Winter Exhibitions
January 28–March 17, 2012
Reception with the Artists: Saturday, January 28, 6–8pm
Art in General
79 Walker Street
New York, NY 10013
212-219-0473
Art in General presents 3 major winter commissions with artists hailing from Beirut, Reykjavik and Denmark. Mounira Al Solh’s film installation is inspired by 5 Cassavetes films and reinterpreted through the lens of Lebanese cultural taboos; Katrin Sigurdardóttir’s miniature theater hangs in a state of precarious suspension reflecting on the theatrics of architecture, light and shadow in the storefront space; and Theresa Himmer creates a physical and psychological soundscape for the Musee Miniscule elevator.
Click on links below for more project info, images, and bios, or read below.
Mounira Al Solh: Dinosaurs, 6th Floor Gallery
Katrin Sigurdardóttir: Stage, Storefront Project Space
Theresa Himmer: All State, Musee Miniscule in Art in General Elevator
Mounira Al Solh: Dinosaurs
A series of scenes that seem both familiar yet brand new. A grouping of characters that seem to live in an eternal present conditioned by everlasting chaos and unrest. A set of locations marked by darkness and yet illuminated by the intensity of those that inhabit them. A narrative that instead of answering a specific question, is in itself a search for answers.
Mounira Al Solh’s new film installation, Dinosaurs, takes its inspiration from five different films by John Cassavetes. Culling vignettes from Opening Night, Minnie & Moskowitz, Husbands, The Killing of A Chinese Bookie, and Faces (originally titled Dinosaurs and used as the title of this exhibition.) Al Solh directs her friends to reenact specific scenes wherein the act of drinking reveals moments of intimacy, aggression, and loneliness. Invoking Cassavetes as both a means of study and a lens, Al Solh reflects on the relationship between substance and evaporation, exploring how alcohol can become instrumental in confronting fate. Dinosaurs’ fragmented scenes build a fragile portrait of a place in flux, a loose narrative that continues to unravel and unhinge with each drink. At once claustrophobic, circular and tense, Al Solh’s reinterpretation of Cassavetes creates a space of suspended chaos.
Mounira Al Solh was born in Beirut in 1978. She studied painting at the Lebanese University in Beirut (LB), and Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (NL). Between 2006 and 2008, she was a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Al Solh’s New Commissions exhibition at Art in General is her first solo exhibition in New York. Her work will also be featured in The Ungovernables, The Second New Museum Triennial, opening in February 2012.
Katrin Sigurdardóttir: Stage
A miniature theater hangs from the ceiling of an empty, unlit storefront space. A single spotlight illuminates the theater’s stage, casting wild shadows that permeate the space and break through onto the street. The stage hangs precariously, a suspended moment of tension irradiating from within. As the day unfolds and the sun sets, the shadows grow stronger, marking time with their formidable presence. Though lit the stage is empty, the theatrics of such architecture transposed to the shadow play inside the storefront.
Real and imagined, miniature yet enormous, Katrin Sigurdardóttir’s site-specific installation, Stage, pushes beyond the physical boundaries of the storefront, compelling an immediate, direct, and intimate encounter for the passer-by. Emphasizing the relationship between inside-outside and passage-enclosure, Stage causes viewers to rethink their own perception of space, assuming an unexpected mise-en-scène that blurs what “is” and what is imagined.
Katrin Sigurdardóttir was born in Iceland and currently lives and works between Reykjavik and New York. In the last 15 years, her works have been shown extensively in Europe, North- and South America and are included in numerous public and private collections. Her most recent solo exhibitions include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Suburban, Chicago, Eleven Rivington, New York, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, Galeria Leme Sao Paulo, Brazil and FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon, France. She has received numerous fellowships and awards, including awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Rema Hort Mann Foundation and The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Brooklyn Rail, Art Papers, Die Zeit, Vogue, Surface Magazine, Modern Painters, Contemporary Magazine, ArtNews, Flash Art and Artforum International.
Theresa Himmer: All State
Theresa Himmer’s site-specific audio installation All State, realized in collaboration with Kristján Eggertsson, responds to the physical and psychological parameters of the elevator. Using the repetitive motion and existing sounds of the Art in General elevator as her starting points, All State amplifies an environment already attuned to heightened sensitivity, positioning viewers somewhere between real and imagined space. In the compact interior of the elevator, Himmer’s uncanny score of recorded sounds disrupts our notion of cause and effect. Through repetition, duplication and overlap, All State mimics reality and belies function. At once, signifiers of both visible and invisible operations (the passing of floors, the overhead fan, the opening of doors) become hollow, irrational and destabilizing.
Theresa Himmer was born in Denmark and lives and works in New York City. Himmer’s site-specific installations integrate the languages of architecture and art to create cinematic environments. Himmer has exhibited internationally with site-specific installations in Russia, Mexico, Iceland, and others. She recently exhibited at Steven Stoyanov Gallery, New York and the National Gallery of Iceland, Dyndilyndi. Himmer is currently attending the Independent Studio Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
About Art in General
Founded in 1981 in Lower Manhattan, Art in General is a nonprofit organization that assists artists with the production and presentation of new work. It changes in response to the needs of artists and engages the public with their work. Since it was established, the organization has emerged as one of New York City’s leading nonprofits devoted to supporting and stimulating the creation of contemporary art, providing an environment in which artists may exhibit unconventional work and exchange ideas with their peers.
Media Contact
Maureen Sullivan
Red Art Projects
maureen@redartprojects.com
