ICI and Performa present the exhibition “Performance Now” debuting
at Wesleyan University’s Center for the
Arts in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha
Gallery, Middletown, Connecticut, opening on Friday, September 7, 2012. Opening
reception on Tuesday, September 11 at 5pm.
“Performance Now” is a selection of works by 19 artists from
a vast repository of new performance from around the world since 2000, a period
that has witnessed an exponential growth in the field. More than a century
after the Italian Futurists insisted on an increased engagement with their audiences
and solicited artists of every discipline to join their cause, performance by
visual artists has become central to our understanding of the development of
contemporary art ideas and sensibilities.
Bringing together some of the most significant practitioners
today, “Performance Now” surveys critical and experimental currents in
performance internationally featuring works by Marina Abramović, William
Kentridge, Clifford Owens, Spartacus Chetwynd and Jerome Bel, among
others. Exploring
the ephemerality of live performance and how this is captured by artists and
transformed into new work that contains the power and content of the original,
together the selected works are an indication of the extent to which visual
artists use performance as part of their creative process; how that process
produces objects, installations, video, or photography interchangeably; and how
these mediums have been enlivened by the demands of recording performance in
innovative ways.
With performance art departments recently being established
in many major museums throughout the world and performance recognized as one of
the most significant artistic forms of the 21st century, this
exhibition provides a window onto these important developments. “Performance
Now” is a series of ongoing
exhibitions designed to introduce some of the most exciting projects of
performance from 2000 to the present and to generate discussion about the
history of performance art. The material is selected from a publication of the
same name, “Performance Now,” by RoseLee Goldberg, which will be published by
Thames and Hudson in 2014.
ARTISTS
Marina Abramović, Jennifer Allora
and Guillermo Calzadilla, Jerome Bel, Spartacus Chetwynd, Nikhil Chopra,
Nathalie Djurberg, Omer Fast, Christian Jankowski, Jesper Just, William
Kentridge, Ragnar Kjartansson, Liz Magic Laser, Kalup Linzy, Kelly Nipper,
Clifford Owens, Laurie Simmons, Ryan Trecartin
The debut of the exhibition at Wesleyan
coincides with the University’s new Institute
for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP), a post-graduate certificate
program that is the first of its kind in the United States. “ICPP brings artists, presenters, managers
and other arts professionals together with Wesleyan faculty and some of the
finest performance curators working today.
Our students develop a responsive curatorial practice that takes the
best from the fields of visual and performing arts. We knew that “Performance
Now” would be an important show to integrate into this year’s ICPP curriculum,
while also resonating with community members and many of our undergraduate and
graduate arts students interested in exploring contemporary performance
practices and their social and historical contexts,” said Pamela Tatge,
Director of Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts and Managing Director of ICPP.
At Wesleyan, the exhibition also
extends to a film series, selected by Performa film curator Lana Wilson, a 2005 graduate of the
University (see below for film series details). Other Wesleyan alumni working
in performance art, including Liz Magic
Laser ’03 (one of the artists featured in the “Performance Now” exhibit), Aki Sasamoto ’04, Arturo Vidich ’03, and Danielle
Mysliwiec ’98, will be panelists at a free seminar moderated by Greta Hartenstein ’11 in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery
during the University’s Homecoming/Family Weekend on Saturday, October 20, 2012
at 2pm.
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