Ellen Harvey: A Whitney for the Whitney at Phillip Morris
23/01/2003 - 04/04/2003
Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris
120 Park Ave at 42nd St.
New York, NY 10017
Tel. (917) 663-2453
Fax (917) 663-5770
www.whitney.org
Ellen Harvey, Installation View of A Whitney for the Whitney at Philip Morris, 2003
Contemporary Artists on Contemporary Art
From January 23 to April 4, 2003, the Whitney Museum of
American Art at
Philip Morris will present Ellen Harvey: A Whitney for the Whitney
at
Philip Morris, an installation featuring painted copies by Ellen
Harvey of
the 394 images in the Whitney Museum’s recently published catalog
of its
permanent collection. The installation also includes the seven most
recent acquisitions made by the Whitney Museum – works by Jim
Campbell,
Luis Gispert, Robert Lazzarini, Paul McCarthy, Hirsch Perlman, Paul
Pfeiffer and Jim Shaw.
This exhibition is part of Contemporary Artists on Contemporary
Art, an
ongoing series of annual exhibitions that invites emerging contemporary
artists to select work from the Whitney Contemporary Collection and to
create new work to be shown alongside their choices. This is the second
exhibition in the series and was organized by Shamim M. Momim, Branch
Director and Curator, Whitney at Philip Morris.
A Whitney for the Whitney at Philip Morris creates a hand-made
version of
the Whitney Museum in miniature. The content is a reflection of the
museum’s vision of itself as revealed through its catalog and its
recent
acquisitions. The viewer walks through a gold frame into a painting of
the
collection – a 14 foot (4.27m) by 24 foot (7.32m) room made of 4
foot
(1.22m) wide by 10 foot (3.05m) high white painted panels onto which the
artist has painted freehand copies in oil of all 394 images contained in
the American Visionaries: Selections from the Whitney Museum of
American
Art catalog. Each copy is twice as large as the catalog reproduction
from
which it was made and their order reflects the alphabetical ordering of
the catalog. Through small rectangular openings in the panels, the
viewer
can see the seven most recent acquisitions made by the Whitney Museum at
the time of the exhibition. These recent acquisitions hang on the walls
of the gallery behind the panels and are completely physically
inaccessible to the viewer. The pristine hanging of the recent
acquisitions forms a marked contrast to the imperfection of the copies
and
the numerous smudges and drips marring the white surface of the panels.
Both the painted copies and the openings are numbered so that the viewer
can look up the images and the pieces in a reconstituted edited version
of
the battered catalog from which the copies were made.
Born in Kent, England, Ellen Harvey lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
She
is a graduate of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and took
part in the PS1 Institute for Contemporary Art’s National Studio
Program.
She is the current recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts
Lily
Auchincloss Fellowship for painting. Her work has been exhibited in
solo
exhibitions as De Chiara Gallery, Stefan Stux Gallery and Alexandre de
Folin Gallery in New York and Marella Arte Contemporanea in Milan,
Italy.
Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions in such venues as
Artists Space, New York, NY, the Secession,Vienna, Austria, the
Institute
of Contemporary Art , Philadelphia, PA, the PS1 Institute of
Contemporary
Art, Long Island City, NY, the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle,WA, Apex
Art,
New York, NY and the Kwangju Biennale, Kwangju, Korea. Her underground
public art project “New York Beautification Project” can be seen at
www.NYBeautification.org. Upcoming projects include a solo exhibition
with Mullerdechiara Gallery in Berlin, Germany, projects for the
Sculpture
Center, NY and the Princeton Museum and a mosaic for the Queens Plaza
Subway Station commissioned by MTA Arts for Transit. Her work is
currently also on view in “Moving Faces” at Outline,
Amsterdam, NL and in
“637 Running Feet: Black & White Wall Drawings by 14 Artists” at the
Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY.
Ellen Harvey: A Whitney for the Whitney at Philip Morris is
accompanied
by a free brochure with an essay by Shamim M. Momin. A free artist talk
with Ellen Harvey will take place on Tuesday March 4th at 6:30pm. Free
gallery talks are offered every Wednesday and Friday at 1:00pm.
The Whitney Museum at Philip Morris is funded by Philip Morris Companies
Inc. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Whitney
Museum at Philip Morris.
Visitor Information
Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris is located at 120 Park
Avenue at 42nd Street. Gallery hours: Monday through Friday from 11
a.m.
to 6 p.m., Thursdays 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Admission to the Whitney at
Philip Morris is free.
