Rachel Harrison
Fake Titel: Turquoise-Stained Altars for Burger Turner
Jordan Wolfson
Ecce Homo / le Poseur
7 September 2013–5 January 2014
S.M.A.K.
Museum for Contemporary Art
Citadelpark, Ghent
Belgium
Rachel Harrison
S.M.A.K. Ghent is presenting a solo exhibition by Rachel Harrison (b. 1966, New York). Considered one of the most influential sculptors of her generation, Harrison simultaneously undermines and reaffirms multiple layers of sculptural histories, employing slapstick humour and a sense of tragicomedy. The exhibition at S.M.A.K. in Ghent is a joint venture with the kestnergesellschaft, Hanover, where an earlier version was presented in summer 2013.
Fake Titel interweaves three distinct bodies of work: sculptures and drawings from Harrison’s 2012 exhibition The Help, the suite of photographs titled Sunset Series (2000–2012) and a revised, architecturally scaled installation Incidents of Travel in Yucatan (2011–2013).
The sculptures and drawings from The Help examine the entangled roles of the artist, the muse, and the help. The title comes from a photograph the artist took of the maintenance door of Duchamp’s final work, Étant Donnés (1946–1966). The Sunset Series comprises thirty-one photographs of a single source image, a photograph of a sunset. In each photograph, shot on 35mm film, the artist physically manipulates the found snapshot to create a new image. Incidents of Travel in Yucatan incorporates an array of used pedestals traversing several rooms with sculptures and video by Harrison, as well as works by other artists. Situated between exhibition device and sculpture, it recalls Marcel Broodthaers and his approaches to institutional critique; as well as issues of cliché, cultural identity and ownership. Harrison integrated multiples by Marcel Duchamp and Yves Klein in addition to further work from S.M.A.K.’s collection by Asger Jorn, Pjeroo Roobjee, Laura Owens and Meret Oppenheim. Oppenheim’s Sommergestirn (1963) might serve as secret map of the exhibition, whereas Owens’s large sunrise, Untitled (2000), could mark its entrance.
The accompanying publication Rachel Harrison. Fake Titel contains texts by Diedrich Diederichsen, Susanne Figner, Martin Germann, Alex Kitnick, Veit Görner and Philippe Van Cauteren.
Special thanks to Greene Naftali, New York, for their generous support.
Jordan Wolfson
Simultaneously, S.M.A.K. is presenting the first substantial museum exhibition by Jordan Wolfson (b. 1980, New York), which is built up around a trilogy of his recent animation films. Con Leche (2009), Animation, masks (2011) and Raspberry Poser (2012, co-produced by S.M.A.K. and REDCAT) are being shown in a labyrinthine exhibition layout that reflects the complexity of Wolfson’s blend of internet images, autobiographical elements, art history references, popular culture, scraps of music and analogue and digital animation.
Jordan Wolfson is interested not only in the expressive potential of animation, but also in animation as a sculptural genre and as an essential step in the history of modernism. His films, tracking issues of ethnic stereotyping, narcissism, class disparity and implied violence, are typical of a generation whose identity is increasingly defined by the fusion of its own self-image and digital space. Our lives can be read as a play with countless roles and masks which, as a result of such phenomena as social media, can almost endlessly be multiplied and enhanced. In that sense, the title of the exhibition Ecce Homo / le Poseur refers to this contemporary state of mind: the wild darkness between the ego and its image.
To accompany this exhibition at S.M.A.K. and Jordan Wolfson: Raspberry Poser, a show that was on at REDCAT in Los Angeles from December 2012 to January 2013, a book was published, titled Jordan Wolfson. Ecce Homo / le Poseur with contributions by Aram Moshayedi, Esther Leslie, Linda Norden, Martin Germann and Philippe Van Cauteren.
Special thanks to David Zwirner, New York/London and Sadie Coles HQ, London, for their generous support.
Press contact: Eline Verbauwhede: eline.verbauwhede [at] smak.be / T +32 (0) 9 240 76 60
