Artipedia - Arts News

Wood Street Galleries

Michael Hardesty
"Feedback"
June 22 - September 15, 2007

Wood Street Galleries
601 Wood Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
(412) 471-5605

http://www.woodstreetgalleries.org

Wood Street Galleries, a project of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, has recently commissioned new work by artist Michael Hardesty, titled "Feedback" which will be featured in the new exhibition titled "Echo" opening at Wood Street Galleries, Friday, June 22, through Saturday, September 15, 2007. Also, on exhibit will be two installations by Michael Hardesty: "Offering" and "Was/Is."

"Michael Hardesty’s environments investigate the mysteries of perception, challenging our sense of our physical selves," writes curator Murray Horne, who had organized a show of Mr. Hardesty’s installations in 1991 as part of the Three Rivers Arts Festival. "The technological aspects of his work dissolve into sensual cues which elicit questions of where, what, why, and how, sometimes inducing a meditative reverie. In response to his work, we shift from the material to the metaphysical."

Michael Hardesty was born in 1952 in Louisville, Kentucky. His early study in art was in the academic forms of drawing and painting, rendering still lifes, figuration. "It taught me the fundamentals…how to ’see.’ For that, I’m eternally grateful," he says.

A graduate of Eastern Kentucky University, Hardesty has worked in painting, sculpture, ceramics, and printmaking. Hardesty furthered his studies from 1974 - 1975 at London’s Central School of Art and Design, receiving a diploma in printmaking.

"One has to marvel at Hardesty’s ability to grab and hold his audience for optimal effect using any technology within his grasp. Hardesty’s art is always the "What if…," an open-ended invitation into a universe where anything seems possible," writes Louis Zona, Executive Director of the Butler Institute of American Art.

The artist will give a public lecture, June 23rd at 1:00 p.m.

Contact: Veronica Corpuz, The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
(412) 471-6082 / corpuz@pgharts.org

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

d.c.a

Out in the Sun
Summer in the art centres
1 June - 30 September 2007

d.c.a
association francaise de développement des centres d’art
32, rue Yves Toudic
F-75010 Paris
T: +33 1 42 39 31 07

http://www.dca-art.com

Being held for the first time between 1 June - 30 September 2007, "Out in the Sun/Summer in the Art Centres" is giving the public the chance to discover a host of exhibitions and art events all over France. Involving almost forty contemporary art centres, this summer festival is being coordinated by d.c.a the french association for the development of art centres, in partnership with the Ministry of Culture and Communications’ Visual Art Delegation.

"Out in the Sun / Summer in the art centres" is offering dozens of new exhibitions all over France, illustrating the richness and dynamism of contemporary creative work — tomorrow’s heritage — via the sheer variety of its artists and what they art presenting.

The programme is interspersed with encounters, talks, concerts and performances, all of them having some connection with the exhibitions. From north to south, from east to west — and in the capital — these are events not to be missed.

Initiated by d.c.a — now a hub for 37 art centres from 19 regions and 32 départements — "Out in the Sun" highlights the way the network now covers the whole of the country.

For over thirty years the contemporary art centres have been venues for artistic experiment and creation, while actively contributing to the circulation of contemporary art and increasing public awareness to the latest on the art scene. Each year they draw hundreds of thousands of visitors.

A book/magazine will be published in December 2007 to keep the memory of those events alive.

It will be a richly illustrated X ray of the art centres, also recapitulating the major events of the summer programming.

Download the detailed programming on:
http://www.dca-art.com
http://www.culture.fr

Also available in May, a brochure recapitulating the whole programming including a map of the French art centres.

Contact presse
Christelle de Bernède
Anne Samson Communications
21 rue Léon Jost
F-75017 Paris
T : +33 1 40 36 84 35
christelle.debernede@annesamson.com

Contact coordination
Muriel Enjalran, coordinatrice
d.c.a / association francaise de développement des centres d’art
32, rue Yves Toudic
F-75010 Paris
T: +33 1 42 39 31 07
m.enjalran@dca-art.com
http://www.dca-art.com

Out in the Sun Summer in the art centres:

Centre d’Art le LAIT / Laboratoire Artistique International du Tarn (81-Albi et Castres), Crac Alsace / Centre Rhénan d’art contemporain (68-Altkirch), Centre d’art de l’Yonne (89-Auxerre), Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Centre d’art contemporain-Centre culturel de rencontre (56-Bignan), CAC Brétigny, Centre d’art contemporain de Brétigny (91-Brétigny-sur-Orge), Centre artistique et culturel du Domaine départemental de Chamarande (91-Chamarande), Centre d’art contemporain la Chapelle du Geneteil, le Carré, scène nationale (53-Château-Gontier), Cneai - Centre National de l’Estampe et de l’Art Imprimé (78-Chatou), Centre d’art contemporain La Synagogue de Delme (57-Delme), Le consortium (21- Dijon), Magasin- Centre National d’Art Contemporain (38-Grenoble), Wharf, Centre d’art contemporain (14-Hérouville Saint-Clair), Le Parvis, Centre d’art contemporain (65-Ibos), Le crédac / centre d’art contemporain
d’ivry (94-Ivry-sur-Seine), Cirva (13-Marseille), Abbaye Saint-André, centre d’art contemporain (19-Meymac), Le 10neuf, Centre régional d’art contemporain de Montbéliard (25-Montbéliard), Espace de l’art concret (06-Mouans-Sartoux), Centre National d’Art Contemporain de la Villa Arson (06-Nice), La Galerie, Centre d’art contemporain (93-Noisy-le-Sec), Jeu de Paume (75-Paris), Palais de Tokyo (75-Paris), Le Plateau / Frac Ile-de-France (75-Paris), Centre Photographique d’Ile-de-France (77-Pontault-Combault), Parc Saint-Léger / Centre d’art contemporain de Pougues-Les-Eaux (58-Pougues-Les-Eaux), Le Quartier / Centre d’art contemporain (29-Quimper), La Criée / Centre d’art contemporain (35-Rennes), Espace Croisé (59-Roubaix), Le Grand Café / Centre d’art contemporain (44-Saint-Nazaire), Centre régional d’art contemporain Languedoc-Roussillon (34-Sète), Le Creux de l’Enfer (63-Thiers), Les Abattoirs (31-Toulouse), CCC / Centre de création contemporaine (37-Tours), Passages, Centre d’art contemporain (10-Troyes), Centre International d’Art et du Paysage de l’ile de Vassivière (87-Vassivière), Institut d’art contemporain (69-Villeurbanne).

For more information go to: http://www.dca-art.com

Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona

A THEATRE WITHOUT THEATRE
Until 11 September 2007

Curators: Bernard Blistène and Yann Chateigné, with the collaboration of Pedro G. Romero.
Co produced by: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and Museo Berardo in Lisbon

Museu d’Art
Contemporani de Barcelona
Placa dels Angels, 1
08001 Barcelona

http://www.macba.es/controller.php

A Theatre Without Theatre, which opens on 24 May at the MACBA, explores the metaphors in which the influences of the theatre model made themselves felt in the arts of our times throughout the 20th century. This exhibition brings together more than 800 works, including paintings, sculptures, installations, drawings, photographs, videos, manuscripts and various other types of documents.

The exhibition reflects on the condition of the subject in contemporary society and on the links between the ‘experience of the senses’ and ‘action’. At the same time, it considers the dramatic roots of art as a constituent element of western modernity: from Vsevolod Meyerhold to Oskar Schlemmer, from Antonin Artaud to Judith Malina and Julian Beck (founders of the Living Theatre company), from Samuel Beckett to Tadeusz Kantor, the theatre has been a wellspring of ideas and theories that have been absorbed by art, becoming models of the aesthetic and spatial relationship. Art could, to a certain extent, be ‘the other stage’ of dramatic practice.

A wide range of approaches to the notion of drama and the points of convergence between an ‘archaic’ art and aesthetic innovation and the break with the past are presented in various fields of research in this exhibition, which reveals the artists and the themes common to both the theatre and art. The exhibition is not structured to show a pattern of evolution over time but instead centres on various core areas of analysis in which the genealogies and influences from the early 20th century are set out.

The theatre stage is a space isolated from the real world and hence is fictitious (though not false). It is perhaps this separation — the distance between the actor and the audience member — that enables the theatre to serve as a critical model as regards the ‘apparent’ and to use its full weight to facilitate the circulation of ideas. The 20th century was a period when the theatre got caught up in a process of transformation that eventually came to affect the roots of western culture as a whole and art in particular.

From the mid-1960s onwards, the notion of theatricality was a prominent element in contemporary art criticism. Minimalism was initially regarded as harmful and thought likely to destroy art as it had been known till then. Michael Fried, the American critic, railed against it in his famous essay Art and Objecthood (1967) on the grounds that it proposed a relationship between the work and the spectator that could lead the space of the artwork to absorb the viewer. The artists of the generation immediately after Minimalism appropriated the theatre model in order to create a core from which the foundations underpinning the contemporary could extend outwards. These foundations were the simultaneity of action and perception in the arts and the constant swapping of roles between actors and audience.

In the early 20th century, Dada, Futurism and Constructivism clearly expressed the close bond between aesthetic renewal and the theatre model. Cabaret, music hall, soirées or social gatherings, declamation and reading became modes of presenting active art for many artists after 1916. Playwrights such as Antonin Artaud and Samuel Beckett have been regarded as the true founders of artistic approaches and practices that go beyond the mere quotation.

A THEATRE WITHOUT THEATRE begins with the confrontation between the invention of Minimalism –with works by Carl André, Robert Morris and Donald Judd– and its rejection and refutation by the following generation -Dan Graham, Bruce Naumann, Marcel Broodthaers, James Coleman and Michelangelo Pistoletto-. In the works of these latter artists, it is possible to see the importance of the text and the ’set’ and to appreciate the need for a new attitude on the part of the audience, which is sometimes directly addressed and always questioned during the act of perception.

A THEATRE WITHOUT THEATRE is complemented by the research of Pedro G. Romero into the relationship between art and the theatre model in Spain: works by Federico García Lorca, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Helios Gómez, Antonio Miralda, the Teatro Estudio Lebrijano Company and Ocaña, among others, are featured in the various sections of the exhibition.

For more information go to: http://www.macba.es/controller.php