June 14 – July 29, 2011

Featuring visual responses to a collaborative sound piece by artists John Aslanidis, Katy Dove, Phoebe Hui, Sophie Hunter, Miler Lagos, John O’Connell, Gonzalo Puch, and Zane Saunders.

Curated by Claudia Calirman

OPENING RECEPTION:

Tuesday, June 14, 2011 6-8 PM

DATES: June 15 – July 29, 2011

HOURS: Tuesday – Saturday 12-6 PM

Location One is proud to present Sounds Good, featuring visual responses to a collaborative sound piece by artists John Aslanidis, Katy Dove, Phoebe Hui, Sophie Hunter, Miler Lagos, John O’Connell, Gonzalo Puch, and Zane Saunders. The pieces relate to movement, rhythm, vibration, energy, and the expanding visual field. The show opens on June 14 and will be on view until July 29.

Australian artist John Aslanidis’s monumental painting Sonic Network no.10 comprises four canvases that translate the vibrations of sound into a visual display. At first, the composition of colorful squares seems optically chaotic. This apparent chaos, however, is the result of a meticulously orchestrated, laborious process that recalls the madness of order. From far away his canvases look as if they are randomly composed, but as the viewer approaches it becomes clear that they are actually highly organized abstract geometric grids, with chance elements interspersed to interrupt the rigidity of his web.

Katy Dove’s work responds to the rhythm and movement from the collaborative sound track developed through group improvised music sessions. The human and textural qualities of the sound is echoed through repetitive mark making, the slowly drying action of the ink, and the geometric shapes that come from the hand’s movement. The resulting works—both on fabric and through the moving image–suggest a psychological state inherent in these processes. Based in Glasgow, Scotland, Dove is known for her animations that juxtapose bodily motions with abstract shapes, mixing the organic and the geometric.

Hong Kong–based artist Phoebe Hui took inspiration from a harmonograph—a musical instrument made of two pendulums suspended through holes in a table—for her interactive audiovisual installation Granular Graph II: The Tank and the Pendulum. In this work, Hui invites the viewer to become a living pendulum, swinging on the instrument’s ropes and giving rise to a mix of vibrational patterns and sounds. Hui’s experimentations with music and kinetics also led her to create Vexation – for K, an electronic musical instrument that plays the composition “Vexation” by French composer Erik Satie. The audience can play the instrument by rotating a compass, thus creating a variety of tones through the contact of different shades of pencil marks on the soundboard.

British theatre director Sophie Hunter’s installation Lucretia is based on a fragment of Benjamin Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia—specifically, the image of a group of women spinning at a loom as their husbands are off waging war. Hunter extracts various elements of the opera, such as the orchestra, the narrative, and the opera house itself, and deconstructs and examines them devoid of their original context. She then reassembles these elements to record an altogether new score—a densely collaged soundtrack made of both music and noise—drawing a parallel between the act of weaving and the recording or encoding of information and memory.

Colombian artist Miler Lagos reflects on the relationship between the natural and the artificial worlds. His five-minute video Attraction shows a heart-shaped red balloon plunging into the water. The impact of the fall is dramatically amplified, creating the effect of an exaggerated explosion. To create his sculpture Cimiento, Lagos began with a stack of seven thousand sheets of paper, each printed with an image of a woodcut by the Japanese artist Ottawa Hiroshige, and painstakingly carved it into the shape of a log. In Tree Rings Dating, four hundred identical pages from The New York Times come together in a mesmerizing three-dimensional collage—a spherical form with a transversal cut simulating the rings of a tree. The sculpture alludes both to the recording of the passage of time and to daily events, since it is made out of newspapers.

John O’Connell, a multimedia artist from Dublin, Ireland, is represented in the exhibition by a series of drawings evoking an intimate and dreamy environment. Built from a myriad of interrelated elements borrowed from his make-believe universe, the drawings straddle the line between real and fictional, process-based and result-oriented. To create these fantastical compositions, O’Connell begins with hand-constructed miniature set models that reproduce the imaginary landscapes of the artist’s poetic, whimsical, and lyrical universe.

Spanish artist Gonzalo Puch’s wall curtain juxtaposes disparate elements in unexpected and often funny tableaux, suggesting intricate narratives out of random elements. Plants, flowers, and pieces of food inhabit his curtain with photographs, sketches, and drawings, creating an open environment populated by the artist’s imagination. It is a world where chaos is not a threat, but a generative force inviting viewers to think outside of their comfort zone. Though Puch is interested in a variety of issues, including science, music, biology, and environmental studies, his art draws primarily on nature for both themes and materials.

Zane Saunders’s series of ceramic-fired clay wall sculptures are inspired by organic forms. His designs utilize a variety of waving shapes that recur in natural landscapes. Saunders was born in Cairns, North Queensland, Australia, where he still works today. He explores issues related to spirituality and the environment, often juxtaposing elements from nature and contemporary life. Through his use of raw and organic materials, he conveys a sense of the beauty and wonder lurking in the world all around us.

ABOUT LOCATION ONE

Based in the Soho arts district of New York, Location One is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to fostering new forms of creative expression and cultural exchange through exhibitions, residencies, performances, public lectures and workshops. Traditionally focused on technological experimentation and new media, Location One’s residencies and programs have favored social and political discourse and dialogue, and acted as a catalyst for collaborations. With a unique environment providing individualized training, support, and guidance to each artist, as well as exposure for their creations and collaborations, Location One continues to nurture the spirit of experimentation that it considers the cornerstone of its mission.

Like A Shark in The Grass
Solo Exhibition by John O’Connell

Curated by Claudia Calirman

Opening Reception: Wednesday, 13 April 2011 6-8PM
Exhibition Dates: 14 April – 27 May 2011

Location One is proud to present: Like a Shark in the Grass, John O’Connell’s first solo exhibition in New York.

John O’Connell, a multimedia artist from Dublin, Ireland, works with sculpture, photography, drawing, and film animation. For Location One, he creates an intimate and dreamy environment, built from a myriad of interrelated elements borrowed from his make-believe universe. The gallery space is transformed with floor-to-ceiling cardboard tubes, a large hand-painted mural, a series of drawings, and a huge papier-mâché structure, creating the sense of a forest that the viewer is invited to explore. This imaginary landscape—in which bizarre and unfamiliar narratives seem to unfold before the viewer’s eyes—is loosely inspired by an earlier drawing by O’Connell, Like a Shark in the Grass (2009), which depicts a ghostly white shark uncannily drifting inside a forest.

O’Connell is best known for his film animations, many of which likewise depart from his drawings, paintings, and miniature set designs. He also composes and plays piano for the animations’ melodic and soothing soundtracks. Straddling the line between real and fictional, process-based and result-oriented, these animated works seem to be involved in their own imaginary journey, oblivious to the exterior world. They ultimately belong to the artist’s poetic, whimsical, and lyrical universe.

About the Artist:
John O’Connell holds an MA from the Royal College of Art, London, and a BA from the National College of Art, Dublin. He has undertaken numerous residencies and has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. Recent solo shows include New Work at The Dock, Ireland (2011); The Visitor, at the Riverbank Art Centre, Ireland (2010); Big Pink at the Goethe Institute, Dublin (2009); Nothing Matters When Your Dancing, at Stiftung Starke, Berlin (2009); and The Garden Project at Wicklow County Hall, Ireland (2007). Recent group shows include By a Route Obscure and Lonely at the Triskel Art Centre, Cork (2011); Contemporary Sculpture Show at the F. E. McWilliam Gallery, Ireland (2010), Re:Public at Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (2010); Clear Skies Above at SIM House, Reykjavik (2010); Futures 09 at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2009); and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter at West Germany Project Space, Berlin (2009).

Location One is extremely grateful to John O’Connell’s residency sponsors: The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon, and The Irish American Cultural Institute, and to The New York State Council on the Arts, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and media sponsor OneArtWorld.com.

Dwelling in Perennial Dreams
Interactive installation by Bundith Phunsombatlert

April 14-May 27, 2011
Special Preview: Wednesday, March 30, 2011
6:30pm-8:30pm

Location One is pleased to present Dwelling in Perennial Dreams, an installation by Thai artist Bundith Phunsombatlert. The installation will be open for a special preview on March 30, from 6:30-8:30pm for Asian Contemporary Art Week.

Dwelling in Perennial Dreams is an interactive installation. This work invites the audience to imagine caring for orphaned babies in Thailand. Several cradles, each holding two TV monitors placed screen side up, play videos of the upper and lower part of a baby sleeping. Each baby sleeps for 15 minutes, then wakes up and cries. The audience participates by rocking the cradles to put the babies back to sleep. The audience can also wake the baby up if they make a loud noise; sensors pick up any noises from the audience and jolt and wake the babies. Furthermore, one crying baby can wake the other babies, showing how we are all interconnected in a community.

A political issue in Thailand inspires Dwelling in Perennial Dreams, but one that is equally applicable internationally in different ways and dimensions. The artwork represents the space where people from the upper class often control the way of lives of lower class people through the metaphor of taking great care of babies, by putting them to sleep. While sleeping is a necessary part for babies to grow up physically and mentally, the process of the work is to make the babies go to sleep as long as possible in order not to face the real world. This contradictory discourse is the subject of the artwork. By pacifying babies, people are simultaneously calming and oppressing them at the same time.

This new media artwork uses the old mechanism of a cradle to invite the audience to participate in the installation and also describe the story of how a group of babies is taken care of by a volunteer pregnant woman and the audience act as performers. The artwork transfers the story of two species of birds from a popular Thai lullaby into a form of interactive installation art using the process of taking care of Thai orphaned babies to another land. The sound of babies’ crying in this piece reflects the way of communication from micro to macro in the society. Whenever a small unit in a community is disturbed, this will consecutively connect to other units.

“My intention to display this artwork in another country is to fulfill the significant meaning of places in the artwork. The installation represents grounded and uprooted experiences of transformation of one land to another land. The audience can get the idea of places from the physical space of where they are; the transformative space between the sites they are; and where the orphaned babies are from—the imaginative space of another land. The real site itself is used as a medium to interpret another site as well as the imagination of the audience on the cultural and social context. The work questions the issue of identities beyond the boundary of geography—a transformation of the boundaries of collective identity.” -Bundith Phunsombatlert

*A pregnant woman will perform in the installation as well as viewers are invited to rock the cradles.

Video of this piece here:

“As
 an
 artist
 living
 in
 Thailand
 for
 the
 past
 decade
 and
 now
 residing
 in
 the
 US,
 I
 have
 reflected
 on
 ever‐changing 
social, 
economic,
 and political
 situations,
 particularly
 in 
the 
framework 
of 
globalization. 
 I 
seek
 to
 analyze
 and
 synthesize
 these
 issues
 within
 the
 context
 of
 history
 to
 form
 art
 that
 rethinks
 Thai
 identity
 in
 the
 world.
 Through
 interactive
 media
 installations,
 I
 design
 systems
 for
 sharing
 and
 communicating
 with
 the
 viewer
 that
 explore
 the
 transformation
 from
 fact‐based
 orientation
 to
 imagination.
 This
 parallels 
my 
own 
transformation 
as 
an 
artist 
working 
in 
the 
East 
and 
the 
West
 as
 well
 as
 my
 move
 from
 traditional
 to
 new
 media.
 Furthermore,
 it
 mimics
 a
 transmodal
 transformation
 that
 I
 argue 
is 
inherent
 in
 new
 media.
”

Mr. Phunsombatlert earned both his B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees in graphic arts (printmaking) at Silpakorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, and his M.F.A in Digital+Media at Rhode Island School of Design. He has participated in international exhibition, such as the Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 1999, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia, ISEA 2004: the 12th International Symposium on Electronic Arts, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland, The Third Guangzhou Triennial 2008, Guangdong Museum of Art, China, and The 4th Auckland Triennial 2010, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand. Among his selected awards and fellowships are Pollock-Krasner Grant in 2001, Second Prize Unesco Digital Art Award 2004, and Asia Cultural Council Fellow 2007.

GIVING MY BACK
TO THE NIGHT
I HEARD YOU LYING TO A GIANT

First Giant
Solo Exhibition and Live Performance
Curated by Jovana Stokic
Through the myth of Ulysses blinding the cyclopes Polyphemus, Davide Balliano  begins his representation of the five phases of sleep
by enacting the ancestral fight against the obscure void that blinds us every night.
 
 
 
Live Performance by
Davide Balliano 

GIVING MY BACK TO THE NIGHT I HEARD YOU LYING TO A GIANT
First Giant
MARCH 3, 6- 9 pm 
MARCH 4 6- 9 pm 
MARCH 5 5- 8 pm 
 

Location One is pleased to present Davide Balliano’s first solo show in New York and has commissioned a new installation from the artist for the occasion.

In the exhibition “Giving My Back to the Night I Heard You Lying to a Giant (First Giant)” Davide Balliano uses the myth of Ulysses blinding the Cyclops Polyphemus as a starting point for his representation of the five phases of sleep which he calls the “ancestral fight against the obscure void that blinds us every night”. Through dark and poetic combinations of performance, objects, drawings, and installation, Balliano explores his ongoing interest in the human mind and its fragile structures and contradictions.

Balliano’s exhibition and performance, conceived as a first act of a five-act cycle, symbolizes the first phase of sleep through the figure of a mythological Giant. In the Indo-European ancient tradition, the Giants symbolized the origin of life, the primal chaos that Gods had to fight with, in order to maintain the order of life. Specifically, in Greek mythology, a Giant pointed to a communion between reality and supernatural. In the Odyssey, Ulysses had to blind Polyphemus during his sleep, in order to set himself and his crew free from the cave where the Giant had imprisoned them. This metaphor of blinding, closing the eyes, as a beginning as a new start is the main punctum of this first act. The artist asks: “What is sleep if not a middle point between conscious and unconscious, between light and dark, between life and death?” The exhibition thus becomes an allegorical interpretation of the myth of blinding as an act to regain freedom. The gallery space of Location One, transformed in the cave of Polyphemus, is inhabited by strange protagonists: Ulysses and his crew embodied in abstract wooden objects and appropriated renaissance images. The ritual of blinding that leads to freedom is represented obliquely and frozen in time. The exhibition space relates to the map of vision itself and refers to the crucial mechanism of seeing: a play between two- and three-dimensional perception. These elements the artist deploys in both his installation and performance.

As a special addition to the exhibition, Balliano will perform live on three dates in March.

Born in Turin, Italy in 1983, Davide Balliano has presented his work internationally, including the Kitakyushu Biennial (Japan) and the Vienna Biennale (Austria), and is featured in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography of Cinisello Balsamo (Milan). Other exhibitions include Artist Space and PS1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, The Watermill Center in South Hamptons, Plymouth Art Center in Great Britain. His portfolio has been recently exhibited in the Archive of Via Farini for the event “No Souls For Sale” at the Tate Modern Gallery in London. He is one of the winners of the AOL 25 for 25 Award 2010. Balliano lives and works in New York.
Website: http://www.davideballiano.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jovana Stokić is the curator of performance art at Location One where, in Marina Abramovic Studio, she supports the growth of performance art by promoting the works of emerging artists on the international scale, organizing and collaborating on events using a network of people converging at Location One. It shows the commitment to experimentation across all art forms and points to recent efforts to return performance art to its central position within the gallery system. Performances, public panels and discussions promote and seek critical discourses on contemporary performance art practice and related issues.

In The Making
January 13–February 11, 2011
Opening Reception January 12, 6–8pm

Location One is proud to present “In the Making,” featuring new individual installations by Karolina Kowalska, Lovisa Ringborg, Yasuko Toyoshima, and Joana Villaverde.

Karolina Kowalska (b. Poland) deals with the bombardment and saturation of visual information in consumer society. Her new series of large digital photographs, titled An Unexpected Breakdown of the Advertising Market, re-imagines the streets of New York absent of their major source of visual pollution: advertisements and commercial images. To create the utopian world of her photographs, she removes all visual and written information, replacing them with empty white space. In this phantasmagorical city, billboards are transformed into abstract geometric constructions. Temples of consumerism, such as Times Square, Chinatown, and Chelsea resemble modernist grids from an earlier era.

Kowalska’s works are usually shown on billboards as site-specific interventions, challenging accepted ideas about copyright and public spaces.

Lovisa Ringborg (b. Sweden) explores states of mind that are at once familiar and unsettling. In her installation Figurines, she creates an uncanny and emotionally disturbing tableau exploring children’s mannequins. Without providing a defined narrative, her work raises questions about childhood, its complexity and its ambiguous states punctuated by moments of abandonment, solitude, and magical bewilderment.

In her signature works, Ringborg manipulates digital photographs to create a sense of disorientation and otherworldliness; these images suggest poetic spaces inhabited by young creatures veiled in reverie and mystery.

Yasuko Toyoshima (b. Japan) is attracted to games and their often-arbitrary rules. Her new series Motion #1 is based on a tote board from the Aqueduct Racetrack, a horse-racing track in Jamaica, New York. The artist plays with the odds and wagers of the race, recording the fluctuation of the bets and their numbers—which are uploaded on the tote board at 30-second intervals—and rearranging them in her constructed drawings. Her focus on the fleeting moment, the bets’ relentless velocity, and the rapid changes on the tote board undermine and contradict the fixed rules of the game.

Toyoshima’s work is concerned with various systems and structures that regulate contemporary society. She conceptually investigates social and cultural frameworks that are taken for granted, such as systems of measurement and financial markets in order to reveal how these frameworks are much more subjective than they appear to be.

Joana Villaverde (b. Portugal) creates spaces that lack a sense of proportion and proper scale. In her installation You Took from Me All the Air So I Can Breathe, an empty chair and a doorframe stands before a canvas, dwarfed by the large dimension of the portrait of a woman’s face. Although there is plenty of room between these objects, the gallery space becomes suffocating: the woman is too big for the painting in which she is entrapped, the chair is too small for its empty surroundings, and the door frame creates nothing more than an illusion of a place.

Villaverde’s works are often variations on the same theme: people in a space in need of more space. This closeness or suffocation, however, is more a mental than a physical one. Villaverde brings forth an intense sense of narrative and dialogue to the viewer using the plainest elements: a canvas, a chair, and a wooden frame.

OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, 4 November 2010, 6–8 PM
DATES: 5 Nov. 2010 – 22 Jan. 2011
HOURS: Tuesday – Saturday 12–6 PM

Location One is proud to present SHARON STONE IN ABUJA an exhibition conceived by Zina Saro-Wiwa, British-Nigerian film-maker and founder of AfricaLab, an organisation dedicated to re-imagining Africa.

SHARON STONE IN ABUJA explores and re-imagines the powerful phenomenon that is “Nollywood”, Nigeria’s booming video film industry and the world’s third largest movie industry after Bollywood and Hollywood.

The SHARON STONE IN ABUJA exhibition pays homage to Nollywood’s narrative and visual conventions and explores the emotional landscape of Nigeria and Africa, navigating the space between the emotive and emotional. The show’s opening coincides with Nigeria’s 50th Anniversary of Independence – an opportune moment to reflect on this much-maligned African country in a fresh way.

Artists Wangechi Mutu, Mickalene Thomas and Andrew Esiebo will contribute brand new works and a selection of Pieter Hugo’s seminal “Nollywood” series will be shown. Zina will also contribute two new Nollywood-inspired short films, a video sculpture featuring Nollywood actresses and an installation created in collaboration with Mickalene Thomas.

Click here to view the embedded video.

SHARON STONE IN ABUJA is an AfricaLab project. Founded by Zina Saro-Wiwa, AfricaLab is an organisation dedicated to examining, re-imagining and expanding perceptions about African life and cultural expression through film and art. AfricaLab commissions new works and re-contextualises existing works to mine the African experience and create new propositions about the African condition. AfricaLab’s first film project was the documentary THIS IS MY AFRICA which was shown on HBO. SHARON STONE IN ABUJA is AfricaLab’s first contemporary art project.

Location One is extremely grateful to The New York State Council on the Arts, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, James Lindon, Wendy Fisher and the International Council at Location One for making this exhibition possible. Special thanks to Robert Devereux and The African Arts Trust.

Zina Saro-Wiwa is a film-maker, writer and founder of AfricaLab. Born in Nigeria to Ken and Maria Saro-Wiwa and brought up in the UK, she has worked at the BBC for much of her career. She now works primarily as a film-maker. Her most recent documentary film THIS IS MY AFRICA aired on HBO in February 2010. www.africalab.org

Experimental new work from acclaimed Turner Prize finalist

Location One is proud to present important new work in 16mm film and sculpture
from Lucy Skaer, the young Scottish artist shortlisted for the 2009 Turner
Prize and recently featured at the Venice Biennale and the Berlin Biennial.

OPENING RECEPTION:

Wednesday, September 15, 2010, 6–8 PM

DATES: 16 September – 16 October 2010

HOURS: Tuesday – Saturday 12–6 PM

Artist Talk: Friday, Sept 24, 2010, 7pm

with Chrissie Iles, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator, Whitney Museum

Skaer’s practice explores the relationship between viewer and image, altering
normal processes of interpretation to create ruptures between what is seen
and what is understood. Her new work comprises 16mm films depicting important
cultural artifacts from different periods of time. Skaer physically alters the film prints to
create voids and effects that intervene on both the timeline and the picture. Accompanying
the films are sculptures that correspond both to the qualities of the original artifacts and
her interruptions in the film.

Gilda Williams, Editor for Contemporary Art at Phaidon Press, London and correspondent
for Artforum, says about Skaer: “everything is in a perpetual state of instability and in-
betweeness”. Lucy uses a remarkable intellect and extraordinary skills to create rules in
order to break their inner logic, challenging the viewer to question traditional ways of
perception.

This is Skaer’s first solo project in New York. The work was developed during Skaer’s
recently concluded year as an international fellow at Location One.

Click here to view the embedded video.

About the Artist: Lucy Skaer is a visual artist working in sculpture, painting, film, video and
installation. Her many international exhibitions include the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 and
the 5th Berlin Biennale in 2008. She is currently showing at Forum 65 at the Carnegie
Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, K21 in Dusseldorf and Elle at the Centre Georges Pompidou.
She works collaboratively with the artist group Henry VIII’s Wives and with Rosalind
Nashashibi as Nashashibi/Skaer. Born in Cambridge in 1975, she holds a BA Hons Fine
Arts from Glasgow School of Art

We are grateful to the International Committee of Location One and The New York
State Council on the Arts, and The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs for making this exhibition and the artist’s residency
possible. Thanks to media sponsor OneArtWorld.com. Lucy Skaer is represented by doggerfisher, Edinburgh and Murray Guy, New York.

]]> http://www.location1.org/new-work-by-lucy-skaer/feed/ 0 http://www.location1.org/specific-gravity/ http://www.location1.org/specific-gravity/#comments Fri, 21 May 2010 23:00:12 +0000 heather http://www.location1.org/specific-gravity/

new paintings by Lyra Abueg Garcellano, and video work by Kwan Sheung Chi

Curated by Claudia Calirman

OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, 20 May 2010, 6–8 PM
DATES: 21 May – 31 July 2010
HOURS: Tuesday – Saturday 12–6 PM

Location One is proud to present Adel Abidin: I’m Sorry, the artist’s second solo exhibition in New York City. Born in Baghdad in 1973 and living in Helsinki since 2001, Abidin touches upon timely subjects such as fundamentalism, nationalism and religion. The artist engages in a variety of media, working primarily with video installations and short films. He assumes an ironic attitude in his deconstruction of prejudices and stereotypes. How can an Iraqi-born artist face the war with a sense of humor? That is exactly what his task entails.

The piece that gives the exhibition its title–a light box including a sound installation– comes from his experience as an Iraqi traveling in the U.S. In one of his trips, Abidin encountered people from diverse social backgrounds. Yet, surprisingly, every time he mentioned his nationality, the answer was invariably the same: I’m Sorry. Of course, this reply comes as a double entendre: Are people sorry for themselves, for feeling guilty for the infringements imposed by the U.S. on Iraq during the war, or are they sorry for the artist’s fate of being born in such place? The shift of position between audience and self is constantly present in his work.

Abidin’s witty criticism targets not only the U.S. invasion of Iraq but also Iraqi fundamentalists’ actions which serve as a pretext to justify the foreign hate against the country. In the video Jihad (2006), the artist explores a familiar scene shown in news coverage: a videotape of an Islamist terrorist with his covered face holding a Kalashnikov in his hands, reciting from the Koran a message of hate and death. Abidin appropriates the image subverting it. He places the fundamentalist against a painted background of a U.S. flag with its Stars and Stripes, reciting a verse from the Koran. Unexpectedly, he picks up an acoustic guitar and sings “This Land is Your Land.” The impact of the piece is immediate. What is the difference between beheading a Western man in front of the cameras and singing a nationalistic American anthem? Ultimately they can both function as U.S. propaganda pieces.

In the three-channel animation and video installation Memorial (2009) notions of fiction and reality are blurred. The piece is based on a real event witnessed by the artist when he was 17 years old, on the third day of the bombardments of Baghdad in 1991, when one of his favorite bridges was bombed. Next to the fallen bridge lay a dead cow. After almost 20 years, that scene still echoes in the artist’s mind as a reminder of the horrors of a city destroyed by the war.

Location One is extremely grateful to FRAME: Finnish Fund for Art Exchange, and The New York State Council on the Arts for making this exhibition and the artist’s residency possible.

About Adel Abidin: Abidin studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki receiving a MFA in new media in 2005. He represented Finland in the 2007 Venice Biennale Nordic Pavilion with the internationally acclaimed piece Abidin Travels: Welcome to Baghdad. In 2010 he had a major solo exhibition at Kiasma, Helsinki’s Museum of Contemporary Art. His work is represented in major museum collections in Finland and has been featured in numerous exhibitions including On the Margins (2009, Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis); and the 2008 Cairo Biennale. He has held many solo exhibitions throughout Europe, Scandinavia and the Middle East.

ARTIST TALK::

Curated by Claudia Calirman

OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, 20 May 2010, 6–8 PM
DATES: 21 May – 31 July 2010
HOURS: Tuesday – Saturday 12–6 PM

Location One is proud to present Adel Abidin: I’m Sorry, the artist’s second solo exhibition in New York City. Born in Baghdad in 1973 and living in Helsinki since 2001, Abidin touches upon timely subjects such as fundamentalism, nationalism and religion. The artist engages in a variety of media, working primarily with video installations and short films. He assumes an ironic attitude in his deconstruction of prejudices and stereotypes. How can an Iraqi-born artist face the war with a sense of humor? That is exactly what his task entails.

The piece that gives the exhibition its title–a light box including a sound installation– comes from his experience as an Iraqi traveling in the U.S. In one of his trips, Abidin encountered people from diverse social backgrounds. Yet, surprisingly, every time he mentioned his nationality, the answer was invariably the same: I’m Sorry. Of course, this reply comes as a double entendre: Are people sorry for themselves, for feeling guilty for the infringements imposed by the U.S. on Iraq during the war, or are they sorry for the artist’s fate of being born in such place? The shift of position between audience and self is constantly present in his work.

Abidin’s witty criticism targets not only the U.S. invasion of Iraq but also Iraqi fundamentalists’ actions which serve as a pretext to justify the foreign hate against the country. In the video Jihad (2006), the artist explores a familiar scene shown in news coverage: a videotape of an Islamist terrorist with his covered face holding a Kalashnikov in his hands, reciting from the Koran a message of hate and death. Abidin appropriates the image subverting it. He places the fundamentalist against a painted background of a U.S. flag with its Stars and Stripes, reciting a verse from the Koran. Unexpectedly, he picks up an acoustic guitar and sings “This Land is Your Land.” The impact of the piece is immediate. What is the difference between beheading a Western man in front of the cameras and singing a nationalistic American anthem? Ultimately they can both function as U.S. propaganda pieces.

In the three-channel animation and video installation Memorial (2009) notions of fiction and reality are blurred. The piece is based on a real event witnessed by the artist when he was 17 years old, on the third day of the bombardments of Baghdad in 1991, when one of his favorite bridges was bombed. Next to the fallen bridge lay a dead cow. After almost 20 years, that scene still echoes in the artist’s mind as a reminder of the horrors of a city destroyed by the war.

Location One is extremely grateful to FRAME: Finnish Fund for Art Exchange, and The New York State Council on the Arts for making this exhibition and the artist’s residency possible.

About Adel Abidin: Abidin studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki receiving a MFA in new media in 2005. He represented Finland in the 2007 Venice Biennale Nordic Pavilion with the internationally acclaimed piece Abidin Travels: Welcome to Baghdad. In 2010 he had a major solo exhibition at Kiasma, Helsinki’s Museum of Contemporary Art. His work is represented in major museum collections in Finland and has been featured in numerous exhibitions including On the Margins (2009, Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis); and the 2008 Cairo Biennale. He has held many solo exhibitions throughout Europe, Scandinavia and the Middle East.

ARTIST TALK::

Joan Jonas
Drawing/Performance/Video
March 20-May 8, 2010

“I didn’t see a major difference between a poem, a sculpture,
a film, or a dance. A gesture has for me the same weight as a drawing:
draw, erase, draw, erase–memory erased.”
-Joan Jonas

Location One is proud to present Drawing/Performance/Video, a new exhibition by Joan Jonas that highlights the role of drawing in the artist’s performance and video work.

OPENING RECEPTION:
Friday, 19 March 2010 6-8 PM
DATES: 20 March–8 May 2010
HOURS: Tues–Sat 12-6 PM

March 24th at 7 pm
Linda Nochlin speaks with Joan Jonas, moderated by Jovana Stokic, curator of the Abramovic Studio at Location One
April 8th at 7 pm
Bonnie Marranca and Claire MacDonald speak with Joan Jonas

Drawing is an underlying practice and ongoing concern that Jonas has pursued
throughout her life. All of Jonas’s performance drawings retain a working relationship to her individual video and installation projects. For Jonas, drawings can be lasting and autonomous objects or they may be ephemeral and destroyed during a performance.

Jonas considers the act of drawing and the physical objects themselves (media on
substrate), in terms of their relation to the camera, the monitor, the space, as well as their status of being descriptive, diagrammatic or iconic.

Drawing/Performance/Video will look at Jonas’s drawings within the context of her performance and video work, including the groundbreaking work Double Lunar Dogs, originally performed in 1984, Lines in the Sand, The Shape the Scent the Feel of Things, Organic Honey’s Vertical Roll and others.

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About the Artist: Joan Jonas is a pioneer of video performance art. Her experiments and productions in the late 1960s and early 1970s were essential to the formulation of the genre. Threads of Jonas’s influence can be found in many genres; from performance and video to conceptual art and theater.

Jonas has worked with composers such as Alvin Lucier and Jason Moran to develop video-performance works. Her work continues to explore the relationship of digital media to performance.

Jonas has had major retrospectives at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1994), and Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart, Germany (2000), and was represented in Documenta V, VI, VII and XI in Kassel, Germany. In 2004, the Queens Museum of Art presented Joan Jonas: Five Works, the first major exhibition of the Joan Jonas’s work in a New York museum. The exhibition included a selection of the artist’s most significant installations, a video room, and a survey of Jonas’ drawings, photographs, and sketchbooks.

The first installation and performance of Jonas’s Reading Dante was at the 2008
Biennale of Sydney. Later that year Jonas performed the work at the Yokohama
Triennale, and also performed a reading at The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Jonas was featured in the International Pavilion of the 2009 Venice Biennale where she installed Reading Dante II. Most recently, the artist presented Reading Dante II at the Performing Garage in New York as part of Performa ’09, and selected elements of this performance are featured in Reading Dante III at Yvon Lambert New York. Also at the Museum of Modern Art, through May 31, 2010, Performance 7: Mirage, which is a reimagining of the groundbreaking performance originally created in 1976. In 2009 Jonas was awarded the Guggenheim’s first annual Lifetime Achievement Award.

Joan Jonas is represented by Yvon Lambert Gallery, and was Senior Artist in Residence at Location One in 2008-09.

Artist Talks:
Joan Jonas with Linda Nochlin, Moderated by Jovana Stokic

Joan Jonas with Bonnie Marranca and Claire MacDonald

February 26, 2010

Curator of Location One’s Abramović Studio, Jovana Stokić will speak with artist Ragnar Kjartansson about his current and past work, focusing on his performative works. The artist grew up to become, among other things, a pop star in his native Iceland, with his band Trabant. He is also recognized as an artist from performances such as The Opera (his 2001 graduation piece from the Academy of Arts in Reykjavík, in which he created a Rococo theatre in a small room and performed for ten days straight), Death and the Children (2002) or The Great Unrest (2005), in which he dressed as a Viking and sang the blues for an entire week in an abandoned theatre in the countryside. Artist will talk about his experience of his six-month long performance at the Pavilion of Iceland at 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009.

An exhibition of keynote works by Vik Muniz and new works from Alexandra Mota de Aguiar, Mattias Ericsson, Wojtek Doroszuk, and Zhou Tao

Curated by Claudia Calirman

OPENING RECEPTION:

Wednesday, January 13, 2010 6–8 PM

DATES: January 14 – March 6, 2010

HOURS: Tuesday-Saturday 12–6 PM

Yes, But… explores works that dwell in the borderline between real and fictional, process-based and result-oriented, temporal and permanent, literal and metaphorical, orderly and undisciplined. Within the fabric of these works lies an array of artistic choices that emphasize contradictions and ambiguities, playing games upon the viewer at every turn.

Yes, But… features works by Vik Muniz (b. Brazil; works in New York) together with artists currently in residence at Location One: Alexandra Mota de Aguiar (b. Portugal), Wojtek Doroszuk (b. Poland), Mattias Ericsson (b. Sweden) and Zhou Tao (b. China).

Vik Muniz uses photography to create images from non-traditional materials. In series such as Pictures of Junk, he re-creates works by Great Masters, undermining the grandiose mythological aspect implied in the historical tableaux with his use of everyday discarded materials. His work usually involves strategies of appropriation–he sets out to create a copy of a copy, which, during the process of transformation, becomes a work by Vik Muniz. It is not only the artist’s materials that have a temporal quality to them; it is also the performative aspect of his works that call to mind issues of time and impermanence.

Working outside Rio de Janeiro in a space the size of a basketball court, the artist collaborates with residents from nearby favelas to remake a series of canonical images, directing his crew from a scaffold high above and then capturing the image through a large-format camera; the resulting works incorporate intriguing discrepancies of scale. In his process, what starts as a permanent object (usually a reproduction of a canonical work of art) becomes an impermanent installation made out of detritus, only to be turned again into a permanent work of art (a conventional gelatin-silver print). Repulsive or tasteful, visual or tactile—all these are choices are games played out in Muniz’s illusionist tableaux, leaving the viewer amused and complacent in being fooled and deceived.

Mattias Ericsson

In the installation September 2001 – March 2009, Mattias Ericsson’s hundreds of black-and-white photographs, which he carefully arranges into a formal grid, are all part of his ongoing work. Many of the images refer to the artist himself, his wife and child; others focus on the idyllic Swedish landscape in which Ericsson was born and still lives with his family. For this work, Ericsson chose images from his archive of thousands of photographs, then meticulously classified, sorted, and displayed them, trying to create order out of chaos.

In Mattias Ericsson’s video 1630 Photographs, the mundane also interferes in the supposedly grand narrative of the past seven years of the artist’s life. He recorded his voice for the video, creating a methodic narrative about the technical process of developing the film, making contact sheets and selecting photographs—a strikingly impersonal accompaniment to the intimate photos. There exists a tension between the work’s visuals and its narrative; the artist’s monotone voice is juxtaposed with his personal images, creating a disjunction between oral description and visual field. While the passage of time is registered in these intimate photographs (self-portraits, daily domestic interiors, family, friends, relatives, even time and aging…) his droning voice-over in a mantra-like rhythm renders these personal images from a distant place, as if subject and object were in reality two different beings, disconnected from each other.

Zhou Tao
Zhou Tao plays with notions of chance and everyday life subverting our understanding of the urban environment. In videos such as Obstacle, Power Here, Mutual Exercise, and East 6th Street to Location One he explores ordinary activities in public spaces.

In Obstacle, Zhou takes a stroll on a Sunday morning in the streets of his native Chinese city of Guangzhou, letting chance lead the way as he interacts with the many different elements that he encounters. Whether swimming in a public pool, scaling an electric pole, or simply just walking on the streets, there is always an element of civil disobedience involved in his actions. In Power Here, he turns on a fan, a loudspeaker, and a floor lamp using the city’s public electricity energy, exposing the lack of surveillance by official authorities. In Mutual Exercise, a collaboration with a friend, they walk the streets of Guangzhou, exploring new situations and creating connections out of randomness, as they encounter obstacles in their way. In East 6th Street to Location One, a collaborative work completed during the artist’s residency at Location One in New York, Zhou and a friend rely upon each other’s bodies to complete the trajectory from his home in the East Village to his studio in Soho.

Wojtek Doroszuk

In his humorous videos, Wojtek Doroszuk sarcastically comments on societal behavior. As an acute observer of social relations, his work deals with elements still considered taboo in society, such as transgender operations, the theatricality of death, and the exploitation of illegal workers. Weighty themes are rendered in a casual way, with Doroszuk acting like a passer-by, or a mere spectator blandly observing the situations around him, as if he could be left unaffected by the huge impact of these major transformative experiences. Special Features–which are the artist’s commentaries on some of his original projects–shows three different situations: Polish citizens collecting raspberries in a farm in Norway, a Turkish transgender man telling the story of changing his gender identity, and Polish employees working for a Turkish boss in Germany. In each of these narratives, there is an element of surprise–something that was expected to happen but somehow gets contradicted or denied. A great dream goes sour, a bad rumor gets buffered.

In Dissection Theatre, a woman lies in a morgue table being dressed and beautified for her burial. The careless and mundane attitute of the workers attending her corpse, contrasts with the sacredness of the situation. This mechanical act is indeed the funereal image of her last deadly appearance.

Alexandra Mota de Aguiar
Alexandra Mota de Aguiar works mainly with drawing remaining close to the expressive mechanisms explored among others by Phillip Guston and Francis Bacon. Using oil pastel, charcoal, graphite, and gouache, she approaches the creative process culminates in a wide range of hybrid organic forms. Part anthropomorphic and part just abstract marks in space, her figures carry strong gestural traces generating ambiguous narratives. These organic enigmatic forms occasionally even suggest erotic actions. Completely immersed in the process of image-making, Aguiar creates works that are in-between abstraction and figuration, alternately whimsical and poetic—and often humorous.

Yes, But… is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a group of international artists working in dramatically different practices but somehow all expressing the contradictions of contemporary daily life–its fragmented experiences, the desire to transgress the norm, the disappointment with stratified rules—and, ultimately, the bewilderment with the possibility of transformation.

After all, Yes, life is short, But…not necessarily small.

Richard Bell: I Am Not Sorry

Australia’s foremost – and most controversial – Aboriginal artist exhibits his work for the first time in New York

A Location One International Fellowship exhibition curated by Maura Reilly
OPENING RECEPTION:
Thursday, 8 October 2009, 6–8 PM
DATES: 9 October 2009 – 25 November 2009
HOURS: Tuesday-Saturday 12–6 PM

Richard Bell, Australia’s leading Aboriginal artist, and one of his country’s most controversial creative talents, will exhibit new and old work in his first-ever US exhibition, “Richard Bell: I Am Not Sorry,” which opens October 8th at Location One.

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The exhibition, which is curated by Maura Reilly, is a centerpiece of the Location One International Fellowship awarded to Bell for the 2009 – 2010 season, which he will spend in New York, creating new work and exploring new creative directions under Location One’s auspices.

Brisbane-based Richard Bell is one of Australia’s most talked-about artists. Bell’s works address — and protest — the commodification of indigeneity in the western art market. They draw attention to frustrations and grievances brought about through the European colonization of Australia. His paintings play with the practice of appropriation, often mining the Pop Art styles of Roy Lichtenstein and Jasper Johns, the paint drips of Jackson Pollock, or the dot matrix style of Aboriginal painter Emily Kngwarreye while including texts that complicate the way we think about racism and race politics.

Aboriginal Art—it’s a white thing (2002), included in the exhibition, is one of the artist’s famous ‘Theorems’, in which he accuses the contemporary art world of manipulating and exploiting indigenous art. In his most recent ‘Theorem’, titled Pay the Rent (2009), Bell demands of the colonizers that they pay in back rent what they owe to the colonized Aborigines since ‘the invasion’ in 1788. Likewise, in a provocative recent video, Scratch an Aussie (2008), Bell plays reversal politics by charading as a black Sigmund Freud who psychoanalyzes racist white Australians. The exhibition will also feature a new video Broken English (2009) in which Bell plays chess with indigenous politics, asking white and black Australians why Aborigines appear to lack a vision for their own future.

This survey exhibition also comprises critical works from the early 1990s, including a photographic series in which the artist presents himself in a series of stereotypical roles imposed upon indigenous males: “drinker”,”failure”,”trouble maker”; while in another early text piece, as spokesperson for all indigenous peoples from “The Lucky Country”(aka Australia), Bell seeks to initiate an “emigrant enhancement program”with countries like China, Iraq, South African, Taiwan, and so forth, with a view to making treaties in order to gain parliamentary representation and sovereignty of lands.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of events, including a public lecture by the artist, as well as a two film programs curated by Richard Bell featuring Walkabout (1971), Rabbit Proof Fence (2002), and Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978) —as well as the important local documentary Incident at Oglala (1992).

About Richard Bell
Richard Bell was born in 1953 in Charleville, Queensland, and is a member of the Kamilaroi, Kooma, Jiman and Gurang Gurang communities. Based in Brisbane, Richard has held numerous solo exhibitions since 1990. He is represented in major collections in Australia and New Zealand and is internationally recognized through numerous exhibitions, including the significant European touring exhibition Aratjara: Art of the First Australians, 1993; Culture Warriors, The National Indigenous Art Triennial, National Gallery of Australia, 2007; the 9th and 16th Sydney Biennales, 1992 and 2008; Australian Perspecta 1993, Art Gallery of New South Wales, The Unfamiliar Territory, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art in 1991 and Half-Light: Portraits From Black Australia at the Art Gallery of NSW. His work was the subject of the survey exhibition Positivity, presented by the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, in 2006. He won the National Telstra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2003. A past member of the Campfire group, Richard is a founding member of proppaNOW, the Brisbane-based Aboriginal artists collective that also includes Tony Albert, Vernon Ah Kee and Gordon Hookey. Richard Bell is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane, Australia.

Location One is extremely grateful to QIAMEA (Queensland Indigenous Arts Marketing & Export Agency), to the Australia Council for the Arts and extends special thanks to Josh Milani for invaluable help in making this fellowship and exhibition possible. 

Current Location One Related Press:
Art in America [link] – PDF

Location One Virtual Residency Project 2.0: “Levels of Undo”
New work by Virtual Artists-in-Residence Jessica Curry, Ursula Endlicher, Narinda Reeders, and Ben Woodeson
September 9–October 30, 2009
Opening reception: September 9, 6-8pm
Free and open to the public
26 Greene Street NYC 10013
(between Canal and Grand)
212-334-3347

Location One Virtual Residency Project 2.0: “Levels of Undo” Four artists from 4 different cities, who have never met—and were forbidden to do so during the three months of their “residency”—collaborate on a topic that they had no say in developing. Is this ethical? Are the parameters unnecessarily rigid? Were they able to produce anything worthwhile under such oddly stringent rules?

Come see the results of this virtual experiment at Location One, on Wednesday, September 9.

Confessedly the rules weren’t quite so harsh as they sound: there were no expectations or requirements to complete any finished artworks, in fact the entire project could conceivably have existed as a blog discussion (see it at http://vres.location1.org). But the four artists (two teams of two) Ben Woodeson (UK) & Ursula Endlicher (US) (Team X), and Narinda Reeders (AU) & Jessica Curry (UK) (Team 7), who were given the topic “Levels of Undo” and precious little else, spent the last three months marinating in that theme and communicating via blog, skype, snail mail, telephone, IM–so long as it did not include meeting face to face–to create some exciting new works, including a few that are not at all virtual.

Location One is pleased to present the fruits of their marination, which include Facebook impersonation performances, Spy pen surveillance video, Morse code sonatas, and analog “Tweets”. What are analog Tweets? Good question. Also making an appearance: a bottle of absinthe that may or may not burst into flames, and a live visitation from the “Old Internet” who tries to “friend” the “New Internet”. How does all this relate to the topic “Levels of Undo”? How indeed. The artists were encouraged to interpret the theme however literally or broadly they saw fit; their interpretations led them to challenge both the idea of “Undoing” as well as the nature of collaboration itself.

Two of the artists will be present at the opening to meet each other for the first time, the other two will teleport in via video chat. Ben Woodeson will also be previewing some of his Virtual Residency Project works at dorkbot-nyc on September 2, 7pm at Location One.

Location One is grateful to the artists for accepting the challenge with such good humor and and grace, and enjoyed watching them so brilliantly do, undo, redo–and ultimately undo our own expectations of this odd experiment.

Artist Bios:

Jessica Curry (Brighton, UK)  is a composer based in the UK who spends far too much time with her husband.
Making a child and making work together has formed the basis of their collaborative experiments for the past eight years.  A Wellcome Trust commission led on to several successful large-scale projects, including a series of experimental computer games.  The latest of these, Dear Esther, was selected for Prix Ars Electronica 2008 and is a finalist in Los Angeles based festival, Indiecade 2009. Their Second Life funeral, The Second Death of Caspar Helendale has recently been selected by The Royal Opera House, UK to be performed there in November 2009.  Jessica and her
husband still, however, argue over whose turn it is to do the ironing.

Location One offered Jessica the opportunity to commit collaborative infidelity with a mysterious Australian artist. The temptation proved too much for Jessica and the rest, as they say, is Levels Of Undo.

http://www.jessicacurry.co.uk

Ursula Endlicher (New York, USA)  is an Austrian artist living in New York. Her work bridges performance, installation, and the Internet. Using the Web since its days of inception she is interested in its inherent structures and languages – such as HTML – and translates them into visual formats, dance choreography, sound, and installations. Recent works such as the net art piece “html_butoh” as well as the live/web-driven performance series “Website Impersonations” are based on the “html-movement-library”, a database of user-submitted movement directions based on HTML code. Recent shows include venues such as Lightindustry in Brooklyn, New York, Theater am Neumarkt in Zürich, Switzerland, and Woodstreet Galleries in Pittsburgh, PA. She received commissions by Turbulence, and by the Whitney Museum of American Art for artport’s Gate Pages.

For “Levels of Undo” she developed new works that reflect on: the peculiar exchanges with her virtual residency
mate(s), the long and winding road of working online for one and a half decades, and the deep and mysterious experiences with Facebook.

http://www.ursenal.net

Narinda Reeders (Melbourne, Australia) is a media artist and a bona-fide nerd. She studied computer science in the dark ages, before hotmail had been invented and the HTML seemed revolutionary. She also obtained an honours degree in Photography from the Victorian College of the Arts. Her photographs and interactive installations have seen her exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently as part of Experimenta national touring exhibitions, and at the International Symposium for Electronic Art in Singapore, 2008.  Narinda is also one half of the performance duo Hit&Miss, with Tai Snaith, although she wishes there were a better word than “performance” to describe the acts of creative mischief they get up to. Dressed identically in red and white, Hit&Miss have been practicing the art of painful stillness and many other absurd acts for the past 6 years. They have popped up unexpectedly in public spaces, exhibitions, parties, flights, shopping festivals and car club rallies in Australia, Scotland and the US.

http://www.narindareeders.net

Ben Woodeson’s (London, UK) practice revolves around absurd and quietly confrontational sculptures. His works set out to challenge the viewer and the exhibiting institution in a playful kind of art chicken. Since December 2008 he has been working on a new series of “ deliberately dangerous” works entitled “The Health and safety Violations”, to date these have included 30,000 ball bearings for the audience to walk on, an electric fence which the audience had no choice but to climb over if they wished to enter the gallery and a motion activated vacuum pump which set about extracting the atmosphere from a sealed gallery every time a viewer was present. In June he was selected for a prize by the artist Mark Wallinger when he exhibited a corridor full of randomly activated trip wires at this year’s Creekside Open exhibition in London. The works sound overtly dangerous… but are they really? For the virtual residency he has
been collaborating with Ursula Endlicher, the two have never met but they will spend the last week before the exhibition opens finalizing works together in New York. He has shown throughout Europe, Canada, and America and he has an upcoming solo show at Electrohype in Malmo, Sweden.

Trained in Glasgow, Scotland he now lives in London, England with his wife the artist Andrea Jespersen and their dog Mia who is deeply unimpressed by his studio that unsurprisingly is full of dangerous shit and things that go “bang”…

http://www.woodeson.co.uk

Rudy Shepherd: Portraits
July 8–31, 2009
Opening Reception July 8, 6–8pm
Location One IRP Exhibition

In “Portraits,” American Artist-in-Residence Rudy Shepherd presents a series of recent works that challenge and transcend traditional notions of who and what is a worthy subject of high-art portraiture, e.g., criminals, anonymous Taliban members, black heroes, or houses.The painted portraits in Shepherd’s “Criminal/Victim” series from 2009 depict both perpetrators and victims of the same crime side-by-side, visually blurring the line between innocence and guilt. By presenting the people first and the stories second a space is created for humanity to be re-instilled into the lives of people who have been reduced to mere headlines by the popular press (e.g. Timothy McVeigh).

In his “Taliban” series, also on view, Shepherd presents beautifully executed color drawings of anonymous Taliban members who, as the artist states “have lived and died for their cause and been completely forgotten.” The portraits are based on a book from 2004 that reproduces images of Taliban soldiers taken in photographic studios in Afghanistan before these men departed on “missions” from which they did not return.

In “The Healers” series from 2009 Shepherd examines his black heroes in large-scale paintings in which he presents the extraordinary individuals against luscious gold backgrounds, hung above eye level, like sacred icons in front of which the spectator is meant to pause, as if in the presence of a diety. Yet, Shepherd’s ‘dieties’–Alice Coltrane (musician, wife of legendary John Coltrane), Sun Ra (American jazz musician), Frantz Fanon (revolutionary author from Martinique who was immensely influential in the field of post-colonial studies), and Octavia Butler (American science fiction author)—are a far cry from the (Caucasian) sitters generally encountered in such traditional portraiture: Christ, Virgin Mary, and various saints, for instance.

Lastly, “Portraits” also features several small-scale paintings, all dated 2006, that could be called “house-portraits” of significant writers, cultural thinkers or places of historical import: Frederick Douglass’ House, Aerial View Neverland Ranch, Freud’s Childhood Home, and the gate to the Auschwitz concentration camp with the haunting phrase emblazoned on it, Arbeit Macht Frei (Work will make you free).

Rudy’s residency at Location One is supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Based in Harlem, NY, Rudy Shepherd received a BS in Biology and Studio Art from Wake Forest University and an MFA in Sculpture from the School of Art Institute of Chicago. He has been in group exhibitions at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, NY, The Studio Museum of Harlem, NY, Bronx Museum of Art, NY, Art in General, NY, Triple Candie, NY, Socrates Sculpture Park, NY, Cheekwood Museum of Art, TN, Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, CT, Southeastern Center of Contemporary Art, NC, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL, Tart Gallery, San Francisco, CA, Analix Forever Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland and solo exhibitions at Mixed Greens Gallery, NY, Regina Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. He has been awarded Artist in Residence at Location One, New York, PS1 National/ International Studio Program, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY, Artist in Residence Visual + Harlem, Jacob Lawrence Institute for the Visual Arts, New York, NY and Emerging Artist Fellowship, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY. He is currently represented by Mixed Greens Gallery, NY and has an upcoming two-person exhibition at Paperwork Gallery, Baltimore, MD.

Location One presents the New York premiere of a young star on the contemporary British art scene

Shawcross, Location One’s first International Fellow, has produced an ambitious new work titled Slow Arc III, which demonstrates the artist’s continued interest in mathematics, cosmology and epistemology. The installation will re-open from September 9th – 26th, 2009 with special public programming.

RE-OPENING RECEPTION:
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009, 6–8 PM
(open to the public)
DATES: September 9th – 26th, 2009
HOURS: Tuesday-Saturday 12–6 PM

Shawcross is known for his multi-media, kinetic sculptures and mysterious structures that are imbued with an appearance of scientific rationality yet beneath the surface are also haunted by the search for the unobtainable and inexpressible. In this new work the artist continues the series of investigations that started with Slow Arc Inside a Cube (2008), which was initially inspired by the late British chemist Dorothy Hodgkin, who said deciphering the structure of pig insulin ‘was like trying to work out the structure of a tree from seeing only its shadow’.” In this new work, however, instead of the path of light being traced by an articulated arm locked into a fixed cycle, the light can move anywhere, by means of a computer-controlled system, within the confines of the mesh cage and thus create and endless series of unpredictable spatial ‘throws’ into the room around it.

The drawings included in the exhibition continue the artist series titled Dumbbells. For this series produced during his time at Location One the artist has chosen to investigate one particular chord, the Major Sixth (5:3). Created by a gravity-driven machine that like Slow Arc operates within a narrow band of parameters, the drawings are visual extrapolations of this particular harmonic. The artist sees the ‘throws’ of light from Slow Arc III as very much linked to these drawings in which the illusion of three-dimensionality is created through line. Both mechanisms divorce the artist’s hand from the process of art-making and instead put in place a series of variables, sometimes predictable, sometimes arbitrary, from which the visual results manifest.

Other works in the show include Lattice Cube IV and Lattice Cube II, both dated 2008, which continue the artist’s interests in the geometry of the tetrahedron and notions of the Big Bang. Lastly the newest work in the show titled The Celestial Meters consists of a series of nine, stainless steel rods arranged around the space. Inspired by the history of the meter, which was conceived of in 1799 during the French Revolution as an attempt to get away from the Imperial system of the foot. In order to do this a new scale or control was needed. It was decided that the size of the earth would be the best thing to use for this absolute. As a consequence the meter is supposedly one ten millionth of the sector of the earth through Paris. Each of the nine rod’s lengths are based on this division of their own sector, so as a result Pluto is only 7 inches long whereas Jupiter is around 35 feet.

Another thread that formally links the works in Shawcross’s exhibition is a preoccupation with cosmology and radiant geometry, where everything emanates from a single point, expanding out from a central nucleus.

Born in 1977, Shawcross lives and works in London. He has had solo exhibitions at Jenaer Kunstverein, Germany (2008), The New Art Gallery, Walsall, and The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2005), and the National Maritime Museum (2004). His work has also been exhibited internationally at institutions including Musée d’art Contemporain, Lyon (2008), Art Basel | 39 (2008), La Chapelle de L’Ecole National Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (2008), The Saatchi Gallery (2004) and Manifesta 5, San Sebastian, Spain (2004). He is represented by the Victoria Miro Gallery in London and will have a New York solo gallery exhibition with Pace Wildenstein in the Spring of 2010.

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Current Location One Related Press:

The New York Times Magazine – The Moment [link] – PDF
Vanity Fair [link] – PDF
Art In America [link] – PDF
The Village Voice [link] – PDF
New York Art Beat [link] – PDF
The New York Times: Art in Review [link] – PDF

Media Contact

For further information on this exhibition or Location One, or for images or interviews, please contact Steve Cukierski at 212-334-3347 or via email at steve@location1.org

Nicolas Grospierre, “Bank” (L), “Safe” (R) click for larger image

Kaeko Mizukoshi, Hymn

Location One is pleased to present the first of its summer 2009 International Residency Program Exhibitions, featuring the work of two outstanding emerging artists, Nicolas Grospierre and Kaeko Mizukoshi.Polish artist Nicolas Grospierre will present a photographic installation consisting of several photographs that depict the interiors of New York City bank vaults, as well as a small sculptural component. Grospierre’s project, brewing conceptually since 2007, yet not realized until this 2009 residency, is particularly prescient in today’s economic crisis and daily bank bailouts.In her video, “Hymn” (2009), Japanese artist Kaeko Mizukoshi, documents a nighttime scene at a Los Angeles bus stop that depicts a seemingly endless dialogue between a man, who rants indecipherably, and an awaiting passenger who responds with unrelated religious exclamations.

Nicolas Grospierre’s residency is presented in association with the Polish Cultural Institute in New York within its Poland-U.S. Artists-In-Residence Exchange Program, organized by a-i-r laboratory at the Centre for Contemporary Art “Ujazdowski Castle” in Warsaw, Poland and Location One in New York, with generous support of the Trust for Mutual Understanding”

Location One 10th Anniversary Exhibition
Laurie Anderson
From the Air: Two Installations

March 10 – May 2, 2009
Opening Reception, Tuesday, March 10, 6-8pm

Location One is pleased to announce the exhibition From the Air: Two Installations, by Laurie Anderson which will be presented in celebration of its 10th Anniversary. Anderson, who was invited to be Location One’s Senior Artist-in-Residence in 2008, will present a new piece and the revival of an older work, both addressing the concept of disembodiment, which has been a common thread throughout her oeuvre. The exhibition will be on view from March 10 through May 2, 2009, with an opening reception on Tuesday, March 10 from 6 to 8 pm.

The title piece, From the Air, uses a series of 3D projections, a technique Anderson has employed since the 1970s, to create a story about the artist and her dog. The second installation, Aleph, projects sound electronically into the gallery space, focusing the sound to make it seemingly emanate from midair. Originally commissioned for the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, the text for Aleph is inspired by the unspeakable nature of this Hebrew letter, and the installation examines the unconscious process of putting ideas into words.

Fostered by the experimental art scene of downtown New York in the early 1970s, Laurie Anderson created her earliest performances in Soho, where Location One is based. In addition to continuing her acclaimed performance work, she has gone on to broaden her artistic practice to include music, video, digital art, and sculpture.

Location One will organize its inaugural Benefit Gala in celebration of its 10th Anniversary on Thursday, March 5, 2009. Honoring Laurie Anderson and her contributions to the downtown New York art world and beyond, the gala will feature a preview of the exhibition and a special performance that the artist will reveal.

About Laurie Anderson:
Laurie Anderson is one of America’s most renowned—and daring—creative pioneers. She is best known for her multimedia presentations and innovative use of technology. As writer, director, visual artist and vocalist she has created groundbreaking works that span the worlds of art, theater, and experimental music.

Her recording career, launched by “O Superman” in 1981, includes the soundtrack to her feature film “Home of the Brave” and “Life on a String” (2001). Anderson’s live shows range from simple spoken word to elaborate multi-media stage performances such as “Songs and Stories for Moby Dick” (1999). Anderson has published seven books and her visual work has been presented in major museums around the world.

In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA which culminated in her touring solo performance “The End of the Moon”. Recent projects include a series of audio-visual installations and a high definition film, Hidden Inside Mountains, created for World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. In 2007 she received the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for her outstanding contribution to the arts. She recently completed a two-year worldwide tour of her latest performance piece, “Homeland”, which will be released on Nonesuch Records this year.

Location One exhibition related press:

NY Times[link] – PDF
Artcat[link] – PDF
ArtForum[link] – PDF
Artico[link] – PDF
Artlog
New York Observer[link] – PDF
Performa[link] – PDF
Theater Mania[link] – PDF

Nayland Blake: Behavior, a 25-year survey of the renowned artist’s work, will feature some thirty pieces from every aspect of Blake’s career as a painter, sculptor, illustrator, performer, and installation artist. They include the iconic Magic (1991), Heavenly Bunny Suit (1994), a restraint piece, Jim (2000), as well as a generous selection of works never before exhibited in NYC. Nayland Blake: Behavior will be accompanied by a catalogue, as well as by a series of artist-curated performance nights, one of which will include a re-staging of Blake’s “Gorge” (1998).

artist bio
Nayland Blake; artist, writer, educator and curator, was born in 1960 in New York City, where he currently lives and works. Over the past twenty four years he has exhibited widely throughout the world. He has had one-person exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; University Art Museum, Berkeley; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, and the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College. His works are in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and many others. He is the author of numerous catalog essays as well as articles and interviews appearing in such publications as Artforum, Out, Interview, and Outlook. In 1995 he was the co-curator, with Larry Rinder, of In A Different Light, the first museum exhibition to examine the impact of Lesbian, Gay and Queer artists on contemporary art. He is currently the founding chair of the ICP/Bard Masters Program in Advanced Photographic Studies at the International Center for Photography in New York. Blake is represented by Fred in London, Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco, and Matthew Marks Gallery in New York.

curator’s bio
Maura Reilly is an independent curator and writer. From 2003–2008, she worked as the founding curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, during which time she organized several exhibitions, including the permanent re-installation of The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, the critically acclaimed Global Feminisms, co-curated with Linda Nochlin, and Ghada Amer: Love Has No End (for which a major monograph by Reilly is forthcoming). Prior to joining Brooklyn Museum, she worked as a free-lance art critic, most regularly writing for Art in America and Art Journal, while also organizing a number of exhibitions as an independent curator, most notably Citizen Queer at the Shedhalle in Zürich, Switzerland, Neoqueer at the Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle. Most recently, Reilly co-curated La Mirada Iracunda (The Furious Gaze) at the Centro Cultural Montehermoso de Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. She has published and lectured widely on post-war art and has taught at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, Tufts University in Medford, MA, and at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Dr. Reilly received her M. A. and Ph. D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Her next curatorial project is an exhibition showcasing the early paintings of Carolee Schneemann at PPOW Gallery, New York, in 2009.

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A satirist from Berlin. . .
. . . a metaverse scholar from Tokyo. . .
. . . and an artist from New York. . .
. . . create joint work – without meeting in person

Can three complete strangers – from different continents, cultures and creative disciplines – collaborate from afar to create a forceful artistic statement about a political event?
Obamabot Vs. McCainbot in Metaverse

They can. They have. Location One presents “Mission Accomplished,” a virtual-residency collaboration of Hidenori Watanave, Susanne Berkenheger, and Andy Deck. Their work, prepared without ever meeting face-to-face, uses Google Earth, Second Life, wikis and blog technologies – not to mention old-fashioned hand-printed Agitprop posters – to address the forthcoming U.S. Presidential election.

“Mission Accomplished” will be on view at Location One’s project gallery, September 10 to November 15, 2008. The opening is 6 to 8 p.m. September 10. Virtual audiences will be able to view and participate in the work at http://location1.org/missionaccomplished.

“The tools of tele-collaboration have become incredible rich and powerful in the ten years of our existence,” said Location One executive director Claire Montgomery. “We were founded on the themes of collaboration, technological experimentation and social consciousness. When we found that three talents this interesting were willing to take on the elections together, how could we resist? You have to see what they did.”

Susanne Berkenheger (Berlin) is an author and journalist, who writes for “SPAM”, the satirical section of German magazine Der Spiegel. She has been involved in projects in Second Life and “Chat Theatre”.
http://spiegel.de/spam
http://www.berkenheger.de/index_english.html

Hidenori Watanave (Tokyo) is Associate Professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University, and is researching 3Di (Second Life) and 3DGIS (Google Earth). He is interested in collaborative work in the realms of Architecture and Environmental Design in tele-existence and the metaverse.
http://mapping.jp/archi/cat18/
http://mapping.jp/index_en.html

Andy Deck (NYC) is an artist specializing in Internet media. His work addresses the politics and aesthetics of collaboration, interactivity, software, and independent media. Deck combines code, text, sound, and image, demonstrating new patterns of participation and control that distinguish online presence and representation from previous artistic practices.
http://andydeck.com
http://artcontext.org

The three artists all speak English, and all are fluent in Internet media. They were given no restrictions other than not meeting in person, and no directions other than the topic of the forthcoming Presidential election. Heather Wagner, director of online exhibitions, coordinated the project for Location One.
Mission Accomplished?
“The works in this virtual residency demonstrate ways in which presence and participation can be abstract and conceptual. From different points of view, they represent how Internet media and tele-presence have expanded the scope of the 2008 U.S. presidential election to global proportions.” – Andy Deck

OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, September 10, 2008 6–8PM
(open to the public)

EXHIBITION DATES: September 10–November 15, 2008
HOURS: Tuesday-Saturday 12–6PM

About Location One:
Location One (http://location1.org) is a not-for-profit art center devoted to fostering new forms of creative expression and cultural exchange, and expanding the capabilities of our artists. We invite artists from different countries, working in a variety of mediums, to experiment with diverse means of expression/technology and engage with audiences through exhibitions and public programs.

Jane Philbrick installation uses fire alarms to confront today’s fear and insecurity

Honeywell engineer: “Are you hoping to blind your viewers and leave them wriggling on the floor like fish?”
Jane Philbrick: “I like it really loud.”

This is PULL, Jane Philbrick’s large-scale installation at Location One, which comprises 502 fire alarms, strobes, smoke
detectors, siren horns, control panels — and one customized vintage fire pull station. PULL is about security and fear and power and technology. It is beautiful while disturbing.

PULL will be on view at Location One’s main gallery, September 10 to November 15, 2008. The opening is 6 to 8 p.m. September 10.

PULL confronts an America seemingly crippled by fear and uncertainty. Developed in collaboration with 18 engineers from Honeywell’s Fire Systems Group, PULL urges viewers to realize their hidden desire to sound the alarm, here in the form of an historic fire call box situated in the center of the gallery space. Once triggered, the work blossoms
into a flourish of lights, words and deafening sirens — a wake up call.

“Like a ventriloquist, Philbrick sends her message through non-human means, a digital narrative that provokes, just as it forces awareness,” says Claire Montgomery, Location One executive director. “She invites viewers to pull her conceptual trigger, and then, as the work plays out, compels them to experience first-hand the tense seductions of
power and the often brutal consequences of our anonymous, systemized response to it.”

“The military machine is as beautiful and seductive as it is menacing and intimidating, brilliantly offering in its mass, anonymous order the implicit promise of security as antidote to the very anxiety it instills,” says Philbrick. “The machine prompts fear, we respond defensively, and the consequences vastly exceed scale, local (personal) fear,
and global response.”

Jane Philbrick is an artist working with language. She is currently an International Fellow at Location One and an artist research affiliate at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT, where she is developing a solo exhibition for the Skissernas Museum for Public Art in Lund, Sweden, opening in 2009. Philbrick developed PULL while an artist
in residence at Honeywell’s Fire Systems Group. This exhibition was curated for Location One by Eric C. Shiner.  Special thanks to Wanas Foundation, Sweden.

Have pop culture and globalization co-opted the wonderfully expressive gestures of the black America female? This is the question that Rashaad Newsome explores in video and photography in Shade Compositions, one of two new works in an exhibition opening on Thursday June 19th at Location One.

In the second work, Untitled (study for banji cunt), Newsome brings choreography for the first time into his expressive repertoire. For this piece the artist invited one of New York’s top vogue dancers, Shayne Oliver, to his studio and recorded his demonstration. From the footage he created a choreographed piece in post-production by connecting different dance sequences. Shayne Oliver was then asked to practice and reinterpret this dance, and to perform it before a camera. The resulting video (8 minute loop) will be shown in Location One’s Project Space, along with ten photographs of specific dance moves from the initial recording session.

“The language of the body has a vocabulary all its own,” says Newsome, whose residency at Location One is sponsored by the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. “Gestural language is often viewed as a cultural signifier, and I am interested in how it is formed, how it evolves as well as how it is appropriated across regional and class boundaries. I think of dance as a means of communication that can reflect a world bigger then the one I live in, one that can reflect many different people, cultures and times.”

In conjunction with the exhibition there will be a live performance of Shade Compositions,
Tuesday June 24th at 7 PM in Location One’s Performance Space (20 Greene Street).

Four black females will perform a choreographed action piece, derived from dismissive gestures often characterized as “ghetto.” The artist will utilize a hacked Nintendo Wii game controller to create a music and video composition in real-time, recording, looping, composing and editing both audio and video simultaneously to the action of the performers.

Thanks to OAK for generously lending clothing for the performance.

Born in New Orleans, Newsome received a B.A. in Art History from Tulane University before studying at Film Video Arts in New York. He has been awarded several residencies including one at Entreprise Culturelle in Paris. Most recently his work has been shown at K.U.E.L., Berlin; Glassbox Gallery, Paris; Rush Arts Gallery, NYC; Fondation Cartier, Paris; The Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans.

www.rashaadnewsome.com

June 19 – July 26 2008
OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday June 19th, 6 – 8pm (open to the public)

Location One presents And we move, an installation by New York based artist Jean Shin, which was developed during her residency at Location One. The opening will be held on Thursday June 19th from 6 to 8 pm and the exhibition will remain open to the public through Saturday July 26th, 2008.

Conceived as a site-specific installation, And we move continues Jean Shin’s investigation into the nature of music and its production. The installation utilizes the display of clothing, a video projection on fabric, unwound audio tape, embroidery, and compositional scores on prints, to explore how music is visualized and expressed through movement of the body, and how sound can be imprinted onto a surface. The result is the creation of a multimedia installation. The title And we move refers to the phrase iterated by the conductor as he begins to work with the musicians and evokes the dynamic relationship between them. It also refers to the way in which music moves its listeners.

In the video, the conductor’s back is isolated into a cropped view of his jacket as he leads the orchestra to play the lyrical score of Ma Vlast (My Country), a piece by Czech composer Bedrich Smetana, and Ibert’s Flute Concerto. The single viewpoint creates a mysterious, suggestive abstraction of something alive, pulsing, moving. As the conductor engages with each second of every orchestral part, the image of his moving jacket speaks to his essential relationship as an individual to the group of musicians and ultimately his role in both interpreting and realizing each collaborative performance.

The artist has chosen to include the structural columns of the gallery in her installation, which she equates to the structural system of a musical score, with measures and repetitive lines. Found magnetic audio tape is wrapped around and extended between the columns in a fluid and expressive manner, evoking the act of drawing, and creating a line of sound within the architectural space. The audio tape also refers to the materiality of music and its making; metaphorically it refers to the socio-economic interrelationships that lead to the production of music.

Further exploration of the themes is provided by a series of five large-scale inkjet prints on fabric. The prints are stills from the video which capture the conductor’s body in action and become moments of music frozen in time: music and movement distilled. On the bottom portion of each print, the score of Smetana’s composition is printed continuously in a long horizontal band extending through all five images while the audio levels of the video are translated into a line of embroidery that runs between the still and the score, visually suturing the distinct elements together. The artist’s intention is to create a pause in the movement of a conductor’s action and contrast it with the musical language of the compositional score as well as the sampling of the audio track that is a record of the actual performance.

The use of clothing as representation of the body is integral to Jean Shin’s practice. In this new project, the artist is also thinking about the expressiveness of fabric throughout history (such as the Baroque and Hellenistic periods) and how it became almost more important than the figure, because it revealed the imprint of the figure, something greater than a simple depiction of the body.

Jean Shin’s residency at Location One is supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
Thanks to Solo Impression Inc. for producing the digital prints for this exhibition, to Richard Lanier, Joseph W. Polisi, George Stelluto and the Julliard School of Music for their invaluable help.

We are pleased to present new work by Daniel Andersson (Finland) and by Tseng Yu-chin (Taiwan), participants of the International Residency Program this year.

We are pleased to present new work by Luis Nobre (Portugal) and by Eric Siu (Hong Kong), who have participated in Location One’s International Residency Program this year.

Eric Siu
Optical Handlers – eeyee, 2008

Optical Handlers – eeyee is a new interactive media project that consists of an optical goggle device constructed by the artist, which splits the vision into four channels. On May 11th the artist walked with the goggles from Location One to Union Square via Broadway by foot and subway, doing various mundane activities such as stopping into shops and having coffee. He was accompanied by a friend who was responsible for his safety and introduced him to people who want to interact with him.

The exhibition consists of a video of the street performance, a video of Eric’s vision through the goggles (namely four POV’s), a full goggle set up for use by one visitor at a time, and four little screens that allow the rest of the public to view what that person is experiencing. On display are also the Alien “eeyee” suit that Eric was wearing, as well as the Master suit worn by the friend. Both suits are meant to allow the public to “see through” him.

The artist will be available to demonstrate the workings of eeyee from 4 to 6pm when the exhibition is open.

Eric received a diploma in digital media studies at IVE in 2001 followed by a B.A. at the School of Creative Media of the City University of Hong Kong in 2005. In 2005, he made his first trip abroad when he received an honorable mention at the Media Art Biennial in Poland for his eight-minute work Sliding Whites, becoming the first Hong Kong artist to win recognition at this prestigious event.

Eric’s residency at Location One is supported by the Asian Cultural Council.

Online: www.ericsiuart.com

Luis Nobre
Hold It! 2008

Hold It! is an installation that creates a fantastical, sometimes hallucinatory vision of nature, the city and the artist’s studio. Visual play is generated by overlapping layers of drawings, ephemeral sculptures made of paper and cardboard, light wire objects, all constructed by Nobre in-situ. For the first time the artist also incorporates video into his work, with footage taken on the Williamsburg bridge, in Greenpoint, and in his native Portugal.

The coming together of all these elements whose scale, medium and density are so disparate, creates a vibration, a tension of line and meaning that feed the artist’s ongoing exploration of nature, survival and the “implications of the empty space” between the originally observed subject and its displayed rendition.
Luis Nobre graduated in 2001 from the Escola Superior de Arte e Design, Caldas da Rainha, Lisbon. Exhibitions include the 5th International Biennial of Sculpture and Drawing, Caldas da Rainha; Sub.864-873, Museu Malhoa, Caldas da Rainha; Between Heaven and Hell, Museum of Natural History, Lisbon; Year of the Dog, Ale and Porter Arts, Bradford, UK; Ohhh Naturel! Madame Lillies, London.

Online: www.luisnobre.net

Luis Nobre’s residency at Location One is supported by dgArtes, Ministerio da Cultura, Lisbon, Fundação Ilidio Pinho, & Instituto Camões

April 24-June 14, 2008
Thursday April 24th, opening 6 -8 pm
open through Saturday June 14th

Aoife Collins (pron Ee-fa) will be showing a number of sculptural and two dimensional works for her exhibition at Location One, exploring synthetic experience and mimesis, transference and its relationship to text and historical figures and influence upon cultural legacy.

Aoife’s interdisciplinary practice is shaped by recurrent themes of permutation, multiplicity, cultural paraphernalia and mass identification. Works are made out of existing materials, substances and structures that are transferred into new forms of narration. In her attempt to open up the realm of possibility, the artist pays close attention to the ability of objects to role-play and the extent of their mutability.

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In 2002. Aoife earned a B.A. from National College of Art & Design, Dublin followed in 2004 by an M.A., Chelsea College of Art and Design, London. In 2006 she completed a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Recent exhibitions include: The Devil in miss Jones, Meals & SUVs, London (2006); Eva, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick (2005) curated by Dan Cameron.

http://www.iaci-usa.org/locationone.html

Aoife’s residency at Location One is supported by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon and the Irish American Cultural Institute.

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Artist-in-Studio As Spectacle: Internal Message Search: A Performative Installation

April 18-April 30, 2008
artist reception: Thursday, April 24, 6 – 8 pm

Nina Sobell will install her studio in Location One’s Project Gallery, which includes recent wax
sculptures, drawings, keyboard, guitar and mic.
Visitors to the gallery will be able to engage in a dialogue with the artist about this work, and may bring their own instruments to improvise with her live on the web.

Sobell pioneered the use of video, computers, and interactivity in art, as well as performance on the Web. Since 1969, when she first used video to document participants’ undirected interactions with her sculptures, she investigates the extent to which video enables her to manipulate the relation between time and space, and to create a vortex for human experience, in which the mediated event coincides with public experience, memory, and relationships. Groundbreaking projects include ParkBench and VirtuAlice, and the ongoing Interactive Encephalographic Brainwave Drawings.

Nina’s work has been shown throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. An award-winning printmaker and figurative sculptor, an avid improvisational guitarist and keyboardist, she can be seen sculpting Emily in the ParkBench Performance Archives and heard playing music there as well.

LIVESTREAM & ARTIST PAGE

related works:
http://www.cat.nyu.edu/parkbench
http://www.cat.nyu.edu/parkbench/portfolio/5/frame.html

Nina Sobell’s residency at Location One is supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

http://ninasobell.com

Invitation
Location One presents its first ever “Virtual Residency Project” in the form of a call to artists and other creative individuals with the express purpose of fostering collaboration and creativity across geographical expanses and areas of expertise around the topic of the 2008 US Presidential Election. The goal of this residency is to find 3 participants who are not necessarily physically proximate but who are willing to collaborate with other artists, engineers, scientists, writers, musicians, poets, and activists to develop a project using such non-F2F (face to face) interfaces such as webcams, email, chat, video, blogs, Second Life, MIDI, skype, walkie-talkie, snail mail, radio or POTS (plain old telephone service), tin cans on string, or any other means of collaboration to develop a project that will be presented at Location One in the fall of 2008, in advance of the US Presidential election.

Though we will consider international residents, the theme of this inaugural residency is the 2008 Presidential Election and the buildup around this pivotal political event. The theme can be interpreted as broadly or as literally as the participants would like, the project will be developed collaboratively by the 3 individuals chosen for this residency project.

Location One will provide an area on its website where the project can develop publically through blogging, video, audio or other means.

Acceptable forms of Submission:
Please send CV, url or any materials to virtualresidency@location1.org by midnight May 15, 2008. Please include a few lines describing why you are interested in a collaborative virtual residency.

What kind of work should it be?
The project will be developed wholly by the participants. Location One can provide curatorial and technical assistance, but the final work will be created “offsite” or online. Online performance, remote music jam, streaming video, blogs, flash animations, radio transmissions, podcasts, Second Life theatre, iChat panel discussions, remote-controlled MIDI robot kittens acting out the debates are all examples of acceptable forms that the project may take. We are leaving the parameters intentionally broad in the hopes that it will elicit deeply creative responses to this topic.

February 26 – April 19, 2008
curated by Eric C. Shiner

Opening Reception: Wednesday, March 12, 6-8 pm
Artist-Curator talk and book signing: Tuesday, March 25 at 7 pm free

Location One is pleased to present three important films by Australian video pioneer Tracey Moffatt, perhaps one of the most revolutionary women artists to have ever worked in that medium. Known for her enchantingly beautiful yet often times dark portrayals of the role of subaltern “others” in both her native Australia and from cultures around the world, Moffatt’s narrative films offer the viewer a penetrative gaze into the realities and implicit fantasies that subjugation based on race and gender churns out. In her dual role as cultural critic and maker of art, Moffatt combines hard-edged life experiences with the technologies of video and photography to seam together pastiche-like vignettes that open a window onto the lives of her characters, whether that be an Australian aborigine or an African-American woman. In so doing, Moffatt not only presents the voice of “the other,” but perhaps more importantly provides a way out of the oft-times inescapable confines of racism, sexism and homophobia found in all corners of the globe. By granting her characters and viewers their own voice, Moffatt becomes champion of the subjugated and mediator between the lived here-and-now and the utopian world that many of us fantasize about one day realizing.

In the suite of videos on view in Social Edit, Moffatt, in collaboration with film editor Gary Hillberg, uses a strategy much different from her more well-known narrative films. Here, she utilizes montage and fracturing to literally excavate and mine the history of Hollywood films to create short movies that address the horrors of racism, Armageddon and destruction of things beautiful. Each work, culled from snippets of both early and contemporary films, some readily familiar and others completely unknown, becomes a thought-provoking journey into the collective memory of humankind, marked by the institutionalized-on-film traces of ill will that have been both opaquely and directly presented to us over the course of our lifetimes. By exposing the moments of subjugation found in Hollywood movies over the decades, whether in the form of racist rhetoric, visual depictions of the end of the world, or the creation and destruction of works of art, Moffatt allows us to rethink and reposition the implicit meaning of these brief filmic moments that might seem innocent one-by-one, but which produce a most ominous threat when bundled together one after another in a nonstop sequence that shocks and awakens in equal measure.

In LIP from 1999, Moffatt pieces together clips focusing on the African-American maid and her white employer to address the ever-present reality of racism and the ghosts of slavery that haunt contemporary America to this day. Through presenting the Hollywood depictions of these otherwise strong women as victim, comedic buffer or sassy troublemaker, Moffatt presents us with a seeming blueprint for the ways in which racism are promulgated in mainstream society, here in the form of popular entertainments that are often more influential on our thought-patterns than any other medium. Likewise, in ARTIST from 2000, Moffatt creates a sequence of film sequences that show artists working intensely on their masterworks, followed by a momentous climax in which chaos rules and the artists or others seemingly explode and destroy works of art in a near-orgiastic crescendo of rage and destructive force. In making such a work, Moffatt attempts to imbue the destroyed masterpieces on the celluloid with a new life, here in the form of a stand-alone work of art that reveals and questions Hollywood’s proclivity for depicting the artist as madman, dilettante or social outcast. Finally, in her recent work DOOMED from 2007, Moffatt analyzes world destruction imagery found in blockbuster movies to form a film brimming over with explosions, natural disasters and terroristic attacks to make a comment on our contemporary world’s fixation on terrorism and natural disasters, and perhaps more importantly, their omnipresence in mainstream media, and thus the front of our minds. By grouping together one disaster—and indeed one social ill or act of destruction—after another, Moffatt forces us to question that which we see on a daily basis, indeed to reevaluate the imagery and messages we are fed through Hollywood, television and news media day in and day out. For Tracey Moffatt, the fractures of film are a most ripe field from which one’s voice, identity and import can be recaptured, and from whence one can find comfort knowing that, once exposed for the social ills that they are, the depictions of subjugation from which these films are made can be turned into the very tools that will defeat them in the end. (ECS)

Location One is happy to present new work by Hermelinde Hergenhahn (Germany) and Mafalda Santos (Portugal). Hergenhahn’s installation will consist of a series of pencil drawings gathered from experiences of quotidian life, and a video projection and wall etching in the gallery. Santos plays with the architecture of the exhibition space to reflect on the particular conditions of being an artist temporarily displaced from her customary work space, while she also considers the evolution of her work in a hand-drawn map for a new website.

Mafalda Santos – from the series Site Specific 2008, digital print and graphite on paper		Hermelinde Hergenhahn – These things, that happened to you, will never happen to me!! 2006, pencil on paper, 10x15cm (4×6 in)

Hermelinde Hergenhahn
Proposal for Bagman & Straight Ladies
In hundreds of very small, or very large drawings Hermelinde explores human hopes and fears, with relentless humour and ambiguity. Her writings, films and installations in public space (video/billboard) analyze the connection between these anxieties in private and how they occur in the arena of everyday life (media/advertisement). She described her approach as one of a “critical nearness”.

For the installation at Location One, she has gathered words heard on the street, snippets from conversations and accidental meetings, transformed them into video projections, and transported them into the gallery where they are given temporary shelter. In the process vulnerability and aggression are revealed, depending on the point of view.

click here for artist statement…

Mafalda Santos
Artist in Residence, 2008
Site Specific, 2008
Organizational schemes, networks, interconnection and principles of scale and composition are crucial in Mafalda’s work. Expanded drawings on walls and floors cull their information from computer interface, books and archives to create a simplified imagery that reflects “a moment/place in a mental or social structure of relations.” The artist also considers that they offer a comment on the specific context for which the work is produced.The series of drawings presented in Site Specific, 2008, have been developed by Mafalda for her website (in collaboration with Sebastien Sanz de Santa Maria, Location One’s residency program coordinator). Each drawing corresponds to a page of the website, and the links between them are laid out, creating a full “site map”.

For the installation Artist in Residence, Mafalda toys with the architectural structure of the exhibition space, as a reflection upon one’s capacity to adapt to different circumstances and environments. The title makes reference to the particular condition of being an artist in the context of a residency, and by extension the distinction that lies between what is work and what is leisure.

About the Artists
Mafalda Santos received a Masters in Painting from the Faculdade Belas Artes do Porto, Portugal. She is also founder and co-director of the artist-run space PêSSEGOpráSEMANA in Porto since 2000. In 2007, Mafalda participated in the Young Artists Award EDP (Electricidade de Portugal). Recent exhibitions include: 2007 – Museum of Contemporary Art MACE, Elvas, Portugal; MUDAM, Luxemburg. She has exhibited at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and is represented by Galeria Presenca, Porto and Lisbon.
Mafalda’s residency at Location One is supported by the Gulbenkian Foundation and Luso American Foundation for Development.

Currently based in Amsterdam, Hermelinde Hergenhahn studied at the Städelschule, Frankfurt and earned a postgraduate degree at the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht. She has shown extensively in Europe. Recent exhibitions include: 2007, AnyoneAnywhereAnytime, Nidwaldner Museum, Stans, Switzerland and – Loyal Rooftops, 2007. Hermelinde’s residency at Location One is supported by Schloss Balmoral, Stiftung Rheinland Pfalz für Kultur.

OPENING RECEPTION: Wednesday 9 January, 6-8 pm
on view 10 – 19 January 2008

Location One is happy to present new work by residents Moira Ricci and Hung Nguyen Manh.

Central to Moira Ricci’s work is the world of the family home as the natural arena in which relationships are played out. Putting aside her own emotions, Ricci turns her personal narrative into fertile ground for thinking about the world we live in.

Moira Ricci – 2008

“Ora sento la musica, Chiudo gli occhi, Sento il ritmo che mi avvolge, Fa presa nel mio cuore“ (“Well I hear the music, close my eyes, feel the rhythm, wrap around, take a hold of my heart)
is the title of Moira’s new video piece. She states: “This video is the first leg of a musical film. This initial work focuses around the topic of dance, a short story of my life, a piece of my past. It recalls the world I come from, that of dance and of my little town in Italy. The idea was born from my mother’s aspiration that I might become a professional dancer. I pursued that course until I was 18, but after high-school, I decided to take a different path, and this caused my mother to be disappointed. Much of my work is constructed from home videos, often taken by my mother during shows organized at my dance school. Here, my mother’s point of view is clearly perceptible. The video is edited following the rhythm and lyrics of “What a Feeling” – the most popular title of Flash Dance, the iconic dance film of the ‘80s. It The lyrics also appear in Italian as subtitles, because they bring out exactly the motivations of a young person pursuing a dream.”

Hung Nguyen Manh – 2007

“Paintings 2007“ by Hung Nguyen Manh
“I love humor, and I like to make a joke about everything. Su-realism is a useful language which helps me create fun. I also mix in hi-tech and lo-tech elements in my paintings. I was born and raised in an apartment block in Hanoi – Vietnam. My father was a fighting pilot, and my mother was an engineer for the Vietnam Rail Way Corporation. No one in my family was concerned about art. In my eyes, Vietnam is one of the strangest countries in the world. People work and behave according to certain habits originating from the agricultural way of life. We live, quarrel, build, eat…just like farmers do. In Vietnam, the culture of the village persists and has a hidden power that affects all the population. Even though we are rushing towards capitalism, this life style shall never disappear. This is what makes Vietnamese people always special, wherever they are.”

On January 11th at 7pm Hung Nguyen Mahn will make a special sound performance at 20 Greene Street.

About the Artists
Moria Ricci graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan in 2004 after attending Photography School at C.F.P.R., Milan. Recent exhibitions include: 2007 – Galleria d’Arte Contemporanea, Monfalcone, Italy; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome; Palazzo Re Enzo, Bologna. At Location One, Moira’s ressdency is supported by Associazione Artegiovane, Fondi Anima and Comune di Milano.

Hung Nguyen Manh is an artist, a self-taught composer and an active participant in the alternative art scene in Hanoi. A graduate from the Hanoi University of Fine Arts in 2002, he has participated regularly in performance art festivals in Japan and Taiwan. In 2005, he was a grant recipient of the Ford Foundation which enabled him to exhibit in Los Angeles , and in 2006, a grant from the Dong Son Today Foundation funded his participation at ART OMI residency program Ghent, NY. At Location One, Hung benefits from a grant from the Asian Cultural Council.

Location One is happy to present new work by two artists participating in the International Residency Program.

With “Draft“, Katia Kameli continues her investigation into key issues that drive her film, video and installation practice, namely the construction of intersecting identities in a globalized world, hybridization, the notion of intercultural spaces and awareness of psychogeographical effects.

“Draft” is a cartographic installation. It is the preface of a larger project whose end result is a palimpsestic film. In line with Debord’s theory of “Dérive” –the early situationist practice of urban drifting– this “intermediate” installation presents itself as a non-definable urban map that includes video, audio and text inserts, as well as photographs. Scenes where cartographers, writers, poets, musicians, cinematographers, scientists are scribbling notes and writing potential scripts overlap with other images also shot by the artist. Kameli then reinterprets these texts by operating a double dérive. Shifting feelings of excitement and anticipation run parallel with anxiety and caution, combined with the realization that there is nothing new to discover but the limitations of one’s own experience and understanding.

Kuba Bakowski‘s quasi bio-mechanical body of work examines the duality between real and artificial as generated by digital media, with an approach that is in part utopian and ironic, often tinged with a perverse sense of humor. For this exhibition, the artist creates “video machines” which produce distinctive audio-visual energy and that he groups under the title Nothing More Happens Than Has To Happen.

“The Question is not so much where we are as when we are” features the artist as he attempts to surpass the physical limitations of his body by appearing on the Polish public channel for two months, every night after the day’s program has ended, exercising and meditating against the colorful background of the test pattern (TV Zero Zones).

In the Rockaway video loops, Kuba has extracted short video samples from BBC documentary movies about the nuclear arms race, and combines them with video footage of flying birds and planes filmed by the artist in Far Rockaway on a rainy and breezy day. Presented as small video-installations, these loops generate a strange and anxious atmosphere. “City pigeons 1,2,3,4,5” and the audio track result from video and audio manipulations.

XU TAN
Searching for Keywords
November 28, 2007–February 9, 2008
opening reception November 28 6–8pm

PRESS COVERAGE: Rhizome

“Searching for Keywords”, an interactive multimedia installation created by Chinese artist Xu Tan will be presented in Location One’s main gallery from November 28th 2007 though Februrary 2nd, 2008.

Xu Tan’s work deals with the hidden motivations and intentions of individuals through a high-tech analysis of their vocabulary. “Searching with Keywords” is the New York leg of an ongoing project which the artist launched in 2005. It began with a series of interviews of different groups of people who are active in Chinese society: a first set of interviews were carried in the Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park, a sort of Silicon Valley near Shanghai, a second set covers different cities and people from all walks of life, from writers, to real estate developers, to Buddhist monks, to businessmen; and a third was conducted among the artistic community in China. The video interviews were then carefully analyzed, and Xu Tan has identified 100 keywords based on meaning (social values), frequency (repetition), sensitivity (political), and popularity (trendyness). These Keywords reveal much about the values and motivations of contemporary Chinese society, they give a pulse of the current social climate, and present an insight into the collective social consciousness of China.

The project will be unfolding simultaneously in Beijing, China, in Sittard, Holland, and in New York, through a website created specifically for this happening. Gallery audiences in New York will be invited to interact with the keywords, which are presented by means of four video projections and four computer stations equipped with laptops, video cameras, and Internet connections. The goal is to have gallery visitors pronounce the keywords as illustrated in drawings and video clips, to ask questions of the artist thorough an on-line forum and message board, and to leave comments. Their reactions and input will be immediately transmitted through the website to the other venues where the installation is present.

While the artist is present in the gallery he will also conduct interviews of different people and the analysis of these interviews will in turn generate other keywords that will help reveal the opinions and attitudes of a western audience towards the current status of China and its role in the global environment.

Xu Tan was born in Wuhan, Hubei Province in 1957 and currently lives in Shanghai and Guangzhou. In the early 1990s he joined the “Big Tail Elephant Group” in Guangzhou with Lin Yinlin, Chen Shaoxiong and Liang Juhui. The aim of this group is to develop critical strategies for negotiating the rapidly changing economic and cultural life in China. He was among the first artists to participate in Location One’s International Residency Program in 2002, and his work has been shown around the world including P.S.1 in New York, Biennale di Venezia, Berlin Biennial, Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane, Australia, Guangzhou Triennial, Taipei Biennial, De Appel in Amsterdam. Recent solo shows were held at the DAAD Gallery in Berlin, at the Vitamin Creative Space in Guangzhou, at BizArt is Shanghai.

XU TAN
Searching for Keywords
November 28, 2007–February 9, 2008
opening reception November 28 6–8pm

PRESS COVERAGE: Rhizome

“Searching for Keywords”, an interactive multimedia installation created by Chinese artist Xu Tan will be presented in Location One’s main gallery from November 28th 2007 though Februrary 2nd, 2008.

Xu Tan’s work deals with the hidden motivations and intentions of individuals through a high-tech analysis of their vocabulary. “Searching with Keywords” is the New York leg of an ongoing project which the artist launched in 2005. It began with a series of interviews of different groups of people who are active in Chinese society: a first set of interviews were carried in the Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park, a sort of Silicon Valley near Shanghai, a second set covers different cities and people from all walks of life, from writers, to real estate developers, to Buddhist monks, to businessmen; and a third was conducted among the artistic community in China. The video interviews were then carefully analyzed, and Xu Tan has identified 100 keywords based on meaning (social values), frequency (repetition), sensitivity (political), and popularity (trendyness). These Keywords reveal much about the values and motivations of contemporary Chinese society, they give a pulse of the current social climate, and present an insight into the collective social consciousness of China.

The project will be unfolding simultaneously in Beijing, China, in Sittard, Holland, and in New York, through a website created specifically for this happening. Gallery audiences in New York will be invited to interact with the keywords, which are presented by means of four video projections and four computer stations equipped with laptops, video cameras, and Internet connections. The goal is to have gallery visitors pronounce the keywords as illustrated in drawings and video clips, to ask questions of the artist thorough an on-line forum and message board, and to leave comments. Their reactions and input will be immediately transmitted through the website to the other venues where the installation is present.

While the artist is present in the gallery he will also conduct interviews of different people and the analysis of these interviews will in turn generate other keywords that will help reveal the opinions and attitudes of a western audience towards the current status of China and its role in the global environment.

Xu Tan was born in Wuhan, Hubei Province in 1957 and currently lives in Shanghai and Guangzhou. In the early 1990s he joined the “Big Tail Elephant Group” in Guangzhou with Lin Yinlin, Chen Shaoxiong and Liang Juhui. The aim of this group is to develop critical strategies for negotiating the rapidly changing economic and cultural life in China. He was among the first artists to participate in Location One’s International Residency Program in 2002, and his work has been shown around the world including P.S.1 in New York, Biennale di Venezia, Berlin Biennial, Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane, Australia, Guangzhou Triennial, Taipei Biennial, De Appel in Amsterdam. Recent solo shows were held at the DAAD Gallery in Berlin, at the Vitamin Creative Space in Guangzhou, at BizArt is Shanghai.

Lida Abdul – What We Saw Upon Awakening

October 4 – November 17, 2007
Opening Reception: Thursday October 4, 6-8 pm

** December 3rd, 2007 ** An Evening with Lida Abdul at MOMA (click for more information)

PRESS COVERAGE: ArtSlant interview / Time Out New York /

Location One presents the first New York exhibition by Afghan artist Lida Abdul. The exhibition, curated by Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, features a film installation entitled “What We Saw Upon Awakening” [2006, 6:50, 16mm film transferred to DVD] .

Lida Abdul’s work is rooted in the devastation of war and in a sublimation of healing. In her videos, Afghani ruins appear as images from a dreamscape–both real and surreal–steeped in forgotten histories and mystery. To acknowledge a ruin in a war torn country, even to pick up a single stone, is to breathe life back into a culture that has been put on hold. The men and women in her films acknowledge their fate, striving to re-awaken by acts of sheer resilience and by compulsive repetitive gestures. Abdul’s films evoke survival and a path to recovery.

In What We Saw Upon Awakening the artist has created a surreal vision of the de-construction of a ruin. Remarkable for its compositional beauty and restraint, this film is a meditation on the aftermath of war, exposing the tangled after shocks of destruction, acceptance and renewal. In six minutes of classically framed and beautifully conceived cinematic shots, we watch as a group of men pull in a united effort on long white ropes, straining under this Herculean task. Slowly we grow aware that the ropes are tied to the stone walls of an actual house destroyed by a recent bombing in Kabul, which the men are striving to pull down. At first their efforts seem puny and ineffectual against impossible odds; their actions become a metaphor of all survivors’ attempt to deal with the devastation of war. Later the film ends with a burial ritual, symbolizing closure and a moment of communal healing when the ruins are finally put to rest so that life can begin anew.

This exhibition has been made possible with the generous support of the Board of Directors of Location One.

An Artist/Curator Talk will be held at Location One on Tuesday October 9th, at 7 pm
free to the public, no reservations needed

Lida Abdul bio

Born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1973, Lida Abdul resides there now. She lived in Germany and India as a refugee when she was forced to leave Afghanistan after the former-Soviet invasion. Her work fuses the tropes of Western formalism with the numerous aesthetic traditions –Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, pagan and nomadic– that collectively influenced Afghan art and culture. She has produced work in many media including video, film, photography, installation and live performance.

Her most recent work has been featured at the Venice Biennale 2005, São Paulo Biennial 2006, Gwanju Biennial 2006, Moscow Biennial 2007, Sharjah Biennial 2007, Istanbul Modern, Kunsthalle Vienna, Museum of Modern Art Arnhem, Netherlands and Miami Central, ICA, ZKM, Capc Bordeaux, CAC Centre d’Art Contemporain de Bretigny, and Frac Lorraine Metz, France. She has also exhibited in festivals in Mexico, Spain, Germany, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan. For the past few years, Abdul has been working in different parts of Afghanistan on projects exploring the relationship between architecture, identity and memory. In the upcoming year she will take part in the Gotenborg Biennial 2007 and solo show at (MANN) National Archeological Museum of Naples. Also in 2007 Ms. Abdul has been awarded the Prince Claus Fund and residency at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. website >>

Whose crater is it anyway?CRATER NEW YORK: a Lunar Drawing Contest

September 6–26, 2007Opening Reception: Thursday, September 6th, 6-8Drawing Contest: September 6–22, Rounds begin at 12:30click here to see the artists who participated >>Awards Ceremony: Wednesday, September 26th, 6-9pmJudges: Jimmy Breslin, Roger Anderson, Karen Helmerson, Bob HolmanList of Finalists and WinnersPRESS: Rhizome [link] – pdf download / Art in New York [link] – pdf downloadWATCH THE CEREMONY

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here is a selection of some of the drawings completed so far…

To kick off the 2007-2008 season Location One presents Crater New York, a participatory project created by the artist duo of Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese. The project takes on the form of a drawing contest that is free and open to the public, artists and not-artists alike. Contestants fill out an entry form and select either a digital or analog medium to create a rendering of the model installation of the Moon that will be placed at the center of the gallery. On one of two computer stations or two traditional artist easels, contestants will have 30 minutes to complete their drawing, which will then be hung on the walls of Location One’s main gallery for the duration of the project. The winner will be chosen by a panel of judges including artists, critics, real estate developers and celebrities. The Jury will be announced once the competition has begun. Three prizes will be awarded on September 26th with each winner receiving a deed for a plot of land on the Moon. Here is a note about it on our blog.At a time when many seek a virtual life in metaverses like Second Life, when property on the moon is available for sale and ownership, Ligorano/Reese have devised a contest to evaluate contemporary artist skills in hand drawing and computer aided design. Using the moon as a drawing model, this project recontextualizes the tradition and practice of the “en plein air” landscape.Proceedings of the drawing challenge and the work created will be shown simultaneously in Second Life, hosted by artist/critic Richard Minsky in his SLART gallery outpost on the island of Artropolis, and will also be live-streamed on Location One’s website.Joining mankind’s ancient fascination with the small celestial body that circles the Earth, Ligorano/Reese’s interactive performance-exhibition invokes questions about imagination, representation, and judgment. It explores the concepts of virtual space and virtual reality, as well as artistic practice, the place of artists in society and in the future of New York. Will artists have to move to the moon to afford working and living space? Will they help redefine outer-borough living? To this end Ligorano/Reese have asked several artists to participate in populating the 8 foot diameter maquette of the moon by creating models of the first lunar artist colonies, using recycled materials in novel ways.The contest is free and open to all visitors of Location One, with prior sign-up and registration. There will be two contest sessions on weekdays, and four sessions on Saturdays. Thirteen contest match-ups, reflecting the 13 annual lunar cycles, and a chance to own a piece of the pie in the sky.LIGORANO/REESENora Ligorano and Marshall Reese have collaborated as Ligorano/Reese since the early 80′s. Their work examines contemporary trends in society and the media through the manipulation of images and sound from print, television, the Internet, and radio. Their installations, limited edition multiples and artists books have been exhibited at Jim Kempner Fine Art, Kent Gallery, the Beall Center, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Museum fur Angewandte Kunst (MAK) in Frankfurt, Germany, MIT MediaLab, Museum of Arts & Design, the Neuberger Museum of Art, and Lincoln Center. They have received fellowships and funding from the Jerome Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, NYFA, NYSCA, the NEA, Art Matters and have been artists in residence at the MacDowell Colony and Djerassi Resident Artists Program.

We are grateful to Tekserve and Material for the Arts for their generous contributions to this exhibition:

Special Curator Tour for Members

June 25, 2007
6:30 – 8:00 PM

Join Nathalie Angles, Director of the Residency Program, the 2007 Artists-in-Residence, and fellow Location One members for a special tour of the Summer IRP exhibition. The artists will talk about their work and how it developed during their residency. Refreshments will be served.

June 2nd – July 28th, 2007
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 2nd, 2007 5-7 pm
Exhibition open through Saturday July 28th (Tue – Sat, 12 – 6 pm)

Location One presents the second IRP group show of the 2006-2007 season, featuring new work developed by our resident artists. The exhibition represents a diverse range of artistic approaches and many are works in progress.

Jeanette Doyle (Ireland) – St. Patrick’s Day NY 2006-07

This triptych work addresses Doyle’s ongoing interest in the St. Patrick’s Day parade and how an event of this nature can segue into militarism. Framed against the entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, the video displayed in the central television features the parade in 2007 as it draws to an end. On the adjacent TVs, the artist has painted the image of a policeman that she photographed as he stuck out his tongue at the 2006 parade. A DVD of a solid color plays behind each painted television, green on one side and blue on the other. This new work reinforces the notion of the rendering of the self into spectacle, the Disney-fication and remote construction of National identity.

Jeanette’s residency at Location One is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and The Irish American Cultural Institute.

Cliff Evans (USA) – Bare life: Booth Girl*s and Stormtroopers: Accumulation

A multi-channel photomontage animation that is presented as an object similar to an altar piece or a product display. It is constructed from an LCD screen and personal media players. It functions as a machine to contain, decipher and display images gathered from online sources. It situates itself within a soft-fascism, producing a baroque spectacle that unfolds and repeats. It, perhaps, is a clockwork meant to tell the time in an age of tech-fetish and availability at a glance.

Cliff’s residency at Location One is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Krist Gruijthuijsen (The Netherlands) – Alan (a memoir)

In Gruijthuijsen’s body of work, the in-depth investigation of personas such as Alan Abel’s underscores the artist’s interest in the relation between construction of myth, its process, and the fluctuating role of the contemporary artist. In this film, slow environmental shots of Abel’s current surroundings support the voice of the 82-year-old protagonist as he reads a letter that he wrote at age 16 describing his life so far and his future goals. This narration is followed by the reading of his obituary, recalling Abel’s last fictional action, when he placed his obituary in the New York Times. Abel’s extraordinary career consisted of “invisible actions” –such as Omer’s School for Beggars (talk shows on how to beg effectively), or mounting a decency campaign for animal underwear– that question the power of media, but also owe their existence to media.

Krist’s residency at Location One is supported by Fonds BKVB.

Ruey-Hsiaan Hsu (Taiwan) – Between

Ruey-Hsiaan Hsu uses mechanical elements as a creative medium, building technically complex and conceptually sophisticated machines. Their motions, which stimulate memories and emotions, are activated by the audience; it is the audience which makes the works complete. In this new body of work, the artist incorporates sound as a means to extend the language of his work.

Ruey-Hsiaan’s residency at Location One is supported by the Yageo Tech Art Award of the ACC (Asian Cultural Council).

SoYoun Jeong (Korea) – Natural Strawberry Flavor

This multiple media installation addresses the cute factor phenomenon that is ubiquitous in Korean culture, but also in the rest of the world. The title is derived from feelings of cuteness that can be experienced in the presence of a Korean female of extreme youth, vulnerability and cuteness as she sings cues from the “I like you, I love you ” melody in the video. However, cuteness and its appealing attributes are simultaneously paired off with a sense of cheapness, manipulation and exploitation. For SoYoun the specter of cuteness haunts the world, to such an extent that “it tastes like the artificiality of natural strawberry flavor. Thus it is natural for me to catch the ghost.”

SoYoun’s residency at Location One is supported by The Daeyu Cultural Foundation.

Miguel Palma (Portugal) – Deep Breath

This installation consists of a scale model of a city constructed on top of a platform/work bench. A dark nylon fabric encloses the city, thus making it impossible for the city to be seen from the outside. Three fans installed at the base of the device blow air into the fabric. Attached to the fabric is a micro camera that rises when the fans are activated. The images shot by the camera offer an aerial view of the cityscape and are projected onto a nearby wall. Every 70 seconds the fans are deactivated, the fabric falls, as does the camera attached to it. The image of this rising and falling process recalls a lung membrane under the scrutiny of a scan or an x-ray. The title of the work reflects this analogy.

Miguel’s residency at Location One is supported by Instituto das Artes and Fundação Ilídio Pinho.

Bundith Phunsombatlert (Thailand) – English Lesson (Something We Learn From One Another)

This video project is inspired by stories from Bundith’s classmates during English classes taken in New York. Bundith recontextualizes elements deriving from diverse nationalities, religious, and cultural points of view in a new “textbook” format of English Language Lessons that have little to do with the more traditional English textbooks. Bundith describes this piece as a collaboration between himself, a few classmates and their English teacher, Ms. A. Smith. It combines stories in which proverbs, idioms, and certain aspects of American culture are employed, as well as personal memories, pregnant thoughts and our hopes for the future. Based on real life stories, this innovative textbook constitutes the basis for conversation and pronunciation.

Bundith’s residency at Location One is supported by the Asian Cultural Council.

Jani Ruscica (Finland) – Futurama

The video, Futurama, takes as its focus the New York State pavilion for the 1964 World’s Fair. The building, a nonfunctional relic from the past, still stands on its site in Queens as testimony of failed utopias. The Pavilion, designed by architect Philip Johnson, was meant to epitomize all the bright promise of the future, as well as fulfill locally a social function beyond the duration of the fair. Ruscica’s video juxtaposes the ambiguity of the structure in its current state to a soundtrack of original newsreel reports from the 1964 Fair. The circular structure of the pavilion is paralleled to the circular nature of fairground attractions, theateramas, dioramas, futuramas.

Jani’s residency at Location One is supported by FRAME (Finnish Fund for Art Exchange).

Eric Van Hove (Belgium) – Ecumenopolis

Van Hove’s non-linear digital installation consists of some 2000 randomly selected video sequences of 5 to 20 seconds played from a database and generating a hypnotic narrative bound to déjà-vu. The impulse to recompose a fictive city from footage collected by the artist in 45 cities worldwide harks back to the original idea of Ecumenopolis as a single city that is continuous worldwide. This piece also brings forth Van Hove’s interest in the writings of Yanagita Kunio, the father of Japanese native ethnology, and his analysis on how earlier and essential layers of national life –custom, practice, and belief– are able to filter through the modern overlays and provide a map for the present. While reflecting on modern digital possibilities, Ecumenopolis, a still life of a sort, relates to other films’ attempt to envision the soul of a city, such as Jean Vigo’s A propos de Nice, and Walther Ruttmann’s Berlin, symphony of a great city.

Eric’s residency at Location One is supported by Service culturel, Commissariat general aux relations internationales de la Communauté française de Belgique.
Location One is a not-for-profit organization devoted to the convergence between visual, performing and digital arts in a time of rapidly changing technology. The International Residency Program is a central part of its activities. It encourages collaboration by inviting artists from all over the world, and working in different media, to experiment with advanced technological tools and delivery systems, and to develop new work.

Location One is pleased to announce the opening of the installation StarLine Tours by resident artist Jeanette Doyle, on April 12th from 6 to 8 pm. The installation consists of video, audio (approximately 1h40mins.) and digital prints on watercolor paper, and will be on view in the Project Gallery through Friday May 25th.

Jeanette Doyle’s practice is primarily concerned with picture making. She is particularly interested in painting and its relationship to lens-based technologies. Her work is driven by conceptual concerns but is deeply engaged with the processes and mechanics of making, especially the production of images. Her works express a desire to crystalise complexity for a moment in an image which, on closer inspection, allows the fiction of coherence to dissolve. Disjunction between the image and text is a hint of this. This disjunction between word and image is a feature of the ‘StarLine Tours’ exhibition at Location One.

The video element was shot on a commercial celebrity-home tour through Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Bel Air and Rodeo Drive. The visual footage represents what is visible through the left-hand window of the tour-bus, often simply bushes, pavements, other vehicles and pedestrians but occasionally also the homes referenced in the soundtrack.

The soundtrack is provided by the bus-driver’s commentary as he describes the palatial homes, the ‘stars’ who live in them and other matters relating to property values and the career trajectories of the inhabitants. However the image of what is described although tantalizingly close is, in the main, denied to the viewer.

The accompanying digital prints are screens grabs from the video, some have had water applied to render them as watercolors, others project the gloss of the cinematic image. These prints are exhibited in a space where the same soundtrack as the video work is audible, further raising questions about the nature of representation, the relationship between different media and the choices made by an artist in the selection of particular images.

The artist manipulates the various media she employs in order to generate very particular effects, questioning the notion of representation and creating a metaphor of what we think we are seeing versus what we actually see or what is given to be seen.

Jeanette Doyle earned critical acclaim with her first post-graduate exhibition, winning the Overall Prize at ev+a ‘95, curated by Maria de Corral. Since then, her practice has concerned itself, often playfully, with the interrogation of a number of different disciplines and stances. Her work has been exhibited widely both in Ireland and abroad; including Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, Croatia; Brisbane Institute of Modern Art; Australian Centre for Contemporary Art; the ICA and Studio Voltaire, London; Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane and the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork. Doyle has also held solo exhibitions at the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Limerick City Gallery of Art; City Arts Centre, Dublin; Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast and Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin. In 2003 and 2005 she showed at Eurojet Futures at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin.

In 2006, Jeanette received a First Class MA in Visual Arts Practices at the Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT). The work produced during this period was shown at an exhibition entitled ‘and then I place my face against the glass’ at Broadstone Gallery, Dublin; with a concurrent show ‘Portrayals’, at AXIS, Ballymun, a Breaking Ground 2 commission. In the past years she has been concentrating her practice on the painted image and its relationship to a variety of both lens based and digital technologies.

Upcoming shows include “SURGE”, 798 Art Festival, Beijing – which will then travel to Duolong Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai and Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen (Hong Kong), curated by The Artist’s Network, New York. Doyle will also exhibit at ‘EDGE’ Kochi Museum, Japan later this year.

Jeanette Doyle is the recipient of 2006/2007 Irish Fellowship at Location One.
This is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and The Irish American Cultural Institute.

Further information about Jeanette Doyle’s practice is available at: www.jeanettedoyle.com

Location One is pleased to present Virtual Minefield, a new installation by Martha Rosler which features The Phrasalator, a two-way speech-to-speech device developed by the Defense Department to translate medical information to and from English and Arabic. This exhibition marks the first use of this technology in a non-military capacity.

Since the early 1970s, Martha Rosler has produced seminal work in the fields of video, performance, photography, critical writing, and theory. Her incisive, often humorous and transgressive, renderings of the social scene reflect her strong commitment to an art that engages with wider publics beyond the privileged spaces of the art world. Accessibility has always been a major concern of hers, as is the role of the viewer in constructing the meaning of the work. She presses viewers to rethink the boundaries between the public and the private as well as the social and the political.

Like an archeologist, Rosler peels back the layers of common sense. Public discourse, and daily experience to reveal the complex realities behind social myths. She brings a critical eye and deadpan wit to bear on aspects of ordinary life and the political world, with particular emphasis on the impact of patriarchal culture. From “Bringing the War Home,” the biting yet beautiful series of photomontages that were generated by her outrage over the Vietnam War to the ambitious and innovative curatorial project “If You Lived Here,” addressing homelessness, housing, and urbanism, Rosler has taken on some of the most pressing issues of our times.

Video from artist talk with Martha Rosler: “Where the Truth Lies”

April 19, 2007
Martha Rosler with Marcia Vetrocq
The second in a series hosted by critic and art historian Marcia Vetrocq and entitled WHERE THE TRUTH LIES: On Veracity, Conscience and Subjectivity in Recent Art.Martha Rosler will talk about the installation on view in our galleries as well as her past work and current undertakings, in relation to the theme of Truth in art.

for more information on Martha Rosler’s work, see her website here: >>.

This exhibition is supported in part by the Peter Norton Family Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Location One presents the first of two exhibitions showcasing new work developed during their residencies by eight artists participating in the 2006-2007 International Residency Program. Featured works, some of which are exhibited as work-in-progress, represent a diverse range of artistic approaches:

Natalie Bewernitz & Marek Goldowski (Germany) – Unveiled Presence (secret sounds 2)
Natalie and Marek’s intermedial video and sound installations are a theoretical and practical attempt to map the possibilities and limits of depicting identity, individual personality and existence in its physical, spiritual and psychological dimensions. Mapping out these characteristics is achieved in the form of interactive and multi-channel installations that deal with the perception of space and sound, and are realized with computer-based self-generating sound creation in real time.

The conceptual premise for Natalie and Marek’s new work is Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made Bruit Secret (New York, 1916). The work contains an object in its center, and Duchamp never knew what it was. It only reveals its presene by shaking the work. With this in mind, Natalie and Marek have recorded secret sounds of the City, which constitute the backbone of this installation.

Bewernitz & Goldowski’s residency at Location One is supported by Schloss Balmoral, Stiftung Rheinland Pfalz für Kultur, and has received additional support from Staatskanzlei Nordrhein-Westfalen, and the Consulate General of Germany, New York

Teresa Henriques (Portugal) – Drawing in Space

Grasping the concept of “Perception” is the focus of Teresa’s body of work. Drawing, geometry, philosophy and optical phenomena are the parameters of her investigations. For this new work Teresa used the open-source animation software, Blender, which she acquired during her residency at Location One. The resulting 3D line drawing/object evolves out of the artist’s extensive research into drawing by women artists in the 20th and 21st centuries. As one walks around the work, two different view points reveal themselves to the spectatpr. This drawing in space becomes a sculpture in the space of the gallery, which in turn becomes an extension of the medium.

Henriques’ residency at Location One is supported by Gulbenkian Foundation and Luso American Foundation for Development.

Agnieszka Kalinowska (Poland) – Doormen

A film and photographic project realized by Agnieszka Kalinowska during her residency, the work features six doormen of different gender, age and faith who come together to narrate personal emotions and observations. Their conversation also touches on politics, ecology and women’s rights. Privy to the hidden worlds of elite Manhattanites, doormen are usually perceived as an invisible people from a different social class. By empowering them with speech, Kalinowska points to reevaluating one of New York’s more conventional practices. The slide presentation here at Location One constitutes a prologue to the film of the same title. Photographs of these “heroes” in their every day outfits alternate with portraits of their uniformed selves.

Kalinowska’s residency at Location One is supported by the Trust for Mutual Understanding and Ministry of Culture, Poland – Program Operacyjny “Promocja Polskiej Kultury Za Granica”, and the a-i-r Laboratory at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle

Nina Katchadourian (U.S.A.) – Zoo (2001-ongoing; a work in progress)

For the past five years Katchadourian has been videotaping extensively in zoos around the world for this project, gathering footage of animals with the goal of rendering them somewhat unplaceable, thus working against the common goal of zoos to project animals as approachable, understandable, and ultimately “like us.” She is also trying to work with the sound in a way that builds an aggregated audio environment, where sound from one monitor will sometimes match, invade, or even dominate, the image of another. The piece shown at Location One is a work-in-progress that reflects the first phase of the project developed during her residency.

Katchadourian’s residency at Location One is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Rie Kawakami (Japan) – Untitled

Of her work Kawakami says that it lies “in revealing the expression of mystery in life and its cycles. I am interested in the unique and aesthetic phenomenon that can be drawn from the nature of materials, both in physical and theoretical terms. My artistic practice is based on the attempt to develop new forms of life in sculpture, installation and interactive work.”

Trained in the tradition of iron and steel welding, this is Rie’s first animation piece. Combining images of Japanese Sumi ink and the Fude brush, the work is modulated by expressions of rhythm and the passage of time. A sense of intense concentration permeates the work as one witnesses the tension between the brush and ink leading to the appearance of the Sumi drawing.

Kawakami’s residency at Location One is supported by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan.

Alessandro Nassiri (Italy) – My private demonstration (a project for 10-20 people, their minds and some T-shirts)

“A demonstration is the display of the common opinion of a group of people. The opinion is demonstrated to be significant by gathering a crowd associated with that opinion. Demonstrations can be used to show a viewpoint (either positive or negative) regarding an issue…” (from wikipedia.org)

For the art video project My Private Demonstration, the artist asked some people to create a small and quick demonstration, to decide on the issue and to take part in it. A sentence was chosen to represent the issue, then transferred onto white T-shirts in red letters (one letter for each T-shirt). Participants came together on December 16th, and went out on the streets to demonstrate: their t-shirts read “coming soon.”

Nassiri’s residency at Location One is supported by Associazione Artegiovane, Fondi Anima, and Comune di Milano.

Kaori Tazoe (Japan)

This new work addresses Kaori’s long term interest in the investigation of the boundaries between reality and fiction and the pursuit of identifying what she calls a “special place,” where these boundaries meet. Surveillance cameras, works on paper and leathercrafted pieces are combined in an attempt to reach this place.

From 1995 to 2002, Kaori collaborated with artist/fashion designer Junko Ito in “Suit,” a series of conceptual art projects exploring the relationship between the individual and the collective mind, and the ways that the act of wearing a uniform affects both the individual and the group. In 2001, she co-founded Scratch Tile Art Space, one of the first alternative art spaces in Yokohama.

Tazoe’s residency at Location One is supported by the Asian Cultural Council.

Virginie Yassef (France) – Les Eparpillés / The Scattered

Virginie’s multi-faceted body of work reveals the poetry of everyday life and emphasizes the subtle gap between perception and reality. Strangeness and the supernatural surfaces when one least expects it. This sculpture continues in the same vein and belongs to a new series of objects referred to by the artist as Les Eparpilles. According to Virginie, these objects have regular shapes, are made of metallic scales, weigh several tons, and are loaded with supraconductive magnets. In appearance they are small metallic spheres, or dirty snowballs whose diameters measure one kilometer. The piece presented at Location One is made in aluminum foil, is attached to its base by a magnet, and produces cold air.

Yassef’s residency at Location One is supported by CulturesFrance and Ville de Paris.

IN THE SKY
by Leesa and Nicole Abahuni

Wednesday November 29th, 6-8pm
Reception and special performance

Location One is happy to announce that dancer Glen Rumsey will be joining the special performance by New York-based avant-garde musician Elliott Sharp, and percussionists Danny Tunick and Christine Bard, during the opening of In The Sky (performance at 7pm, free).

The multimedia installation, which marks the first solo show for twin artists Leesa and Nicole Abahuni, is an exploration into the sharing of the senses and the interconnectedness between perception and sensation as experienced through visual, aural, and physical realms.

The exhibition will be on view through January 27^th 2007 (Tue-Sat, 12-6pm).

		American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer Elliott Sharp has personified the avant-garde experimental music scene in New York City for over thirty years. Sharp describes himself as a lifelong “science geek,” having modified and created musical instruments from his teen years. (website)Dancer, choreographer Glen Rumsey has worked with Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Mark Morris, Pam Tanowitz, and others. His dance suite ignored in my heaven… was performed at Location One last year to critical acclaim (website)

In The Sky was conceived by Leesa and Nicole Abahuni in their Location One studio while participating in Location One’s International Residency Program with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts.

This exhibition has received funding from the Peter Norton Family Foundation and assistance from Harvestworks

Location One is pleased to present the debut solo exhibition in NYC by artists Leesa & Nicole Abahuni, on view in our main gallery at 26 Greene Street from November 21st through January 27th 2007 (Tue-Sat, 12-6pm).

An opening reception and performance will be held on Wednesday, November 29th from 6 to 8 pm.

The multimedia installation, which was commissioned by Location One, is entitled In the Sky, is an exploration into the sharing of the senses and the interconnectedness between perception and sensation as experienced through visual, aural, and physical realms.

In the Sky populates the gallery with strands of metallic beaded-chain hung in patterns from the ceiling, creating a spatial architecture through which visitors navigate. This web will force the individual to slow down the body so that the senses can become more aware of changes in tactile, visual and aural experiences while at the same time generating waves of movement, reflections and shadows. The audio portion of the installation presents six separate channels of sound, progressively laid out from the front to the back of the gallery. On the back wall of the gallery a video screen will show the work of hands weaving and unweaving a tapestry, or the movement of an acrobat winding and unwinding his body on a rope. Overall, the installation explores the notion of repetition, the weaving and unweaving of time and memory, so that the senses can rise to a greater awareness of the space around them.

The Abahunis have always worked as a team. “As twins we are born collaborators” says Nicole, and Leesa continues: “Collaboration is at the root of our thinking and our work. We believe that the active forging of tactile, aural and visual perception between humans and in collaboration with technology asks questions that can yield ways of better understanding, seeing and hearing natural order.”

Opening night, November 29th 2006, will include a half-hour performance of a new composition, commissioned by Location One and created specifically for this installation by New York-based avant-garde musician Elliott Sharp, and performed with percussionists Danny Tunick and Christine Bard, and dancer Glen Rumsey. Using MAX/MSP software that generates and manipulates sound, the musicians will create an aural environment that responds to the movements of people within the space. The performance will be recorded and the resultant selection of sound files will be used as audio components throughout the duration of the installation.

Leesa and Nicole Abahuni participated in Location One’s 2005-2006 International Residency Program, with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts. In the Sky has received funding from the Peter Norton Family Foundation and assistance from Harvestworks.

The Abahunis studied at Goldsmiths College, University of London, MFA; Polimoda, Florence, Italy; and the School of Visual Arts, NYC, BFA in Computer Art. They have exhibited nationally and internationally including the 6th International Arts Biennial of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates; ICA, London; Sonic Interactions Conference, London; Redux, London; Gallery Mouri, Tokyo; Orb//Remote, Copenhagen; Half Machine Festival, Copenhagen; Eyebeam Atelier, NYC; Siggraph, Los Angeles; DUMBO Arts Festival, Brooklyn; DUMBO Arts Center, Brooklyn; 67 Gallery, Brooklyn; Deep Listening Space, Kingston; The Kitchen, NYC. Their solo performances include The New York Hall of Science, Queens and NYC in 2000. They have received awards and grants from the Experimental Television Center, NY; International Postgraduate Scholarship, Goldsmiths College, London, UK; Alumni Scholarship Award, School of Visual Arts, NY; and Award of Distinction, School of Visual Arts, NY.

Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer who has personified the avant-garde experimental music scene in New York City for over thirty years. He has released over sixty-five recordings spanning the musical spectrum from blues, jazz, and orchestral music to noise, no wave rock, and techno music. Sharp describes himself as a lifelong “science geek,” having modified and created musical instruments from his teen years. He is an inveterate performer, both as a soloist (playing mainly guitar, saxophone and bass clarinet) and with a number of ensembles.

Glen Rumsey is originally from Greensboro, NC. He graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts and moved to New York to join the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Glen has danced and collaborated with many choreographers, including Mark Morris, Pam Tanowitz, Stanley Love, and Sarah Michelson. He has also developed a drag performance character, Shasta Cola, whose shows have received critical accolades both in the US and Europe. In 2005 he choreographed an original dance suite entitled “ignored in my heaven…” which he performed to critical acclaim at Location One with his dance troupe, the Glen Rumsey Dance Project. He has received a Creative Residency for 2006-2007 at Dance Theater Workshop. www.glenrumsey.com

ArtBots: the robot talent show
2006 NYC Regional Show!

For more information see: artbots.org/2006_NYC
Location One is proud to host the regional NYC show as part of the science+art festival 2006 this fall. The show will feature works old and new by eight New York artists who have appeared in previous ArtBots shows.

When:
Thursday-Sunday November 9-12, 2006, Noon-6pm
Opening reception Thursday November 9th, 6-8pm

Where:
Location One, main gallery
26 Greene Street (between Canal and Grand)
New York City!

How much:
$$$FREE$$$

Who:
you!

[Show as slideshow]

Participants:
Neil and Iona – Mixed Feelings, Jason Van Anden http://www.smileproject.com

Robozoic, Brett Doar http://www.kingvolcano.com, http://homepage.mac.com/kingvolcano

Retrospectrum, Yoav Bergner and LoVid (Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus) http://www.ignivomous.org/projects/lovid

Ill-Tempered Clangier, Bob Huott & Eric Singer, fabrication by Kazuyo Inoue, Kell Condon, Rocio Barcia, Roberto Osorio, Goenaga, Jesse Fox, Aidan Collins, Gregory Boland, Leif Krinkle, Jonathan Zalben, Ajay Kapur http://www.lemurbots.org

It’s In the Air!, Mark Esper http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk, http://www.damstuhltrager.com

Wheeze, Ranjit Bhatnagar http://www.moonmilk.com
Wildflower Meadow Glacier, James Powderly http://robotclothes.com

IPO Madness, Jonah Brucker-Cohen http://www.coin-operated.com

Opening Reception Thursday, September 14, 6-8pm

PRESS
ArtForum: Best of 2006 FILM
ArtForum, Feb.2008 – Cliff Evans – Isabella Stewart Garner Museum

INSTALLATION VIEWS

This three-channel moving image installation (15 minute loop) is a personal artifice assembled from ideas and images found across the socio-environment of the Internet. Its form is reminiscent of historic epics as represented in cinema and in grand panoramic paintings, while also mimicking the ubiquitous technology used for website banner advertisements.

The show is curated by Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. In the catalogue that accompanies the show she writes: “It is a panoramic triptych that maps the condition of the American adolescent psyche through myriad scavenged images and a carefully calibrated soundtrack. The artist has roamed the Internet examining anxieties, phobias and obsessions, searching out subjects that often preoccupy internet surfers: conspiracy theories and surveillance.”

The Road to Mount Weather is an open animation, susceptible to hugely varied critical perspectives and interpretations. It shakes us out of our complacency. In a mock epic journey through capitalist Hell, Evans creates a baffling cascade of imagery coded in complex syntax. The large swath of information is presented in a loop shown at a slow and melodious pace. With each repeated viewing, the viewer becomes more intrigued, less complacent, finding new associations and symbols, and questioning the final meaning of the narrative.

Evans is one of a number of artists who have mined the form and content of appropriation and photomontage in their work. Among his notable predecessors are Georges Braque and the Dadaists. Images are treated almost like found objects, obtained from the vast reference library that is today’s Internet. They are cut up and scrambled, scene after scene, with deliberate order and disquieting disorder ultimately finding a perfect fit in the puzzle.

Evans reflects on America’s complex geopolitical situation and its impact on mainstream news where fear is a constant. [His] ever-expansive investigation is matched by an eye for detail as well as an ability to find humorous prank subtexts.

An Artist/Curator Talk (see video) was held at Location one on Thursday September 21st, at 7 pm (free to the public).

Cliff Evans was born in Darkwood, Australia and moved to Texas when he was three. He graduated from the Museum School, Boston in 2002 and returned a year later to the Museum School for the competitive Fifth Year Program, winning the prestigious traveling scholarship from the Medici Society. Since then he has lived in New York and New Orleans. Currently he resides in Fort Green, Brooklyn.

Evans’s work has been shown at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Brickbottom Gallery, the Judi Rotenberg Gallery, and the Museum School in Boston, the Maryland Art Place in Baltimore, and the Creative Research Lab in Austin, Texas.
www.cliffevans.net

back to EXHIBITION page

Leesa & Nicole Abahuni, Simo Alitalo, Andrew Duggan, Mayumi Nakazaki,
Trine Nedreaas, Yuki Okumura, Lydia Venieri, Wang Ya-Hui

On Thursday, June 1st, Location One opens its Summer exhibition, showcasing new work developed by resident artists from the USA, Finland, Ireland, The Netherlands, Norway, Japan, Greece, and Taiwan who are participating in the Location One 2005-2006 International Residency Program. The show will be open to the public through Saturday, July 29th, 2006.

Featured works represent a diverse range of artistic approaches:

	Conductive Agents by Leesa & Nicole Abahuni The opening performance of this installation will include copper, people, video, liquor, and chocolate. The artists will create “conductive agents” utilizing copper materials and digestible information, in an effort to make contagious the interrelationships of conveyance, surveillance, and reflexive experience. This performance will be followed by a series of ‘actions,’ scheduled at given times during the course of the exhibition.
	Encounters/Kohtaamisia by Simo Alitalo A sound installation whose aim is to provide a “Muybrigean” break-down of wave mechanics, this piece consists of several loudspeaker “chains” that are suspended from the ceiling and connected to each other with steel springs. Low sounds are routed to the sub-bass speakers which cause the loudspeaker chains to slowly rotate in mid-air. The sound material consists of water-earth encounters and waves hitting the shore. They were recorded by hydrophones and underwater microphones buried in sand or placed underwater.
	Act by Andrew Duggan Theatre curtains, split-screen video projection with no sound. An actor sits in his dressing room, before the curtain rises, before he delivers his performance. His mood is solitary, reflective, internal. He is applying makeup, and his makeup is camouflage since the actor is a soldier. The work is about the relationship between the actor and his performance, the soldier and his battle, the individual and his actions. It is about how we present ourselves, how we are perceived and seen, it is about the culture of representation and the legacy of our actions.
	Shifting Script by Mayumi Nakazaki An installation with video and drawings that investigates the multiple forms taken by visual experience in relation to reality and illusion. The video consists of five scenes dealing with the subject of memory and information. The first four scenes (loop) are intended to be experienced in the cinematic context of a black box. The fifth scene, screened on a separate monitor placed outside the box, is presented along with works on paper that evoke the neural processing of memory.
	Stalking Heads by Trine NedreaasThe installation consists of three video loops shown on separate monitors. Excruciating close-ups of televangelists; all words are omitted, leaving only the pauses between them. The breathing, gestures, and facial expressions of these spiritual predators become both sinister and humorous as they plead, sympathize and demonize to the camera and to each other.
	Supersonic by Yuki OkumuraA video that features the artist teleporting to different locations throughout New York City. The instant dematerialization of the artist’s presence at one spot and his sudden reconstitution at another site is triggered by sneezes, as he breathes air in and out. This experience raises questions about the significance of material versus immaterial, of existence versus nonexistence.
	The Last Conflict by Lydia Venieri A robotic baby representing God moves in dialog with performance artist Adrian Saich who incarnates Nature. Venieri creates stories where dreams reinforce reality, and reality reinforces dreams. This evocative installation/performance bridges mythology, history, fairytales and daily life with humor and self-reflection, touching on issues of the human condition in present times.
	Exchange by Wang Ya-Hui In this two-screened video projection, the narrative is generated through a succession of images depicting personal belongings and objects that are dislocated from their domestic place of origin. The drifting quality of these objects signifies the artistÕs interest in determining where the confines of personal reality begin and end.

Location One is a not-for-profit organization devoted to the convergence between visual, performing and digital arts in a time of rapidly changing technology. The International Residency Program is a central part of its activities. It encourages collaboration by inviting artists from all over the world, and working in different media, to experiment with advanced technological tools and delivery systems, and to develop new work.

The residencies of the artists included in this show are generously supported by:
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (USA), FRAME (Finnish Fund for Art Exchange), The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon (Ireland), The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, Bergen City Council (Norway), Asian Cultural Council (USA), J.F. Kostopoulos Foundation (Greece), The Yageo Corporation, (Taiwan).

Location One is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in the U.S. by Polish artist Lukasz Skapski. The exhibition opens on Tuesday April 11th and will run through Saturday May 20th. On Wednesday April 19th at 7pm the artist will participate in a gallery talk (see video) about the exhibition with Nathalie Anglès, Location One’s Director of the International Residency Program.

Skapski’s recent photographic and video work concerns cultural and political issues common to many national groups: the emotional ambivalence of women and nursing mothers, people’s views of the environment in which they live, the legacy of Communist practices in farming communities, as well as the practice and tradition of film itself. In all his work, the artist demonstrates an uncanny ability for capturing people’s circumstances on film and video. He listens; he seizes detail and human interaction; he brings out the absurd and the humorous in the situations that he records.

There are powerful emotions and surprising candor at work here, sometimes leavened by a humor that is at once accessible and distinctly Polish. Examining social customs and rituals reveals underlying attitudes inherent in the social fabric. Critical awareness is, as always, the linchpin of a free and healthy society.

Ten video works will be presented in this show, including some very short half- minute and one-minute videos with titles like The Wind, Brightness, Cold, which the artist describes as “funny and a bit taoistic tautological.”

A longer piece entitled Clash shows a series of interviews with women about the experience of pregnancy and maternity. In contrast with traditional social views, many of them reveal that they hate the experience.

Skapski is particularly interested in Polish society as it emerges from its difficult recent past. In the series Machines he uses both color photography and video to show home-made tractors put together by farmers who improvised as mechanics to fulfill the needs of their small private farms. These unusual and spectacular “monsters” illustrate the human capacity to pragmatically resist totalitarian oppression, and the accompanying video further underlines the pride and dignity of the human spirit.

Other videos include Cracow Guide in which the inhabitants of this famous medieval town comment about living in the standardized housing blocks that cover 90% of the city’s area. Explosions, is a baroque-minimalist film consisting of found footage from Hollywood films, while The Film is “a film about telling films, or rather, a film which is being told during the film.”

The show will also include several videos by the Azorro Group, an artist collaborative of which Skapski is a founding member, whose work centers on the paradoxes of the institutional circuit of art. They ask: what is contemporary art like? Where are artists and curators located? The questions are intentionally naïve and the sequences often amusing and absurd.

This exhibition is made possible, in part, by funds from the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Location One presents
video installations by Carlos Amorales & Javier Viver
For the month of March, Location One will devote its galleries to two exceptional videos by Mexican artist Carlos Amorales and Spanish artist Javier Viver.

Opening Reception: Wednesday March 8th, 2006, 6-8pm
Open through: April 1st, 2006 (Tue – Sat, 12 – 6 pm)

In the Main Gallery, “Manimal” by Carlos Amorales, a black and white video animation (2005, 6 minutes). Reminiscent of a tale from the Middle Ages, in this animation narrative a pack of wolves emigrates from the forest into the city, substituting, as they overtake the streets, its human population. The piece was made by combining 3D animation tools with flat two dimensional drawings of silhouettes, in a form that looks like a shadow theatre happening in a virtual environment. The music, an orchestral slow tempo heavy metal sound, keeps in tension the narrative suggested by the drawings; the story of the wolves becomes a dark epic. Manimal is about the transformation of animal emotions into human rationality, it is about how, when the moon disappears, the werewolf returns to people’s normality.

In the South Gallery an installation by Javier Viver “The Audience”, (2005, video and theater chairs, 4.5 minutes). The three video channels are projected on contiguous panels while the viewer sits on red theater chairs that are constantly lit. Viver draws an analogy with The Big Theater of the World (El Gran Teatro del Mundo) a masterpiece written by Calderón de la Barca during the Spanish Golden Age. In the video we can see the last minutes of an opera performance: each singer bows and receives the deserved applause from the audience, but the audience is missing. We can hear the clapping, but we can not see where it comes from. The minimalist monotony of the empty theater is broken by three mysterious eyes looking around. Could this be the eye that sees everything?

Javier Viver’s installation is supported in part by Consulate General of Spain in New York.
Carlos Amorales is represented by the Yvon Lambert Gallery in New York and Paris.
Theater seats kindly provided by Poltrona Frau USA.

Location One presents
video installations by Carlos Amorales & Javier Viver
For the month of March, Location One will devote its galleries to two exceptional videos by Mexican artist Carlos Amorales and Spanish artist Javier Viver.

Opening Reception: Wednesday March 8th, 2006, 6-8pm
Open through: April 1st, 2006 (Tue – Sat, 12 – 6 pm)

In the Main Gallery, “Manimal” by Carlos Amorales, a black and white video animation (2005, 6 minutes). Reminiscent of a tale from the Middle Ages, in this animation narrative a pack of wolves emigrates from the forest into the city, substituting, as they overtake the streets, its human population. The piece was made by combining 3D animation tools with flat two dimensional drawings of silhouettes, in a form that looks like a shadow theatre happening in a virtual environment. The music, an orchestral slow tempo heavy metal sound, keeps in tension the narrative suggested by the drawings; the story of the wolves becomes a dark epic. Manimal is about the transformation of animal emotions into human rationality, it is about how, when the moon disappears, the werewolf returns to people’s normality.

In the South Gallery an installation by Javier Viver “The Audience”, (2005, video and theater chairs, 4.5 minutes). The three video channels are projected on contiguous panels while the viewer sits on red theater chairs that are constantly lit. Viver draws an analogy with The Big Theater of the World (El Gran Teatro del Mundo) a masterpiece written by Calderón de la Barca during the Spanish Golden Age. In the video we can see the last minutes of an opera performance: each singer bows and receives the deserved applause from the audience, but the audience is missing. We can hear the clapping, but we can not see where it comes from. The minimalist monotony of the empty theater is broken by three mysterious eyes looking around. Could this be the eye that sees everything?

Javier Viver’s installation is supported in part by Consulate General of Spain in New York.
Carlos Amorales is represented by the Yvon Lambert Gallery in New York and Paris.
Theater seats kindly provided by Poltrona Frau USA.

Opening Reception: Thursday, 9 February 2006 6-8pm
Open through: March 4th, 2006 (Tue – Sat, 12 – 6 pm)

On Thursday, February 9th, Location One presents the first of two Spring exhibitions showcasing new work developed by artists from Italy, France, Germany, Korea, and Portugal who are participating in the 2005-2006 International Residency Program. Featured works represent a diverse range of artistic approaches:

Reclaim the Media! by Paololuca Barbieri and the Alterazioni Video collective, is a a three-piece installation that acts upon and reacts against the implications of unprecedented media control in our society.

Alterazioni Video develops software platforms and tools to question issues of conventional borderline of legal and illegal use of media technologies.“Baghdad Space Sharing” (2005), interactive video installation. “Blue Jack” (2005), bluetooth phones, software and media – experiment testing the limits of privacy protection at conventional consumer electronics devices.“If You Hear Something, Say Something” (2005), pirate radio transmitter, gold MP3 recordings. A project in collaboration with Nikolas Gambaroffand special guests Franco Berardi Bifo, Raddek Community, Sylver Lotringer, Avdey Ter Oganien, Los Osamas, Dj Pollution, Aldo Vignocchi, and others.

On the Road (dvd, 2’06″, 2005) and Parade (dvd, 1’49″, 2005) by Isabelle Ferreira

Ferreira describes On the Road as “a road-movie that has been short-circuited.” Through the depiction of an action that is quintessentially absurd, this short video aims to liberate landscape as a format from all narrative content and human representation. The second video Parade is a silent and visual dialogue between two mechanisms. More generally Isabelle’s work tends to create a time suspended atmosphere, where gesture and motion are slowed down and hidden rhythms revealed.

Stars (2006) by Geka Heinke

A monumental wall installation. Here a dynamic structure is achieved through the juxtaposition of a large monochromatic star motif painted directly on the wall against a backdrop of loose, free flowing technique on papersheets rearranged by the artist to engage the viewer into the depths of illusionistic space.

Logo Oriental Landscape Painting (2005-2006) by Yoon-Young Park

consisting of 6 vertical panels, painted in Chinese ink on rice paper. It is the artist’s reflection and comment on reading a western book on Oriental Painting which identifies Oriental landscape painting as Utopian, as opposed to the realistic approach of western landscape painting. Park observes the logos of several bottled waters that include mountains and rivers, and are depicted in a utopian and stylized manner. She elaborates these in the traditional technique of Oriental landscape panels with ink burshed on rice paper.

In her new work, Mariana Viegas

continues to investigate the impact of landscape as a transformative and transforming entity in urban contexts. The artist’s photographs suggest evidence of human activity in the design and articulation of parks and other green areas in the city. In the video, Mariana examines how objects in communal garden settings are placed in such a way that they become designations of each user’s area. Increased familiarity with these objects can also shift our perception and lead to the construction of possible narratives. All these investigations address the larger issue of the relationship between fiction and reality, nature and the construction of nature.

The residencies of the artists included in this show are generously supported by Associazione Artegiovane, Milan; The FondiAnima; Comune di Milano; L’Association Française d’Action Artistique – AFAA, and Ville de Paris; Schloss Balmoral, Stiftung Rheinland Pfalz für Kultur; The Korean Culture and Arts Foundation; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Luso-American Development Foundation.

Location One is pleased to present Somnambulic, the first New York solo exhibition by Canadian artist Martin Beauregard. This new body of work highlights persistent themes for the artist revolving around the relation between dream, illusion, and reality. It also produces a “fantastical strangeness” that is characteristic of Beauregard’s work, as he explores modes of perception through play and creation.

Featured works trigger a poetical and deliberate confusion between cuddly toys and dead animals, between play-acting and deadly hunting rites. Confronting the world of childhood fantasy and the harsh brutality of game hunting causes a shift in meaning, a displacement of signs and symbols that create unsettling tension.

Wake Up Teddy! is a giant stuffed toy whose fur is made from the real skin of a bear: reality and fiction coming together in one object. Jewel in the Head shows a trophy-like moose whose horns have been plated in silver, namely the materialization of the symbol of victory. These works mirror the double nature of each individual’s perception of reality

The hunting theme carries over to the series of photographs entitled Old Boys that show groups of hunters proudly displaying their “kill” in a dreamlike, eerie and ghostly atmosphere.

The exhibition also includes video projections of past performance pieces and the more recent Lotus (3 minute video loop), a visual poem through which the artist contemplates the connection between the physical world and the sublime/absolute.

[Show as slideshow]

Martin Beauregard studied at the l’Université du Québec at Abitibi-Témiscamingue. He also received the Diplôme National Supérieur from the École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux . Since 2000 his work has been featured in solo shows in his native country and in numerous group shows in France, Canada and the U.S. In 2004-2005 he participated in Location One’s International Residency Program.

On Wednesday, December 7th at 7pm there will be an Artist Talk featuring a conversation between Martin Beauregard and Nathalie Anglés, Director of Location One’s International Residency Program. This event is free and open to the public.

Location One thanks the Cultural Services of the Quebec Government House, the Canada Council for the Arts for their support of this exhibition.

Sound Installations at Location One
Slowscan Soundave (III) & The Telæsthetic Finger
October 11 – November 26, 2005
with works by Douglas Repetto, Atsushi Nishijima, Kevin Centanni, Heather Wagner
curated by Heather Wagner

Location One continues its Fall 2005 season with an exhibition in two parts featuring a large-scale interactive installation in the main gallery and a collection of smaller sound pieces in the project room.

Slowscan Soundwave (III) is an immense, interactive sound sculpture by artist and dorkbot instigator Douglas Repetto. Consisting of enormous strips of sound-sensitive transparent mylar strewn from the ceiling, motors, and custom electronics, the piece “breathes” in sympathy with the ambient sounds in the gallery, rippling and reflecting light when there is a sound and resting, invisible, when there is silence. Because of the transparency of the mylar strips, the effect is subtle and eerie, a gossamer membrane that functions as acoustic barometer, making visible sonic phenomena that are often heard, but rarely seen.

Telæsthesia is the perception of events or objects not actually present. In Location One’s Project Room, we present The Telæsthetic Finger, a selection of works that function as acoustic crab traps: devices that are cast out and reeled back in, filled with booty…or not. On display: the booty and the devices.

Works by Kevin Centanni (sneaking into frequencies usually accessible only by police radios and emergency pagers, this piece uses a computer script to convert the data to ASCII and the messages are presented in real time on a scrolling LED display like so many stock quotes); Atsushi Nishijima (recordings at the end of a kite sent out of sight and reeled back in), and Heather Wagner (“Attempted–Not Known” comes out of an old hobby of sending recording devices through the mail, gathering acoustic documentation of their journeys. In this version, the packages are sent to impossible addresses, for example “GOD”, or “Amelia Earhart” and are, hopefully, returned to sender. Inexplicably, the reasons for nondelivery – “Insufficient Address”, “Outside Delivery Limits” – vary from addressee to addressee.

Artist Biographies:

Douglas Irving Repetto
is an artist and teacher. His work, including installations, performances, recordings, and software has been presented internationally. He runs a number of arts/community-oriented groups in New York City and on the web, including dorkbot: people doing strange things with electricity, ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show, organism: making art with living systems, and the music-dsp mailing list and website. When not teaching or making art, Douglas spends much of his time cooking, coveting buildings, and socializing with members of the plant kingdom. He is Director of Research at the Columbia University Computer Music Center and lives in New York City with his wife, writer Amy Charlotte Benson; two cute/bad cats, Pokey and Sneezy; and many plants.

Kevin Centanni
is a veteran of physical computing and interactive multimedia. His technological wizardry and innovative approach to high-tech problems have led to his involvement in many projects, ranging from museum installations to corporate trade show exhibits.Kevin is currently President of Controlled Entropy, a Brooklyn based technology consulting firm that has been producing interactive technology for over 10 years. From 2000 to 2004, Kevin was also one of the owners of Remote Lounge, a unique interactive bar/nightclub in New York City. Previously Kevin Centanni was Director of Technology for Interfilm, an interactive motion picture company that went public in 1994.

Atsushi Nishijima
is a composer and visual artist. Originally from Kyoto and trained in experimental and contemprary music, Nishijima creates sculptures and installations which emphasize the idea that sound, and thereby music, is inherent in all objects and environments. A particularly important resource for the artist is the city, which becomes a gigantic synthesizer. He participcated in Location One’s International Residency Program and had a solo show entitled “Subtractive Creation: Visible Sound”, 2001. His work has been show in Asia and the US, including Art Omi International Arts Center, New York, 2003, Sound in the Landscape; The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1994 with Rolywholyover A Circus as part of the Citycircus. Nishijima is also a performer and was featured in Roulette’s Festival of Mixology 2003, New York and the Tokyo Performing Arts Market – Alternative “Discovering New Talent – Music”.

Heather Wagner
is an artist and practicing ‘pataphysician with a black belt in Taiwan (inadvertently left in hotel room). She plays drums with the indie-rock band Morex Optimo and is director of online exhibitions at Location One. She is grateful to the curator for thinking of her.

Sound Installations at Location One
Slowscan Soundave (III) & The Telæsthetic Finger
October 11 – November 26, 2005
with works by Douglas Repetto, Atsushi Nishijima, Kevin Centanni, Heather Wagner
curated by Heather Wagner

Location One continues its Fall 2005 season with an exhibition in two parts featuring a large-scale interactive installation in the main gallery and a collection of smaller sound pieces in the project room.

Slowscan Soundwave (III) is an immense, interactive sound sculpture by artist and dorkbot instigator Douglas Repetto. Consisting of enormous strips of sound-sensitive transparent mylar strewn from the ceiling, motors, and custom electronics, the piece “breathes” in sympathy with the ambient sounds in the gallery, rippling and reflecting light when there is a sound and resting, invisible, when there is silence. Because of the transparency of the mylar strips, the effect is subtle and eerie, a gossamer membrane that functions as acoustic barometer, making visible sonic phenomena that are often heard, but rarely seen.

Telæsthesia is the perception of events or objects not actually present. In Location One’s Project Room, we present The Telæsthetic Finger, a selection of works that function as acoustic crab traps: devices that are cast out and reeled back in, filled with booty…or not. On display: the booty and the devices.

Works by Kevin Centanni (sneaking into frequencies usually accessible only by police radios and emergency pagers, this piece uses a computer script to convert the data to ASCII and the messages are presented in real time on a scrolling LED display like so many stock quotes); Atsushi Nishijima (recordings at the end of a kite sent out of sight and reeled back in), and Heather Wagner (“Attempted–Not Known” comes out of an old hobby of sending recording devices through the mail, gathering acoustic documentation of their journeys. In this version, the packages are sent to impossible addresses, for example “GOD”, or “Amelia Earhart” and are, hopefully, returned to sender. Inexplicably, the reasons for nondelivery – “Insufficient Address”, “Outside Delivery Limits” – vary from addressee to addressee.

Artist Biographies:

Douglas Irving Repetto
is an artist and teacher. His work, including installations, performances, recordings, and software has been presented internationally. He runs a number of arts/community-oriented groups in New York City and on the web, including dorkbot: people doing strange things with electricity, ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show, organism: making art with living systems, and the music-dsp mailing list and website. When not teaching or making art, Douglas spends much of his time cooking, coveting buildings, and socializing with members of the plant kingdom. He is Director of Research at the Columbia University Computer Music Center and lives in New York City with his wife, writer Amy Charlotte Benson; two cute/bad cats, Pokey and Sneezy; and many plants.

Kevin Centanni
is a veteran of physical computing and interactive multimedia. His technological wizardry and innovative approach to high-tech problems have led to his involvement in many projects, ranging from museum installations to corporate trade show exhibits.Kevin is currently President of Controlled Entropy, a Brooklyn based technology consulting firm that has been producing interactive technology for over 10 years. From 2000 to 2004, Kevin was also one of the owners of Remote Lounge, a unique interactive bar/nightclub in New York City. Previously Kevin Centanni was Director of Technology for Interfilm, an interactive motion picture company that went public in 1994.

Atsushi Nishijima
is a composer and visual artist. Originally from Kyoto and trained in experimental and contemprary music, Nishijima creates sculptures and installations which emphasize the idea that sound, and thereby music, is inherent in all objects and environments. A particularly important resource for the artist is the city, which becomes a gigantic synthesizer. He participcated in Location One’s International Residency Program and had a solo show entitled “Subtractive Creation: Visible Sound”, 2001. His work has been show in Asia and the US, including Art Omi International Arts Center, New York, 2003, Sound in the Landscape; The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1994 with Rolywholyover A Circus as part of the Citycircus. Nishijima is also a performer and was featured in Roulette’s Festival of Mixology 2003, New York and the Tokyo Performing Arts Market – Alternative “Discovering New Talent – Music”.

Heather Wagner
is an artist and practicing ‘pataphysician with a black belt in Taiwan (inadvertently left in hotel room). She plays drums with the indie-rock band Morex Optimo and is director of online exhibitions at Location One. She is grateful to the curator for thinking of her.

15 artists will spend seven days at Location One working intensely and in restricted conditions to produce wearable creations with only the tools and materials provided to them. A cross between art and fashion, the project temporarily removes the gallery from the appointed function of “showing” and moves it to the world of artistic production, raising questions about the circumstances, both physical and mental, of the creative process.

Open Stitch removes artists from the comfort of their own environments, imposes constraints, and compels them to work among others. The action will be documented via live-streamed video. Following the production stage, the gallery space will be left in its raw, post-production state, and an installation of the work produced will be on display. A video montage of the production process will be projected as part of the installation.

[Show as slideshow]

Open Stitch was conceived and organized by Sebastien Sanz de Santamaria in collaboration with Jessie Cohan. Participating artists include Ayah Bdeir, Jessie Cohan, Barry Doss, Stefany Anne Golberg, George Hudacko, Selma Karaca, Ryan Kennedy, Miranti Kisdarjono, Katherine Moriwaki, David Quinn, Chris Sanders, Davina Semo, and Wikiwikicorp, a collective that includes Jean Barberis, Aya Kakeda and Sebastien Sanz de Santamaria.

September 7-13 Workshop
7 days, 56+ hours, 15 artists/designers working intensely and in restricted conditions to produce wearable creations with only the tools and materials provided to them. The project removes artists from the comfort of their own environments, imposes constraints, and compels them to work among others. The action will be documented via live-streamed video.
Open to the public every day from 12 to 6pm

Timelapse Video

Click here to view the embedded video.

September 14-30 Installation
The gallery space will be left in its raw, post-production state, and an installation of the work created will be on display. A video montage of the production process will also be projected.
Open Tuesday-Saturday, 12 to 6pm

Click here to view the embedded video.

September 21 & 28 at 7pm Open House Wednesdays
Two talks about Cultural Constraints and Social Identities relating to clothing and fashion. Speakers to be announced.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Saturday October 1st Runway show – Performance – Party
Opening with a short performance by the Glen Rumsey Dance Project, the evening features a staged showing of the garments produced by the participating artists, plus music, DJ and cocktails.

Read press for the show: (PDFs)

Gay City News

Village Voice “Don’t Call it ‘Project Runway, the Art Exhibit”
by Corina Zappia

http://www.location1.org/chris-csikszentmihalyi-skin-control-2/ http://www.location1.org/chris-csikszentmihalyi-skin-control-2/#comments Wed, 22 Sep 2004 15:18:16 +0000 admin http://www.location1.org/chris-csikszentmihalyi-skin-control/ Rising out of the gallery floor and disappearing into the walls, two large-scale installations by MIT-based artist Chris Csikszentmihályi (cheek-sent-mee-high) occupied Location One’s space for the Fall Season 2004. The installations explore two central technologies of our late industrial society, the airplane and the control panel, rehearsing our dependence on complex technologies and the vulnerability they engender.

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Parallel installations by Chris Csikszentmihályi
“Skin” and “Control”
September 22 through February 26, 2004
[display_podcast]

 

see slide show of installation

Skin & Control catalogue
$28 or $65 special edition (signed by the artist, includes CD-ROM)

 

Rising out of the gallery floor and disappearing into the walls, two large-scale installations by MIT-based artist Chris Csikszentmihályi (cheek-sent-mee-high) will occupy Location One’s space for the Fall Season 2004. The installations explore two central technologies of our late industrial society, the airplane and the control panel, rehearsing our dependence on complex technologies and the vulnerability they engender. “Skin” is an aluminum cylinder, the fuselage of a Boeing 737 that emerges from the gallery floor, stopped in the act of flying. Viewers will feel the vibrations of the plane in flight and hear the muffled conversations of passengers. “Control” is composed of panels, roughly modeled on those used in Chernobyl, that wend their way through the gallery. The visitor will manipulate the puzzling array of buttons, dials, and indicators of this complex technological system, all the while wondering what kind of control he gains by his interaction.

Of his work Chris Csikszentmiháyi writes “my goal as an artist is to understand and intervene into the production of material power–technologies. My day job as MIT professor involves doing that at a very literal level. “Skin” and “Control” do this at a more symbolic level, in the form of installations that operate as immersive environments, walk-in tableaux with everyday drama being enacted moment by moment.”

As with all Location One events, the exhibition will be live-streamed on the Internet. During the exhibition Location One will present a series of conversations, lectures and discussions with the artist and international speakers from many fields to debate the ideas generated by the installations. The installations will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with texts by Caroline A. Jones, Professor of Art History at M.I.T. and author of Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist, by McKenzie Wark, author of A Hacker Manifesto (Harvard University Press) and Professor of media & cultural studies at Lang College, New School University. It will be published by Charta Art Books, Milan and distributed by D.A.P.

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http://www.location1.org/chris-csikszentmihalyi-skin-control/ http://www.location1.org/chris-csikszentmihalyi-skin-control/#comments Wed, 22 Sep 2004 15:18:16 +0000 irp http://www.location1.org/chris-csikszentmihalyi-skin-control/

Parallel installations by Chris Csikszentmihályi
“Skin” and “Control”
September 22 through February 26, 2004
[display_podcast]

 

see slide show of installation

Skin & Control catalogue
$28 or $65 special edition (signed by the artist, includes CD-ROM)

 

Rising out of the gallery floor and disappearing into the walls, two large-scale installations by MIT-based artist Chris Csikszentmihályi (cheek-sent-mee-high) will occupy Location One’s space for the Fall Season 2004. The installations explore two central technologies of our late industrial society, the airplane and the control panel, rehearsing our dependence on complex technologies and the vulnerability they engender. “Skin” is an aluminum cylinder, the fuselage of a Boeing 737 that emerges from the gallery floor, stopped in the act of flying. Viewers will feel the vibrations of the plane in flight and hear the muffled conversations of passengers. “Control” is composed of panels, roughly modeled on those used in Chernobyl, that wend their way through the gallery. The visitor will manipulate the puzzling array of buttons, dials, and indicators of this complex technological system, all the while wondering what kind of control he gains by his interaction.

Of his work Chris Csikszentmiháyi writes “my goal as an artist is to understand and intervene into the production of material power–technologies. My day job as MIT professor involves doing that at a very literal level. “Skin” and “Control” do this at a more symbolic level, in the form of installations that operate as immersive environments, walk-in tableaux with everyday drama being enacted moment by moment.”

As with all Location One events, the exhibition will be live-streamed on the Internet. During the exhibition Location One will present a series of conversations, lectures and discussions with the artist and international speakers from many fields to debate the ideas generated by the installations. The installations will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with texts by Caroline A. Jones, Professor of Art History at M.I.T. and author of Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist, by McKenzie Wark, author of A Hacker Manifesto (Harvard University Press) and Professor of media & cultural studies at Lang College, New School University. It will be published by Charta Art Books, Milan and distributed by D.A.P.

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http://www.location1.org/creative-intelligence-new-work-from-the-mit-visual-arts-program/ http://www.location1.org/creative-intelligence-new-work-from-the-mit-visual-arts-program/#comments Thu, 20 May 2004 22:37:54 +0000 irp http://www.location1.org/creative-intelligence-new-work-from-the-mit-visual-arts-program/

Creative Intelligence :: New Work from the MIT Visual Arts Program
May 20 – 27, 2004
Opening Reception May 20 6-8 PM
Location One has an ongoing informal working relationship with artists from the faculty and student body at MIT. Because of this rewarding association, we occasionally exhibit interesting work on a short-term basis in our galleries or online. On May 20, 2004 students from the MIT Visual Arts Program will open an exhibition entitled, “Creative Intelligence”. Featuring work by Lukas Lysakowski, Hiroharu Mori, Carrie Bodle, Ross Cisneros and Clementine Cummer

Artists bios:

Lukasz Lysakowski
a native of Poland, is an artist exploring the contemporary relationships between man – machine and nature – culture. Lysakowski is one of the members of the video improvisation trio 242.pilits (with Kurt Ralske and HC Gilje).

Hiroharu Mori
originally from Tokyo, focuses in on issues of cultural marginality. Repetition and absurdity are elements that Mori manipulates in order to engage in the territorial boundaries of isolation, perception, announcement, and interrogation. Mori utilizes prosthetic devices, audio augmentation and visual manipulation.

Carrie Bodle
a Columbus, Ohio native, Bodle investigates a site history of MIT’s Building N52 through a sound installation that responds to the notion of oscillatory patterns.

Ross Cisneros
continues to respond to rapidly developing technologies and the challenging ideologies of techno0trnascendentalism, transhumanism, and extropian belief systems within the present technocracy. Cisneros explores the consistent positioning of the technologist as healer, prophet, myth maker and transcendental magician through sculptural, cinematic, and perfomative hallucinations.

Clementine Cummer
is interested in how our moving bodies are evocative objects ­ evocative of the experience of being human in all of its strange beauty and pain. Cummer works with the interplay between the moving body, the moving camera, and the moving picture.

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http://www.location1.org/creative-intelligence-new-work-from-the-mit-visual-arts-program-2/ http://www.location1.org/creative-intelligence-new-work-from-the-mit-visual-arts-program-2/#comments Thu, 20 May 2004 22:37:54 +0000 admin http://www.location1.org/creative-intelligence-new-work-from-the-mit-visual-arts-program/ Location One has an ongoing informal working relationship with artists from the faculty and student body at MIT. Because of this rewarding association, we occasionally exhibit interesting work on a short-term basis in our galleries or online. On May 20, 2004 students from the MIT Visual Arts Program opened an exhibition entitled, “Creative Intelligence”. Featuring work by Lukas Lysakowski, Hiroharu Mori, Carrie Bodle, Ross Cisneros and Clementine Cummer.

]]>

Creative Intelligence :: New Work from the MIT Visual Arts Program
May 20 – 27, 2004
Opening Reception May 20 6-8 PM
Location One has an ongoing informal working relationship with artists from the faculty and student body at MIT. Because of this rewarding association, we occasionally exhibit interesting work on a short-term basis in our galleries or online. On May 20, 2004 students from the MIT Visual Arts Program will open an exhibition entitled, “Creative Intelligence”. Featuring work by Lukas Lysakowski, Hiroharu Mori, Carrie Bodle, Ross Cisneros and Clementine Cummer

Artists bios:

Lukasz Lysakowski
a native of Poland, is an artist exploring the contemporary relationships between man – machine and nature – culture. Lysakowski is one of the members of the video improvisation trio 242.pilits (with Kurt Ralske and HC Gilje).

Hiroharu Mori
originally from Tokyo, focuses in on issues of cultural marginality. Repetition and absurdity are elements that Mori manipulates in order to engage in the territorial boundaries of isolation, perception, announcement, and interrogation. Mori utilizes prosthetic devices, audio augmentation and visual manipulation.

Carrie Bodle
a Columbus, Ohio native, Bodle investigates a site history of MIT’s Building N52 through a sound installation that responds to the notion of oscillatory patterns.

Ross Cisneros
continues to respond to rapidly developing technologies and the challenging ideologies of techno0trnascendentalism, transhumanism, and extropian belief systems within the present technocracy. Cisneros explores the consistent positioning of the technologist as healer, prophet, myth maker and transcendental magician through sculptural, cinematic, and perfomative hallucinations.

Clementine Cummer
is interested in how our moving bodies are evocative objects ­ evocative of the experience of being human in all of its strange beauty and pain. Cummer works with the interplay between the moving body, the moving camera, and the moving picture.

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http://www.location1.org/on-translation-on-view/ http://www.location1.org/on-translation-on-view/#comments Tue, 30 Mar 2004 22:39:11 +0000 irp http://www.location1.org/on-translation-on-view/ On View, a new work from On Translation Series, conceived and shot in Japan, post-produced in New York at Location One, is a work about viewing, looking… waiting… as contemporary rituals. Waiting in lines, airport standby, museum audience, tourist photo opportunities… Interrogations on where, when, why, who and what are part of the intention of the work.

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MUNTADAS
On Translation: On View

March 30 to May 15, 2004
Opening reception: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 6 – 8 PM
On View, a new work from On Translation Series, conceived and shot in Japan, post-produced in New York at Location One, is a work about viewing, looking… waiting… as contemporary rituals. Waiting in lines, airport standby, museum audience, tourist photo opportunities… Interrogations on where, when, why, who and what are part of the intention of the work.

[Show as slideshow]

On Translation, a series of work begun in Helsinki in 1995, groups a set of thirty works reflecting on the concept of translation and interpretation from a perspective that encompasses cultural, linguistic, political and economic issues produced and presented in different contexts and mediums.

MUNTADAS
Antoni Muntadas – born in Barcelona, Spain in 1942 – has lived and worked in New York since 1971. His work addresses social, political and communications issues, the relationship between public and private space within social frameworks, and investigations of channels of information and the ways they may be used to censor central information or promulgate ideas. His projects incorporate different media such as photography, video, publications, Internet and multi-media installations.

His works have been exhibited throughout the world, including the Venice Biennale, Documenta VI and X in Kassel, the Sao Paulo Biennal, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. During the past year the MACBA in Barcelona and the Dortmund Museum in Germany presented the on-going series On Translation (1995-2003) and produced an extensive publication on these works. His upcoming public works include On Translation: Die Stadt (Graz/Lille/Barcelona) and On Translation: Tren Urbano (San Juan, Puerto Rico-Roosevelt Station). Upcoming shows include exhibits at Laboratorio de la Alameda in Mexico, the Neuen Museum Weserburg-Bremen, and In Site 2005 in San Diego/Tijuana.

MUNTADAS has taught and directed seminars at the San Francisco Art Institute, the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris, the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, Cooper Union and many other institutions. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, Visual Arts Program.

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http://www.location1.org/poetic-spectrum-images-objects-and-words-of-gozo-yoshimasu/ http://www.location1.org/poetic-spectrum-images-objects-and-words-of-gozo-yoshimasu/#comments Wed, 03 Sep 2003 22:48:43 +0000 irp http://www.location1.org/poetic-spectrum-images-objects-and-words-of-gozo-yoshimasu/

click on thumbnails to see larger image

Location One is proud to present:

Poetic Spectrum – Images, Objects, and Words of Gozo Yoshimasu

September 3 – September 23, 2003
Opening Reception: September 3, 6 – 8pm

Listen to a sound clip of “Ishikari sheets” (music by Scott Fraser)
[display_podcast]

Poetry reading by Yoshimasu: September 23, 2003 at 7 PM
Live translation by American poet Geoffrey O’Brien
Improvisational music by guitarist Jean-François Pauvros
Poems translated by Hiroaki Sato
Admission: Free – Doors open at 6pm

Curated by Miwako Tezuka
Gallery hours: Tue – Sat 12-6 PM
Tuesday, September 23 12-7 PM

Location One is pleased to present the New York debut exhibition and special performance reading by renowned Japanese poet Gozo Yoshimasu, recent recipient of the Purple Ribbon Award from the Japanese Government for his significant cultural contributions. Poetic Spectrum will present Yoshimasu’s photographs and copperplate calligraphies for the first time to the New York audience, and will also bring the legendary poet to New York to perform after a ten-year absence.

A highly acclaimed avant-garde poet since the 1960s, Yoshimasu is a poet of migrant vision, creating his works while he travels to different locales and cultures, composing his poems through vision, touch, and sounds. He has more recently expanded his poetic works to include the media of photography and calligraphy. The exhibition Poetic SpectrumPoetic Spectrum captures the multi-faceted nature of the poet’s work through 30 photographs and 15 engraved calligraphies, each treated as a word, and interwoven to create textual complexity in space. explores Yoshimasu’s poetry as a web of interconnected images, objects, and words that reflect on a conflicting sense of nostalgia and estrangement.

In a rare event, Yoshimasu will come to New York City to read/perform selections from his most recent poems on September 23rd. Through his unique performance style, his voice, ultimately weaves together the visions and touches of the past, and revives the singularity of those encounters. The amalgamation of images, objects, words, and reading as performance, will present a possibility of transcending the limit of language, and reveal the trans-cultural fertility of poetry.

This performance will last just under an hour and will include a live translation by American poet Geoffrey OíBrien, as well as improvisational music by experimental guitarist, Jean- François Pauvros. The event will be streamed live on the Location One website beginning at 7PM EST.

Poetic Spectrum – Images, Objects, and Words of Gozo Yoshimasu is made possible through the generous support of The Japan Foundation, as well as through contributions from members of Location One. Poetic Spectrum is a participating event of “US-Japan 150,” a two-year nationwide festival commemorating the 150th anniversary of the inception of relations between the US and Japan in 1853. Thanks to Itoen Tea for its generous contribution of beverages.

BIOGRAPHIES

Gozo Yoshimasu was born in Tokyo in 1939 and published his first book of poems entitled Shuppatsu (Departure) in 1964. Juxtaposing imagery of reality and memories of various locations, his poems open new vistas that reach one’s collective consciousness. Yoshimasu is also known for his unusual, trance-like reading through which he has collaborated with artists such as Kazuo Ono and Nobuyoshi Araki. Considered to be an emblematic presence in postwar Japanese poetry, many of his poems have been translated into various languages. He has given readings at Centre Georges Pompidou (2000), Taipei International Poetry Festival (2001), and has exhibited his photographs and calligraphies at São Paulo Biennale (1990), Chambre de Commerce et Industrie, Strasbourg (2000), among others. In May 2003, he received the Purple Ribbon Award from the Japanese government for his significant cultural contributions.

Miwako Tezuka is an independent curator and a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University. She specializes in postwar Japanese avant-garde art. She was a recipient of the Luce Foundation Museum Fellowship in Asian Art at the Asia Society, NY. Her recent work includes curatorial consultation for The Legacy Project’s 9/11 commemorative exhibition, In Memory: The Art of Afterward, at the Mishkin Gallery, NY (2002), and co-curation of Making It Home: Three Contemporary Asian Artists, at the ISE Gallery, New York (2002).

Jean-François Pauvros, guitar, was born in France. A well-known avant-garde guitarist composer and performer, he made his debut in the late 1970s, forming a trio called Catalogue with Gilbert Artman (ex. urban sax) and Jac Berrocal (trumpet, voice). He is considered one of the foremost European experimental guitarists.

Geoffrey O’Brien is a widely published poet, critic, editor, and cultural historian. He has been honored with a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Institute for the Humanities. A regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, he is the editor-in-chief of The Library of America. His most recent publication is A View of Buildings and Water. He lives in New York City.

Poems by Yoshimasu in English translation:

A Thousand Steps…and More: Selected Poems and Prose 1964-1984. Translated by Richard Arno, Brenda Barrows, and Takko Lento. Oakland: Katydid Books, Oakland University, 1987.

Osiris, the God of Stone. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. Laurinburg: St. Andrews Press, 1989.

“Kadena” (To appear in Simple Vows, #4. Ed. Kemp Gregory, San Antonio.)

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http://www.location1.org/qing-hua-porcelain-blue-white-2-2/ http://www.location1.org/qing-hua-porcelain-blue-white-2-2/#comments Thu, 23 May 2002 07:23:30 +0000 admin http://test.location1.org/news/qing-hua-porcelain-blue-white/ Qing Hua Porcelain (Blue & White) is a new video/sound installation in which Xu Tan explores the differences in American and Chinese cultural interpretations of what is “real” and what is “fake”. Although each culture distinguishes and classifies “real” from “fake”, neither clearly defines these terms.

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An Exhibition by Xu Tan
Exhibition Website
May 23rd – June 29th 2002)
Opening Reception May 23rd 6-8 PM)

Location One is pleased to announce artist-in-residence Xu Tan‘s forthcoming debut solo exhibition in New York City.

Qing Hua Porcelain (Blue & White) is a new video/sound installation in which Xu Tan explores the differences in American and Chinese cultural interpretations of what is “real” and what is “fake”. Although each culture distinguishes and classifies “real” from “fake”, neither clearly defines these terms.

Xu Tan draws his inspiration from the teachings of philosopher Chuang-Tzu (circa 250 BC). Successor to Lao Tzu and a foremost proponent of Taoism, Chuang-Tzu presumed that no matter how alike two things are, a difference between them can always be found and, conversely, no matter how different two things are, one can find a similarity between them. Objective similarities and differences do not justify any particular way of distinguishing between things.

Qing Hua Porcelain (Blue & White) consists of 3 videos in which Xu Tan posits that situations play out differently depending upon location (in this case China and America); location relates to culture, therefore culture plays a role in how one understands the world, interprets “true” and “false,” “authentic” and “fake”. Through a dialogue with an American female friend, Xu Tan sheds light on diverse interpretations of love, asking the question: “What is true love?” Xu Tan further addresses differences between “real” and “fake” by recording specialists of Qing Hua Porcelain—the well known Ming Dynasty china—who discuss the notion of “authenticity” and the controversy around authenticating these imported ceramics. Can anyone be certain that a piece is genuine or counterfeit?

On the night of the opening several Blue and White porcelain experts in locales throughout the world will be connected to the Location One chat room (rage.location1.org) to interact with and field questions from gallery patrons and online spectators. This dialogue will also be projected live in the gallery space.

Qing Hua Porcelain (Blue & White) was partly inspired by a line from the Chinese short novel, Dream of the Red Chamber that says, “if you turn something fake into something real, then the real things start to lose value becoming fake”.

Xu Tan was born in Wuhan, Hubei Province in 1957. In the early 1990s he joined the “Big Tail Elephant Group” in Guangzhou with Lin Yinlin, Chen Shaoxiong and Liang Juhui. The aim of this group is to develop critical strategies for negotiating the rapidly changing economic and cultural life in China.

We are particularly grateful to the Asian Cultural Council for making Xu Tan’s residency at Location One possible.

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http://www.location1.org/qing-hua-porcelain-blue-white-2/ http://www.location1.org/qing-hua-porcelain-blue-white-2/#comments Thu, 23 May 2002 07:23:30 +0000 admin http://test.location1.org/news/qing-hua-porcelain-blue-white/ Qing Hua Porcelain (Blue & White) is a new video/sound installation in which Xu Tan explores the differences in American and Chinese cultural interpretations of what is “real” and what is “fake”. Although each culture distinguishes and classifies “real” from “fake”, neither clearly defines these terms.

]]>

An Exhibition by Xu Tan
Exhibition Website
May 23rd – June 29th 2002)
Opening Reception May 23rd 6-8 PM)

Location One is pleased to announce artist-in-residence Xu Tan‘s forthcoming debut solo exhibition in New York City.

Qing Hua Porcelain (Blue & White) is a new video/sound installation in which Xu Tan explores the differences in American and Chinese cultural interpretations of what is “real” and what is “fake”. Although each culture distinguishes and classifies “real” from “fake”, neither clearly defines these terms.

Xu Tan draws his inspiration from the teachings of philosopher Chuang-Tzu (circa 250 BC). Successor to Lao Tzu and a foremost proponent of Taoism, Chuang-Tzu presumed that no matter how alike two things are, a difference between them can always be found and, conversely, no matter how different two things are, one can find a similarity between them. Objective similarities and differences do not justify any particular way of distinguishing between things.

Qing Hua Porcelain (Blue & White) consists of 3 videos in which Xu Tan posits that situations play out differently depending upon location (in this case China and America); location relates to culture, therefore culture plays a role in how one understands the world, interprets “true” and “false,” “authentic” and “fake”. Through a dialogue with an American female friend, Xu Tan sheds light on diverse interpretations of love, asking the question: “What is true love?” Xu Tan further addresses differences between “real” and “fake” by recording specialists of Qing Hua Porcelain—the well known Ming Dynasty china—who discuss the notion of “authenticity” and the controversy around authenticating these imported ceramics. Can anyone be certain that a piece is genuine or counterfeit?

On the night of the opening several Blue and White porcelain experts in locales throughout the world will be connected to the Location One chat room (rage.location1.org) to interact with and field questions from gallery patrons and online spectators. This dialogue will also be projected live in the gallery space.

Qing Hua Porcelain (Blue & White) was partly inspired by a line from the Chinese short novel, Dream of the Red Chamber that says, “if you turn something fake into something real, then the real things start to lose value becoming fake”.

Xu Tan was born in Wuhan, Hubei Province in 1957. In the early 1990s he joined the “Big Tail Elephant Group” in Guangzhou with Lin Yinlin, Chen Shaoxiong and Liang Juhui. The aim of this group is to develop critical strategies for negotiating the rapidly changing economic and cultural life in China.

We are particularly grateful to the Asian Cultural Council for making Xu Tan’s residency at Location One possible.

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http://www.location1.org/qing-hua-porcelain-blue-white/ http://www.location1.org/qing-hua-porcelain-blue-white/#comments Thu, 23 May 2002 07:23:30 +0000 irp http://test.location1.org/news/qing-hua-porcelain-blue-white/ Qing Hua Porcelain (Blue & White) is a new video/sound installation in which Xu Tan explores the differences in American and Chinese cultural interpretations of what is “real” and what is “fake”. Although each culture distinguishes and classifies “real” from “fake”, neither clearly defines these terms.

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An Exhibition by Xu Tan
Exhibition Website
May 23rd – June 29th 2002)
Opening Reception May 23rd 6-8 PM)

Location One is pleased to announce artist-in-residence Xu Tan‘s forthcoming debut solo exhibition in New York City.

Qing Hua Porcelain (Blue & White) is a new video/sound installation in which Xu Tan explores the differences in American and Chinese cultural interpretations of what is “real” and what is “fake”. Although each culture distinguishes and classifies “real” from “fake”, neither clearly defines these terms.

Xu Tan draws his inspiration from the teachings of philosopher Chuang-Tzu (circa 250 BC). Successor to Lao Tzu and a foremost proponent of Taoism, Chuang-Tzu presumed that no matter how alike two things are, a difference between them can always be found and, conversely, no matter how different two things are, one can find a similarity between them. Objective similarities and differences do not justify any particular way of distinguishing between things.

Qing Hua Porcelain (Blue & White) consists of 3 videos in which Xu Tan posits that situations play out differently depending upon location (in this case China and America); location relates to culture, therefore culture plays a role in how one understands the world, interprets “true” and “false,” “authentic” and “fake”. Through a dialogue with an American female friend, Xu Tan sheds light on diverse interpretations of love, asking the question: “What is true love?” Xu Tan further addresses differences between “real” and “fake” by recording specialists of Qing Hua Porcelain—the well known Ming Dynasty china—who discuss the notion of “authenticity” and the controversy around authenticating these imported ceramics. Can anyone be certain that a piece is genuine or counterfeit?

On the night of the opening several Blue and White porcelain experts in locales throughout the world will be connected to the Location One chat room (rage.location1.org) to interact with and field questions from gallery patrons and online spectators. This dialogue will also be projected live in the gallery space.

Qing Hua Porcelain (Blue & White) was partly inspired by a line from the Chinese short novel, Dream of the Red Chamber that says, “if you turn something fake into something real, then the real things start to lose value becoming fake”.

Xu Tan was born in Wuhan, Hubei Province in 1957. In the early 1990s he joined the “Big Tail Elephant Group” in Guangzhou with Lin Yinlin, Chen Shaoxiong and Liang Juhui. The aim of this group is to develop critical strategies for negotiating the rapidly changing economic and cultural life in China.

We are particularly grateful to the Asian Cultural Council for making Xu Tan’s residency at Location One possible.

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http://www.location1.org/white-balance/ http://www.location1.org/white-balance/#comments Thu, 10 Jan 2002 07:19:26 +0000 irp http://test.location1.org/news/white-balance/

White Balance (to think is to forget differences) is an effort to uncover the geographies of power, the frontiers of privilege. It revisits this problem from different angles, creating short circuits of meaning which are hosted by improbable audiovisual matches. Media and internet footage is intermixed with images shot in downtown Manhattan before and after the September 11th attacks.

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François Bucher
White Balance (to think is to forget differences)
2002 DVD, color, sound; 30 minutes.

White Balance reviewed:
The Village Voice, Feb 5
Columna De Arena (in Spanish) Jan 31
Art Forum Feb 2002

The West Project: accompanying web project

January 10 – March 2, 2002
Opening Reception: January 10th, 6-8 PM
Where there is amenability to paraphrase, where the sheets have never been rumpled, there poetry, so to speak, has never spent the night.
—Osip Mandelstam
White Balance (to think is to forget differences) is an effort to uncover the geographies of power, the frontiers of privilege. It revisits this problem from different angles, creating short circuits of meaning which are hosted by improbable audiovisual matches. Media and internet footage is intermixed with images shot in downtown Manhattan before and after the September 11th attacks. The video presents a question that needs to be visited over and over, a question that is always and necessarily larger than ourselves. Yvonne Rainer asked this question in her film Privilege: “…is ‘permanent recovering racists’ the most we can ever be?” In this sense, offering a meta narrative that would pretend to describe the issues at stake, is a failure to understand the layers of unspeakability that are hidden in the question of whiteness. The piece opts for a poetic language, an address that seeks to arouse thought by concentrating on the openings of the audiovisual experience, in the short-lived moment of the in-between.

Click here to view the embedded video.

François Bucher was born in 1972 in Cali, Colombia and lives and works in New York City. He graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999 with an MFA in film (MFA fellowship recipient). From 1999 – 2000 he attended The Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. He is co editor of Valdez Magazine, Bogotá, Colombia. Bucher has shown his work in Latin America, the United States and Europe. White Balance (to think is to forget differences) was funded in part by The New York City Media Arts Grant of The Jerome Foundation.

Location One (www.location1.org) is a new not-for profit art center, which fosters the convergence of all types of creative expression. We maintain a gallery space suitable for every form of performance and exhibition, and within this space, multimedia net-broadcasting facilities that allow us to webcast a 24-hour stream of both live and archived events. Our International Residency Program invites artists from other countries to experiment with emerging technologies. Location One is an exploration space for continual creative discovery.

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http://www.location1.org/o2o3-fractured-oxygenozone/ http://www.location1.org/o2o3-fractured-oxygenozone/#comments Thu, 20 Sep 2001 22:59:59 +0000 irp http://www.location1.org/o2o3-fractured-oxygenozone/ The exhibition comprises six pieces that result from Sonnier's investigations into the work of Nikola Tesla during the period 1990-1997.

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O₂=O₃; Fractured Oxygen=Ozone
September 20 – November 28, 2001
Opening Reception: September 20th, 6-8 PM
Location One 26 Greene Street NYC 10013
Between Grand and Canal

Click here to view the New Yorker cartoon (pdf) for O₂=O₃; Fractured Oxygen=Ozone

Location One is happy to announce an exhibition of selected work created by the internationally celebrated artist Keith Sonnier. The exhibition comprises six pieces that result from Sonnier’s investigations into the work of Nikola Tesla during the period 1990-1997. The Tesla series “captures” raw electricity in its most spectacular form by stringing copper wires and causing the current to flow and spark between them.

Keith Sonnier, born in Mamou, Louisiana, gained international recognition 30 years ago with his sculptures and installations using neon and argon lights. His most spectacular work in Europe is the one-kilometer long “Lichtweg,” which runs the entire length of the Munich airport. Although neon and fluorescent light have been an important part of his artistic vocabulary, Sonnier’s work distinguishes itself above all by the variety of materials used, and by its formal as well as thematic complexity.

Beginning with his earliest explorations with light, sound, video, and live and taped broadcasts, Sonnier has engaged in a constant investigation into the process of exchange which constitutes communication. As early as 1975, he created a 2-way open channel performance event connecting New York and Los Angeles via NASA CTS satellite. He explores sometimes by redefining the functions of the transmitter/receiver, sometimes by indicating and reconfiguring elements of the process, but always with an awareness of the energy fields in which we live and maneuver.

Selections of early video work will be presented as part of the exhibition, both on the Location One website and in the gallery. Keith Sonnier was among the first artists to incorporate technology into his work. By making the communication process an integral part of the art context, he forever changed the environment of contemporary art.

Sonnier is a seminal figure at Location One, as our central purpose is to encourage artists from different media and different cultures to experiment with advanced technological tools and delivery systems. He continues to explore technology with the careful tenacity of a research scientist and the vision of a poet.

“These are the perfect images of ‘the medium as the message.’”
—Flash Light, 6/01/97

Click here to view the embedded video.

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http://www.location1.org/delivery-system-no-1/ http://www.location1.org/delivery-system-no-1/#comments Thu, 03 May 2001 20:08:02 +0000 heather http://www.location1.org/delivery-system-no-1/ Gregory Whitehead is a playwright, audio artist, voice performer, radiomaker. Since 1984, Whitehead has written, performed and produced over eighty audio features, documentaries and earplays for broadcast in the US and abroad, together with an extensive list of credits in new media, theater, film and installations.]]>
DELIVERY SYSTEM NO. 1: A Theater for Nine Teleprompted Heads
May 3 – June 2 2001

“One of my earliest media memories: the celebrity tic-tac-toe game of Hollywood Squares. At the time, I had no idea who the celebrities were, what the questions were about, or why their answers were so funny, but the display of nine “caged” personae springing to life on cue still provides, to my mind, a kind of model for how electronic media deliver the goods. Meanwhile, real and prosthetic heads multiply like Hydras: click away from one and find two more in its place. War, stocks, sex scandals, murder, fashion and show business all beckon to the Hydra’s multitask faces. Delivery System No. 1 offers them a theater, by way of an installation play in three acts: GOOD MORNING, CATASTROPHE, and COURAGE. Synchronized swimming for the face, loops of refigured text, jumping the gap from inside the grid—who’s there?

—Gregory Whitehead

Gregory Whitehead is a playwright, audio artist, voice performer, radiomaker. Since 1984, Whitehead has written, performed and produced over eighty audio features, documentaries and earplays for broadcast in the US and abroad, together with an extensive list of credits in new media, theater, film and installations.

mp3 clips of some of his radio and audio works

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http://www.location1.org/recorders/ http://www.location1.org/recorders/#comments Thu, 22 Mar 2001 09:43:54 +0000 irp http://test.location1.org/news/recorders/ Recorders is an installation where a rotating camera and video projector interact with the visitor in a game of shadows and projection, images and text, narration and space, focus and blur. A pre-recorded conversation acts as voice-over for the entire set-up which is encompassed by a large image that resembles something like bits of information, white noise or a glittery seascape.

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RECORDERS by Katya Sander and François Bucher
March 22 – April 21, 2001

360° Quicktime VR of RECORDERS

Audio from RECORDERS

Artists’ statement:
“Recorders is an installation where a rotating camera and video projector interact with the visitor in a game of shadows and projection, images and text, narration and space, focus and blur. A pre-recorded conversation acts as voice-over for the entire set-up which is encompassed by a large image that resembles something like bits of information, white noise or a glittery seascape.

In this dialogue, two actors, a man and a woman, repeatedly fail to relate an event. The nuances of their relationship; the repeated obstacles in their communication; the interruptions that they undergo; their indecision over the sorting out of significant elements, and a general sense of paranoia, render the task impossible. At certain points they listen to a pre-recorded conversation and try to repeat it faithfully. They go on to switch roles and recite or correct each other’s words. The narration is never fully told, only further fragmented by their attempts. The sound of the sea recurs, a sort of erasure of what had been said, a kind of white noise that drowns and reshuffles their words.”

Recorders is a collaboration between Katya Sander and François Bucher.

Katya Sander is a Danish artist living and working in Copenhagen. François Bucher is a Colombian artist living and working in New York.

Click here to view the embedded video.

360° Quicktime VR of RECORDERS exhibit.
Click on the image and drag to view movie.

Curated by Harm Lux


September 9 through October 28
Opening: Saturday, September 9, 1-6 pm, Street Lunch at 2 pm
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 12-6 pm

G R A N D O P E N I N G

LIFE, After the Squirrel, the grand opening show of Location One has been curated by Harm Lux, an international curator, originally from the Netherlands, who has been based in Zurich for the past ten years.

LIFE, After the Squirrel will feature several European and American artists and a number of young artists discovered by Mr. Lux when he traveled throughout the United States researching new work. In addition to Location One’s actual space, the show will also be exhibited in a virtual dimension (QTVR). Viewers of the virtual dimension can actively participate, intervene and send these interventions back to the gallery via innovative software, which is currently being developed.

View Exhibition Website Here

May 1 – May 30, 2000

Lisa Bateman, Janene Higgins, Luther Price, Carolee Schneemann, Miroslaw Rogala

Location One is happy to announce the initiation of our film/video program with “Vivisection”, a video installation featuring work by Lisa Bateman, Janene Higgins, Luther Price, Miroslaw Rogala, and Carolee Schneemann.This work will appear in the gallery and will be streamed on our website.

“…suppressive taboos, the body of the artist in dynamic relationship with the social body”. This phrase, taken straight out of the biography of Carolee Schneemann, the brilliant multidisciplinary artist, whose collaborative video, made with Miroslaw Rogala, makes its US premiere in this show, is the key to all of these acutely perceptive short videos.

We will also begin our evening programming this month, every Monday through Thursday from 8-10 PM. The same day each week will be curated by a guest curator. Monday nights will belong to Pamela Grace, Tuesday to Mark McElhatten, Wednesday to Seamus Coutts, Thursday (TBA) Admission is $2.50.

Lisa Bateman
is a visual artist living and working in New York. Her current works are installations using painted and colored surfaces, mirrors, optics, found objects and video. She is increasingly interested in the history of particular sites, locations and institutions. She has exhibited in over thirty group exhibitions and six one-person shows in both the US and Europe. Her next projects will incorporate images of “learning” and “training” from the Global Institute of Technology and federal government programs in Manhattan. She teaches studio art and lectures in contemporary art at Pratt Institute in New York.

Janene Higgins
is a graphic designer and video artist living in New York City. Her videos and digital media have been presented in numerous festivals and galleries throughout North America, Europe and Japan. She has just completed her fourth artist residency at The Experimental Television Center in Owego, New York. Her work includes live video mixing in a performance setting, most often in an ongoing duo with electric harpist Zeena Parkins. Their latest piece, Arch, will premiere at Roulette this May.

Luther Price
Luxuriously laminated unforgiving process. Crusty enjeweled with imperfection. Oxygen tank, oxygen tank. Skies of white that turn blue the same day. Praying while fucking on a lollipop, for something to do with tomorrow. Ice cream cake. An eyeball kiss. Chickpeas and macaroni or hamburger stew. Toenails and colostomy bags full of corn and turkey gravy drag you down when your stomach is full of staples. Larger than life we scream, then whisper before we die.

Carolee Schneemann
multidisciplinary artist. Transformed the definition of art, especially discourse on the body, sexuality, and gender. The history of her work is characterized by research into archaic visual traditions, pleasure wrested from suppressive taboos, the body of the artist in dynamic relationship with the social body. Painting, photography, performance art and installation works shown at Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; Museum of Modern Art, NYC; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and most recently in a retrospective at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York entitled “Up To And Including Her Limits”. Film and video retrospectives Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, NY; National Film Theatre, London; Whitney Museum, NY; San Francisco Cinematheque; Anthology Film Archives, NYC. She has taught at many institutions including New York University, California Institute of the Arts, Bard College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recipient of a 1999 Art Pace International Artist Residency, San Antonio, Texas; Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (1997, 1998); 1993 Guggenheim Fellowship; Gottlieb Foundation Grant; National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, Maine College of Art, Portland, ME. Lifetime Achievement Award, College Art Association.