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Saint Louis Art Museum

Currents 100: Angelina Gualdoni
March 30 – June 17, 2007

Saint Louis Art Museum
One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park
St. Louis, MO 63110
314.721.0072
http://www.slam.org

Artist’s Lecture and Exhibition Preview
Thursday, March 29, 7:00 p.m.

Angelina Gualdoni engages the complex legacy of modernism as it has played out in the visual arts and architecture during the second half of the twentieth century. Although her work is devoid of cynicism or polemics, Gualdoni is interested in the phenomenon of failed utopias. The disuse and collapse of the buildings that populate these canvases suggest meditations on the transience of life, or vanitas paintings for the early twenty-first century. The paintings draw upon a range of modernist sources that are given new meaning in their unlikely juxtapositions and, one might say, their gentle corruption. In Gualdoni’s hands, Le Corbusier-inspired modular buildings (which were carefully theorized to produce harmonious proportions) are afflicted with the indignities of old age. Morris Louis’s technique of staining, or pouring paint directly onto unprimed canvas (celebrated as disembodied, purely abstract color) is adapted by Gualdoni to create backgrounds for illusionistic lan
dscapes.

The literal and metaphorical sense of ebb and flow in these paintings is a result of Gualdoni’s technique. She begins each painting by pouring diluted acrylic pigments directly onto raw canvas, which reveals both the texture of the underlying fabric and the often irregular paths taken by the paint as it flows, swirls, and clots on the surface. The direction the paint takes when it is poured and the degree to which it is absorbed into the canvas are variables that Gualdoni manipulates but cannot utterly control; rather, these are elements of chance she allows into the process. She notes that in much the same way that architects engage specific sites when designing buildings, her paint pours create a specific site upon which she builds the work.

Angelina Gualdoni holds a BFA in painting and installation from the Maryland College of Art in Baltimore and an MFA in painting from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her work has recently been exhibited at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Engholm Engelhorn Gallery in Vienna and the Museum De Paviljoens, Almere, in the Netherlands. Angelina Gualdoni is represented by Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago.

Currents 100: Angelina Gualdoni is part of a series of exhibitions featuring the work of contemporary artists at the Saint Louis Art Museum. The series is supported by the Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Endowment Fund, which supports the exhibition and acquisition of contemporary art at the Museum and the teaching principles of contemporary art at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, College and Graduate School of Art at Washington University. This exhibition is curated by Robin Clark, associate curator of contemporary art.

For more information go to: http://www.slam.org

Centre for Contemporary Art, Nottingham

Alex Farquharson appointed Director of the new Centre for Contemporary Art, Nottingham

For further information call Gary Smerdon-White, Chairman of CCAN on +44 (0)7860311412 or email garysmerdon-white@supanet.com

The new Centre for Contemporary Art, Nottingham, announces the appointment of the internationally renowned curator, critic and writer Alex Farquharson as its founding Director. Farquharson takes up his post on 2 April 2007 and will lead the development of the centre through to its opening in Autumn 2008 and beyond. Designed by architects Caruso St John, the Centre for Contemporary Art is a highly significant addition to the East Midlands cultural landscape, occupying a prime site in Nottingham’s Lace Market district and funded by Arts Council East Midlands, Nottingham City Council and a range of other supporters. Under Alex Farquharson’s direction it will join an international network of contemporary art institutions dedicated to artistic, curatorial and educational innovation.

In the last six years Alex Farquharson has built a distinguished reputation as a freelance curator, writer, editor and university lecturer. Recently he co-curated British Art Show 6, with Andrea Schlieker, at various venues in Gateshead, Manchester, Nottingham and Bristol, 2005 – 2006, and Le Voyage Intérieur: Paris – London with Alexis Vaillant at Espace Electra in Paris, 2005 – 2006. His next exhibitions are If Everybody had an Ocean: Brian Wilson, an Art Exhibition, at Tate St Ives and CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, 2007 – 2008, and ArtPace’s Fall 2007 season of residencies and accompanying exhibitions in San Antonio. He writes for a range of magazines including Frieze, Art Monthly and Artforum and has contributed to numerous books and catalogues on contemporary art, including Phaidon’s monograph on Isa Genzken (2006). As Tutor and Research Fellow in Curatorial Studies on the Curating Contemporary Art MA at the Royal College of Art he has led weekly
seminars over the last six years on various aspects of experimental exhibition history, and has written and lectured widely on these subjects. Farquharson’s curatorial career began at Spacex in Exeter in 1994, where he became Exhibitions Director, prior to his move to Centre for Visual Arts in Cardiff, again as Exhibitions Director, 1999 – 2000. He curated around forty exhibitions in this period.

Alex Farquharson has expressed his excitement at the prospect of shaping the new centre and sees it as ‘an ambitious new institution of contemporary art, that will be an inspirational social and cultural home for our immediate audience and the artists and other cultural practitioners we’ll be working with’. Under his direction the Centre for Contemporary Art will give equal emphasis to major exhibitions and a dynamic programme of live art, artists’ films and transdisciplinary education projects. Farquharson hopes that Nottingham will become ‘an essential port-of-call for national and international visitors committed to the exploration of art and ideas’.

Alison Lloyd, Head of Visual Arts and Literature, Arts Council England, East Midlands, said: ‘We are delighted to welcome Alex to Nottingham to develop what will be a flag ship gallery of contemporary art in the region. His reputation will help to establish CCAN as an exciting and leading centre for contemporary art. Arts Council England is a major capital and revenue investor in CCAN and sees it as playing a major role in attracting visitors to the city and region.’

Nottingham City Council is the lead partner in the development of the project and has been instrumental in bringing it to this stage. Peter Milton, Head of Cultural Services said: ‘As developer of the building, the City Council is delighted to be working with Alex Farquharson and the new Board to ensure CCAN benefits the cultural life of Nottingham, the region and beyond.’

For more information go to:

MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art’s
Third Annual International
Graduate Symposium

The Revolution Will Not Be Curated: Twenty-First-Century Perspectives on Art and Politics

Keynote address: Friday, April 13,
6:30 p.m.
Symposium: Saturday, April 14,
10:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Art and politics are contested and overlapping fields that are complexly manifested in the theory and artwork of twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists. This symposium seeks to investigate artists’ attempts to deploy art as a means of political force and to critically engage with radically changing conditions of modern and contemporary life. This tradition stretches across media and time, from the visual strategies of the historical avant-garde in the early twentieth century to more recent artistic work emerging in opposition to globalism, and the ensuing political, economic, and military domination of the new world’s super-powers.

Selected from an international pool of applicants, six graduate students will present their papers at the symposium.

Keynote address: Friday, April 13, 6:30 p.m.
Thomas Keenan
Director, Human Rights Project, and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Bard College

Symposium: Saturday, April 14, 10:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m., Founder’s Room, sixth floor

10:00 a.m.
INTRODUCTION
David E. Little, Director, Adult and Academic Programs, The Museum of Modern Art

10:15–10:45 a.m.
Tom Williams, Stony Brook University
“Lipstick Ascending: Claes Oldenburg, Pop Art, and the Cultural Revolution”

10:45–11:15 a.m.
Taína B. Caragol, The Graduate Center, CUNY
“Hemispheric Tendencies: The Display of Latin American Abstract and Perceptual Art at the Center for Inter-American Relations (1967–1977)”

11:15–11:45 a.m.
Luke Skrebowski, Middlesex University, England
“All Systems Go: Recovering Hans Haacke’s Systems Art”

11:45 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
DISCUSSION
Branden Joseph—Moderator
Associate Professor, Modern and Contemporary American and European Art, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University

12:15–1:45 p.m.
LUNCH BREAK

1:45–2:15 p.m.
Irmgard Emmelhainz, University of Toronto
“Jean-Luc Godard’s Militant Filmmaking Between Breton’s Objective Engagement and Sartre’s Engaged Activism (1967–1974)”

2:15–2:45 p.m.
Taro E. F. Nettleton, University of Rochester
“An Adult is Being Beaten: Infantility, Development, and Power in Shuji Terayama’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup”

2:45–3:15 p.m.
Emily Liebert, Columbia University
“Mapping Alternatives: The Center for Land Use Interpretation and the Politics of Neutrality”

3:15 – 4:30 p.m.
DISCUSSION
Claire Bishop—Moderator
Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, Warwick University

Please join us for a reception following the symposium.

Presenters were selected from an international pool of applicants by an advisory committee
consisting of:

Claire Bishop, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, Warwick University

Salah Hassan, Director, Africana Studies and Research Center, and Associate Professor, Department of Art History at Cornell University

Branden Joseph, Associate Professor, Modern and Contemporary American and European Art, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University

From The Museum of Modern Art:
Amy Horschak, Educator, Department of Education

David E. Little, Director, Adult and Academic Programs, Department of Education

Joachim Pissarro, Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture

Peter Reed, Senior Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs

Symposium organized by:
Amy Horschak, Educator, Department of Education, The Museum of Modern Art
David E. Little, Director, Adult and Academic Programs, Department of Education, The Museum of Modern Art

Both events are open to the public and will take place at The Museum of Modern Art, on Friday in Titus 2 and on Saturday in the sixth-floor Founder’s Room. Tickets can be purchased at the lobby information desk and the Film and Media desk at The Museum of Modern Art or online at http://www.ticketweb.com/.

For complete information please visit,
http://www.moma.org/education/symposium_2007.html
Or e-mail Amy Horschak at Amy_Horschak@moma.org

For more information go to: http://www.moma.org/education/symposium_2007.html