“How I Finally Accepted Fate”
June 8th-July 28th, 2006
curated by Jason Murison
Opening Reception, June 8th, 6-8 pm
EFA Gallery
EFA Studio Center
323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10018
between 8th and 9th Avenues
Summer Gallery Hours:
Tues. through Fri., 12-6 PM
www.efa1.org
Artists:Jennifer Cohen, Stuart Croft, Angela Dufresne, Maureen Duncan, Ilana Halperin, Sarah Hirzel, Matt Keegan, Keith Mayerson, Carolee Schneemann, Noah Sheldon
EFA Gallery continues its inaugural season into the summer with How I Finally Accepted Fate curated by Jason Murison. In a two-part framework of diary and fiction, How I Finally Accepted Fate examines objects and images which function through memoir.
The first half of the exhibition presents artists who use aspects of diary as the conceptual foundation of their work. Many of these artworks start with an extremely personal experience or relationship and distance themselves through a project-oriented approach. For example, Matt Keegans abstracted photographic installations always start from a personal perspective, often using his boyfriend or his father as his subject. Jennifer Cohen also utilizes her own history, as a professional ballerina, to inform her sculptures that explore the quasi-cultural history of the ballet. In both cases, the use of memoir becomes a necessary springboard for larger conceptual structures; while other works in the exhibition memoir remains intact. Maureen Duncan has recorded a 3 1/2-hour monologue in which she confesses why she cannot part with her CD collection (she has changed to MP3s). In the piece she recounts her emotional dependence album by album. Carolee Schneemanns ABC in the Cards, We Print Anything documents a transformation of lovers through a series of photographs and color coded cards. Each card recounts such things as advice from others, dialogs between the three parties involved, and notation of her dreams at the time.
The exhibition continues with works that act as doppelganger-like fictions to the artists life. In Point X, Stuart Croft, a young video artist from London, creates a television narrative much like Americas Most Wanted telling the tale of a father/son relationship with speculation of murder. Keith Mayerson readdresses the vacant Warholian celebrity icon by painting them in an expressionistic style much like a method actor approaching their character. Angela Dufresne also paints fictional characters and landscapes of cinematic moments, often mixing in her real life relations to create idealized landscapes for both her friends and idols to simultaneously exist in. Ilana Halperins installation of drawings is the fodder for her powerful lecture performances that combine the aspect of diary as travel log. In it she tells a tale of grief set within the shifting and often violent landscape that surrounds her.
How I Finally Accepted Fate celebrates artworks whose fictional scenarios and personal memoirs do not quite transcend the political, but rather, hover as artifacts of change.
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Jason Murison is an independent curator as well as the current director of PPOW Gallery. Aside from curating a number of exhibitions, he has written criticism and essays for various publications and catalogs.
This exhibition is presented by the EFA Gallery, a program of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, with additional support from The Milton and Sally Avery Foundation, The Helen Keeler Burke Charitable Foundation, and Peter C. Gould.
The EFA Gallery is located in the EFA Studio Center in mid-town Manhattan. The gallery supports the creative work of independent curators. Curators build the frame work in which we understand artists and the art they make. At their best, they redefine how we look at culture.
The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts believes in the essential importance of art in a civil society. The value of the artist’s creative spirit is not limited by age, race, nationality or acceptance by others.
For further information:
Elaine Tin Nyo, Artistic Director
T. 212-563-5855 x203, F. 212-563-1875
gallery@efa1.org
