visual catalogue

reading

2009-06-21T16:21:00.000-07:00

Elmgreen & Dragset

2009-06-21T16:15:00.001-07:00

Kate Gilmore

2009-05-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

reading

2009-04-18T06:57:00.000-07:00

Clare Twomey

2009-04-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

tunick

2009-03-23T14:01:00.000-07:00

thalen and thalen with mei lee

2009-03-23T13:58:00.001-07:00

sean m johnson

2009-03-10T14:06:00.000-07:00

beard love

myspace

jana sterbak

2009-02-03T17:42:00.000-08:00

kanako sasaki

2009-02-03T17:38:00.000-08:00

shinique smith

2009-02-03T17:34:00.000-08:00

Tania Bruguera

2009-02-03T17:28:00.000-08:00

cornelia parker

2009-02-03T17:24:00.000-08:00

louise bourgeois

2009-02-03T17:16:00.000-08:00

man ray

2009-02-01T12:52:00.001-08:00

eli petel

2009-01-27T13:07:00.000-08:00

might this thing be

peter callesen

2009-01-27T13:00:00.000-08:00

evan penny

2009-01-27T12:58:00.000-08:00

julia sapir

2009-01-26T17:17:00.000-08:00

Donald Judd

2009-01-24T10:02:00.001-08:00

lalla essaydi

2009-01-22T15:00:00.000-08:00

Philippe Petit

2009-01-20T16:21:00.000-08:00

Robert Gober

2009-01-20T16:20:00.000-08:00

Wim Pelvoye

2009-01-20T16:16:00.000-08:00

Josiah McElheny

2009-01-20T16:14:00.000-08:00

Samuel Beckett

2009-01-14T08:01:00.000-08:00

novel The Unnamable (1953)

"…admit that to be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world and the shrink from it desertion….I know that all that is required now, in order to make of this submission, this admission, this fidelity to failure, a new occasion, a new term of relation, and of the act which unable to act, obliged to act, he makes, an expressive act, even if only of itself, its impossibility, of its obligation." Samuel Beckett"

cindy sherman

2009-01-05T09:24:00.001-08:00

Anna Gaskell

2009-01-05T09:21:00.000-08:00

lorna simpson

2009-01-05T09:06:00.000-08:00

ellen gallagher

2009-01-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

sarah hill

2009-01-05T08:50:00.000-08:00

carrie mae weems

2009-01-05T08:37:00.000-08:00

catherine opie

2009-01-05T08:23:00.000-08:00

tee corinne

2009-01-05T08:11:00.000-08:00

sinister wisdom 1977

reading

2008-12-19T17:06:00.000-08:00

matthew barney

2008-12-19T16:47:00.000-08:00

nan goldin

2008-12-19T16:32:00.000-08:00

Nan Goldin's work involves the body. Her photos have an Aesthetically beautiful (content driven) snap shot quality to them. Her work is some what executed in a documentary style. She is close with most of her models. She invites the viewer into worlds that are not usually considered socially acceptable. Her photos are emotionally charged, with there theatrical lighting and sensuous color. She has done work involving the third gender, aids and sexuality.

ana mendieta

2008-11-28T13:24:00.000-08:00

Ana Mendieta used the silhouette of her body to create actions (performances). The photo documentation of her actions is as formal as her work. She manipulates her body to create a new form. She felt that she needed to be united with her eternal source, " I have been carrying on a dialogue between the landscape and the female body, based on my own silhouette," (Barreras del Rio 10). She creates emotionally charged self portraits, which are known for there deep spiritual connection to the earth.

Hannah Wilke

2008-11-28T12:13:00.000-08:00

velia

2008-11-21T13:36:00.001-08:00

Bill Durgin

2008-11-21T06:05:00.000-08:00

Natasha Rosling

2008-11-17T17:28:00.000-08:00

Mari Richards

2008-11-17T17:21:00.000-08:00

veronica bailey

2008-11-14T17:03:00.001-08:00

tony feher

2008-11-14T16:56:00.000-08:00

shih chieh Huang

2008-11-14T16:54:00.001-08:00

patricia piccinini

2008-11-14T16:51:00.000-08:00

Cecily Brown

2008-11-14T16:50:00.000-08:00

rineke dijkstra

2008-11-14T09:00:00.000-08:00

Jac Leirner

2008-11-14T08:52:00.000-08:00

kiki smith

2008-11-14T08:36:00.000-08:00

MELANIE SCHIFF

2008-11-14T08:35:00.001-08:00

For her senior project at New York University, Melanie Schiff made a video of herself theoretically, "committing suicide." She is currently makeing works about the female body. Schiff is acutely aware of Ana Mendieta's work dealing with rape and death. She explaines Mendieta's work as a, "possession of self- awareness" and the ability to, "connect to the space." (1 Camper) Schiff make photos about being a female in a seemingly male dominated practice.

Schiff made a photo in 2006 entitled Mud Reclining. This Photo is a direct referance to Mendietas performance at Old Man's Creek, Iowa in 1979. In Mendietas preformance she was naked and covered in mud. In Schiffs photo the model has left her underware on. Schiff is a trained photographer which automatically makes her compositions stronger. However, Mendieta is a performance artist, she realizes the need for the body to be completely exposed in order to gain a certain affects from her viewers.

Schiff stated that, "my work is about what it is to be a feminist and still make a sexy image," (1 Frerrara). Her photos have a Duchamp aspect about them. Shiff's work is deceptively simple yet straightforward. She objectifies women and empowers them at the same time. However, this time "the photo is made by a woman" (1Frerrara). She is interested in placing a seemingly male persona, on to a female.

Erwin wurm

2008-11-14T08:30:00.000-08:00

annette messager

2008-11-14T08:27:00.001-08:00

etant donnes

2008-10-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

Valerie Hegarty

2008-10-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

gordon matta clark

2008-10-28T10:50:00.000-07:00

do ho suh

2008-10-28T08:55:00.001-07:00

cildo meireles

2008-10-26T16:37:00.000-07:00

mona hatoum

2008-10-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

francesca woodman

2008-10-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

Francesca Woodman was making photos around the same time Mendieta was preforming actions. Both artists were using her own body. Woodman made a photograph of a print of her body in the snow. Half of her body is in the photo. She leaves the viewer with everything he or she needs to know about how the work was made. Where as Mendieta's photos leaves more untold.

Woodman used her body to make black and white photos. Mendieta uses her body to make actions and documents the actions with photos. Woodman is also preforming an action but her emphasis is on the photo. Woodman's composition of her body makes the photo strong. Mendieta's concepts and ideas are sometimes stronger then the photos that are taken.

Woodman committed suicide in 1981 by jumping out a loft window in New York. Mendieta supposedly commited suiside four years later in 1985 at the age of thirty six. She was said to have jumped from her appartment window in New York. She fell from the thirty fourth floor. Her husband Carl Andre a minimalist artist was tried for her murder but found not guilty.

sarah lucas

2008-10-25T09:06:00.001-07:00

Jac Leirner

2008-10-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

james turrell

2008-10-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

christo and jeanne claude

2008-10-14T17:43:00.000-07:00

readings

2008-10-14T17:36:00.000-07:00

Gaston Bachelard

"corners"

eva hesse

2008-10-07T16:43:00.000-07:00

andre zittel

2008-10-07T16:33:00.000-07:00

Ann Hamilton

2008-10-07T16:31:00.001-07:00

Myien: fuchsia

gabriel orozco

2008-10-07T16:24:00.000-07:00

My Hands Are My Heart
1991

richard long-robert smithson-andy goldsworthy

2008-10-07T16:14:00.001-07:00

richard long

robert smithson
spiral jetty

andy goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy makes mostly earth works. Many of his works have been documented with photos or drawings. He creates indoor installations for galleries. He made a Mud Wall for the Museum of Scotland. When he installed the wall the mud was wet. When the mud dried it cracked and left a pattern revealing what was originally beneath. Mendieta made relief sculptures out of mud using practically the same process.

Mendieta's wall relief sculptures are representations of her own body. Goldsworthy's work talks specifically about the material and how the material decays over time. Mendieta's work deals with political issues as well as gender and identity. Mendieta uses the body which instantly brings life to an image. Beauty is something that should never be overlooked. Each of Mendieta's images have a beautiful quality to them, even if the subject matter is somewhat disturbing. Beauty in Mendietas images usually has an underlying political agenda.

Both Goldsworthy's Mud Wall and Mendietas wall relief have an aesthetically beautiful quality to them. Goldsworthy speaks specifically about experiencing the material,"The process of watching something being born and grow has a tired, tense, slow excitement driven more by fear of what may happen, (143 Abrams)." Mendieta's wall relief pushes the viewer to think beyond use of material. Where as Goldsworthy focuses specifically on material.

She created sculptures out of logs and drawings on leaves. These served as less controversial they were supposedly more suitable for a gallery. Her earlier works were more stimulating and aggressive often having disturbing undertones of rape and death. If she were alive today she would probably be making contemporary art, that would still push boundaries.

kim Rugg

2008-10-07T16:03:00.001-07:00

jenny saville

2008-09-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

Mendieta was interested in transforming the human body. She completed a series entitled Glass on Body, in 1972 at the University of Iowa. She took a square sheet of glass and pressed her face against it. This action distorts the face, beyond recognition while manipulating the skin into a sculptural form. Mendieta documented the transformations of her body's flesh.

Jenny Saville has basically re-created Mendietas work. Jenny Saville has taken her torso and pressed it up against glass. When Saville lectured at Boston University she did not cite Ana Mendieta as being part of her source material. Jenny Saville as been called an artist who, " reclaims female subjectivity by emphasizing woman's potent flesh" (1 Kuspit). Mendieta not only moved beyond reclaiming the female body or flesh as a subject matter. She engaged in the political issues that surrounded the art she was making.

Mendieta shows us what is actually happening when she presses her body against the glass. The viewer can see the edges of the pain of glass. In some cases the edges of the glass interact with Mendietas body. Savilles work is a straight on view. She does not let the viewer know that that the body is pressed up against a sheet of glass. Savilles photos act more like paintings. Mendieta's Glass on Body causes the viewer to experience a deeper since of connection to his or her own body.

Most individuals know what it feels like to be cut with a sharp edge. Mendieta captures this essance of pain and distorts the body simultaneously. Saville is dealing with the same issues of mutilation of the body. She is only able to capture the distortion of the body.

Saville stated that, "I can't look at any other contemporary art." She can only look at art from the past, for example Courbet or Degas. Saville can not look at contemporary art, because, "if I look at anything else, it gives me other options,"
(1 Elton). She is putting herself in danger of recreating someone else's work. She does not seem to be aware of what is happening currently, or what has happened in the past few decades.

Like Medieta, Saville, uses her body like a prop, "It's like loaning my body to myself. So the flesh becomes like a material" (1 Elton). Saville was going to use the photos that she created with the glass, to make paintings. She claimed that, "When I saw the Polaroids they were just perfect as photographs, better than I could ever have transformed them with paint"(1 Elton). If she had painted the photos, they would have been one step removed from Medietas work.

Carolee Schneemann & vanessa beecroft

2008-09-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

vanessa beecroft

Shirin Neshat

2008-09-26T12:09:00.001-07:00

tara donovan

2008-09-26T11:16:00.000-07:00

Phoebe Washburn

2008-09-26T11:12:00.000-07:00

'For Regulated Fool's Milk Meadow', Guggenheim, Berlin

reminds me of the work of Wim Delvoye
cloaca

rachel whiteread

2008-09-16T10:26:00.000-07:00

janine antoni

2008-09-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

loving care

Ives Klein

2008-09-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

anish kapoor

2008-09-14T12:15:00.001-07:00

joseph beuys

2008-09-14T12:05:00.000-07:00

nancy rubin

2008-09-10T15:41:00.000-07:00

drawings

naum gabo

2008-09-10T15:39:00.001-07:00

El Lissitzky & Kurt Schwitters

2008-09-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

merzbau

hernesto neto

2008-09-10T15:31:00.000-07:00

Wim Delvoye & Piero Manzoni's

2008-09-10T15:25:00.000-07:00

Piero Manzoni's
Artist's Shit 1961

Wim Delvoye
cloaca

installation definition

2008-09-10T14:21:00.000-07:00

as you enter the space you enter the body...you enter a part of the space
you become a dimension of the space

In installation the room becomes the canvas

Space/Scale/capacity/Mass

space as a line

LINE

we create something because we have never seen it before.

body is a chamber a vessel: eros

poetry

ephemerality

opens a point of entry
an inner world another time
history

MEMORY

SPACE AS TIME

TRACE / MAP

richard serra

2008-09-10T10:23:00.001-07:00

context as content
this is how we live ie. one walks around and begins to feel dizzy. Serra has created a feeling that humans experience in every day life.

Jim Lambie & Sol Lewitt

2008-09-10T10:19:00.000-07:00

Jim Lambie

Sol Lewitt

lucio fontana & adriana Varejao

2008-09-10T10:13:00.000-07:00

adriana Varejao

the paint is building up layers ie a history. The guts of the painting or history is revealed. The Canvas is trying to break into the room, trying to become a space. Painting as a layer of skin in motion.

lucio fontana

The past is behind the wall. The inner world, another space. "painting is often referred to as a window into the soul.

Marcel Duchamp

2008-09-10T05:34:00.000-07:00

Rrose Selavy

The Fountain

Jenny Holzer

2008-09-04T17:14:00.000-07:00

Jenny Holzer PROJECTIONS

SLOPPY THINKING GETS WORSE OVER TIME

She uses two projectors and the inside structure of MASS MoCA to create an environment. Holzer creates a struggle for power and control by invoking intense curiosity from her viewers. She invites you to join in the creation of her work, but then refuses to remain attached. She remains an outsider. Holzer wants the viewers to become engulfed by the larger than life bean bags she has positioned on the floor. While one is day dreaming, lights flood over the body and across the gallery floor. The words flood across the bare floor only to become shattered and obstructed by the viewers presence.
The same text is being projected from each end of the gallery. It is as if the text is talking to its self. The text changes from time to time, which the curator posts on the website to notify the public. Holzer did not write the text herself. Just like many did not enter the doors, a select few actually took time to read the text. One can read the text at the front or back of the gallery.
If one were to read the text in Projections, he or she would find out that it deals with war as well as the struggle for power and control. Currently the words of Wislawa Szymborskaare, a Polish poet, are being displayed. She hold mostly the same views as Holzer, "Even the worst book can give us something to think about" (Szymborskaare).
Holzer also has work in the two adjoining galleries. She titled them map paintings, which had previously been classified government documents. She silk screened these prints on to huge canvases. They were made available to the public after the 'Freedom of Information Act.' One can see these maps at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv. The second gallery includes large silk screen prints in which she has titled "Wish List." These documents can be read at http:www.aclu.org. The "Wish List" consists of a set of interrogation techniques that are to brutal to actually be used. An example of such wish is, "White Noise Exposure."
These two Galleries are often missed by the public. One has to walk all the way through Projections in order to reach the silk screened documents. The names of the paintings are printed on the back of the hand out printed by MASS MoCA. However the viewer would have to actually read the card. Once one reaches the top gallery there is an exceptional view of the main floor of Projections. Holzer has again distracted us from the importance of the documents, by leaving the balcony lookout uncovered. We are again distracted by the beauty of the text flowing over the main gallery. Holzer has achieved her goal of making the viewer comfortable in an uncomfortable environment. This is shown by noticing how children interact with the installation. They will be jumping onto the letters and the larger than life bean bags. The underlying feeling that there is something more, stops adults from seeing the installation as purely beautiful.
This feeling can be summed up by Holzer's latest Twitter Posted from the web at 02:24 AM September 19, 2008. "STASIS IS A DREAM STATE."
In Projections she has presented the viewer with a state of equilibrium, caused by two opposing forces. The bean bags being one force and the words being the other. They work against each other only to balance each other out. Causing the viewer to remain stagnant while creating the prefect balance of power and control. Holzer sets her viewers up for this dream state.

Gary Hill

2008-09-04T16:57:00.000-07:00

in as much as it is already taking place, 1990

Peter Campus

2008-09-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.tonkonow.com/campus.html

Bruce Nauman

2008-09-04T16:44:00.001-07:00

100 live and die

Dara Birnbaum

2008-09-04T16:36:00.000-07:00

Les chaises

2008-09-04T16:32:00.000-07:00

Rebecca Horn

2008-09-04T16:16:00.000-07:00

Rebecca Horn