FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MATTRESS FACTORY ANNOUNCES INNER AND OUTER SPACE; GUEST-CURATED EXHIBIT TO OPEN APRIL 25, 2008
PITTSBURGH, PA
Nine international contemporary artists will break new ground – metaphorically and physically – in an upcoming exhibition that will test the limitations and possibilities of the Mattress Factory’s galleries. Inner and Outer Space, organized by New York-based independent curator Dara Meyers-Kingsley, will open with a public reception from 6.00PM to 9.00PM on Friday, April 25.
The exhibition runs through January 11, 2009.
The artists, who hail from six countries, include Luca Buvoli, Daniel Canogar, David Ellis, Mark Garry, Yumi Kori, Sarah Oppenheimer, Tavares Strachan, Allison Smith, and Mary Temple.
At the Mattress Factory, the installations by these artists defy the two-dimensional surfaces of each gallery by penetrating the walls and floors, offering new perceptions of “actual” space – rupturing notions of “here” and “now.” Collectively, these artists’ works employ a great variety of materials, from hand-made crafts to fiber optics, from painting to electronic projection, from simple string to advanced robotics.
Many have taken the Mattress Factory’s permanent installations, notably those by James Turrell and Yayoi Kusama that share the building, as inspiration.
Inner and Outer Space includes projects that investigate the personal and collective experience of time and space; the experience of travel and flight, gravity and speed, and visual and sensory perception. The works illuminate the interplay of relationships that coexist between the private/interior, public/exterior, social/political and human/ natural/cosmic realms.
“The ‘inner and outer space’ theme -- the conceptual underpinning for the exhibition -- not only relates to the form and content of the work but also an approach to artistic practice. The artists will create installations both inside and outside the Mattress Factory building. Works will extend beyond the gallery walls; spilling out into the immediate Mattress Factory grounds and into the city of Pittsburgh -- to other remote locations,” says Meyers-Kingsley. “Following the impetus for creating public dialogue with audiences beyond the art world, a number of artists are working collaboratively with other Pittsburgh institutions and local artisans to realize their projects.”
THE ARTISTS
Luca Buvoli (Italian, lives in New York) Luca Buvoli works with animated film and video, installation, sculpture, painting, drawing, and artist’s books. His two ongoing multi-media projects, entitled Not-a-Superhero and Flying —Practical Training explore mythology, science, and ideology. In these works, the artist intertwines elements of philosophical and psychoanalytical discourse with daily life and humor, transforming them into an elaborate personal language.
Luca’s solo shows include the ICA in Philadelphia (2007), the M.I.T. List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (2000), Philadelphia Museum of Art (2001), and the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art (1999). His recent meditation on the illusions and delusions of Modernism was presented in the 2007 Venice Biennale.
Daniel Canogar (Spanish) Daniel Canogar creates room-sized installations with light and photography, through projections and video. He studied visual communications at the Complutense University, and received his master’s in photography from NYU/ICP in 1990.
Daniel’s work has been exhibited in major venues in Spain, as well as Galerie Guy Bärtschi, Geneva; Espace d’Art Yvonamor Palix, Paris; Centre d’Art Contemporain de Basse Normandie, France; Metronom, Barcelona; Centro de Arte Santa Mónica, Barcelona; Artist Space, New York; Museo Alejandro Otero, Caracas; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; Hamburger Banhoff Museum, Berlin; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Musuem, Düsseldorf.
David Ellis (American) The work of David Ellis weaves rhythm, cultural landscape and conceptual art. Like a band leader, Ellis combines his ideas with other disciplines in a process that promotes improvisation and spontaneity. In an ongoing series of sculptures entitled “Trash Talk,” the artist collaborates with composer Roberto Lange, transforming what appear to be dormant piles of debris into kinetic heaps of percussive funk. Their latest effort was recently installed in the group exhibition entitled “Ensemble” curated by Christian Marclay at the ICA, Philadelphia.
David is also engaged in an ongoing time-based media project that captures the artist painting what he calls “motion paintings.” One example, “Painting on Trucks in a World in Need of Love” screened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Other recent installations have been exhibited in Paris, London, New York, Miami, and Cincinnati. Ellis’ forthcoming exhibition, “Dozens” opens May 23rd, 2008 at Roebling Hall in NYC.
Mark Garry (Irish) Mark Garry completed a Masters in Visual Arts practices from Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Ireland. He worked primarily as a curator and writer from 1999 to 2004. Returning to a full time art practice in 2003, he participated in a number of notable exhibitions and was one of the artists representing Ireland at the 2005 Venice Biennale.
Mark is interested in how humans navigate the world and the subjectivity inherent in these navigations. While Mark uses a variety of media and mechanisms in his practice, he primarily focuses on gallery-based installations. These site-specific installations incorporate a range of natural and craft materials such as thread, beads, colored paper, origami, plants and mechanical musical mechanisms.
Yumi Kori (Japanese) Yumi Kori is a practicing architect and is the principal of Studio Myu, a Tokyo-based architecture firm. She has twice won honorable mention from The Architectural Review’s prestigious AR+D award: once for a building in Japan and the other for an installation in Germany. She taught architecture at Barnard College and Columbia University and is presently teaching design at Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan.
Yumi’s artwork focuses on individual spatial experience and sophisticated use of light in her installations. Rather than employing light to illuminate objects, she uses it to focus and contain the viewer’s visual field.
Sarah Oppenheimer (American) Sarah Oppenheimer’s work focuses on how the built environment and human behavior reciprocally impact each other; most recently, the way that the visual progression of the human gaze is mapped by the contours of a given space. Oppenheimer opens apertures in existing architectures, modifying the modular units that make up our standardized urban world. These apertures create new lines of sight within the space of display, and can function as both “holes” and “screens” forcing the viewer’s gaze to toggle between object and void.
Recent and upcoming exhibitions include projects at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Drawing Center, the Queens Museum, SculptureCenter, Skulpturens Hus, Stockholm, Annely Juda Fine Art, London and PPOW, New York. Sarah Oppenheimer has received numerous awards including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2007. She received her MFA from Yale University.
Allison Smith (American) Allison Smith’s diverse artistic practice engages in an investigation of the cultural phenomenon of historical reenactment and the role of craft in the construction of national identity. Allison uses history as an aesthetic palette to produce sculptural installations and live art events alluding to contemporary social conflicts around notions of gender, art/craft, and war. She received an MFA from the Yale University School of Art (1999).
Allison has exhibited her work in numerous venues in the US and abroad, including the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum (2007); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2007); Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams (2006); Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh (2006); Socrates Sculpture Park, New York (2006); Arario Gallery, South Korea (2006); P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2005); and Studio Voltaire, London (2005).
Tavares Strachan (Bahamian, lives in New York) Tavares Strachan holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Yale University. Tavares’ work touches on many different issues: environmental, geographical, social, cultural, and historical. Strachan has been working to involve communities of school children in the Bahamas through the tradition of story telling, and performances. His solo exhibitions include the Luggage Store, San Francisco; Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NY; Pierogi 2000, Brooklyn; and the Aubrey Sayle Primary School, Nassau.
Mary Temple (American) Mary Temple’s sculptural approach to painting and drawing exploits neglected areas of buildings as viable sites for paint-installations. In much of her multidisciplinary practice she draws on architecture as a component in communicating larger philosophical and psychological concerns.
Mary’s solo shows include Sandroni Rey, Los Angeles (2007); Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, (2006); Mixed Greens, New York (2006); and the Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2006) among many others. Currently her work is on view at the Contemporary in Baltimore (thru May 2008), Mass MoCA (May 2008-May 2009), and SFMoMA (August 2008-October 2008). She received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from Arizona State University.
THE CURATOR
Dara Meyers-Kingsley Dara Meyers-Kingsley is an independent curator specializing in contemporary art and media based in New York. She has organized group and one-person exhibitions in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Chicago, including the retrospectives of the contemporary French photographer, Frederic Brenner’s work entitled, “The Jewish Journey,” for The Brooklyn Museum of Art and Adrian Piper’s media and installation work entitled “MEDI(t)Ations,” that traveled to the MCA Chicago, the Andy Warhol Museum, The New Museum, and LA MOCA. Other exhibitions and projects include a survey of early video by sculptor Keith Sonnier, an exhibition of pioneering media (“Reel Work”) for Miami MOCA, and an art commission for the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan with Pittsburgh sculptor, Diane Samuels.
Ms. Meyers-Kingsley was previously Director of the Film and Video Collections at The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, where she oversaw the exhibition, preservation, and marketing of Warhol’s films and videos. She began her curatorial career at the Brooklyn Museum of Art where she organized 20 exhibitions of film and video. She has served as a panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts, and New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs’ Percent for Art Program which places public art throughout New York City. She currently teaches at Parsons School of Design in the graduate Fine Arts Department.
The Mattress Factory is a museum of contemporary art that presents “art you can get in to” – room–sized environments, created by in–residence artists. Located at 500 Sampsonia Way, on Pittsburgh’s North Side, since 1977, the Mattress Factory is hailed as the best facility for installation art in the United States.
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