Afternoon Performances: BLIND DATES at Rita McBride’s Arena
RITA MCBRIDE: EXHIBITION
September 12 – November 29, 2004
SculptureCenter
44-19 Purves Street
Long Island City, NY 11101
t 718 361 1750 f 718 786 9336
Afternoon Performances:
BLIND DATES
October 24, 2004, 3 – 6pm
A one-day event featuring New York-based artists who have developed new performance works within the context of Rita McBride’s Arena.
SculptureCenter is pleased to present Rita McBride: Exhibition from September 12 – November 29, 2004. Exhibition includes an outdoor site-specific installation of important works produced over the last four years, public sculpture propositions, and Arena, a modular tribunal structure that will be activated during the course of the show by a selection of readings and performances.
BLIND DATES
10.24.04
SculptureCenter presents BLIND DATES, a event of new performance works by seven New York-based artists on Sunday, October 24, 2004 from 3 to 6pm. Within the context of Rita McBride’s Arena, each artist has developed a site-specific performance that engages the dynamic between spectator and spectacle.
Artists include Daniel Bozhkov, Peter Coffin, Tom Johnson, Pia Lindman, Michael Mahalchick, Seth Price, Kathryn Williamson.
Originally produced in 1997 as a temporary modular tribunal structure, in the past Arena has provided a participatory venue for artists and institutions everywhere from Taipei to Liechtenstein. This is the first time it has been seen in North America. The artists featured in BLIND DATES take Arena as a point of departure and activate its performative implications. Their diverse approaches include monologues, massages, cushion wrestling, and a Battle of the Bands “cheer-off,” among others.
About Rita McBride
Rita McBride was born in Des Moines in 1960 and educated at Bard College and California Institute of the Arts. Since 1997, solo exhibitions of McBride’s work have been held at European institutions in Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands. She was awarded a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2002 and served as a member of the Skidmore Owings and Merrill team for the World Trade Center competition. She lives in New York and Germany where she is a professor at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf.
About SculptureCenter
SculptureCenter, an active contributor to New York’s cultural community since 1928, is a non-profit organization that champions contemporary sculpture in all of its forms. SculptureCenter’s mission is to engage with artists in evolving the definition of contemporary sculpture. SculptureCenter’s programs identify new talent, explore the conceptual, aesthetic, and material concerns of contemporary sculpture, and encourage independent vision through solo exhibitions of mid-career and established artists. These programs include exhibitions, artist residencies, public art projects, publications, lectures and other public events intended to further the historical documentation and critical dialogue around contemporary art and sculpture in particular. In 2001, SculptureCenter purchased a former trolley repair shop in Long Island City, Queens. This newly renovated facility, designed by artist and designer Maya Lin, includes 6,000 square feet of interior exhibition space, offices, and outdoor exhibition space.
SculptureCenter is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; and New York City Councilman Eric Gioia. Additional corporate and foundation exhibition support is from The A. Woodner Fund, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Citibank, The Greenwall Foundation, Jerome Foundation in celebration of the Jerome Hill Centennial, JPMorgan Chase, The Ken and Judith Joy Family Foundation, The Lily Auchincloss Foundation, The Merrill G. and Emita E. Hastings Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, the Norman and Rosita Winston Foundation, and Tin Man Fund.
Directions
Take E or V to 23rd / Ely or G to Courthouse Square or the 7 to 45th Road (note: the V train does not run on weekends). From all trains, walk north on Jackson Avenue one block past 44th Drive and turn right onto Purves Street.
SculptureCenter is five minutes from Midtown by subway.
