Press Releases

WEEK 1

Thursday, November 14, 2002 6:30 - 9 pm
Set in Motion: Recent Video and Film work by Maria Alos, Franklin Evans, and Melissa Pearl Friedling
The three artists featured here have approached the margins of the animated image in order to provoke wonder, social critique, suspense, laughter, and discomfort. While crafted through diverse technical approaches, together, the works evidence the multiple ways the world may be set in motion and transformed by the artist. In the "Manic Apple" video series of Maria Alos, a tacky remote-controlled toy encounters the world's challenges on its own micro-scale. "Manic Apple" adventures approximate those of the Hollywood action hero and compel the viewer to root for this bit of tragic commercial kitsch. The video series extends Alos' interest in institutional structures and individua belief systems, both in society and within the art world. Her larger body of work encourages viewers to reconsider practices and actions that normally go unquestioned, such as the legitimacy of the art object, the art world's systems of validation, and the deferential gaze of the museum visitor. Franklin Evans' Baseball Video Animation series attempts to playfully level an uneven playing field by constructing a new narrative for the "great American pastime" highlighting the subtextual sexual content of the game and its culture. Evans' videos use a patterned world of baseball signifiers (balls, bats, bases, players, cups and jocks) initially rendered as scroll drawings, and then captured into the language of animation. While meditating on the elegance and subtle artfulness of baseball's visual pleasures, the video series simultaneously points to the ways in which the exploitation of women on the periphery of the game underlies an emphatic displacement of homoerotic desire away from the male players. Melissa Pearl Friedling's film and video works employ animation and live action in order to make evocative comment on themes of sense, memory, autobiography, and identity. Her work emerges from personal narratives, made fantastical through repetition and the transformative possibilities of film and video. The narratives include a meditation on her own family's inability to smell (The Anosmia Project) her experience of purchasing a new bed (The Princess and the Pee Stain), and her interactions while living abroad (Foreign Things that Come In and Out of My Mouth). Often originating and sometimes finishing on film, the works additionally call attention to the framed image and its manipulation of our experience of time.

Friday, November 15, 2002 6:30 pm
Free Dialogue Alicia Chillida, apexart's current resident, invites you to participate in a open dialogue to discuss the overlapping roles of artist, writer, curator and the intersections between museums, galleries, and independent spaces. Alicia Chillida is an independent curator based in Madrid, Spain. She was the Curator of the Spanish Pavillion at the Sao Paulo Biennial earlier this year and was formerly a Curator with the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid.

Saturday, November 16, 2002 3 pm - 9 pm
The Resurrection Bus Work from the Experimental Television Center
On Saturday, November 16, as part of apexart's sans exhibition, Jenny Perlin will present works from the Experimental Television Center, a non-profit media arts program located in upstate New York. The program will include selections from ETC's extensive archive of video works, as well as contemporary works supported by ETC's residency, finishing fund grants, or fiscal sponsorship program. From 3-6pm, Perlin will screen historical video art from the ETC's extensive collection, dating back to the early 1970s. From 6:30-9pm, videos by Barbara Hammer, Alan Berliner, Bianca Bob Miller, Torsten Burns, Jim Supanick, Ann Wooster and others will present some of the many contemporary voices coming out of collaborations with the Experimental Television Center today.
The EXPERIMENTAL TELEVISION CENTER was founded in 1971, an outgrowth of a media access program established by Ralph Hocking at Binghamton University in 1969. The Residency Program has provided creative opportunities to over 1200 media artists from around the world. The Center also offers sponsorship for artists' projects and has recently partnered with Irit Batsry, Ken Jacobs, Kristin Lucas, Jeffrey Lerer, Barbara Hammer, Jenny Perlin, Jeanne Liotta and many others. These works and those created through the Residency Program are screened throughout the world. The Grants Program offers direct support to New York State's film and media artists, and to organizations to expand programming of independent work. The Video History Project is an on-going research initiative which documents the emergence of video art and community television, and makes resources available on the Web. The Center also serves as an information resource for the media community. 25 Years of the Experimental Television Center was curated by Ann-Sargent Wooster for exhibition in the gallery of Art in General, November 8, 1996 – January 25, 1997, on the occasion of the Center's 25th Anniversary. The artists presented in this collection include Peter Rose, Shigeko Kubota, Peter D'Agostino, Barbara Hammer, Dan Reeves and many others. The Center's programs are supported by the contributions of artists, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Media Alliance. Corporate assistance provided by Dave Jones Design and Matt Schlanger of Black Hammer Productions. Jenny Perlin is a film and video maker whose recent film, Perseverance & How to Develop It (2002), was supported by grants and fiscal sponsorship from the Experimental Television Center. This exhibition represents a small tribute to the innovative and restorative, and excellent work that the ETC has been doing for over 30 years.

WEEK 2
Tuesday, November 19, 1-6
CAFE APEX
The gallery will be open for people to meet, greet, read magazines/catalogs and relax with a tasty cup of coffee/tea.

Wednesday, November 20, 7-9pm
Film screening (VHS projection): Germany in Autumn (Deutschland im Herbst)
German with English subtitles, 1977, 126 min. This fall marks the 25th anniversary of the production of Germany in Autumn (Deutschland im Herbst). Released to much acclaim in 1978, this collectively produced film uses reportage, interviews and dramatization to explore the 44 days in West Germany between the September kidnapping of the industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer and the Baader-Meinhof deaths in Stammheim prison in October. In its emphasis on local and personal reactions to the events, it examines the pervasive mood of paranoia spawned by terrorism. Presented by Greg Williams. Directors: Alf Brustellin, Hans Peter Cloos, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge, Maximiliane Mainka, Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus, Edgar Reitz, Katja Rupé, Volker Schloendorff, Peter Schubert, Bernhard Sinkel Screenplay: Heinrich Boell, Peter Steinbach, et al.

Thursday, November 21, 5 - 7 pm
WELCOME RECEPTION FOR NEW RESIDENT, UTHIT ATIMANA Drop by apex to meet Uthit. Uthit is the Director of the Art Museum, and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Chiang Mai University, Thailand. He is also one of the founders of Chiang Mai Social Installation (now known as Eukabeuk). Refreshments will be served.

Friday November 22, 2002 6 - 9 pm (presentation begins at 7 pm)
A Presentation & Discussion of the Arab Image Foundation
The Foundation for the Preservation and Presentation of Middle Eastern Photographic Heritage and Visual Culture
The Arab Image Foundation (AIF), presented by Moukhtar Kocache, Walid Raad and Lucien Samaha, was established in Beirut in 1996 to locate, collect, preserve, interpret and present the photographic heritage and visual culture of the Middle East and North Africa from the early 19th century to the present. The collection provides insight into a period of crucial transformation in Arab history and Arab lands. The foundation aims to contribute to the study and understanding of the region and its cultures, as well as to support contemporary Arab visual production and analysis. Its database is available for artists, curators and researchers as well as to the public primarily through publication and exhibition projects. The long-term goal of the Foundation is the creation of a center in Beirut for preservation and exhibition of its photographic collections, for the study of Arab visual culture, and for the analysis and promotion of contemporary Arab cultural production. A current goal of the Foundation is to expand its activities in the U.S. as it has successfully done in Europe and the Middle East. A New York chapter has been established under the sponsorship of the New York Foundation for the Arts to further its mission in the Americas. www.fai.org.lb

Saturday, November 23, 2002 10 am - 10 pm
ITINERANT GASTRONOMY a new restaurant
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.* Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal.On Saturday, November 23rd a new restaurant will be opened by the proprietor, Mary Ellen Carroll. The restaurant will be open from 10 in the morning until 10 at night. Reservations will be required. There will be six seatings for four individuals every two hours which means that 24 people will be be fed throughout a day. As with the historical precedent, FOOD--the artist run restaurant in the seventies--there is a desire not to recreate that place and that time, but to offer an itinerancy of taste, within another context and at another moment. I have brought together a group of cooks who also speak other languages, and these polyglots, always do what they do with a great deal of precision, passion, and pleasure, and since I do believe that the essence of one is also reflected in their work, I am both honored and pleased that they have agreed to provide their taste to the public, at a time when the notion of pleasure is often relegated to a prescribed paid vocation, or sublimated in work, these days, unemployment. But, a life is more complicated, messy, and therefor an interesting thing, and when things are spontaneous and unknown, a certain amount of chaos is created, or will ensue. The cooks will do the creating for you, as a public, and as individuals, which brings me back to the notion of Taste. We knew that the Greeks understood pleasure, and I mention this, not from a position of envy, but from observation, and Aristotle spoke to us about Taste "being able to discern the smallest objects is what makes the acutest sense—and showed the most power of discerning figures in general." There are no rules for the cooks, there is no agenda, accept to create something that exists for a day, and within a day, one must eat, and what and when one chooses to eat, is a rational decision. As Gertrude Stein once lectured to us that, one repeats oneself all of the time, but much in the same way as how a film is made, all of the frames are singular, as will be the experience of the cooks, diners, and observers. I look forward to sharing this day and these people with you, and at a time when we are all too aware of our own barbarism and can stop eating healthy children* and subtitute this for the food that will be prepared for you at Itinerant Gastronomy.
Sincerely,
Mary Ellen Carroll
endemique@aol.com
Itinerant Gastronomy
291 Church Street
New York City
212.431.5270 for reservations
The following is the schedule for Itinerant Gastronomy:
10am-NOON Brunch JoAnne Hendricks, owner of Cookbooks
NOON-2pm, Lunch Suchitra Reddy Sridhar Venkatapuram
2 pm until 4 pm, Lunch Nouvelle Bavarian Cuisine and Barbara Probst and Stefan Schessl
4 pm until 6 pm, Pre-Theatre Dinner "The Science of Eating" Dr. Ott
6 pm until 8 pm, Dinner Forest Food, Margaret Smith, Cara Perlman
8 pm until 10 pm, Dinner Marc Latamie "Histoire des animaux"

WEEK 3
Tuesday, November 26, 6:30 - 8 pm
The Definition of 'Culturalists'
Uthit Atimana (apexart Resident) and Thasnai Sethaseree (artist, Chicago) will discuss the contemporary art practice in Thailand where Thai artists quietly associate their works with Buddhist discourse and community oriented projects. Also, Uthit will talk about how Thai artists attending international art shows are motivated implicitly by the Buddhist idea, and about how a graveyard, paddy field, monk monastery, suburban land, and etc have become project spaces that Thai artists ordinarily fit their works into. And, why they do not intend them to be alternative art spaces. Uthit will also present his museum policy, which intendeds to make use of the museum space not only art projects, but also a museum as the anthropological meeting space that everyone can equally have easy access. The museum becomes a space where everyone can come to use it.

1-6 pm
CAFE APEX
Come one, come all. Eat cookies, read magazines, drink and be merry!

Wednesday/Thursday/Friday, November 27-29
Gallery sans programming

Saturday, November 30, 11-6 pm
Dennis Elliott presents Adam Sutherland and a chronicle of his search for romantic art in New York City.

WEEK 4
Tuesday, December 3, 1-6 pm
CAFE APEX

Wednesday, December 4, 11-7 pm
One Day, Everday, In a Day A day-long installation of a Gecenkondu
Artists Matthew Lusk and Rachel Owens build a Gecenkondu Gecekondu, meaning built in a night, is a phenomenon where by Turkish laborers are allowed to keep a house that they can construct within one night on certain government lands. Although mostly scavenged materials are used, the families working together in a very organized manner to construct the home. By the morning time - as long as there are 4 walls, a roof, and a teakettle boiling- the structure may remain. Using the Turkish architectural phenomenon known as Gecekondu as a model we have created a one-day event encompassing various psychological, emotional and political aspects surrounding the idea and actuality of domestic space. by creating a physical structure that is directly related to the ideological, the artists are in addition to creating an exhibition space within an exhibition space, also giving greater specificity and unity to the idea and its participants. Participants include: Caroline Allison, Brendan Coogan, Amy Henry, Christian Holstad, Lara Kohl, Matthew Lusk, Rachel Owens, Tricia McLaughlin, Darren Newton, Shahar Yannay, Aaron Wexler.

Thursday, December 5, 2-8 pm
Absent Presence works by Ilyse Soutine and William Steiger
Like the apexart gallery is 'sans' (meaning without), so are the photographs by Ilyse Soutine and works on paper by William Steiger in that they are missing the figurative presence of the individual. Instead, the artists use a unique sense of scale and a psychological intensity that infuses the work with a sense of nostalgia and emotion that is not to be missed. The artists will be in the gallery from 6-8 pm for a public reception along with the organizer, Allison Peters.

Friday, December 6, 11-6 pm
Elaine Bowen presents the work of five artists from Toronto, Canada: Karen Azoulay, Amy Bowles, Shary Boyle, Jay Isaac, and Paul P. Ride the Red Rocket will feature Azoulay's delicate, other-worldly coffee filter 'wall-flowers', Bowles' recent abstract watercolors, Boyle's illustrated book 'Horny', Isaac's new collages and a sculptural work that walks the line of 'bad art', and Paul P.'s seductive pencil crayon drawings of young boys on the verge of adolescence. *Ride the Red Rocket is the marketing jingle for Toronto's metro system

Saturday, December 7, 11-6 pm
It could happen to you including Lygia Clark, Sharon Hayes, Nancy Hwang and Judi Werthein Dean Daderko will present work by artists whose practices involve performance and interactions with apexart's visitors. In their use of direct strategies these artists engage viewers in interpersonal situations. Through one-on-one experiences, with the artists or with other visitors, or by situations in which visitors 'make' a work, or walk off with one, It could happen to you investigates diverse strategies by which 'viewing' experiences can be explored and expanded. As part of the exhibition, bring your holiday gifts to be wrapped!

WEEK 5
Tuesday, December 10, 1-6 pm
CAFE APEX

Wednesday, December 11, 11-7 pm
Marfa Recordings
a sound installation by Stephen Vitiello (artist will be present from 5-7pm)
Carin Kuoni, Director of Exhibitions at Independent Curators International, has asked Stephen Vitiello to take over the gallery space at apexart for one day. Vitiello will create an installation with speakers and headphones featuring new work created this year while in Marfa, Texas. The artist will be available in the gallery between 5 and 7 pm for conversation with visitors. The installation itself will be open to the public all day until 7 pm.

Thursday, December 12, 7-9 pm
An Evening of Visual and Sonic Performances
featuring The Bride of Wittgenstein

Friday, December 13, 7-9 pm
A NIGHT OF ENTERTAINMENT
Live performances and cocktails
apexart curatorial program is proud to present a musical performance by Larry Krone and stand up comedy by Guy Richards Smit and Lou Fernandez curated by Christopher K. Ho and Mari Spirito. Marcel Duchamp once observed that "art in the twentieth century has come to a similar function as a mere entertainment." It is indeed within the context of entertainment that Guy Richards Smit and Larry Krone situate their respective performances. Far from being "mere," however, their identification with entertainment is critical rather than complicit. By foregrounding discontinuities in their work, they systematically founder its ability to achieve the sheer exteriority emblematic of everyday life in twentieth-century America. Not only is Smit's stand up comedy routine acutely unfunny, but he is unceremoniously interrupted and publicly berated by a colleague, Fernandez. This interruption evinces two disjunctions: between goods promised to the audience (comedy) and goods delivered (drama); and between Smit's ideal of himself and Fernandez's opinion of him. Likewise is Krone's performance structured around an internal rift. While initially appearing down-to-earth -- a program of country ballads sung with sister Janet and brother-in-law Randy -- gradually, Krone strips down to a slip dress. While entertainment requires the presentation of a seamless exterior, it is precisely the seams that Smit and Krone showcase. The dialectic between high and low has been a mainstay of modern art; here, rather than aspiring to the slickness of mass culture, Smit and Krone resolutely fall short of it. This failure, finally and paradoxically, allows for the performances' success, breaking as it does the passivity of the audience to connect artist with viewer via disruption, subversion of expectation, and radical juxtaposition. Guy Richard Smit lives and works in New York City. He has recently shown at the MoMA MediaScope, Team Gallery, and Galerie Filles du Calvaire in Paris. Larry Krone lives and works in New York City. He has performed and participated in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, the New Museum, and the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis.

Saturday, December 14, 11-6 pm
Video Projects selected by YYZ Artists Outlet, Canada
Generally, But Not Always a program of videos organized by YYZ Artists' Outlet (artist-run centre in Toronto, Canada) Curated by artist and YYZ Board member Daniel Bowden, the screening will feature video work by Brian Joseph Davis, Fastworms, Lee Goreas, Marla Hlady, David Kramer, Kevin Rodgers, Chris Rogers, Althea Thauberger and Barb Webb, that was showcased in a park in Toronto this past summer. The videos will run throughout the day, and at 3 pm Bowden will give a talk on artist-run culture in Toronto.

WEEK 6
Tuesday, December 17, 1-6 pm
CAFE APEX

Wednesday, December 18, 7-9 pm
Short video works presented by Matthew Buckingham
Off-Screen Works by Holen Kahn, Ewa Einhorn & Misha Stroj, Tomas Gilljam, David Slatis and Cristobal Lehyt Even as we increasingly live life in relation to the four-sided horizon-line of video display and cinematic projection, many events--ranging from the overtly political to the seemingly quotidian--occur 'off-screen.' Each work in this segment of sans dramatizes the tension at the border of the image in a different way. Oscillating between 1948 and 1994, Holen Kahn's "Diplomatic Immunity"examines the United Nations' role (and lack of it) in the Rwanda genocide. Ewa Einhorn and Misha Stroj's "The Masters: Language Problems in the Heart of Europe" looks at how the invocation of Nazi rhetoric by the Haider-era Austrian government was addressed and not addressed. A second, but very different, piece by Einhorn and Stroj, "Microsort", builds a complex set of associational relations around juxtaposed animated images, invoking political dystopias. An untitled work by Tomas Gilljam subtly rearranges the viewer's expectation and experience of time, quietly constructing a spatial continuity that breaks temporality whenever one of his "characters" leaves the frame. Without digital manipulation, David Slatis' "The Call" exploits real space to make an impossible telephonic connection. And Cristobal Lehyt's nearly motionless "Dog" creates an ambiguous scene that resolves itself in relation to the image-frame in its final moment.

Thursday, December 19, 7-9 pm
A New Scene: Contemporary Art in Greece Heather Felty will share her recent discoveries during a three month Fulbright grant in Greece to research contemporary Greek artists for an exhibition in NYC. Among the artists whose work she will discuss are: Dimitris Tsoublekas, Irini Karayannopoulou, Alexandra Katsiani and Thanasis Chondros, Ioanna Myrka, Paris Petridis, Konstantinos Papamichalopoulos, DeAnna Maganias, and Kostas Bassanos. She will also discuss the developing art scene in Athens, highlighting the curatorial projects of Christos Joackimidis, Els Hanappe and Marina Fokidis.

Friday, December 20, 11-6 pm
Mary Ceruti asks Carey Ascenzo & Michele Valerio to create a spontaneous installation. A screening of Clay Club films Michele Valerio and Carey Ascenzo will be screening approximately ten short old-time films about sculpture from the days of the Clay Club in the 1930s. At any hour on the hour, one of the 3-10 minute films will be shown on a real film projector. Last filmstarts at 5pm. In between, come help us prepare by popping popcorn and melting butter.

Saturday, December 21, 11-6 pm
Paul Clay schedules video work and DJ's to perform in the space for a day.Afternoon DJ/VJ session hosted by Paul Clay as a wrap-up of sans. Come by for some hot cider and visuals and some chill beats as DJs and video artists from around New York's underground scene hang at apexart for the afternoon. The video mixing gear will also be available at points during the afternoon to anyone who wishes to try their hand at it. Participants include DJ Chrome of Blackkat, DJ Hirotaka from Satellite (on audio), and Willyum Delirious and David Bone (on visuals). Additional visuals will be contributed by artists not traditionally working in the club scene, including Hilda Daniel, James Walsh. Expect other special guests as well.

EXHIBITION PROGRAMMING ENDS