|
CUE Art Foundation: Naeem Mohaiemen - Curated by DJ Spooky Adiwit Ansathammarat - Curated by Kay Rosen - 10 Sept 2009 to 31 Oct 2009 Current Exhibition |
||||
|
Naeem Mohaiemen - Live True Life or Die Trying
Curated by DJ Spooky |
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
Live True Life or Die Trying Naeem Mohaiemen Curated by DJ Spooky September 10 - October 31, 2009 Opening reception, Thursday, September 10, 6-8pm Discussion, Thursday, September 17th, 7 pm Mohaiemen in conversation with Vijay Prashad, author of Darker Nations: A People's History Of The Third World and Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity. Related projects - http://shobak.org Informed by two Chris Marker films that are decades apart in political exhaustion, Grin Without A Cat (grand disillusion with interlinked global left revolutions) and Case of the Grinning Cat (anti-war movement with foretold conclusion), Naeem applies these polarities to political movements that he participates in or documents. Looking at a single day in January 2009, he follows two political rallies that happen in two parts of Dhaka. The first by a new group of young Islamists-- an event where he finds no familiar faces, "except among the photographers". Yet he also notes the energy: "These are not the Islamists we lazily lampooned in the 1980s. Now their rhetoric has a sharp edge and reality tint. When they argue that gangster capitalism has failed and is dragging down the world, that the global compact is imploding, it's a resonant message for many." The second rally, later in the afternoon, organized by a group of Leftists on the university campus. In this one, Naeem is back in his comfort zone, meeting familiar friends, joining in enthusiastically, sometimes marching and chanting, sometimes walking backwards trying to capture a "dramatic" photo. Through it all though, a queasy feeling: of the awareness that this second rally is so much smaller, of the inevitability of Left decline, of recognizing his own desire to zoom in for a close shot. The better to inflate the size of the crowd. His camera is soaked in bias and sympathy. Naeem Mohaiemen is a writer & artist working in Dhaka & New York. He uses text, video, and photography to explore historic markers in post-partition South Asia. He founded Visible Collective, whose projects http://disappearedinamerica.org looked at globally interlinked national security panic. Naeem also works on activist projects in Bangladesh. He writes the chapter on religious and ethnic minorities in the Ain Salish Kendro Annual Human Rights report http://askbd.org, as well as being a member of local activist networks http://unheardvoice.net/blog. Working between two countries, this work delineates the contradictions between Bengalis in marginal migrant status in Northern countries, and majoritarian (and authoritarian) status inside Bangladesh. His essays include Collectives in Atomised Time (with Doug Ashford, Idensitat), Fear of a Muslim Planet: Islamic Roots of Hip-Hop (Sound Unbound, DJ Spooky ed., MIT Press; runner-up for Villem Flusser Theory Award), Mujtoba Ali: Amphibian Man (The Rest of Now, Rana Dasgupta ed., Manifesta 7, Trentino), Everybody Wants To Be Singapore (The Good Life, Carlos Motta, Art in General), Adman Blues Become Artist Liberation (Indian Highway, Hans Ulrich Obrist & Julia Peyton-Jones, Serpentine Gallery), Beirut: Illusion of a Silver Porsche (Men of Global South, Adam Jones ed., Zed Books), and Why Mahmud Can't be a Pilot (Nobody Passes, Matt Bernstein ed., Seal Press), etc. Live True Life or Die Trying at Cue Art Foundation is Naeem's first solo show in America. Supported in part by Rhizome, Franklin Furnace and New Museum's "New Silent Series". This is part of a longer exploration of underground left movements, a Creative Capital project. Adiwit Ansathammarat Curated by Kay Rosen September 10 � October 31, 2009 Opening reception Thursday, September 10, 6:00 � 8:00pm �Adi�s feet are planted not so much in the past versus present, or Asia versus North America, but rather in a zone somewhere in between where memory, dreams and fantasy bleed together. Filtered through the fine mesh of his personal sensibility, a diary emerges in the form of painting or sculpture about loss, time, distance, and even humor.� �Kay Rosen Pangs of longing and the bleat of raw memory reverberate across the canvasses and scuptural surfaces of artist, Adiwit Ansathammarat. Born and raised in Thailand and educated in Scotland and Chicago, Ansathammarat is well versed in the painful and arduous process of leaving one�s home, culture and family. It is through these experiences that his work examines the altered emotional terrain of one�s personal relationships when physicality, comfort and proximity are removed. His paintings employ repeated abstract forms that bend, rip, tear and fall. His scuptural work, assembled with humble materials, emphasize aspects of distance, time and weight. These large canvasses, small watercolors and sculptural works form a personal narrative: a visual, abstracted confession of pains felt by the artist. She left me for L.A. (detail, above) is a large, unstretched canvas measuring 120� x 240.� The monumental surface is saturated with deep colors and covered with repetitive forms that resemble falling leaves in a pouring rain. Along the bottom of the canvas, Ansathammarat has torn away triangular shapes that emphasize the act of cutting and mirror the leaf-like forms in the canvase above. Both the repetition of the painted forms and the cutting of the canvas evokes a sense of angst � a heart beating rapidy or the pounding of a drum. They are also regimented like a calendar, not only parsing out time, but underlining it. I wish you could come home with me tonight (right) employs simple materials and shares in the formal simplicity of his two-dimensional work. Through the reptition of triangular and circular shapes, a highly abstracted human form is perceived. Within the frame of the body hangs a weighted form � a collection of conical and orb-like objects suspended from rope. The contrast of the colorful objects and the bleach-white outer surafaces of the piece draws the viewer to focus on this inner suspension and the sense of intertia and heaviness created by the hanging objects and tripod-like frame. Both of these pieces, and much of Ansathammarat�s other work, enlist sentimental titles that, while referencing a very personal account, underscore the more general and universal themes apparent in the work. While so much of the work may initially seem melancholic, the artist�s sense of playfulness and humor emerges through the humble materials used and the almost whimsical images utilized. On view at CUE Art Foundation, Ansathammarat�s first solo show in New York, will be a collection of large to medium-scale paintings and medium to small-scale floor-standing assemblages, all created during the artist�s temporary return to Thailand in 2009. Through the incorporation of all planes within the gallery space, the artist effectively creates a formal and conceptual �diary� � one in which we all share at least one entry. For additional information, please contact Ryan Thomas, Programs Coordinator, CUE Art Foundation, 212-206-3583, or email [email protected] |
||||
re-title.com
International contemporary art
SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTERS
SIGN UP for ARTIST MEMBERSHIP
SIGN UP for GALLERY MEMBERSHIP
Click on the map to search the directory