ART CHICAGO 2008
The Merchandise Mart, 12th Floor and Main Lobby
April 25-28, 2008
Fri. & Sat: 11am – 7pm; Sun: 11am – 6pm & Mon:11am – 4pm
Galerie Ernst Hilger
Dorotheergasse 5
A-1010 Vienna, Austria
Phone: 43-1-512 53 15
Fax: 43-1-513 91 26
http://www.hilger.at
Hilger Contemporary is delighted to present Dust Storm (Manter, Kansas) 2007 in Art Chicago. This is the second in a series of works by John Gerrard which feature Dust Storms from the 1930′s Dust Bowl remade virtually and placed on the landscapes as they stand today. The artist has described these works as ‘memorial structures’. Here Joseph Wolin writes about the first of these Storm works in Modern Painters magazine:
‘Landscape and time have remained the subjects of many of Gerrard’s subsequent works, each of which can take him and his Austrian team up to six months to design …. Dust Storm (Dalhart, Texas, USA)–seen in the group show last summer at Marian Goodman Gallery in New York–similarly invokes ecology. In the 2007 animation, an ominous tempest looms on the horizon of a rural grassland. The work’s panoramic view comes from photographs the artist shot on location, the image of the storm from 1930s archival photos of the Dust Bowl, which resulted from the confluence of cyclical drought and the reckless expansion of agricultural activity made possible by fossil fuel–powered farm equipment. But Gerrard devised the algorithm that defines the dark cloud’s roiling by looking at video of a dust storm in Anbar Province in Iraq, taken by an American soldier. In a strange reversal, Dust Storm makes our contemporary thirst for oil, and an attendant blindness to its effects on the world, animate a historic catastrophe in the panhandle of George W. Bush’s home state, a disaster that was likewise driven by oil, rapaciousness, and willful ignorance of the consequences’.
“Introducing: John Gerrard” by Joseph Wolin from the November 2007 issue of Modern Painters.
John Gerrard (1974, Dublin) is based in Dublin, Ireland and Vienna, Austria. He received a BFA from the Ruskin School of Oxford University, UK, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA. Currently work by the artist can be seen in Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin, Ireland in the exhibition: John Gerrard / Joy Gerrard, 12 April – 24 May 2008. Recent solo shows include Dark Portraits, RHA Gallery, Dublin, Ireland (12.06) travelling to hilger contemporary, Vienna, Austria (1.07) Recent group shows include Equal, That Is To The Real Itself, Marian Goodman Gallery, NY, USA, (08/07) Singing the Real, National Gallery of South Africa, SA. (07/07) Landscapism, Islip Museum of Art. Islip, USA, Present Future, Artissima, Turin, Italy (11.06). The 4th Seoul Media Art Biennale, Seoul Museum of Art, South Korea (10.06).
Further artists at art chicago 08: Daniele Buetti, Oliver Dorfer, Andreas Leikauf, Brian McKee, Angel Marcos, Massimo Vitali.
Contact: Galerie Ernst Hilger, ernst.Hilger@hilger.at , http://www.hilger.at