 Basim Magdy: Two Days to Apocalypse, 2003 DVD still, flash animation on DVD, 3:40 min. re: source Twenty-Two International Artists Rework Original Source in a Group Exhibition Drawn from Art in General's Open Submissions Yasser Aggour (NYC), Rutherford Chang and Emily Chua (NYC), SunTek Chung (NYC), Maria Dumlao (NYC), Adriana García Galán (Paris, France), Shaun Gladwell (Sydney, Australia), Garrick Imatani (NYC), Yeondoo Jung (Seoul, Korea), Irini Karayannopoulou (Athens, Greece), Joel Kyack (NYC), Mayumi Lake (Chicago, IL), Jeanine Oleson and Ellen Lesperance (NYC), Basim Magdy (Cairo, Egypt), Julian Montague (Buffalo, NY), Marco Roso (NYC), Xaviera Simmons (NYC), Shinique Smith (NYC), Marcelino Stuhmer (Chicago, IL), Bradley Wood (NYC), Tom Yglesias (Novato, CA) Funeral homes glow like amusement parks and wood dwellers don pelts in ""re: source"", a group exhibition that presents the multiplicity of voices, styles, and ideas that characterize the hundreds of submissions Art in General receives annually. For over twenty years, Art in General has been committed to exhibiting and promoting the work of emerging artists through its Open Submissions Policy - an inclusive and competitive process that allows any artist to submit materials for consideration. This year, out of over 700 submissions, Advisory Panelists culled an exhibition that gathers the work of 22 emerging artists working today in various media, ranging from painting and sculpture to video and installations. Art in General's annual exhibition drawn from submissions is designed to be non-thematic, but, in fact, various themes do emerge from the trends that inform and influence artists working today. "re: source" is meant to evoke the varying relationships among the works and how the viewer's interpretation of each piece is molded by the context in which it is presented and the works that surround it. The artists in "re: source" appropriate, employ, and directly reference popular culture and media to an end that is wholly different. Movies, newspapers, the internet, science fiction, and fairytales form the fodder for their revisions. Maria Dumlao, who is developing a new work for the exhibition, extracts stills from over a hundred films, directed by the likes of Hitchcock, Antonioni, and Godard, that depict a female character with her back to the audience. References to source materials are also seen in the work of Rutherford Chang and Emily Chua, who make drawings over newspaper collages, or Joel Kyack, who uses the grid structure of the comic strip for his series of cartoon-like watercolors that address desire, expectation, and isolation by illustrating mundane, daily scenes. Basim Magdy's short animation conjures the apocalypse, borrowing iconic images from popular culture - Superman, E.T., and white doves - and Irini Karayannopoulou's whimsical works on paper superimpose fairy tale-like images and landscapes. Many of the works in "re: source" construct fantastical scenes or imaginary tableauxs fashioned from myths or fairytales, while others use the daily or mundane as a point of departure. In Jeanine Oleson and Ellen Lesperance's collaborative series of photographs, the artists enact a parallel existence, a fantasy of living outside of society while being absolutely rooted in it. Yeondoo Jung's slide projections cast ordinary individuals as protagonists in their own fantasies. For example, one image of a young Korean man working in gas station in Seoul is juxtaposed with another image of that same individual as an F1 racing champion. SunTek Chung's staged, cliché environments carefully re-construct the utterly banal, while Mayumi Lake's lens transforms the grim reality of funeral homes around America into ethereal, almost fantastical places. Julian Montague's fastidious taxonomy of shopping carts elevates this common object and at the same time casts a critical glance at the process of classification in general. And, Tom Yglesias abstracts the ordinary by digitally altering photographs of the backs of large cargo trucks. Other artists in the exhibition also isolate or elevate common cultural symbols as a means of revisiting their meaning or significance. Garrick Imatani will create a hand-sewn flag that reads "What do we want?" in English and "When do we want it?" in Chinese, a passage borrowed from contemporary protests and, in turn, appropriated by corporate America, contemporary social protests, and traditional sport cheers. During the course of the exhibition, Imatani's work will be hung outside Art in General, temporarily replacing the organization's flag. Adriana García Galán will present a discrete sound work that gathers the various hymns and chants of insurrection groups in her native Colombia. Marcelino Stuhmer, who studies historical narratives in art, film, and politics, will present a new series of paintings based on film-footage from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", both the 1955 original version and its 1978 remake. Marco Roso, whose work is largely influenced by MTV aesthetics, will create an installation combining (and clashing) a disco-fashion mural painting and a heavy metal-based video, and Shinique Smith makes installations that are drawn from an amalgam of different sources from hip hop and graffiti to abstract expressionism and Japanese calligraphy. Bradley Wood has created a video installation that links the growth of a digitally rendered plant to the foot traffic of the gallery. Past artistic traditions serve as the source for others in the exhibition. Xaviera Simmons uses the tradition of portraiture and self-portraiture to explore multiplicity of identity while Yasser Aggour employs portraiture as a means of commenting on global culture and politics through representations of political figures, such as presidential advisor David Gergen. Shaun Gladwell's videos juxtapose traditional landscape art and popular culture. "Video Storm Sequence 2000" shows the artist skateboarding against the backdrop of the stormy Australian ocean. "re: source" performances As an added component to the annual Advisory Panel exhibition, a series of performances will held in Art in General's street-level Project Space from November 3 to 6, featuring works by Charles McGill (NYC), Nicolas Dumit Estévez (NYC), Darius Ziûra (Lithuania), Karen Porter Sorensen (NYC), Will Kwan (NYC), and exhibition artists SunTek Chung, Jeanine Oleson, and Ellen Lesperance. Artist Selection Process The artists in "re: source" were selected by Art in General's 2003-2004 Advisory Panel from over 700 artist's portfolios and work samples submitted to the organization. This year's panel included artists Yoko Inoue and Clifford Owens; independent curators Craig Buckley and Koan-Jeff Baysa; Art in General board member Beth Venn; executive director Holly Block; and curator/programs manager Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy. The artists were selected following a seven-month review process and/or a series of artist meetings or studio visits. "re: source" is made possible, in part, by Sean Johnson. Additional funding has been provided by the Jerome Foundation, Gerry and Karen Migliaccio, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. Exhibition: September 8 - November 6, 2004 Gallery hours: Tue-Sat 12 - 6 pm Art in General 79 Walker Street USA-New York, NY 10013-3523 Telephone +1 212 219-0473 Fax +1 212 219-0511 Email info@artingeneral.org www.artingeneral.org www.likeyou.com/basimmagdy |
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