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Spring 2002 Schedule

Larry Rinder - Whitney Biennial 2002
The Whitney Biennial began in 1918 as the first major public forum for contemporary American art. It has since become one of the most eagerly anticipated exhibitions and continues to play a leading role in showcasing vanguard works by artists residing in the United States. In the past, the exhibition has been recognized not only for its artistic innovation but also for its controversial record. This year's Biennial Curator, Larry Rinder, the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator of Contemporary Art, will discuss his selections for the 2002 Whitney Biennial.

Before his arrival at the Whitney in 2000, Rinder was the Director of the CCAC Institute at the California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco and Oakland. He was also the curator for 20th-century art and MATRIX at the Berkeley Art Museum. Rinder served as an advisor to both the 1991 and 1993 Whitney Biennials and was among the six co-curators selected to organize the 2000 Whitney Biennial.

When: Tuesday, March 12

Where: The New School University, 66 West 12th Street(between 5th & 6th Avenues)

Time: 6:30 p.m.

 
Whitney Biennial in Central Park, Organized by the Public Art Fund
At the invitation of the Whitney Museum, the Public Art Fund has organized the Whitney Biennial in Central Park, a major exhibition marking the first time that the two institutions have co-curated a project from outset to realization. Tom Eccles, Director of the Public Art Fund will introduce Kiki Smith, Kim Sooja, Brian Tolle, Keith Edmier, and Roxy Paine. Following the presentations, Stefano Basilico, Curator of the New School University Art Collection will moderate a discussion.

The five artists-selected jointly by Larry Rinder and Tom Eccles-are all New Yorkers who have been commissioned by Public Art Fund to make dynamic new work uniquely suited for specific sites within the inimitable setting of Central Park. Located at Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Keith Edmier's Emil Dobbelstein and Henry Drope, 1944 is a seemingly conventional war memorial to his grandfathers, who both served in the Second World War. Kiki Smith's Sirens and Harpies, based upon the deadly temptresses and voracious monsters in Greek mythology, will greet visitors at the gateway to the Central Park Zoo. The multidisciplinary artist Kim Sooja has created a vibrantly colorful installation of Korean bed coverings for the Leaping Frog Café. Roxy Paine's spectacular Bluff is a fifty-foot high tree made of brilliantly reflective stainless steel. And, beneath the bridge of Central Park Lake, Brian Tolle's Waylay, is a series of scattered splashes which appear to be caused by someone skipping a rock across the water.

When: Tuesday, March 26

Where: The New School University, 66 West 12th Street(between 5th & 6th Avenues)

Time: 6:30 p.m.

Vik Muniz
Brazilian artist Vik Muniz will speak about his interest in the history of photography, illusory techniques, and the nature of visual representation. Muniz' works teases the eye by presenting the viewer with familiar images created from unusual and surprising materials. His photographs are based on models that he makes using food or found items like chocolate syrup, dust, tomato sauce, cotton, and sugar. Deriving from a variety of sources-portraits of Sigmund Freud or Liz Taylor, Jackson Pollock abstractions, cloud patterns, children of sugarcane laborers-Muniz' imagery reveals his sense of humor as well as his irreverence for an original work of art, calling into question the significance of an original versus a reproduction.

Described as "low-tech" illusions, the images in Muniz' photographs draw attention to our methods of observation. Muniz' detailed pictures of the floor tile MoMA -New York, are shot at such close range that at first, they appear like images of a starry night. Interested in the way our eyes can play tricks on our minds, his work produces a short-circuit effect once the viewer realizes what the images actually are and/or what materials are used to create them. Muniz explores the borders between reality and artifice and the import placed on sight.

Born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1961, Muniz has lived and worked in New York City since the mid-1980s. He began his career as a sculptor, eventually turning his attention exclusively to photography. He has had solo exhibitions at the Centre National de la Photographie, Paris, and the International Center of Photography, New York. His work has also been included in various exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial 2000, the Corcoran Gallery of Art's 46th Biennial Exhibition: Media/Metaphor in Washington DC, and The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

When: Tuesday, April 9

Where: The New School University, 66 West 12th Street(between 5th & 6th Avenues)

Time: 6:30 p.m.

Gregory Crewdson
Public Art Fund presents a special *Thursday Night Talk with Photographer Gregory Crewdson. He will discuss a new book with an essay by Rick Moody about his work Twilight Series, 1998-2002. Expanding on themes previously explored in his work, this series examines familiar tropes of American suburban life, highlighting tensions between domestic bliss and modern-day anxieties. The Untitled photographs consist of elaborately staged cinematic tableaus of clichéd domestic environments infused with supernatural effects. In Twilight Series, Crewdson presents a fragmented narrative reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock or David Lynch films in which the appearance of normalcy is questioned. Like the fiction of A.M. Holmes, Joyce Carol Oates, and Rick Moody, Crewdson reveals his disillusionment with the utopian notion of the American Dream, presenting an alternate view of life gone awry.

Born in 1962 in Brooklyn, Crewdson received his MFA from Yale University in 1988, where he now teaches photography. Crewdson's work has been exhibited widely including solo-shows at the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Partobject Gallery, Carrboro, North Carolina. His work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum among others.

When: *Thursday, May 23

Where: The New School University, 66 West 12th Street(between 5th & 6th Avenues)

Time: 6:30 p.m.

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