its rabid interests in the consumption of music history.
John Baldessari has been termed one of the most influential artists to emerge since the mid-1960’s. He has exhibited extensively at venues such as the Venice Biennale, documenta, and the Museum of Modern Art, NY. Joseph Grigely, based in New York, has exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Anthony D’Offay Gallery, London, Musee d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Whitney, Venice, and Istanbul Biennials. Sara Mameni is currently completing her MA at the University of British Columbia. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery and Artspeak, Vancouver. Dave Muller is a voracious collector of music, and has exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and the Vancouver Art Gallery.
The Western Front gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council through the Government of British Columbia, the City of Vancouver, and our members and volunteers. The Western Front is a member of the Pacific Association of Artist-Run Centres (PAARC).
Special thanks to Blum and Poe, LA, Cohan and Leslie, NY, and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
The Western Front gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council through the Government of British Columbia, the City of Vancouver, Blum and Poe, LA, Cohan and Leslie, NY, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and our members and volunteers. The Western Front is a member of the Pacific Association of Artist-Run Centres (PAARC).
Western Front Exhibitions
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