Environmental-themed art exhibit opens at Wesleyan's Zilkha Gallery Tuesday, Jan. 29

Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University
238 Washington Ter., Middletown, (860) 685-3355
FOOD-WATER-LIFE---LUCY+JORGE ORTA
Through Mar. 3, 2012.
Opening reception: Tues., Jan. 29, 4:30—6:30 p.m.
Gallery talk at 5 p.m by guest curator Judith Hoos Fox.
Artist Lecture with Lucy Orta: Tue., Feb. 26, 4:15 p.m. in the CFA Hall

Press release from the Zilkha Gallery

FOOD-WATER-LIFE---LUCY+JORGE ORTA, an exhibition of sculptures, drawings, mixed-media installations and video that explores crucial themes of the contemporary world—biodiversity, environmental conditions, climate change and exchange among peoples, organized by Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox of c2 curatorsquared for Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, Massachusetts, will be on view in Wesleyan University’s Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery from Fri., Jan. 25 through Sun., Mar. 3, 2013. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday from Noon to 5pm. Gallery admission is free.

The public is invited to attend the opening reception on Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013 from 4:30—6:30 p.m., with a gallery talk at 5 p.m. by Judith Hoos Fox, co-curator of the exhibition. The opening reception is free.

Artist Lucy Orta will discuss the ideas explored in the exhibition FOOD-WATER-LIFE---LUCY+JORGE ORTA in the context of Studio Orta’s work during a free lecture on Tue., Feb. 26, 2013 at 4:15 p.m. in the CFA Hall, located at 287 Washington Terrace on the Wesleyan campus in Middletown, Connecticut.

This is the first comprehensive exhibition of work by the French wife-husband duo Lucy+Jorge Orta to be presented in the United States. The works in this exhibition are drawn from major solo exhibitions by the Ortas held at venues around the world. FOOD-WATER-LIFE---LUCY+JORGE ORTA debuted at the Tufts University Art Gallery in Medford, Massachusetts in September 2012. Following the engagement at Wesleyan University, FOOD-WATER-LIFE---LUCY+JORGE ORTA will travel to museum venues across the United States, including the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York in 2014; and the Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, California and the Richard E. Peeler Art Center, DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana in 2015.

The works in FOOD-WATER-LIFE embody the philosophy that steers the pioneering art practice of Lucy+Jorge Orta, "the ethics of aesthetics." As heirs to the practice of social sculpture, formulated by Joseph Beuys in the 1960s, the Ortas’ works are reflections of their own function—beguiling assemblages that are the platform for the preparation of food, mechanisms that actually purify water, and elements created for their 2007 expedition to Antarctica, and that are part of an effort to amend the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The works in this exhibition are metaphors-in-action, constructions that perform the tasks of which they are emblematic.

These humorous, jerrybuilt contraptions are obviously not the most efficient means to purify, prepare and transport food and water, or to launch a world-wide humanitarian effort. It is in their ability to actually function, albeit awkwardly and haltingly, that these objects gain power as works of art created to move us to awareness and action. The artists have created a unique visual language through which they tackle the major global issues affecting our lives and the precarious position of this planet. As the Ortas' artwork communicates widely to audiences beyond the field of contemporary art, it demonstrates the importance of art as a creative agent for awareness and change.

The works in the FOOD section of the exhibition are drawn from the series "HortiRecycling" (1997-present) that focuses on the food chain in global and local contexts. Through an ongoing series of actions and interventions and the integral associated equipment, the Ortas deal with alternative systems for a just distribution of food. The fact that farmers in European Union countries still have to destroy millions of fresh agricultural products each year because of cheap imports from industrial farming countries, despite worldwide hunger, inspired the artists to create this project. The precipitating action was the collection of fruits and vegetables that had been discarded at markets. They were carefully washed, and celebrity chefs created meals and put up preserves from these rescued foodstuffs. The produce was transported to the exhibition site on moveable-processing units equipped with sinks, cutting surfaces, and hot plates. Now sculptural objects, their life as working kitchens is complete.

The works in the WATER section of the exhibition are part of the series "OrtaWater" (2005-present) that focuses on the general scarcity of this vital resource and the issues surrounding the privatization and corporate control that affect access to clean water. The aim of this work is to contribute proactively to the broadening of our understanding and development of sustainable solutions for the dilemmas surrounding water—its purification, transport, and distribution. Through combining functional objects, photography and sound, the Ortas create and communicate the reach of the issue through means of ameliorating it, through contraptions that are both playful and provocative. Of particular significance is their research into low-cost purification and distribution devices, to provoke a wider understanding of the current technologies available. Fully functioning machines and bottling stations distributing purified OrtaWater are incorporated into these artworks, enabling filthy water to be pumped and filtered directly from neighboring polluted water sources. The pump-station was first tested during the Venice Biennale in 2005, pumping water from the Grand Canal that was then purified and offered in sample bottles to visitors.

Lucy+Jorge Orta: "OrtaWater-Fluvial Intervention Unit," 2005, Canadian maple wood canoe, steel structure, glass shelves, copper and plastic tubes, gloves, 4 buckets, 4 crates, 4 water drums, 2 water tanks, 2 light projectors, 4 flasks, copper tubes and taps, audio mp3, speakers, 24 OrtaWater bottles, 102 ½ x 200 ¾ x 47 ¼ in. Courtesy of the artists and Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing / le Moulin. Photography: Gino Gabrieli

The works in the LIFE section of the exhibition are drawn from the series "Antarctica" (2007-present) that focuses on international human rights and free international migration. Their most ambitious project to date, Lucy+Jorge Orta produced an expedition and installation "Antarctic Village—No Borders," that took place in Antarctica in 2007 through a commission by The End of the World Biennale. This multi-part project addresses issues of the environment, politics, autonomy, habitat, mobility, and relationships among peoples. There are several inter-related groupings of work in this project, including the "Drop Parachutes," each focusing on critical human needs for food, water and comfort; "Survival Kits," wall-mounted assemblages with similar purposes; a film that poetically transmutes us into fellow expedition participants; and a utopian passport that would insure free movement across all borders, available to visitors who voluntarily add their name to the petition to amend the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights with new Article 13.3, a reminder that we are all part of one precarious and fragile planet.

About Lucy+Jorge Orta

The collaborative practice of Lucy+Jorge Orta focuses on a number of sustainability issues tackling the ecological and the social factors to realize major bodies of work employing a number of mediums ranging from drawing, sculpture, installation, object making, couture, painting, silkscreen printing and "Light Works," as well as staging workshops, ephemeral interventions and performances. Some of the most emblematic series are "Refuge Wear" and "Body Architecture"—portable minimum habitats bridging architecture and dress; "70 x 7 The Meal"—the ritual of dining and its role in community networking; "The Gift"—a metaphor for the heart and the biomedical ethics of organ donation; and "Amazonia"—the value of the natural environment to our daily lives and to our survival.

Working in partnership since 2005, the duo creates, produces, and assembles their artworks and large installations together with a team of artists, designers, architects, and craftspeople. They stage on-location workshops, ephemeral interventions, residencies, and master classes, which explore the crucial themes of the contemporary world: the community, autonomy, dwelling, migration, sustainable development, and recycling.

Opening reception for "Passing Time" at Wesleyan Zilkha Gallery On January 31

Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University
238 Washington Ter., Middletown, (860) 685-3355
Passing Time
Jan. 27—Mar. 4, 2012.
Opening reception: Tues., Jan. 31, 5—7 p.m.
Gallery talk at 5:30 p.m by guest curator Judith Hoos Fox.

Press release

Passing Time, a new exhibition of recent works by 14 international artists in a range of media, explores the multiple and converging meanings of the phrase “passing time." Organized by guest curators Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox of c2 curatorsquared, the exhibition will be on view in Wesleyan University’s Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, located at 283 Washington Terrace on the Wesleyan campus in Middletown, from Fri., Jan. 27 through Sun., Mar. 4, 2012. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday from noon—4 p.m. Gallery admission is free.

The public is invited to attend the opening reception on Tues., Jan. 31, 2012 from 5—7 p.m., with a gallery talk at 5:30 p.m. by guest curator Judith Hoos Fox. The opening reception is free.

The various meanings of the phrase “passing time”—spending time, time to die—are explored in the evocative imagery of the works in Passing Time—video, photography, sculpture and works on paper. Some artists turn to sport, some to music; some refer to nature and its rhythms to explore concepts of time—short term, long term and terminating. Others partner with time itself in their making of art. Time is a concept that philosophers and physicists ponder. Time provides a framework that orders, measures and defines. We spend time, we waste it, we keep it; time flies, it drags. It is elastic in its perception—long when we are young, gaining momentum as we age. The Passing Time exhibition explores the relationship between the time of our life and the time of the eons.

Following the engagement at Wesleyan University, Passing Time will travel to the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana and other venues through the fall of 2013. In 2010, c2 curatorsquared organized the exhibition Connectivity Lost, which addressed the ways we are estranged from each other and from the environment in which we live. Connectivity Lost was on view in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery from Sept. 11 through Dec. 6, 2010.

"We are really glad to be back at Wesleyan for a second exhibition," said Ms. Fox. "We first identified Passing Time as a subject being explored by a great number of artists across the world and across media about four years ago. The Venice Biennale was particularly rich. That is where we saw the Shaun Gladwell Storm Sequence. Maybe it’s the speed at which we all live these days, on fast forward, that makes artists start to look at time. Maybe we were particularly aware of the subject because of things going on in our own lives—children growing up before our eyes; an older generation dying."

The artists, known and emerging, featured in Passing Time include Matthew Buckingham (United States), Jonathan Callan (United Kingdom), Luis Camnitzer (United States), Rineke Dijkstra (The Netherlands), Ken Fandell (United States), Shaun Gladwell (Australia), Felix Gonzalez-Torres (United States), Leandro Katz (Argentina), Katrin Korfmann (The Netherlands, Germany), Philipp Lachenmann (Germany), Stefana McClure (United States), Su-Mei Tse (Luxembourg, France), Siebren Versteeg (United States), and Bill Viola (United States).

"The North Gallery [of the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery is a wonderful place for a room-sized installation of video, and we are putting Siebren Versteeg’s dual projection live feed piece there. We really want to take advantage of the elegant glass link to that gallery, and are working on a way to install the Katrin Korfmann light box piece in this link. And Luis Camnitzer's Last Words should read powerfully when placed [on the far back wall]. Each work [in Passing Time] is there because of the particular voice it brings to the conversation," said Fox.

Jeffrey Schiff show opens Tuesday at Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan

Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University
238 Washington Ter., Middletown, (860) 685-3355
Jeffrey Schiff: Double Vision: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society
Jan. 21—Feb. 27, 2011.
Opening reception: Tues., Jan. 25, 5—7 p.m.
Gallery talk at 5:30 p.m.

Press release

Double Vision: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society is a solo exhibition of new work by artist Jeffrey Schiff, which exposes how unconscious projections from America’s colonial past shape perceptions of its current reality.

In 1786, members of the American Philosophical Society, including such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Priestly, published personal accounts of the natural world in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (subtitled “Useful Knowledge”). Schiff has created a body of work distilling anecdotes from these texts into concrete images: a field of terracotta pots—some smashed to reveal interior organs; an 18th-century painting of a slave girl transformed into a fragmented nautical map; laboratory experiments in purity and contamination; and stereoscopic displays of animal hearts.

Double Vision will be on view in Wesleyan University’s Zilkha Gallery from Fri., Jan. 21 through Sun., Feb. 27, 2011. The public is invited to attend the opening reception on Tues., Jan. 25 from 5–7 p.m., with a gallery talk at 5:30 p.m.

Double Vision is based specifically on three accounts from the Transactions: Two Hearts Found in One Partridge, Account of a Worm in a Horse’s Eye, and Some Account of a Motley Coloured, or Pye Negro Girl and Mulatto Boy. These texts are records of personal observations and explanations of the natural world, which purport to be scientific accounts, yet reveal themselves as wholly subjective descriptions rife with the biases and superstitions of the day. Together, the texts unwittingly reveal the era’s unresolved struggle between rationality and superstition, democratic ideals and cultural traditions of elitism and slavery—struggles we have inherited as we negotiate (sometimes violently) conflicting views of scientific enterprise, globalism, religious and ethnic identity, and the information age. Schiff’s sculptural extrapolations intervene in the historical text, giving physical form to the preoccupations of America’s early conscience. In contrast with a more traditional exhibition format of presenting historical documents and artifacts as time capsules of a particular era, Double Vision abstracts from the text to initiate a dialogue across time and culture.

The exhibition is curated by Andrea Hill of Seven Hills Advisory.

Jeffrey Schiff is a sculptor/installation artist whose work explores the interplay between order and disorder, rationality and custom, and the uses of information. He has received numerous fellowships and prizes, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, a Senior Scholar Fulbright Fellowship to India, Bogliasco Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio residencies, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Facing the truth: Artist Daniel Heyman bears witness in show at Wesleyan

I've written about Daniel Heyman's artwork previously, specifically back in 2008 when some of Heyman's prints were included in a portraiture show at the Guilford Art Center. Heyman currently has a show at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University. I have a review of this show in this week's New Haven Advocate as well as on the Advocate's Web site:

What have we done? What terrible crimes were committed in our name whose perpetrators are not held to account? Some answers to these questions come in the form of a searing exhibition of portraits by Daniel Heyman, Bearing Witness: Stories from the Front Lines, currently on display at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University.

Heyman accompanied a team of human rights lawyers to Istanbul and Amman where they interviewed former Abu Ghraib detainees. Sitting in on dozens of interviews from 2005 to 2008, Heyman sketched and painted the former prisoners’ portraits while also scrawling text of their harrowing accounts into the images. The show also includes eight portraits of African-American men, primarily former felons now committed to being responsible members of the community. Additionally, two wood sculptures illustrated with black-and-white allegorical etchings critiquing our national disfigurement by war are installed in the gallery. The latter two works reminded me of Picasso’s “Guernica.”

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Friday opening at Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan

Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University
238 Washington Ter., Middletown, (860) 685-3355
Bearing Witness: Stories from the Front Lines
Apr. 24—May 23, 2010.
Opening reception: Fri., Apr. 23, 5—7 p.m.

Press release

From 2005 through 2008, painter and printmaker Daniel Heyman accompanied a team of human rights attorneys to Istanbul and Amman, where he sat in on dozens of interviews of formerly detained Iraqis. Closer to home, in 2008 and 2009, Heyman began painting another group of people with few opportunities to tell their stories: poor, recently incarcerated African-American men in Philadelphia, all of whom are fathers.

Bearing Witness: Stories from the Front Lines is an exhibition of Heyman's portraits of both of these groups, and runs from Sat., Apr. 24 through Sun., May 23, 2010 in Wesleyan's Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. It incorporates first-person testimony and features a plywood wall installation that provokes questions about the ongoing crisis in the Middle East. The exhibition is curated by Zilkha Gallery's Nina Felshin.

The public is invited to attend the opening reception on Fri., Apr. 23 from 5-7 p.m., with Daniel Heyman giving a talk at 5:30 p.m.

The portraits and accompanying text provide powerful and disturbing insight into the experiences of Heyman's subjects. One account of abuse by American forces that Sadik Saturi al-Dailami related to American human rights attorneys in Istanbul after his release from Abu Ghraib prison in 2008, hauntingly begins "I was in the cage seven days." Heyman artfully weaves the words of this testimony into his depiction of the speaker, integrating a dress shirt and tie with the story: "After my hand was broken (fingers stepped on by Lynndie England), I passed out. Then she dragged me." Amazingly, in part because of the amount of time it took to translate into English, Heyman was able to complete each portrait during the course of the interview.

Returning to the United States, he observed his next subjects in Philadelphia progress from inexperienced parents with uncertain futures to responsible members of their communities, guided by the National Comprehensive Center for Fathers. In creating their portraits, Heyman was "impressed by the honesty with which they shared their thoughts and their life stories." What began as a limited commission for a one-day Philly Fathers exhibition two years ago has grown into a seven-portrait collection of fractured, but healing, urban lives, in the same style of interwoven image and text as his project in the Middle East.

Bearing Witness features portraits of both former detainees and former felons; each has his own story. The renderings of prisoners released from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison give humanity and a voice to that cohort of men and women now bound together by their survival. In similar fashion, the Philly Fathers series allows the viewer not only to see the men but also to hear their moving stories. The dignity of Heyman's subjects is underscored by the fragile yet powerfully seductive formal qualities that characterize the artist's unique style. His delicate yet assertive use of color, line, and text as a formal element result in work that is intriguing, powerful and completely engaging.

In a departure from his two-dimensional work, for this exhibition Heyman has created a 10 x 14 foot plywood wall printed with images that is meant to provoke questions about our understanding of ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. "Without the wall," Heyman explains, "it might be too easy to look at the portraits and think, 'this is all in the past, everything's returned to normal,' when it hasn't."

Daniel Heyman received degrees from Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania, prestigious grants from the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, Independence Foundation, the AMJ Foundation and the Rhode Island School of Design. He is also a 2010 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. He currently resides in Philadelphia and teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design, Princeton University, and Swarthmore College.

Friday opening: video installations at Wesleyan's Zilkha Gallery

Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University
238 Washington Ter., Middletown, (860) 685-3355
Julika Rudelius: Projections
Jan. 23—Feb. 28, 2010, 2009.
Opening reception: Fri., Jan. 22, 5—7 p.m., Artist talk at 5:30 p.m.

Press release

At Wesleyan University's Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, German artist Julika Rudelius will be represented in her third American solo exhibition by three video installations "Adrift," "Forever" and "Your Blood Is As Red As Mine." As with all Rudelius' work, these works starkly and powerfully explore private experience within the public sphere. In addition, by combining documentary and staged events the artist intentionally confuses and reinforces a sense of what is real and what is fiction.

Since the early 2000s, her work has addressed subjects ranging from adolescent boys discussing their sexual experiences to politicians introducing their interns to the world of domination and obedience in Washington, DC to businessmen talking about the significance of money.

Julika Rudelius: Projections runs Sat., Jan. 23 through Sun., Feb. 28, 2010. The public is invited to attend the opening reception on Fri., Jan. 22 from 5—7 p.m., with an artist talk at 5:30 p.m.

"Your Blood Is As Red As Mine" (2004, 15:56 min), the earliest work in the show was shot in Amsterdam and consists of a series of staged interviews and situations that focus on skin color and the representation of "the other." How does it feel to be black, dark-skinned, or white? What is light? And what does light do to a photo of a dark face? A white woman, the artist, spends some time in a black community, where she talks to people about the color of their skin, and about the photos that she makes of them.

For the synchronized video installation "Forever" (2006,16:40 min), Rudelius cast five American "women of a certain age" for their beauty. Each is posing at an upscale private swimming pool in the Hamptons. Each reflects on her notions of beauty - ways to obtain it and its relationship to privilege. Straddling a fine line, this work succeeds in both evoking and critiquing stereotypes at the same time.

For "Adrift" (2007, 4:50 min), a short single-channel projection, the artist assembled twenty people of varying age and background and seated them inside an anonymous waiting room, where they seem to drift between the waking world of bureaucracy and administration and a childlike state of dreams and vulnerability. The room bobs and sways, knocking the sleepers' heads from side to side. Amidst the gentle tumult of the room, the unconscious sleepers shift about as they try to remain comfortable despite the unusual movement.

Julika Rudelius was born in Cologne, Germany and now divides her time between New York and Amsterdam. After a career in publishing and photography, she studied at the Rijks Academy in Amsterdam where she discovered video. She was a resident in the International Studio and Curatorial Program, NY, 2006 and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace program, 2008. Solo exhibitions include those at the Swiss Institute, NY; Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris; Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam; and the Westfalian Institute of Contemporary Art ,Germany. Her work has also been exhibited at the Tate Modern, Bard Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and MOCA North Miami.

Thursday opening at the Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan

Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University
238 Washington Ter., Middletown, (860) 685-3355
Eiko & Koma: Time is not Even, Space is not Empty
Nov. 20—Dec. 20, 2009
Opening reception: Thurs., Nov. 19, 5—7 p.m.
Artist talk at 5:30 p.m.

Press release

Time is not Even, Space is not Empty at Wesleyan University's Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery is the first event of Eiko & Koma's multi-year Retrospective Project. For this groundbreaking project, Eiko & Koma place themselves in the unusual role of self-curating a series of visual and performance exhibitions that explore their own legacy. Long familiar to the Wesleyan community as performers and teachers, Eiko & Koma are innovative artists originally from Japan. Based in New York since 1976, they have since presented their works worldwide and are the recipients of numerous honors, including the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and the American Dance Festival's Scripps Award.

Time is not Even, Space is not Empty will use video, textiles, smells, and other objects to create a textured landscape, illuminating how the intersection of space and time is dense with memories and possibilities. Both old and new performance works of Eiko & Koma are source material for this exhibition: Fission (1980), Wind (1993), Breath (1998) and Raven (2009). Together they serve to promote deeper understanding of Eiko & Koma's artistic trajectory. Furthermore, during the Zilkha show, Eiko & Koma will often be seen working and rehearsing in the space to further develop their retrospective project.

The larger Retrospective Project is comprised of new commissions, restagings of old work, the publication of a catalog, video compilations, panels, and workshops and will allow Eiko & Koma to explore the past and present of their 38-year collaboration. In the next three years, different phases of the project will be presented in New York City and other cities across the US, including a "living" installation at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2010.

The public is invited to attend the opening reception for Time is not Even, Space is not Empty on Thurs., Nov. 19 from 5—7 p.m. Starting at 5:30 p.m., Eiko & Koma will begin a performance in various parts of the gallery space. The performance will be recorded and will subsequently be shown as a part of the installation during the remainder of the exhibition. The exhibition will run from November 20 through December 20. Gallery Hours: Tuesday—Sunday, noon—4 p.m.; Friday noon—8 p.m.