Exhibitions program 2018

Allen Ruppersberg: Intellectual Property 1968–2018
March 17–July 29, 2018

This major retrospective presents the work of Allen Ruppersberg (US, b. 1944) and is the artist’s first comprehensive US survey in more than 30 years. One of the most rigorous and inventive practitioners to emerge from the Conceptual art movement in the late 1960s, Ruppersberg has explored a wide range of media and approaches, rooted in language, images, and ideas filtered through the lens of mass culture. 

The exhibition offers an opportunity to experience the artist’s work with unprecedented breadth and depth. Many of the pieces have never before been exhibited in US museums. Featured artworks include early installations such as Al’s Cafe and Al’s Grand Hotel, his groundbreaking participatory projects of the late 1960s; photo-based narratives combining text and image; and more recent installations containing his commercial letterpress posters, ephemera, drawings, and films.

Curator: Siri Engberg, Senior Curator, Visual Arts; with Fabián Leyva-Barragán, Curatorial Fellow, Visual Arts
 

Jason Moran
April 26–August 26, 2018

Jason Moran (US, b. 1975), the artist’s first museum show, features the full range of his work, from performance and collaborations with visual artists to his own sculptural pieces. In all aspects of his practice, Moran’s creative process is informed by one of the essential tenets of jazz: the “set” in which musicians come together to engage in a collaborative process of improvisation, riffing off of one another to create the musical experience. The exhibition will highlight his mixed-media set installations based on storied jazz venues from past eras, including STAGED: Savoy Ballroom 1 and STAGED: Three Deuces (both 2015). The exhibition will additionally premiere a new sculptural commission from this series that takes inspiration from the celebrated New York jazz venue Slugs’ Saloon. Also presented will be a selection of Moran’s most recent charcoal drawings and several projected media works from his long-standing collaborations with artists such as Lorna Simpson, Glenn Ligon, Joan Jonas, and Stan Douglas.

Curator: Adrienne Edwards, Curator at Large, Visual Arts; with Danielle Jackson, Mellon Interdisciplinary Fellow, Performing Arts
 

Siah Armajani: Follow This Line
September 8, 2018–December 30, 2018

Siah Armajani: Follow This Line is the first comprehensive US retrospective devoted to the work of Minneapolis-based artist Siah Armajani. Born in Tehran in 1939, Armajani moved to Minnesota in 1960 to attend Macalester College in St. Paul. He has lived and worked in the Twin Cities ever since, while exhibiting internationally.

Armajani is best known today for his works of public art—bridges, gazebos, reading rooms, gathering spaces—sited across the United States and Europe. This groundbreaking exhibition spans six decades of the artist’s studio practice and engages a range of references—from Persian calligraphy to the manifesto, letter, and talisman; from poetry to mathematical equations and computer programming; from the Abstract Expressionist canvas to the vernacular architecture of rural America, Bauhaus design, and Russian Constructivism.

Siah Armajani: Follow This Line is co-organized by the Walker Art Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Curators: Clare Davies, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Victoria Sung, Assistant Curator, Visual Arts (Walker Art Center); with Jadine Collingwood, Curatorial Fellow, Visual Arts (Walker Art Center)
 

Mario García Torres: Illusion Brought Me Here
October 25, 2018–February 17, 2019

Illusion Brought Me Here is the first US survey to focus on the work of the Mexico-based artist Mario García Torres (b. 1975). Working in a variety of media, including video, installation, sound, photography, and sculpture, García Torres creates environments that explore obscure histories and personalities, particularly those associated with Conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s. This exhibition takes a radical approach to the traditional retrospective: a newly conceived sound piece—a soundtrack compilation of all of García Torres’s media-based works to date—creates the retrospective framework for the exhibition, which features a selection of forty between existing and newly produced artworks presented both in the galleries as well in the Walker’s cinema and mediateque.

Illusion Brought Me Here is organized by the Walker Art Center and co-presented with WIELS, Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels.

Curator: Vincenzo de Bellis, Curator, Visual Arts; with Fabián Leyva-Barragán, Curatorial Fellow, Visual Arts
 

Platforms: Collection and Commissions
November 15, 2018–September 15, 2019

Platforms: Collection and Commissions looks at key artists from the Walker’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection together with newly commissioned film and video works by nine international contemporary artists. Commissioned by the Walker between 2014 and 2017, the artists responded to the influence, inquiry, and inspiration of leading artists and filmmakers in the collection to create new works that premiered first as an online series. Artists: Uri Aran, Marwa Arsanios, Yto Barrada, Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz, Moyra Davey, Renée Green, Leslie Thornton, Shahryar Nashat and James Richards

Curator: Sheryl Mousley, Senior Curator of Moving Image; with Ruth Hodgins, Bentson Archivist/Assistant Curator
 

Elizabeth Price
December 8, 2018–June 30, 2019

London-based artist Elizabeth Price (UK, b. 1966) creates richly-layered narrative moving image works made specifically for gallery settings. Conceived in response to the architecture and past history of the Walker’s Gallery, this solo exhibition includes two new moving image works, FELT TIPP and KOHL (both 2018), marking the artist’s first commission for a US museum. Projected floor to ceiling, FELT TIPP focuses on the design motifs of men’s neckties from the 1970s and ’80s featuring patterns that evoke electronic networks and digital systems. In KOHL, four fictional characters tell stories related to coal: its link to ink, writing, and the archive as well as its uses as a source of fuel and a cosmetic. Seen together, Price’s new works take motifs of dress and body adornment to reflect upon the relationship between the material and digital, sites of labor, and markers of class.

Curator: Pavel Pyś, Curator, Visual Arts; with Jadine Collingwood, Curatorial Fellow, Visual Arts