VISITING ARTIST LECTURE SERIES

Untitled (Structures), 2012
Leslie Hewitt in collaboration with Bradford Young

Leslie Hewitt’s photographs rest in sturdy wooden frames that lean against the wall and invite viewers to experience a unique space between photography and sculpture. Her work combines still life compositions comprised of political, social, and personal materials, which result in multiple histories seen embedded in sculptural, architectural, and abstract forms. Mundane objects and structures open into complex systems of knowledge. This perceptual slippage is what attracts Hewitt to both the illusions of film (still and moving photography) and the undeniable presence of physical objects (sculpture). Exploring this as an artist and not as a historiographer, Hewitt draws parallels between the formal appearance of things and their significance to collective history and political consciousness in contemporary art. In her lecture, Hewitt will discuss the development of her practice and recent collaborations.

Leslie Hewitt is an artist living in New York City. She graduated from The Cooper Union’s School of Art in 2000 and went on to earn an MFA from Yale University in 2004. From 2001-2003, she studied Africana Studies and Cultural Studies at New York University. Hewitt has displayed her work in exhibitions in a number of American and international galleries, and her work is in the public collection at the Museum of Modern Art; Guggenheim Museum; The Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, the Yale Art Gallery, among others. Hewitt was represented in MoMA’s New Photography 2009, a thematic presentation of significant recent work in photography that examines and expands the conventional definitions of the medium. In 2010, she received the prestigious Foundation for Contemporary Arts Individual Artist Grant and Joyce Alexander Wein Prize. Hewitt has held residencies at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the American Academy in Berlin, Germany amongst others.

Untitled (Abloom), 2012
Blue Sikes, Warm Sunlight Study
Digital chromogenic print
30 x 40 inches

More information can be found here:

Leslie Hewitt

Leslie Hewitt artforum.com / 500 words 

Leslie Hewitt – Sikkema Jenkins

A Series of Projections, 2010
Digital chromogenic prints
Seven photographs, each:
30 x 40 inches

My Bed, 1998

Tracey Emin’s art is one of disclosure, using her life events as inspiration for works ranging from painting, drawing, video and installation, to photography, needlework and sculpture. Emin reveals her hopes, humiliations, failures and successes in candid and, at times, excoriating work that is frequently both tragic and humorous.

Emin’s work has an immediacy and often sexually provocative attitude that firmly locates her oeuvre within the tradition of feminist discourse. By re-appropriating conventional handicraft techniques – or ‘women’s work’ – for radical intentions, Emin’s work resonates with the feminist tenets of the ‘personal as political’. In Everyone I’ve Ever Slept With, Emin used the process of appliqué to inscribe the names of lovers, friends and family within a small tent, into which the viewer had to crawl inside, becoming both voyeur and confidante. Her interest in the work of Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele particularly inform Emin’s paintings, monoprints and drawings, which explore complex personal states and ideas of self-representation through manifestly expressionist styles and themes.

Tracey Emin was born in London in 1963, and studied at Maidstone College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. She has exhibited extensively internationally including solo and group exhibitions in Holland, Germany, Japan, Australia and America. In 2007 Emin represented Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale, was made a Royal Academician and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art, London, and a Doctor of Letters from the University of Kent and Doctor of Philosophy from London Metropolitan University. During the Edinburgh Festival in 2008, Emin’s survey exhibition ’20 Years’ opened at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and then toured on to Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain and the Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland (March 19th – June 21st 2009). In May 2011, Emin had a major solo exhibition at the Hayward, London. Emin currently lives and works in London.

Love Is What You Want Installation View, 2011

More information can be found here:

Love Is What You Want

Tracey Emin Studio

Tracey Emin Hearts Times Square

I Kiss You, 2011

The Syphilis of Sisyphus
Installation view

Mary Reid Kelley was born in South Carolina in 1979. She studied Art and Women’s Studies at St. Olaf College and received her MFA in Painting from Yale University in 2009. The videos she makes in collaboration with her husband, artist Patrick Kelley, have been shown in New York, Los Angeles, and London. Other exhibitions include The Wexner Center for the Arts (2012); Bard CCS (2012), MACRO Rome (2012); Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2010); and ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany (2010). Mary and Patrick completed a commissioned video for the 2010 SITE Santa Fe Biennial, The Dissolve. In August 2013 the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston will present an exhibition of the video work.

An interest in language, literature and history informs their work, which combines video, poetry, animation, performance, and painting. The videos have been reviewed in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, Flash Art, Frieze, and Art in America. The making of The Syphilis of Sisyphus (2011) was documented in Season Six of Art21, episode “History”. From 2011 to 2012 Mary and Patrick resided at the American Academy in Rome, and now live in upstate New York.

Robespierre, 2011
Collage, acrylic, ink, charcoal on paper: 11 x 14 inches

More information can be found here:

http://maryreidkelley.com/

Art 21: Mary Reid Kelley: “You Make Me Iliad” 

Finding the Reason in Mary Reid Kelley’s Mad Rhymes About French History

“Sadie, The Saddest Sadist”, 2009, Singlechannel DVD with sound, 7:23 M:SS, Installation View

Abstract, 2012. HD video with sound, 5 minutes. Installation view, e-flux, 2012.

Filmmaker, theorist, and author Hito Steyerl examines pop culture, social issues, and gender politics through the moving image. Her work is highly self-referential; Steyerl is adamant that one must understand his or her own role in social issues before exploring such topics artistically. As a result, she is often featured in many of her works. Drawing inspiration from her dual heritage, Steyerl is greatly influenced by both German and Japanese avant-garde film. In addition to solo exhibitions throughout Europe, Steyerl’s work has been included in numerous art shows including the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2004), Manifesta 5 (2004), dOCUMENTA (12) (2007) and the Shanghai Biennale (2008), among others.  Recent solo exhibitions include Hito Steyerl, e-flux, New York, 2011 and focus: Hito Steyerl, The Art Institute Chicago, 2012−2013.  A collection of her essays is recently published in The Wretched of the Screen (2012).  Steyerl holds a PhD in philosophy, currently serves as a professor for media arts at the University of Arts Berlin and has taught film theory at both Goldsmith College and Bard College.

Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

In Free Fall, 2010

More information can be found here:

Making: Hito Steyerl [Is the musem a battlefield?] at the 2012 Creative Time Summit (video)

NYTimes: Memorials, Along With Some Mischief Hito Steyerl Has New York Solo Debut at e-flux (2012)

Frieze Magazine: Hito Steyerl at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, Germany (2009)

Adornos’s Grey, 2012. Single channel HD video projection, 14 minutes 20 seconds, four angled screens, wall plot, photographs. Installation view, e-flux, 2012.

Sprout, 2010

A native of Nairobi, Kenya, Wangechi Mutu received her MFA degree from Yale University in 2000 and her BFA at Cooper Union College, New York. She has a solo exhibition currently on view at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University and will have a solo show opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia this coming May. Mutu recently participated in the Kochi-Muziris Biennial, the first in India, as well as the Paris Triennial: Intense Proximity, curated by Okwui Enwezor, and will be included in the International Center of Photography’s Triennial this May and the Moscow Bienniale this Fall. She has had solo exhibitions at institutions including the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Miami Art Museum; and ArtPace, San Antonio. Mutu’s work is in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art; The Studio Museum in Harlem; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. She lives and works in Brooklyn.

She Seas Dance, 2012

More information can be found here:

Gladstone Gallery

Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey

Susanne Vielmetter

Art21 Blog

The Art Newspaper

Little Touched Installation View, 2008

Scene Twice, 2012

Next Bathers, four (wash),  2012

Carroll Dunham is an American artist born in 1949. Dunham has had numerous solo exhibitions at galleries and museums internationally, including: Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany; Millesgarden in Stockholm, Sweden; Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, MA; Drammens Museum in Norway; and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York launched a major retrospective of his work in 2002. Dunham received the Skowhegan Medal for Distinction in Painting in 2004. The artist currently lives and works in New York City and rural Connecticut. 

 Installation at Blum & Poe, 2010

Ship, 1997-1999

More information can be found here:

Carroll Dunham Website

Gladstone Gallery

New York Times Review: Carroll Dunham at Gladstone Gallery

Los Angeles Times Review: Carroll Dunham at Blum & Poe

Los Angeles Times Review: “Carroll Dunham: A Drawing Survey”

Featureless Two, 2005

The Uncountables (Encyclopedia), 2010

Sarah Sze was born in Boston in 1969. She received a BA from Yale University in 1991 and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1997. She has received critical acclaim for her public commissions and site-specific installations, including recent commissions for the New York City High Line, the Cartier Foundation, the Carnegie International and the São Paolo Biennial. A MacArthur Fellow and Louis Comfort Tiffany Award winner, she has challenged architectures and captivated viewers with her large-scale constructions that penetrate walls, suspend from ceilings, burrow into the ground and stretch across museums. Solo museum projects include at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Asia Society in New York, and The Institute of Contemporary Art, London.  Sarah Sze is Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University School of the Arts.  She has been chosen to represent the United States at La Biennale di Venezia in 2013. Her work will be presented by Holly Block and the Bronx Museum of the Arts in the 55th International Art Exhibition.

Just Now Dangled Still (Detail), 2008

More information can be found here:

Art21 SEGMENT: Sarah Sze in “Balance” (video) 2012

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Tilting Planet (detail), 2006

The Persuaders, 2003

Charlie White is a Los Angeles-based artist and associate professor at the Roski School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California. White’s work spans photography, film, animation, writing, and, most recently, experimental pop music. He has exhibited internationally since 1999, including shows at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, PS1 New York, ICA Philadelphia, the Shanghai Contemporary Art Museum, Oslo Kunstforening (Norway), and Center of Contemporary Art of Salamanca (Spain). White was selected for the 2011 Singapore Biennale, and his films have been featured at the Sundance Film Festival and Director’s Fortnight at Cannes. White’s most recent monographs include American Minor, (JPR Ringier, 2009), and Such Appetite (LBM, 2013). In addition to his studio work, White’s writing has been published in Artforum, and his essay “Minor Threat” was included in the publication Words Without Pictures (Aperture Press). Currently, White is completing his Music for Sleeping Children project, an free online experimental pop album, and working on a feature film project.

A life in B Tween, 2012

More information can be found here:

Music for Sleeping Children

Charlie White Website

Study of Teenage Girls

Teen and Transgender Comparative Study , 2008

Music for Sleeping Children , 2012

Freeman/Lowe, Stray Light Grey Installation, 2012

JONAH FREEMAN was born in 1975 in Santa Fe, NM and lives and works in New York City. He has a degree in Film Production and Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Since 1998 he has been exhibiting film/video, photo and environmental installations in galleries and museums worldwide. His several interconnected bodies of work have been primarily focused on the phantasmagoria of the constructed world. Recent solo exhibitions include Stray Light Grey, Marlborough Chelsea, NY (2012); Bright White Underground, Country Club, LA (2010); Black Acid Co-op, Deitch Projects, NYC (2009); In The Kaleidoscope Room, Mitterrand + Sanz, Zurich (2009); Hello Meth Lab In The Sun, Ballroom Marfa, (2008); The Long Goodbye, John Connelly Presents, NYC (2007); The Franklin Abraham, Andrew Kreps Gallery, NYC (2005); and In the Public Realm: Sixteen Scenarios, Public Art Fund, Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, NY (2002). His films have screened in several film festivals that include The International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Locarno International Film Festival and The Rome International Film Festival. His work has also been represented in the recent group shows: Paper Exhibition, Artists Space, NYC (2009); The Station, Miami, FL. (2008); The Future As Disruption, The Kitchen, NYC (2008); Le Centre pour l’Image Contemporaine, Saint Gervais, Geneva, Switzerland; Grow Your Own, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2007); Busan Biennale 2006, Busan, South Korea; Intouchable (l’ Idea transparence), Centre National d’Art Contemporain – Villa Arson, Nice, France (2006); Day Labor, PS1/MOMA, NYC, and Vanishing Point, The Wexner Center for the Arts, Wexner, OH (2005).

JUSTIN LOWE was born in 1976 Dayton, Ohio. In 2004 he received his MFA from Columbia University. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California and New York City. Since 2003 he has been exhibiting large scale, immersive, site-specific installations in galleries and museums worldwide. Recent solo exhibitions include Stray Light Grey, Marlborough Chelsea, NY (2012); Hair of the Dog, Peppin Moore, LA (2011); Bright White Underground, Country Club LA (2010); Werewolf Karoke, Wadsworth Museum, Hartford CT (2010); The New War, Galleria Cesare Manzo (2010); Black Acid Co-op, Deitch Projects, NYC (2009); Freedom Time is Here Little Kittens, Fredric Giroux, Paris (2008); Hello Meth Lab In The Sun, Ballroom Marfa (2008); Helter Swelter, Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery (2006); Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Frederic Giroux Paris (2006); Waterfall, The Wrong Gallery (2004); Passage, PS1 Special Project Room, NYC (2004); Collecting Pictures in the Brain, Hotel Sculpture Center (2005); .45 0n the 33, Galleria Cesare Manzo, Rome, Italy (2007). His work has also been represented in the such group shows as: Greater LA (2011); The Station, Miami, FL (2008); Fit To Print: Printed Media In Collage, Gagosian Gallery, NYC (2007); FUORI USO 2006 – ALTERED STATES, National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucharest, Romania (2007); The Pantagruel Syndrome, Museum of Contemporary Art in the Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy (2005); Greater New York, PS1/MOMA, NYC (2005).

Freeman/Lowe, Bright White Underground, 2010, Installation View, Los Angeles, California

More information can be found here:

Dumpster Hive: Two artists turn a blue-chip Chelsea gallery into a junk-bin fantasyland, NYMagazine (2012)

VIDEO: Freeman and Lowe at Marlborough Chelsea Gallery, BLOUIN ARTINFO (2012)

VIDEO:  JUSTIN LOWE AND JONAH FREEMAN ART TALK, Vice (2012)

Freeman/Lowe, Hello Meth Lab in the Sun, 2008, Installation View
Marfa, Texas

Darth Vader Tries to Clean the Black Sea With Brita Filter, 2000, C-print mounted on aluminum

Daniel Bozhkov is an artist based in New York City. He employs variety of media, from fresco to performance and video, and works with professionals from different fields to activate the public space. He enters the worlds of genetic science, department mega-stores, world-famous tourist-sites, as an amateur intruder/visitor who also functions as a producer of new strains of meaning into seemingly closed systems.

Daniel is a recipient of 2012 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, 2007 Chuck Close Rome Prize of the American Academy in Rome, Alpert Award Residency Prize, and of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Andy Warhol Foundation, Art Matters, and Artslink. His work has been presented in international exhibitions such as the 6^th Liverpool Biennial, in 2010, 6^thMercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2007, 9^th Istanbul Biennale in Turkey in 2005, the 1^st Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art in Russia in 2005. Daniel Bozhkov is an Associate Professor of Art at Hunter College, CUNY, and has taught as a Lecturer at Columbia University and Yale University School of Art.

Training In Hospitality (Mural), 2000, Fresco on wall

More information can be found here:

Liverpool Biennial Artist Talk: Daniel Bozhkov (2010)

Andrew Kreps Gallery: Daniel Bozhkov

Learn How to Fly Over a Very Large Larry (Crop Sign), 2002, Impression on grass