NEW WORKS: 06.1 AND ARNOUD HOLLEMAN
Artpace San Antonio is pleased to announce New Works: 06.1, on view March 8 through May 7, 2006. The exhibition presents new projects by resident artists Edgar Arceneaux (Los Angeles, CA); Augusto Di Stefano (San Antonio, TX); and Ranjani Shettar (Bangalore, India). Selected by Douglas Fogle, Curator of Contemporary Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, PA, each artist alternately explores the foundations of humanity in our boundaries, our collision with nature, and our tragic sense of humor.
About the Artists
Edgar Arceneauxs Alchemy of comedy Stupid combines film, performance, photos, and print to extract connections between the medieval science of alchemy and contemporary comedy. The project centers on a multi-channel film featuring comedian David Alan Grier experimenting with the same routine in three locations. Like a scientist might consider the four basic elements of air, water, fire, and earth, the production mixes proportions of colors, music, audience, and wordplay. Objects in the gallery expand on the idea of tragedy as an inherent part of both comedy and alchemy, which was applied to prolong life and cure disease. Arceneauxs Artpace project will travel to Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Special thanks to them and The Joyce Foundation, which provided additional funds.
Augusto Di Stefanos paintings, drawings, and, for the first time, printed material, explore processed and gestural marks that slip between geometric abstraction and strangely lone structures. In Di Stefanos paintings, the solitude of flawlessly coated backgrounds is strategically broken. Untitled features a deep grey field marred by thick, black, finger-like gestures heavy with the emotional residue of the artists hand. Movement is contained in a form reaching toward one edge, alluding to space beyond the painting. Di Stefanos drawings pulse with the juxtaposition of inside and outside, moving further from the gestural to rigid, produced forms. The semicircular arrangement of works encourages connections and distinctions.
In Ranjani Shettars Im no one to tell you, what not to do, biological research leads to her considered treatment of materials. Both the three-dimensional sculptural installation and framed print connect with South Texas by incorporating native woods. For the installation Shettar carved, sanded, and polished sections of mesquite into rounded sculptural nodes. Mounted on the wall, the wooden forms congregate convey the irregular balance of nature. Nearby, ropes of watery green algae hang from the ceiling and appear ready to host the wooden fungi. The algae, cast by hand from silicone rubber, is an additive process which complements the reductive act of carving, just as each element in the installation networks with the other to exist and be complete. The project is a subtle meditation on relational negotiations, particularly mutual symbiosis. Ranjani Shettars works suggest the mutual benefits and beauty of sharing and cooperation over competition and combat.
About the Curator
New Works: 06.1 is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy, with additional funding from the Texas Commission on the Arts and Rosina Lee Yue and Bert A. Lies, Jr., MD.
Also on view in the Hudson (Show)Room
Through video, films, photographs, drawings, and print projects, Amsterdam-based Arnoud Holleman appropriates and creates imagery, blurring boundaries between documentation and fiction, reality and fantasy. While pivoting between media and commercial and fine art production, Holleman consistently interrogates the creation and reception of cultural materialof looking and of making items that are looked at. For Hollemans first show in the United States, Artpace San Antonio will present past projects and debut new ones on the idea of portraiture. This exhibition was curated by Kate Green, Artpaces Curator of Education and Exhibitions.
This exhibition is supported in part by the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam.
About Artpace
Artpace San Antonio serves as an advocate for contemporary art and as a catalyst for the creation of significant art projects. We seek to nurture emerging and established artists and to provide opportunities for inspiration, experimentation, and education. Our programs support the evolution of new ideas in contemporary art and cultivate diverse audiences while providing a forum for ongoing dialogue.
Artpace is located downtown at 445 North Main Avenue, between Savings and Martin streets, San Antonio, Texas. Free parking is available on the corner of Savings and N. Flores streets. Artpace is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday, 12-5 PM, Thursday, 12-8 PM, and by appointment. Admission is free.
Programs at Artpace San Antonio are made possible through the generous support of corporate partners, individual donors, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Kronkosky Charitable Foundation, Texas Commission on the Arts, the Edouard Foundation, and A Grant from the Ruth Lang Charitable Fund of the San Antonio Area Foundation.
© 2006 Artpace San Antonio
