September 17, 2011–January 8, 2012
Montclair Art Museum
3 South Mountain Ave.
Montclair, NJ
07042 973-746-5555
The Fall 2011 season at the Montclair Art Museum marks the launch of New Directions, a series of solo exhibitions of contemporary artists inaugurated by Alexandra Schwartz, MAM’s first curator of contemporary art. The first in this series presents the work of Brooklyn-based digital artist and 2011 Guggenheim Fellow Marina Zurkow. The exhibition presents the world premiere of Zurkow’s Friends and Enemies, and will include five digital animation videos, two of which will be screened on the Museum’s grounds, and 16 works on paper.
The first portion of the exhibition showcases the series Crossing the Waters (2006–09), digital animations that explore oceanic environments and climate change. The four-part video Elixir (2007–09), parts III and IV of which will be screened on the Museum’s grounds, shows figures trapped in floating bottles, highlighting the paradoxical violence and tranquility of the oceans. Weights and Measures (2007) examines how animals, plants, and machines play radically different ecological roles. Slurb (2009), commissioned by the city of Tampa, imagines that city as an underwater, post-apocalyptic world.
The centerpiece of the exhibition, from the series Friends and Enemies, comprises a 146-hour-long video and related prints. The digital animation Mesocosm (Northumberland UK) (2011) chronicles the changes that occur over a year on the moors of Northumberland, England; one minute of screen time equals one hour of real time. Seasons unfold, days pass and animals come and go around the omnipresent man in the garden, which is based on a painting by Lucian Freud of the British fashion designer and performer Leigh Bowery. The action in the landscape is determined by computer code, which randomly generates its order and frequency; no cycle is identical to the last. Mesocosm (Northumberland, UK): Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn (2011) consists of four digital prints based on video stills, while Heraldic Crests for Invasive Species (2011) comprises 12 letterpress prints describing some of the major invasive (non-native) species of Northern England, several of which appear in the video.
The exhibition will open with an outdoor community celebration, free and open to the public, on Saturday, September 17, 5–7:30 p.m. (rain date: Sunday, September 18, 4–6:30 p.m.).
Since 2000, MARINA ZURKOW has exhibited at The Sundance Film Festival, The Rotterdam Film Festival, Res Fest, Ars Electronica, Creative Time, The Kitchen, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Walker Art Center, the Brooklyn Museum, The National Museum for Women in the Arts, and Eyebeam, among other venues. Her videos have been broadcast on MTV, FujiTV, and PBS. She is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2005 NYFA Fellow, a 2003 Rockefeller New Media Fellow, and a 2001 Creative Capital grantee. She teaches at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), and lives in Brooklyn.
Besides inaugurating the New Directions series, ALEXANDRA SCHWARTZ is planning a major traveling exhibition, New Order: Art and Politics in the 1990s, opening at MAM in Fall 2013. She is the author of Ed Ruscha’s Los Angeles (MIT Press, 2010) and co-editor of Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, 2010).
Marina Zurkow: Friends, Enemies, and Others is made possible with generous Exhibition Angel support from the Vance Wall Foundation, Rose and John Cali, Tracy Higgins and James Leitner, Karen and Larry Mandelbaum, and Margo and Frank Walter.
All Museum programs are made possible, in part, by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vance Wall Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and Museum Members.
