Artipedia - Arts News

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art [SMoCA]

Lyle Ashton Harris
Unitled (Kokrobitey #3), 2005
Working image.
Courtesy of the artist
and CRG Gallery, New York.

Lyle Ashton Harris:
Blow Up
8 February 2008 to 27 May 2008

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art [SMoCA]
7380 E. 2nd Street
Scottsdale, AZ 85251, U.S.A.
Phone: 480-874-4666

http://www.smoca.org

EXHIBITION:
Lyle Ashton Harris: Blow Up

This first museum survey of Lyle Ashton Harris’s art spans nearly twenty years of his art, from the formal studio self-portraits for which he first gained acclaim in the late 1980s to the large-scale constructions featured in the 2007 Venice Biennale. Harris approaches photography as a social performance. He “blows up” preconceptions of portraiture, mass-media imagery and street photography as he zeroes in on the viewers’ role as a reader of images—images that are also evidence of one’s sense of self, gender and race. This exhibition is structured as a vast collage of imagery that weaves back and forth over time and reveals the artist’s dynamic, recombinant creative process.

Harris has moved from the self-as-subject to a broader interest in the anthropology of images. He is an assistant professor at New York University (and teaches in its study-abroad program in Accra, Ghana) as well as a photojournalist for periodicals such as the New York Times, expertise that informs his thinking about the potential of photography amid globalization. His creative use of collage on a grand scale in this exhibition both documents the expansive course of his vision and reveals his intellectual methodology. Harris’s collages recall the art-historical traditions of collage as a form of social commentary, as seen in the work of Hannah Höch and Robert Rauschenberg, for example.

With this exhibition, SMoCA debuts Harris’s first installation inspired by his sojourns in Ghana, as well as his use of video in conjunction with his collage work. The monumental Accra My Love, 2007-08, includes hundreds of Harris’s photographs and extensive video footage shot in Ghana, alongside found imagery: it reflects the tensions, seen on the public stage, between traditional African art and the infiltration of Western popular culture.

Organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

Sponsored by Yvette Craddock; Janis Leonard; Linda and Sherman Saperstein; Mikki and Stanley Weithorn; and the SMoCA Salon.

TOUR:
Lyle Ashton Harris: Blow Up will travel to the UB Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Aug 26 through Oct 18, 2008.

This exhibition is available for travel beginning in November, 2008. To receive a full exhibition proposal packet please contact exhibition curator Cassandra Coblentz, 480-874-4637, or cassandrac@sccarts.org

PUBLICATION:
Lyle Ashton Harris: Blow Up Available by March 5th, 2008
The exhibition is accompanied by a book co-published with Gregory R. Miller & Co., New York and distributed internationally by DAP. It includes essays by Cassandra Coblentz (associate curator, SMoCA), noted Ghanaian scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah (Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University, New Jersey) and art historian Sarah Elizabeth Lewis (former curatorial assistant, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut), and a conversation between the artist and writer Senam Okudzeto.

RELATED PROGRAM:
Wednesday, 5 March, 7:00 pm: Discussion with artists Lyle Ashton Harris and Liz Cohen on their use of photography, performance and the body. Stage 2 Theater (adjacent to SMoCA), SMoCA members. Tickets at: 480-994-ARTS (2787)

For further information please visit our website http://www.smoca.org

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art [SMoCA]
7380 E. 2nd Street
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
U.S.A.

Phone: 480-874-4666
Fax: 480-874-4655
e-mail: smoca@sccarts.org

Museum hours: Tue, Wed, Fri + Sat: 10am - 5pm; Thurs 10am - 8pm; Sun 12 noon- 5pm
closed on Mondays

DIVA

DIVA – Artist-in-residence program in Denmark 2009

Application deadline: August 15 2008

http://www.danishvisualarts.info

To promote creative exchange between Danish and foreign artists and art institutions, The Danish Arts Council has established an artist-in-residence program in Denmark. The program makes it possible to invite artists from abroad to stay and work in Denmark for extended periods.

The Danish Arts Council will let individuals or institutions within the Danish art world propose candidate artists from abroad – preferably with a view of working together with the artists during their staying in Denmark on projects such as exhibitions, workshops, public talks, and the like. Based on the proposals submitted, The Danish Arts Council’s Committee for International Visual Art will decide whom to invite.

What the Artists are Offered

In 2009, the program offers residencies ranging from 3-6 months, but application for shorter periods of residency is also possible.

In Copenhagen, The Visual Arts Centre will provide the residents with living space and studios free of charge. The program also allows individuals or institutions outside of Copenhagen to organize one or more artist residencies of 3-6 months of duration – perhaps linked to the location in question. In the case of a residency outside of Copenhagen, it is up to the applying institution or individuals to find accommodations and studio space for the artist, subsequently financed by the program within an economic framework agreed upon in advance. The program does not cover the accommodation or expenses of accompanying family members.

Grants

Each artist receives a grant of 10.000 DKK per month to cover expenses.

Who May Apply and What is the Procedure

1. Individuals as well as institutions, galleries or other members of the Danish art world may propose artists from abroad for the program.

2. Before a proposal is made, the artist must be contacted to ensure that he or she is interested in and able to accept a residency in Denmark of the proposed duration. Residency outside Copenhagen furthermore requires securing accommodations and studio facilities for the artist in advance.

A well-founded proposal must be forwarded by mail, containing the following:
- a presentation of the artist and his or her artistic work
- descriptions of plans you may have for collaborations with the artist (exhibitions, public talks, workshops, or the like.)
- information on when the artist wants to arrive and the term of residence (3-6 months)
- a budget including travel expenses and – in the case of proposals for residency outside Copenhagen - expenses for the artist’s accommodations and studio facilities to be financed by the program
- information on how the artist can be contacted

Deadline for Proposals and Replies

Proposals for residency during 2009 must be received prior to August 15 2008. Replies can be expected within 10 weeks after the deadline.

Address

Please send proposals to
The Danish Arts Council’s International Committee for International Visual Arts

The Danish Arts Agency, The Visual Arts Centre HC. Andersens Boulevard 2
DK-1553 Copenhagen V

Further information on DIVA can be found on the website http://www.danishvisualarts.info or please contact Merete Jankowski, email: merjan@danish-arts.dk or phone: +4533744527

Americas Society

Graciela Iturbide, Ciudad de Panamá, 1974
Pigment on archival rag paper
Courtesy of the artist

Dialogue between Graciela Iturbide and Cuauhtémoc Medina
Thursday, February 28, 6:30 PM

Americas Society
680 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10021
T: (212) 249 8950
F: (212) 249 5868
Free Admission

http://www.americas-society.org

Graciela Iturbide is internationally recognized for her iconic images of Mexico. The artist will discuss her work with Cuauhtémoc Medina, a Mexico City-based critic and art historian, and Associated Curator of Latin American art at the Tate Modern, London.

Graciela Iturbide was born on May 16, 1942 in Mexico City. She studied filmmaking with a special interest in scriptwriting and later still photography at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos, at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México from 1969 to 1972. It was there she met Manuel Álvarez Bravo, and in 1970 and 1971 she apprenticed with him. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held around the world, including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Casa del Lago, New Mexico. Major retrospectives of her work have been held at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico (1996) and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1997-98). She is the recipient of a Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography (1987) and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Felloswhip (1988). Iturbide lives and works in Coyoacán, Mexico.

Cuauhtémoc Medina has an international reputation as an independent art critic, curator and historian. He studied for his PhD at the University of Essex and is on the International Advisory Board of the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art (UECLAA). Since 1992 he has been a full time researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at the National University of Mexico. He is based in Mexico City and is on the advisory committee for the 2004 Carnegie International. He has served as a visiting professor at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (New York State, USA), and is the associate curator of Latin American Art of the Tate Modern, London.

This public program accompanies the Torrijos: The Man and The Myth. Photographs by Graciela Iturbide currently on view at the Americas Society’s gallery.

In this exhibition, artist Graciela Iturbide explores in an intensely personal homage an era of contemporary Latin American life through the persona of a single man whose changing role in that history is emblematic of the times. She establishes both place and identity not only of her distinguished subject but the context of country, the land itself, in aesthetic and vernacular style alike. Presented for the first time, this complex body of work redefines the photographic image of General Omar Torrijos by looking at it as a document and metaphor, often deconstructing and reconstructing Iturbide’s own personal intersections with her subject. The symbolic and expressive imagery of the works, produced three decades ago, offer a visual paradigm that calls on memory, and a re-presentation of facts that conjure an emotional bond between subject and viewer, whether affirmative or oppositional.

Torrijos was a charismatic political and military leader who died tragically in a 1981 plane crash. The Torrijos legend is of a man of action, yet an idealist strategist and a polemic figure. The recent populist shift in Latin America recalls an examination of this earlier period of history, making the personality of Torrijos newly relevant. Iturbide provides an insightful portrait of Torrijos as a popular myth that blends tradition and modernity.

This exhibition is curated by Nan Richardson and is organized by the Americas Society in conjunction with Umbrage Editions. Americas Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Galería Emma Molina, Graciela Iturbide, the Bruce T. Halle Family Foundation and La Fundación/Colección Jumex. Additional support has been provided by the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York.

The listed event is free, open to the public and will take place at Americas Society.
We are located at 680 Park Avenue at 68th Street, in New York City.
For wheelchair access, kindly call in advance.

Reservations are mandatory, so please RSVP to: (212) 277-8359 or
culture@americas-society.org

For more information, visit http://www.americas-society.org If you have questions or comments, please email us at culture@americas-society.org