SPRING EXHIBITIONS AT WEX
Double Sexus: Hans Bellmer and Louise Bourgeois
Human Behavior: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg
Pipilotti Rist: The Tender Room
March 26–July 31, 2011
Wexner Center for the Arts
The Ohio State University, Columbus
www.wexarts.org
Opening events March 25
“Anchored by Double Sexus, this suite of exhibitions was consciously constructed to be at once illuminating and provocative, moving and unsettling,” notes Wexner Center Director Sherri Geldin. “Brilliantly juxtaposing the work of Louise Bourgeois and Hans Bellmer, Double Sexus reveals not only the remarkable affinities between the two artists, but the exceptional audacity with which they pursued their investigation of the body as a metaphor for all manner of physical and psychological manipulation.”
Geldin adds, “And to demonstrate the powerful ongoing legacy of Bourgeois’s work, in particular among younger women artists, the center invited two international talents to exhibit alongside her. Coming of age more than two generations after Bourgeois, both Nathalie Djurberg and Pipilotti Rist are known to mine similar veins of gender and sexual politics, among other highly charged social topics.”
Double Sexus: Hans Bellmer and Louise Bourgeois: This exhibition explores the striking formal and thematic connections between two influential and historically significant artists, Hans Bellmer (1902–1975) and 1999 Wexner Prize recipient Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010). Although they never actually met, both artists lived and worked in Paris in the 1930s during the height of the surrealist movement. Their work over subsequent decades shares considerable parallels, in particular an interest in manipulating the human form to challenge entrenched social conventions, often by embracing imagery and ideas once considered taboo. This exhibition marks the first dialogue between their artwork and includes more than 50 examples of sculpture, photography, and works on paper that date between 1934 and 2008. Double Sexus was organized by Udo Kittelmann, Silke Krohn, and Kyllikki Zacharias at the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, in cooperation with the Wexner Center.
Double Sexus is accompanied by an extensive catalogue; a free gallery guide produced by the Wexner Center will also be available.
The Wexner Center’s Lambert Family Lecture, Jerry Gorovoy and Germano Celant: Remembering Louise, will feature a discussion between Gorovoy (Bourgeois’s longtime assistant, collaborator, and friend) and Celant, former curator of contemporary art at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The event is April 26 at 7 pm, and admission is free. The event will be streamed live at www.wexarts.org/live.
Human Behavior: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg: Djurberg, who won the prestigious Silver Lion for Promising Young Artist at the Venice Biennale in 2009, makes her Ohio debut with this exhibition surveying some of the most important developments in her work from 2006 to 2009. This constellation of works includes sculpture and four stop-motion animation films that demonstrate the range and evolution of her practice. Djurberg’s carefully crafted, entirely handmade animations upend the childlike innocence of stop-motion animation to dramatize abuses of power in such sociopolitical issues as the lingering impact of colonialism, senseless violence, sexual exploitation, and the commodification of women. Foregrounding the visceral and physical, her films treat uncomfortable, even repellent subjects in horrific detail, yet consistently maintain the humanity of perpetrators and victims alike. Those on view are The Natural Selection (2006), New Movements in Fashion (2006), It’s All About Painting (2007), and The Experiment (Greed) (2009), all with music by Hans Berg.
Notes Chief Curator Christopher Bedford, “Through her consistently topical, thought-provoking work, Djurberg asks some of the most challenging questions being posed in contemporary art. This exhibition demonstrates the artist’s pursuit of a core set of social questions, as well as her distinctive and masterful use of stop-motion animation.”
A gallery guide produced by the Wexner Center will be available.
Pipilotti Rist: The Tender Room: This site-specific, multimedia environment incorporates Rist’s recent ideas into a wholly new work, featuring her signature use of lush color, with video projections, vibrant window treatments, and seating elements designed by the artist. In her work, Rist consistently takes familiar subjects, such as the body, and divorces them from traditional representations through her clever and transformative use of color and signature cinematography. Devoting herself to the task of complicating and enhancing the visual environment, Rist blurs the boundary between fantasy and reality, and her immersive installations invite viewers to linger in the space. For this installation, Rist draws inspiration from her first feature-length film, Pepperminta (2009). The exhibition also features a projection of the single-channel video Open My Glade (Flatten) (2000) outside the Wexner Center’s east entrance.
Notes Chief Curator Christopher Bedford, “We are very pleased to host the solo Columbus debut of Pipilotti Rist, and to have been able to support the production of an ambitious new work that extends the reach of one of the artist’s most significant projects to date, Pepperminta.”
The center will produce an exhibition catalogue documenting the new installation to be available in early June with essays by Christopher Bedford and Lynne Tillman, an interview with the artist by Kristin Brockman, and extensive installation photography.
On March 25 at 7:30 pm, Rist will discuss her installation and other recent works with author and critic Lynne Tillman as part of the exhibition’s opening festivities (also streamed live at www.wexarts.org/live).
Also on view in the lower lobby: Candice Breitz’s Factum, on view through April 17, and Rineke Dijkstra’s Annemiek, opening April 20. Erwin Redl‘s outdoor light installation FETCH is on view through May 30.
Press Contact:
Karen Simonian, (614) 292-9923
ksimonian@wexarts.org
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*Images above:
painted wood, fabric, velvet, and child’s sock and shoe, 21 3/4 in. in height (installed, approx.), The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, purchased through the bequest of Rita and Otto Blau, Lugano, B06.2277
Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, by Einat Arif-Galanti © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.
Right: Pink rubber, 30 x 19 x 15 in., courtesy Cheim & Read, Hauser & Wirth, and Galerie Karsten Greve. Photo: Christopher Burke.