 Installation shot Kim Levin Notes and Itineraries, 1976 - 2005 Haas & Mayer Gallery will exhibit "Notes and Itineraries" by Kim Levin, a prominent New York art critic and curator. As a regular contributor to "The Village Voice", Levin was responsible for compiling and evaluating its weekly art listings for more than twenty years. Devising a system to organize the information about hundreds of ever-changing exhibitions, Levin used available scavenged gallery promotional material to write down her lists for gallery visits and her on-site observations, coding her reactions as she progressed. Levin accumulated a prodigious archive directly connected to the very subject of her weekly investigations - a multi-layered survey of the vibrant New York art scene into the twenty-first century. The show serves partly to mirror the evolution of art in New York during a period of explosive growth. Tracking the years 1975 to 1991, hundreds of postcard exhibition announcements from downtown galleries are pinned upright. The collection represents early exhibitions by artists like Leon Golub, William Wegman, Sherrie Levine and many others who went on to occupy permanent niches in the official histories of Postmodernist art. It also reflects the downtown art world's geographical swing from SoHo in the 1970's to the East Village in the 1980's and back to SoHo. With visual impact, the installation provides the opportunity for historical analysis and personal recollections. Projecting from the wall in rhythmic patterns, hundreds of notated gallery cards chronicle the years from 1995 to 2005 from which the viewer can extract spheres of inquiry - aesthetic trends, trajectories of careers, shifting power centers, and economic cycles. Patchwork grids of annotated press releases and announcements capture the energy and diversity of the times, revealing highlights and hidden surprises. Another collection of postcard announcements, not annotated, beginning as early as 1976, documents the merging of minimalism into the funhouse of the '80s and the scourge of AIDS. "Notes and Itineraries" allows to trace the history of the art world in exhibition announcements and to behold the names of galleries that no longer exist and artists who have passed away. This show is a reminder that what may be most ephemeral about the art world is the art world itself. Objects remain but everything else will one day be gone. The exhibition is curated by John Salvest, an Arkansas artist, whose work relates to accumulation. As curator for an exhibition of Levin's archives at Delta Axis @ Marshall Arts in Memphis in 2003, he has written: "I suppose that Ms. Levin's contribution can be conveniently examined via microfiche and the digital archives of The Village Voice. ...But I prefer the spontaneous notes and impromptu drawings on scraps of dated material, evidence of an inventive and disciplined mind fully engaged with the art of a particular time in a particular place." Kim Levin, author of "Beyond Modernism: Essays on Art from the '70s and '80s" (Harper Collins 1988; Tokyo Shoseki 1991), has taught at the Philadelphia College of Art, Parsons The New School for Design, Claremont Graduate School, and The School of Visual Arts. She was advisor to the 1995 Kwangju Biennial in Korea and has organized exhibitions in Denmark, Germany, Japan, Norway, Poland, and the United States. President of the International Association of Art Critics from 1996 to 2002, her awards include the Art/World Award for Distinguished Newspaper Journalism in 1986 and the SECA Fellowship for Criticism by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1993. In 2004, she was selected as a Fellow for the Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Program. Exhibition June 3 - July 1, 2006 Gallery hours Tues-Sat 11 am - 6 pm Haas & Mayer Gallery Sihlhallenstrasse 19 8004 Zürich Telephone +41 (0)43 538 61 46 Fax +41 (0)43 538 61 53 www.haasmayer.com |
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