Substitute Teacher
March 5 – May 16, 2010
Exhibition Explores Authority,
Learning, and Categorization
Atlanta Contemporary Art Center
535 Means Street NW
Atlanta, GA 30318
http://www.thecontemporary.org
The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center is pleased to announce the opening of Substitute Teacher, an exhibition co-curated by Regine Basha and Stuart Horodner, which includes twenty emerging and established artists whose works act as an alternative syllabus for art-life learning.
The participating artists are Lisa Anne Auerbach, Daniel Bozhkov, Luis Camnitzer, Brody Condon, Brian Dettmer, Andrea Fraser, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Nina Katchadourian, Glenn Ligon, Larry Miller, Jenny Perlin, Walid Raad/The Atlas Group, Pedro Reyes, Danielle Roney, Jay Rosenblatt, Mira Schor, Michael Smith, Joe Sola, Javier Téllez, and David Wojnarowicz.
What is a substitute teacher? Typically, it is a person who fills in for the regular teacher when he or she is unavailable because of illness or vacation or other personal reasons. For our purposes, a substitute teacher is any being, situation, or object that has the potential to impart knowledge.
Substitute Teacher is an exhibition which examines reversals of authority and alternative forms of understanding, experience, and curiosity. It acknowledges traditional subjects of study as well as the slippage of one discipline into another. Informed by the structures of the classroom and other potential sites of learning, (nature, city streets, places of worship, the internet, the home), Substitute Teacher brings together works in diverse media that become surrogate instructors. These works offer educational opportunities while challenging conditions of categorization, officialdom, and believability.
Much of the work in Substitute Teacher incorporates language that is appropriated, manipulated, or transcribed. Lisa Anne Auerbach, Luis Camnitzer, Andrea Fraser, Glenn Ligon, Larry Miller, Pedro Reyes, and Mira Schor each use text drawn from personal, historical, or institutional realms to create unique modes of public address.
Daniel Bozhkov, Nina Katchadourian, Walid Raad, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Danielle Roney, and Joe Sola are artists who exemplify a kind of “apprentice syndrome,” a phrase used by Bozhkov to suggest the ongoing acquisition of new data and skills through extensive research, travel, or training.
In photographs by Michael Smith and David Wojnarowicz, authority figures wear a public face that might hide private conditions of despair and uncertainty. In films and videos, Brody Condon, Jenny Perlin, Jay Rosenblatt, and Javier Téllez use documentaries, instructional footage and You Tube clips to construct distinctive narratives about drug experiences, twentieth-century dictators, and perceptual exercises.
For sculptor Brian Dettmer, encyclopedias and dictionaries are fertile raw materials. Through extensive acts of alteration, he renders these conventional repositories of information unusable in one way while simultaneously making them wondrous in another.
In recent years, numerous artists and institutions have attempted to address the role of education in their activities, challenging notions of audience, intention, and outcome.
The curators of this exhibition are engaged in the art world and academic dialogues about these issues, and their Substitute Teacher exhibition is an attempt to encourage visitors to assess and challenge their own wealth of knowledge while embarking on new journeys of discovery. The diverse range of works they have selected and their installation strategy argue for a constantly shifting situation of curiosity, appreciation, and transformation.
Film screenings, tours, lectures, and other public programs developed in conjunction with the exhibition are available at http://www.thecontemporary.org
About the Curators
Regine Basha is an independent curator and writer currently based in Brooklyn who has worked nationally and internationally for the past 17 years. Her career began in Montreal, as Director of the non-profit contemporary art space Art Gallery of the Saidye Bronfman Centre, 1992-1995. In 1996, she graduated from the inaugural class of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and went on to subsequently curate projects showcasing emerging artists working in New York within the collectives Mayday Productions and The Brewster Project. From 2002 to 2007 she was based in Austin, Texas where she curated numerous shows and produced special commissions as Adjunct Curator of Arthouse, at the Jones Center and co-founder of the contemporary art initiative, Fluent~Collaborative. Her recent projects include The Marfa Sessions and The Activist Impulse. As a curator, Basha uses various formats in disseminating art and ideas including exhibition, radio, live presentation, temporal interventions, virtual and print media.
Stuart Horodner is the Artistic Director of the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. During the past twenty years he developed unique exhibitions and public programs as Director/Partner of the Horodner Romley Gallery in NYC; Director of the Bucknell University Art Gallery in Lewisburg, PA; Curator of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; and Director of the Atlanta College of Art Gallery.
He has contributed art writing to publications including Art Issues, Art on Paper, Sculpture, Art Lies, Dazed & Confused, BOMB, and Surface.
About the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center
The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary arts organization dedicated to excellence, experimentation, and education in all forms of contemporary art and culture.
Atlanta Contemporary Art Center
535 Means Street NW
Atlanta, GA 30318
http://www.thecontemporary.org
Friday, March 5
Opening: Substitute Teacher
Patron Member Preview 7 – 8 PM, by invitation
Public Opening, 8 – 10 PM
Remarks, 8:15 PM
Join us for the opening of Substitute Teacher, with Co-curators Regine Basha and Stuart Horodner, and exhibiting artists.
Saturday, March 6, 11 AM – 12 PM
Curator and Artist Talk
Co-curators Regine Basha and Stuart Horodner discuss the evolution of Substitute Teacher with exhibiting artist Nina Katchadourian.
For more information, contact Stuart Horodner, Artistic Director, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, 404.688.1970 x214, or shorodner [at] thecontemporary.org.
