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Fall 2001 Schedule Maurizio
Cattelan His 6th Caribbean Biennial (1999) mocked the international art circuit by creating all the attendant signs of a major exhibition without installing any artwork, and providing a vacation in the sun for its featured artists. Another example, Lullaby (1994) is formally minimal with its two small rectangular piles of debris stacked on a wooden pallet, but the source of the rubble is politically charged as it came from three major Italian art institutions damaged by Mafia-related bomb attacks. Cattelan seeks to hit a nerve wherever he presents his work: in London he showed a massive block of black granite reminiscent of the Vietnam Memorial wall but carved with all the soccer World Cup matches lost by England, and in law abiding Holland he stole the entire contents of a gallery, from artworks to fax machines, for his De Appel exhibition. In this way he consistently turns modernist form against its own ideology and presents instead an ethically ambivalent mise en scène. "Irreverent" is a word frequently used to describe Cattelan's work. He has managed to poke fun at artworld luminaries from Picasso to Beuys, and has even entered the realm of the spiritual and political with The Ninth Hour (1999), in which a wax sculpture of Pope John Paul II is hit by a meteorite, and Him (2001), a rendering of Hitler kneeling in prayer under a halo of natural light. When: Tuesday, October 9 Where: The New School University, 66 West 12th Street(between 5th & 6th Avenues) Time: 6:30 p.m.
Shirin
Neshat Neshat first became known for her incisive photographs of chardor-clad women, often self-portraits, overlaid with Farsi texts in Persian script. Some explore concepts of self-martyrdom that were central to the Islamic revolution in Iran, and others include the feminist poetry of Forough Farrakhzad. Over the last several years Neshat has received international acclaim for her vivid films which are layered with rich imagery and stunning music. Turbulent (1998) won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and featured two facing screens. On one, a man sings to an audience an impassioned love song, gesturing and receiving applause. On the opposite screen, a woman stands on stage in an empty theatre, and begins to sing an extraordinary wordless song that embodies the deepest emotions. Neshat's frequent musical collaborator, Sussan Deyhim is this singer, and is a composer who often mixes traditional Islamic forms with modern technology. Neshat's 1999 Rapture also features Deyhim's gripping compositions matched with stark visuals that depict a drama of erotic attraction. And most recently, Neshat collaborated with Phillip Glass on Passage (2001) in which a burial ritual is carried out on a desert plain, with men and women taking seemingly prescribed roles. Again the musical and visual impact work in tandem to provide an almost anthropological study within a forceful experience of emotion and spiritualism. When: Tuesday, October 23 Where: The New School University, 66 West 12th Street(between 5th & 6th Avenues) Time:
6:30 p.m. Jeff
Wall Wall's earlier work offered more direct social critique paired with formal historical types as with The Arrest (1989) which features police officers leading away a sad-looking, Middle-Eastern young man and The Destroyed Room (1978) depicting a violently trashed woman's bedroom. With the massive size of his photographs (The Vampire's Picnic (1991) measures 90 x 132 inches and The Flooded Grave (1998-2000) measures 90 x 111 inches), Wall invites participation in his presentations and creates a feeling similar to that of standing in front of Courbet's Burial at Ornans. Heroic scale offsets the mundane subject, and the power of his images often comes from this interplay of visual organization and subject. Despite Wall's attachment to the "everyday" his process is extremely complex with custom-made photo production materials and advanced computers and props necessary to create the outsized transparencies for which he is so well known. When: Tuesday, November 27 Where: The New School University, 66 West 12th Street(between 5th & 6th Avenues) Time:
6:30 p.m.
Talks Archive
Spring 2011 Schedule
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