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Still time to catch 'Fat House' and 'Fat Car' at the Rose Art Museum
Released on March 06, 2006Contact: Marsha MacEachern 781-736-4203 or marsham@brandeis.edu
Food for Thought Luncheon with Director Michael Rush June 28; Gallery Talk with Stephanie Molinard July 8. Details in release.
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| Erwin Wurm's "Fat House" |
"I Love My Time, I Don’t Like My Time: Recent Work by Erwin Wurm," the artist’s first major survey, is organized by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and will be housed in the museum’s Lois Foster Wing and Rose Building. Through experimentation in performance, photography, installation, drawing, video and text, the internationally renowned Wurm pushes the boundaries of sculpture by investigating elements of time, mass, and material form.
The exhibition includes Wurm’s early works such as "59 Positions" (1992) and a range of his "One-Minute Sculptures" (1997-present), as well as series like "Instructions for Idleness" (2001) and "How to be Politically Incorrect" (2002-2003). In addition to the photography, drawings, sculpture, and video work, at the center of the exhibit is the debut of "Fat House/I Love My Time, I Don’t Like My Time" (2003), the latest in Wurm’s series about mass that explores the wild and dark potential of sculpture and digital animation. "Fat House," a life-sized house made to look cartoonishly bloated, incorporates "I Love My Time, I Don't Like My Time," the animated video of another work about mass, "Fat Car." This combination of works blurs the line between comedy and darkness, and indicates recent, spectacular innovations in Wurm's artmaking.
Similar to his well-known "One-Minute Sculptures," there will also be instructional drawings on-hand, which will invite audience participation. By combining their bodies with a variety of common objects according to the artist’s instructional drawings, the audience becomes a vital component of the creation of these temporary sculptures. The humorous and poignant results of these interactions will be documented with Polaroid cameras provided by The Rose.
Wurm’s work is concerned with finding ways to extend the dialogue of the pioneering performance and conceptual art of the 1960s into formal works of sculpture. He has staged art pieces that walk the delicate line of performance art. While appearing purely comical on the surface, there are complex messages beneath these temporary sculptures that elevate them above the status of mere incident, form, and behavior. These sculptures provide satirical commentary on life and art. His piece "How to Be Politically Incorrect" is humorous yet addresses serious subject matter – his reactions to a post-9/11 world.
“This show represents a comprehensive survey that highlights more than 10 years of smart, beautiful, and humorous production by one of the world’s most unique artists,” Rose curator Raphaela Platow says.
Adds Michael Rush, the Henry and Lois Foster Director of The Rose, “Wurm continues the strong tradition of ironic and political performance work initiated by the widely influential Viennese Actionists of the 1960s.”
Wurm’s work has been the subject of sole exhibitions at museums and galleries throughout the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice, Italy), and the Centre National de la Photographie (Paris). He graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts and Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1982 and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, in 1979.
"Sarah Walker: Paintings," the artist’s first museum survey, will be located in The Mildred S. Lee Gallery. Walker’s colorful, layered paintings encapsulate numerous spatial systems based on patterns and diagrams from the worlds of science, technology, nature, and architecture, as well as the virtual spaces of the Internet and the mind.
In her work, Walker strives to create paintings that act as retinal reprogramming tools that amplify the viewer’s capacity for digesting complex information. The layers of systems and programs provide a filter for the increasingly complicated texture of lived experience.
“The interweaving and cross-communication of dissimilar patterns form a moiré effect on the mind,” Platow says. “Ultimately, the artist’s paintings address a need for finding ways to visualize the experience of multiple and ever-more-permeable realities.”
Walker’s work has been part of exhibitions at the DeCordova Museum (Lincoln, Mass.), Painting Center (New York), Pierogi Gallery (Brooklyn), Bernard Toale Gallery (Boston), and the Gregory Lind Gallery (San Francisco).
Walker received her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her BFA from the California College of the Arts in Oakland. She serves as the chair of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.
Last year Walker received The Rappaport Prize, the largest annual public award to an individual artist in Massachusetts. The $20,000 stipend is awarded by the DeCordova Museum and the Jerome Lyle Rappaport Charitable Foundation.
I Love My Time, I Don’t Like My Time: Recent Work by Erwin Wurm
Through July 30, 2006
Lois Foster Wing, The Rose Building
Sarah Walker: Paintings
Through July 30, 2006
The Mildred S. Lee Gallery
Food for Thought Luncheon with Director Michael Rush
11 a.m., Wednesday, June 28
Join us for a gallery talk on the Erwin Wurm exhibition and lunch at The Rose.
Free to museum members at Patron level ($500) or above; $12 for all other members; $15 for nonmembers.
Inside View: Gallery Talk with Stéphanie Molinard
2 p.m., Saturday, July 8
Free with museum admission
Location and hours:
On the campus of Brandeis University
415 South St., Waltham
Commuter rail stop at Brandeis/Roberts
12-5 p.m., Tuesday-Sunday
Closed Mondays and national holidays
Admission: $3
www.brandeis.edu/rose
Links
The Boston Globe Magazine
submitted by Carrie Simmons
Boston Globe
submitted by Carrie Simmons
Boston Phoenix
submitted by Carrie Simmons
MetroWest Daily News
submitted by Carrie Simmons
Boston Globe (Review)
submitted by Marsha MacEachern