MIERLE LADERMAN UKELES
THE ARMORY SHOW: PIER 94 – BOOTH 1116
Location: 12th Avenue at 55th Street
February 23 – 26, 2007
Friday – Sunday: Noon to 8:00 pm.
Monday: Noon to 5:00 pm
The Ronald Feldman Gallery, in cooperation with the New York City Department of Sanitation, will present the work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles at the gallery’s booth (1116) at Pier 94 in the 2007 Armory Show. An artist who works in the public domain, Ukeles conceptualized the term “Maintenance Art” in 1969 after child-birth, which she has applied to the home, all kinds of service work, the urban environment, and the sustenance of the earth itself. Her thirty-year-long artist-in-residency, official and unsalaried, in the Department of Sanitation was referred to in the Winter 2002-2003 Public Art Review as among the great public art works of our time.
On view will be The Social Mirror, a twelve-ton, twenty-eight-foot-long New York City sanitation truck reconfigured with mirrored glass panels that will occupy the booth. The reflecting truck is a metaphor for the interrelationship between “us” whose images get caught in the mirror and “those” who collect our garbage. A highlight of the First NYC Art Parade in 1983, The Social Mirror is a permanent, mobile public-art work that continues to be used by the Department of Sanitation for parades and other special events.
Photographs, videos, and text tracing the arc of Ukeles’ career will line the corridor between the booth’s wall and the mirrored truck, including The Manifesto for Maintenance Art (1969); documentation of domestic art actions and early performances in art institutions in the ‘70s; the ground-breaking Touch Sanitation city-wide performance with 8,500 Sanitation workers from 1977 to 1980; Unburning Freedom Hall at L.A. MOCA in 1997; and her work on the transformation of closed landfills, including Danehy Park in Cambridge, MA. As the Percent for Art Artist of Fresh Kills, the largest landfill on earth, her proposals to renew people’s connections to the site and make the power of its transformation visible have been published in the NYC Fresh Kills Park Draft Master Plan. A PBS video and a compilation video of The Social Mirror, the Ballet Mechanique, choreographed for six sanitation mechanical sweepers, and Ceremonial Sweep capture the spirit of these decades of work.
Mierle Ukeles has received multiple awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the NY State Council on the Arts and support from the Guggenheim, Andy Warhol, Joan Mitchell, and Anonymous Was a Woman Foundations. Forthcoming group exhibitions include WACK! Art & the Feminist Revolution at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Sharjah Biennial 8, United Arab Emirates, and Claiming Space: The American Feminist Originators at American University, Washington D.C.
On view at Ronald Feldman Gallery:
Brian Knep
through March 10
Knep draws comparisons between the properties of organic life and human experience by combining art, architecture, and science in interactive video projected installations which engage and encourage audience participation.
The exhibition features Deep Wounds, a version of a public art work he initially made for Harvard University’s historic Memorial Hall, which was built to honor the 136 Harvard alumni who died in the Civil War on the Union side. As a counterpoint to the omission of the Confederate fatalities, in Knep’s installation visitors walk on floor panels to reveal descriptions of the 64 Harvard alumni who died fighting on the Confederate side. The work considers healing and reconciliation.
Other works by the artist are also on view.
Brian Knep, who lives and works in Boston, is an artist-in-residence at Harvard Medical School.
For information, contact Sarah Paulson at (212) 226-3232 or sarah@feldmangallery.com.
RONALD FELDMAN FINE ARTS
31 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10013
T. 212-226-3232 | F. 212-941-1536 | info@feldmangallery.com
http://www.feldmangallery.com