Friday, February 11; 1:30 – 5:30 p.m.
612 Schemerhorn Hall
Columbia University
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/wallach
Project Europa: Imagining the (Im)PossibleT.J. Demos, Lecturer, Department of History of Art, University College London, England
Diedrich Diedrichsen, Professor, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria
Tim Griffin, Artforum International, New York
Maria Hlavajova, Director, BAK (Basis voor actuele kunst), Utrecht, Netherlands.
Columbia/Barnard art history professor Alexander Alberro will serve as moderator.
The exhibition will be introduced by Kerry Oliver-Smith, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida.
Exhibition Information: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/wallach
Project Europa: Imagining the (Im)Possible is on view at the Wallach Art Gallery through 26 March 2011.
A Gallery Talk with exhibition curator Kerry Oliver-Smith is scheduled for 12 March at 12:00 p.m.
The past two decades in European history have been marked the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Europe—monumental events seen by many as symbolically heralding a new social and democratic vision. This exhibition together 19 artists whose work, created in the aftermath of these historic events, considers the relationship of art to democracy and responds in various ways to the conflicts and contradictions of Europe’s democratic dream.
Organized by the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida, Project Europa addresses the complex positioning of Europe in the modern world. While the continent embodies the notions of democracy, human rights, peace and diversity, it also reverberates with xenophobia, racism, religious intolerance, and—especially after the fall of the World Trade Center towers—heightened security and the hardening of immigration policies. Project Europa’s artists are catalysts for new ways of seeing, thinking about and imagining Europe.
The artists included in the exhibition are Francis Alÿs, Fikret Atay, Kader Attia, Maja Bajević, Yto Barrada, Tacita Dean, Beate Gütschow, Jens Haaning, Susan Hefuna, Eva Leitolf, Aernout Mik, Marcel Odenbach, Dan Perjovschi, Marjetica Potrč, Andrea Robbins and Max Becher, Bruno Serralongue, Superflex and Lidwien Van de Ven.
Kerry Oliver-Smith has selected artists which she describes as coming from “a rich variety of perspectives and cultural positions”. The works on view use a variety of strategies and media—sculpture, painting, performance, photography, and film—to integrate the viewer in the creation of the aesthetic experience. Especially exciting are the contibutions of Kader Attia and Dan Perjovschi, who were commissioned to re-create large-scale work applied directly to the walls of the gallery.
