Monthly Archives: January 2016

3 posts

Tuesday February 2nd: Shelly Silver

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Shelly Silver is a New York based artist working with the still and moving image. Her work explores contested territories between public and private, narrative and documentary, and–increasingly in recent years–the watcher and the watched. She has exhibited worldwide, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Yokohama Museum, the London ICA, and the London, the Singapore, New York, Moscow, and Berlin Film Festivals. Silver has received fellowships and grants from organizations such as the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, the Jerome Foundation, the Japan Foundation and Anonymous was a Woman. Her films have been broadcast by BBC/England, PBS/USA, Arte/Germany, France, Planete/Europe, RTE/ Ireland, SWR/Germany, and Atenor/Spain, among others, and she has been a fellow at the DAAD Artists Program in Berlin, the Japan/US Artist Program in Tokyo, Cité des Arts in Paris, and at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Silver is Associate Professor and Chair of the Visual Arts Program, School of the Arts, Columbia University.

More information here.

Tuesday January 26th: Alfredo Jaar

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Alfredo Jaar is an artist, architect, and filmmaker who lives and works in New York City. He was born in Santiago de Chile.

Jaar’s work has been shown extensively around the world. He has participated in the Biennales of Venice (1986, 2007, 2009, 2013), Sao Paulo (1987, 1989, 2010) as well as Documenta in Kassel (1987, 2002). Important individual exhibitions include The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Whitechapel, London; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm. A major retrospective of his work took place in summer 2012 at three institutions in Berlin: Berlinische Galerie, Neue Gesellschaft fur bildende Kunst e.V. and Alte Nationalgalerie. In 2014 the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki hosted the most extensive retrospective of his career.

Jaar has realized more than sixty public interventions around the world. More than fifty monographic publications have been published about his work.

He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985 and a MacArthur Fellow in 2000.

His work can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum, New York, the MCA in Chicago, MOCA and LACMA in Los Angeles, the Tate in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Centro Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlaebeck and dozens of other institutions and private collections worldwide.

More information here

Tuesday January 19: Leigh Ledare

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Leigh Ledare (born 1976, Seattle, Washington) uses photography, archival material, text and film to explore human agency, social relationships, taboos and the photographic in equal turns. Through a wide span of artistic practices, Ledare examines issues related to desire, identity, and morality.

Ledare first gained recognition through his exhibition and artist book titled “Pretend You’re Actually Alive” (2000-2008), which examines the complex relations between the artist and his mother – namely, how she used intimacy, eroticism, and vulnerability to negotiate the balance of power within the family. The resulting images are often sumptuous, saturated with color, and surprisingly beautiful. But they also, and importantly, disconcert the viewer, making us uncomfortable, and, in the process, raising questions about the functioning of the image and the construction of subjectivity in contemporary culture. Ledare has continued this examination into personal relationships with works that’s feature images of his collectors, patrons, and ex-wife, often in sexual situations.

In 2009, Ledare was included in an exhibition “Ça Me Touche” curated by Nan Goldin in Arles France as part of the annual Rencontres d’Arles photography festival. Writing in the New York Times, Roberta Smith said that Ledare is “taking us deep into the darkness and torment that drive many artists.” In the series “Personal Commissions” Ledare “answered personal ads from women whose desires echoed those of his mother’s, and paid them to photograph him in their apartments, in a scenario of their choosing.”

Read more about his controversial body of work “Pretend You’re Actually Alive” here.