Six Solos
Erwin Redl
Megan Geckler
Tobias Putrih/MOS
Gustavo Godoy
Katy Moran
Joel Morrison
November 9, 2010 – February 13, 2011
Opening events:
November 5-7, 2010
Wexner Center for the Arts
The Ohio State University, Columbus
1871 N. High St.
Columbus, OH 43210
Notes Wexner Center Director Sherri Geldin, “The Wexner Center has a long history of supporting the production of new, often experimental work by younger artists looking for opportunities to push their practice in new directions. Each of the selected artists is on the cusp of greater renown, and we are particularly pleased to open this show on the occasion of the 21st anniversary of the Wexner Center, which might well connote a modicum of institutional maturity—but never creative complacency.”
Christopher Bedford, chief curator of exhibitions, says, “For many of these artists, this will be the first solo presentation in a U.S. museum, and it’s telling that most have used this occasion as incentive to broaden their scope of address and expand their already ambitious repertoire of forms and ideas. We are very proud to be able to support such work in a wide variety of media, some representing new hybrids altogether.”
An overview of the six artists and their projects:
• Erwin Redl has created a time-based installation on the Wexner Center’s exterior grid using approximately 100 multicolored LED light sticks, animating the building’s grid, a signature feature of its architecture, as never before. Entitled FETCH, this spectacle of illumination will be visible at night. Born in Austria, Redl currently lives and works in Bowling Green, Ohio.
• Los Angeles-based artist Megan Geckler has created an immersive installation, Spread the ashes of the colors, that features interlacing, vibrantly colored flagging tape suspended from the ceilings and lining the walls of the lobby.
• Tobias Putrih/MOS have designed and constructed an environment, titled Majestic, of aluminum and fiberglass that serves as a viewing space for a video series conceived by Wexner Center film curators. Visitors can walk into and around the work, absorbing it as a sculpture, and can also sit within the structure. The video program will change every few weeks and will feature, in order, Jun Nguyen-Hatshushiba’s Happy New Year: Memorial Project Vietnam II (November 9–27); Abbas Kiarostami’s Shirin (November 29–December 26); Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreig’s Je Veux Voir (December 28–January 23); and seven episodes from Leslie Thornton’s Peggy and Fred in Hell (January 24–February 13). Born in Slovenia, Putrih lives and works in Boston; MOS is a design and architecture collective that often collaborates with Putrih; led by principals Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample, MOS is based in New Haven, Connecticut.
• Los Angeles–based, Mexican-American artist Gustavo Godoy has created a site-responsive installation that fills a trapezoidal gallery space with a dramatic plywood construction. Visitors can move through and around the work, which is lit from within by fluorescent bulbs, creating a luminous effect amplified by the white vinyl floor treatment. This work is the largest project to date in Godoy’s ongoing Fast-formal series. Visitors are invited to climb on the sculpture one person at a time, at their own risk.
• British painter Katy Moran‘s first solo museum presentation in the United States features more than 30 works created between 2006 and 2010 and examines the trajectory of her art during this period. Moran’s intimately scaled, deeply felt paintings—in her signature sensual, brushy style—exist along the fault lines of representation and abstraction. Some of the more recent works incorporate elements of collage.
• Seattle-born sculptor Joel Morrison has several works on view, together offering a selective survey of recent work. At the center of the exhibition is a major new project, the gigantic Victor (rat trap), a stainless steel work depicting an air-filled latex glove caught in a rat trap. Also on view: one of Morrison’s most memorable previous works, Romeo—a gaping maw with bullets for teeth—and a major new fiberglass sculpture.
FREE ARTIST’S TALKS: Tobias Putrih/MOS, November 7 at 2 pm; Erwin Redl, November 18 at 4:30 pm; Megan Geckler, January 12 at 4:30 pm; Joel Morrison, January 20 at 4:30 pm; and Gustavo Godoy on January 27 at 4:30 pm.
MEDIA PREVIEW: Friday, November 5, 3–5 pm (rsvpmedia@wexarts.org).
ANNIVERSARY PARTY (invite-only): Saturday, November 6 starting at 7 pm
MEMBERS’ PREVIEW BRUNCH: Sunday, November 7, 11 am–2 pm
Six Solos is organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts.
Generous support for the project by Tobias Putrih/MOS is provided by Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown.
All exhibitions and related events also receive support from the Corporate Annual Fund of the Wexner Center Foundation and Wexner Center members, as well as from the Greater Columbus Arts Council, The Columbus Foundation, Nationwide Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council.
Wexner Center for the Arts
The Ohio State University
wexarts.org
Press Contact:
Karen Simonian, 614-292-9923
ksimonian@wexarts.org
Press page: wexarts.org/info/press/sixsolos
Twitter: @wexarts
Facebook: facebook.com/wexarts
*Images above:
Left: Courtesy of Stuart Shave / Modern Art, London, UK; Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York; and Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco.
Right: Courtesy of the artist and Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles.
Photo by M. Christopher Jones/courtesy Wexner Center for the Arts.
