Carissa Rodriguez: The Maid
May 18–July 29, 2018
Allison Katz: Diary w/o Dates
Diary w/o Dates, the first solo exhibition in the US by Allison Katz (b. 1980, Montreal; lives and works in London) draws a parallel between the grid of the calendar and the grid of the canvas. Katz sees a resemblance between the structured intervals of time and the physical constraints of a painting. She plays within the borders of each—the cells of the day, week, and months in a year and the four stretcher-bars that determine the limits of a composition—letting that which is beyond the grid encroach. This most recent body of work is a suite of 12 paintings that construct a mythical present, simultaneously referencing the past while proposing the future. Katz engages self-portraiture, negotiating memory and projection, complicating the viewer’s relationship to the narrator and how a diaristic premise functions in relation to belief and doubt. Content is generated from multiplicity, with sources lifted from family, history, the city, the natural world, the mirror, and the mask. Katz warps the reproduction of time, echoing the irrational (dis)order in which we apprehend our own personal histories, drives, and destinations.
Allison Katz: Diary w/o Dates is organized by Yuri Stone, Assistant Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center. This exhibition is organized in collaboration with Oakville Galleries, Ontario.
Carissa Rodriguez: The Maid
Carissa Rodriguez (b. 1970, New York, NY; lives and works in New York) examines the material and social conditions in which art is produced and reveals how the canonical figure of the artist is reflected in—and reproduced by—the products of her labor. At the center of her exhibition is The Maid (2018). This video work follows a selection of American artist Sherrie Levine’s Newborn sculptures throughout the course of a day in various residences, private and institutional, from New York to Los Angeles. Levine made the works in crystal and black cast glass in the early 1990s, molding them after Constantin Brancusi’s marble and bronze sculptures of the same name from 1915 and 1920. By featuring not only Levine’s sculptures, already appropriations of another artist’s work, but also capturing their contemporary environments, Rodriguez engages the conditions and settings in which art circulates, proposing that the futures of artworks are inherently speculative. Rodriguez’s exhibition also includes the recent video The Girls (1997–2018) and a series of gelatin silver prints titled All the Best Memories are Hers (2018).
Carissa Rodriguez: The Maid is presented in collaboration with SculptureCenter, New York, and curated by Ruba Katrib. The Cambridge presentation is organized by Henriette Huldisch, Director of Exhibitions & Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center. The video commission, The Maid, is underwritten by Valeria Napoleone XX SculptureCenter.
Exhibitions at the List Center are made possible with the support of Fotene Demoulas & Tom Coté, Audrey & James Foster, Jane & Neil Pappalardo, Cynthia & John Reed, and Terry & Rick Stone. Special thanks to Philip S. Khoury and the Office of the Associate Provost.
General operating support is provided by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Council for the Arts at MIT; Philip S. Khoury, Associate Provost at MIT; the MIT School of Architecture + Planning; the Mass Cultural Council, and many generous individual donors. The Advisory Committee Members of the List Visual Arts Center are gratefully acknowledged.
