GIRL FIGHT
KATE GILMORE’S PERFORMANCE-BASED VIDEOS AT ARTPACE SAN ANTONIO
Through April 20, 2008
445 North Main Avenue
San Antonio, Texas 78205
Artpace San Antonio is pleased to present Girl Fight, on view through April 20, 2008 in the Hudson (Show)Room. The exhibition features eight videos by Kate Gilmore, marking the artist’s first major solo exhibition in a museum. Organized by Artpace Executive Director Matthew Drutt, Girl Fight provides a comprehensive look at Gilmore’s performance-based practice, and features the debut of a new video and accompanying sculptural installation created at Artpace.
Kate Gilmore’s work depicts the artist confronting a series of self-imposed challenges. Her tragicomic situations—a smiling performer relentlessly pelted with rotten tomatoes (With Open Arms, right), an elegantly dressed woman attempting to hammer her leg out of a bucket of quick-drying mortar (My Love is an Anchor, below)—question the futility of personal and cultural ritual, bringing to the foreground issues surrounding feminine identity and the struggle for success.
While occasionally humorous, Gilmore’s performances have a more serious subtext: the daunting, often self-subverting obstacles that many women face. Subjecting herself to precarious situations while wearing clothing incongruous with her circumstances, Gilmore persistently and methodically labors onward, sometimes negotiating her own sculptural tableaus as she encounters life’s many perils in heels, dresses, and makeup.
Endurance Makes Gold (2008), created at Artpace, is Gilmore’s most ambitious project to date. The video documents her unaided attempt to pile a motley collection of furniture, piece by piece, in the museum’s ground-floor courtyard. Once the colorful mountain of discarded sofas, chairs, and dressers reaches the second-story ledge, she ascends the precarious tower dressed in a bright yellow dress and red high-heel boots and enters her exhibition space via a blue-carpeted ramp. The pile of furniture and the ramp remain as sculptural elements of the installation, evidence of the artist’s Sisyphean task.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kate Gilmore was born in Washington D.C. in 1975 and currently lives and works in New York, NY. She received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, in 2002. She is a 2007-2008 Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. She has had solo exhibitions at Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2006); Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, OH (2006); and White Columns, New York, NY (2004). Selected group exhibitions include Reckless Behavior, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2006); Mixed Emotions, Haifa Museum of Art, Israel; and Greater New York 2005, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City,
NY (2005).
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
This exhibition is made possible in part by the Linda Pace Foundation; the City of San Antonio’s Office of Cultural Affairs; and The Brown Foundation, Inc.; with additional support from Texas Commission on the Arts.
ABOUT ARTPACE
Artpace San Antonio serves as a laboratory for the creation and advancement of international contemporary art. Artpace believes that art is a dynamic social force that inspires individuals and defines cultures. Our residencies, exhibitions, and education programs nurture the creative expression of emerging and established artists, while actively engaging youth and adult audiences.
Artpace is located downtown at 445 North Main Avenue, between Savings and Martin streets, San Antonio, Texas. Free parking is available at 513 North Flores Street. Artpace is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday, 12-5 PM, Thursday, 12-8 PM, and by appointment. Admission is free.
Copyright: 2008 Artpace San Antonio
