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 Friday, 19 March 2010 |
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Walker Art News |
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Today at the Walker Art Center
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What's happening today at the Walker
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Lourdes : Directed by Jessica Hausner : Film (Premiere)
People flock to the purportedly miraculous healing waters in the French town of Lourdes when they think science has failed. Exploring religion and the origin of belief, Lourdes focuses on Christine (Sylvie Testud), wheelchair-bound with multiple sclerosis, who uses the pilgrimage to create a social life. “Hausner walks a tightrope . . . between medicine and the Madonna—and the result is an austere, measured, skeptical, sensitive film that lingers in the mind for days” (London Evening Standard). Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize, Venice Film Festival. 2009, 35mm, in French with English subtitles, 96 minutes.
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Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell : Theater
“A breathing portrait . . . you feel the deep, lonely ache of something precious lost. Thank Heaven that Stories Left to Tell reminds you that something precious remains as well. ” —New York Times
Thursday, March 18 with Louie Anderson
Friday, March 19 with Kerri Miller
Saturday, March 20 with Kevin Kling
Celebrating the influential work and life of actor/writer Spalding Gray (1941–2004) and his irreverent storytelling style, Stories Left to Tell combines excerpts from both renowned and never-before-seen works that span the artist’s career and life. The piece is performed by a five-person ensemble made up of some of downtown New York’s most accomplished writer/performers—including David Cale, Ain Gordon, Josh Lefkowitz, and Carmelita Tropicana—as well as a different local celebrity guest performer each evening. Stories Left to Tell also honors the 30-year history that the Walker enjoyed with Gray, which included commissions, video coproductions, and presentations of such major works as Swimming to Cambodia, Monster in a Box, and Sex and Death at Age 14.
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Stories Left to Tell and the Walker Collections : Preshow Tour
Before the performance of Stories Left to Tell, visit the galleries with guide Misa Chappell and Kathleen Russo, Spalding Gray’s wife and creator of this celebratory reading of his work. They’ll discuss artworks that resonate with the creative spirit of Gray’s life and writings.
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Sveit : Directed by Kyja Kristjansson-Nelson : Film
Screens daily from 12 noon during gallery hours
Sveit, an Icelandic word untranslatable into English, is “what connects you to the earth, to history, to nature, to humanity,” according to the late poet/essayist/musician Bill Holm. With captivating cinematography and animation, this geneography of memory and place traces the filmmaker’s connection to Iceland. 2009, video, in English and Icelandic with English subtitles, 30 minutes.
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2009 MNTV : Film
This annual series of short films and videos showcases the finest work by artists in Minnesota over the past two years, including animation, documentaries, experimental films, comedies, and dramas. Selected by Walker associate curator Dean Otto, Lu Lippold from IFP Minnesota Center for Media Arts, and local curator Marlina Gonzalez, the three one-hour programs were recently broadcast on Twin Cities Public Television.
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Abstract Resistance : Exhibition
Now-legendary figures as well as younger artists who have revolted against the aesthetic orthodoxies of their times are featured in the Walker Art Center exhibition Abstract Resistance on view February 27–May 23. Nearly 40 works ranging from the 1950s to a brand-new commission do not conform to a single theme, but are united in challenging what is expected of art, from the way it looks to the role it plays in society at large. The exhibition considers “resistance” as a complex formal and political force, as is suggested by the title it borrows from a featured sculpture by Thomas Hirschhorn. Ultimately, Abstract Resistance proposes an alternative framework for aesthetically inventive, ethically engaged, and politically defiant art. The exhibition, drawn mostly from the Walker’s collection, highlights works in assemblage, collage, and photomontage by Francis Bacon, Lynda Benglis, Anthony Caro, Sarah Charlesworth, Bruce Conner, Willem de Kooning, Lucio Fontana, Hollis Frampton, Philip Guston, Rachel Harrison, Hirschhorn, Ellsworth Kelly, Paul McCarthy, Robert Motherwell, Bruce Nauman, Cady Noland, Charles Ray, Gedi Sibony, Kara Walker, Andro Wekua, and Cathy Wilkes.
Starting with Michel Foucault’s assertion that “where there is power, there is resistance,” curator Yasmil Raymond argues that art made since World War II has been shaped by traumatic historical events in complex ways. Rather than creating an explicit art of social protest, artists have responded to violence and upheaval with art that rejects comforting moral certainties. Such art, says Raymond, is “resistant to interpretation; it withholds information, it tends to evade identification, and certainly it protests interrogation.”
Abstract Resistance brings together four generations of artists whose works have rarely, if ever, been seen together in one installation. Works by legendary figures such as Francis Bacon, Lynda Benglis, Philip Guston, and Willem de Kooning are juxtaposed with new acquisitions and a commissioned piece by artists currently at the forefront of contemporary art, including Rachel Harrison, Thomas Hirschhorn, Gedi Sibony, Andro Wekua, and Cathy Wilkes, among others.
The “abstract” qualities of the works in the exhibition are grounded in the context of the real world in ways that are emotional, visceral, and confrontational, creating an ethical relationship to recent events and the challenges facing political thought today. They are inherently “contemporary” and meant to be understood in the context of our times, when so much in our culture and society seems geared toward individualism, escapism, and a familiar kind of order. In both scale and content, Wilkes’ walk-in environment, commissioned by the Walker, evokes a domestic space in which the viewer is surrounded by found and hand-made vessels, toys, and a life-size terracotta figure that suggest symbols of birth, life, and communion.
In their struggle with the abstract qualities of death, violence, and conflict, the artists represented in Abstract Resistance provoke discomfort as well as the possibility for empathy.
To accompany the exhibition, the Walker will publish a collection of essays by exhibition curator Yasmil Raymond, art historian Simon Baier, and philosopher Marcus Steinweg as well as artist statements by Thomas Hirschhorn, Gedi Sibony, and Cathy Wilkes. The publication will be available online and through the Walker Art Center Shop in April.
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Hélio Oiticica/Rirkrit Tiravanija: Contact : Exhibition
Two recently acquired installation pieces invite visitors to relax, reflect, socialize – and also embrace deeply political, even subversive possibilities put forth by Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica and Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija.
Oiticica’s CC5 Hendrixwar/Cosmococa Programa-in-Progress, conceived with filmmaker Neville D’Almeida in 1973, is an immersive, nuanced take on pop culture involving 10 hammocks for visitors to lounge in, large-scale projections of media images of rock icon Jimi Hendrix, and an all-Hendrix soundtrack.
In Tiravanija’s untitled 2006 installation, visitors are welcome to gather at a picnic table to assemble an expansive puzzle depicting Eugène Delacroix’s 1830 masterpiece, Liberty Leading the People. A pavilionlike structure, a replica of one designed by Jean Prouvé for use in French colonial Africa, completes a tableau that presents an amusing and ironic set of juxtapositions.
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Event Horizon : Exhibition
Highlights and hidden secrets of the Walker’s contemporary art collections are presented in a lively sequence of rotations that unfold throughout the exhibition’s run. Inspired by the idea of the event horizon, a term that describes the edge of observable space, this exhibition threads together major themes and developments in contemporary art, while showcasing works in the context of the events that produced them. In changing over time, it reflects the many voices, perspectives, and programs advanced by the Walker over the past half-century, while acknowledging the continual evolution of art collections as works are added to the mix.
In addition to showing the Walker’s remarkable holdings of postwar art, from avant-garde film of the 1960s to newly created environmental works, the Event Horizon galleries serve as sites for performances, public dialogues, and screenings—all significant aspects of the art of today.
The exhibition includes more than 80 works, including pieces by Joseph Beuys, Vija Celmins, Joseph Cornell, Olafur Elisasson, Cao Fei, Thomas Hirschhorn, Andreas Gursky, Mike Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, George Segal, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, and Kara Walker.
Curators: Darsie Alexander and Elizabeth Carpenter, with Philip Bither, Sheryl Mousley, and Sarah Schultz
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