Anne Collier
Amy Sillman: one lump or two
June 28–September 21, 2014
Opening: Saturday, June 28, 1–4pm
Center for Curatorial Studies and
Hessel Museum of Art
Bard College, PO Box 5000
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000
Hours: Thursday–Monday 11am–6pm
Free admission
T +1 845 758 7598
ccs [at] bard.edu
The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) presents the first major survey exhibition of the artist Anne Collier, tracing her career from 2002 to the present. The self-titled exhibition presents several themes dominant in Collier’s practice during the past decade, including autobiography, pop psychology, the clichés and conventions of commercial photography, and the act of looking or seeing. The exhibition at CCS Bard includes more than 40 works, and establishes Collier’s interest in photographing images that are propagated in popular culture—record-album sleeves, magazines, coffee-table books, Hollywood film stills, and pictorial calendars—set against neutral studio backdrops. Collier’s cool and detached photographic style, manifested in large-scale color prints, eliminates any unnecessary artifice between viewers and the material she finds so fascinating. Anne Collier is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and curated by Michael Darling, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator. This exhibition will travel to MCA Chicago on November 22, 2014 to March 8, 2015, Aspen Art Museum on April 2 to July 15, 2015, then open at The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto in the fall of 2015.
Anne Collier (born 1970) lives and works in New York City. She received a MFA from the University of California Los Angeles, and a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts. An internationally exhibited artist, Collier’s works are held in collections around the world. Recent solo exhibitions include the Modern Institute, Glasgow, Scotland; and Marc Foxx, Los Angeles. She has held teaching positions at the Yale University School of Art and Parsons School of Design in New York, among others.
Presented in the Hessel Museum of Art, Amy Sillman: one lump or two—the artist’s first museum survey—traces the development of Sillman’s work over the past 25 years—from her early use of cartoon figures and a vivacious palette, through to her exploration of the diagrammatic line, the history of Abstract Expressionism, and a growing concern with the bodily and the erotic dimensions of paint. The exhibition focuses on the importance of drawing in Sillman’s practice, as well as the intensity with which she has embraced the dichotomy between figuration and abstraction. Amy Sillman: one lump or two features over 90 works, including drawings, paintings, ‘zines, and the artist’s recent forays into animated film. Organized by Helen Molesworth, Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, the exhibition was on view at the ICA/ Boston from October 3, 2013 to January 5, 2014, and the Aspen Art Museum from February 13 to May 11, 2014.
Amy Sillman is an artist whose paintings, drawings, and animations actively negotiate interactions between abstraction and figure, language and image, feeling and form. Her work has been shown regularly at museums and galleries for the past two decades, including The 2014 Whitney Biennial, and in December 2014 she will participate in a group show about painting at MoMA in New York. Sillman has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and the Pollock-Krasner Grant. For many years a resident of Brooklyn, Sillman will spend much of the next year travelling. In the fall of 2014 she will be a Resident at the American Academy in Rome, and in April 2015, she will begin a stint as Professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt.
Also on view:
Works from the Marieluise Hessel Collection including SCORE! curated by Amy Sillman and Cheyney Thompson, and Jordan Wolfson’s Raspberry Poser (2012).
About the Center for Curatorial Studies
The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) was founded in 1990 as an exhibition and research center for the study of late twentieth-century and contemporary art and culture and to explore experimental approaches to the presentation of these topics and their impact on our world. Since 1994, the Center for Curatorial Studies and its graduate program have provided one of the world’s most forward-thinking teaching and learning environments for the research and practice of contemporary art and curatorship. Broadly interdisciplinary, CCS Bard encourages students, faculty and researchers to question the critical and political dimension of art, its mediation and its social significance. CCS Bard cultivates innovative thinking, radical research and new ways to challenge our understanding of the social and civic values of the visual arts. CCS Bard provides an intensive educational program alongside its public events, exhibitions, and publications, which collectively explore the critical potential of the institutions and practices of exhibition-making. It is uniquely positioned within the larger Center’s tripartite resources, which include the internationally renowned CCS Bard Library and Archives and the Hessel Museum of Art, with its rich permanent collection.
Free chartered bus available from New York City for the openings on June 28. For reservations call
T +1 845 758 7598, or write ccs [at] bard.edu.
Public tours are every Sunday at noon; reservations are preferred at T +1 845 758 7562.
For more information on getting to Bard College, hotel recommendations, transportation, or further information, please call CCS Bard at T +1 845 758 7598, write ccs [at] bard.edu, or visit www.bard.edu/ccs.
