MAKE NICE
WEEK 1
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WEEK 3
WEEK 4
WEEK 5
WEEK 6
WEEK 7
WEEK 8
WEEK 9
WEEK
TWO: TIM HAWKINSON
(VIDEOBOX) Lutz Bacher
JULY 13th - JULY 17th
Opening reception: Wednesday, July 14th 6-8 pm
Curated by Lawrence Rinder, Dean of Graduate Studies at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Adjunct Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Tim Hawkinson,
Seal, 2004
Polymer clay
Seal was created especially for Make Nice. It consists of Sculpey, a kind of polymer clay, that has been pressed into a mold to create the shape of a flayed elephant skin. Although the work is small, the surface texture of the animal's skin is clearly visible. Superfluous Sculpey had been pressed out the sides, making the work look like a large, official 'seal.'
I am in the process of developing a survey show of Tim Hawkinson's art for the Whitney, so his work has been on my mind a lot lately. When I was asked to select a piece for Make Nice, I thought it would be good to select something that wasn't too aggressive. The mode of anger, once engaged, might get out of control. So, I wanted to 'make nice,' while also offering a work that, publicly installed during the summer of New York City's Republican National Convention, could be read as a modest incident of artistic protest. At first I thought of another work of Tim's, an enormous flayed elephant skin made out of tin foil. But this piece would not fit in the space allowed. As it happens, Tim still had a mold from which he had made a smaller version of the poor, dead elephant. So I asked him to make another.
-Lawrence Rinder
Los Angeles-based artist Tim Hawkinson is represented by Ace Gallery, New York and LA. A mid-career survey show of his work will open at the Whitney Museum of American Art in February of 2005.
Lutz Bacher,
Olympiad
Single-channel video
36 minutes
Black and white
Silent
Courtesy of
American Fine Arts
This video was shot in and around the 1936 Berlin Olympic stadium. The erratic quality of the image, which is essential to the work's effect, is the unintentional result of the use of a corrupt tape. "Paradoxically," writes Bacher, "this degradation intensifies at the same time as it disturbs the classical aspirations of this haunted site."
I can think of few artists whose work captures the insidious tensions of our times as well as Lutz Bacher. Her deceptively simple videos, which can often be excruciating to watch, are filled with a feeling of uncertainty and dread. This work is one of her most powerful, using as its subject a notorious site of fascist celebration and nationalistic mania. The dangers of these same forces cannot be underestimated in our own time.
-Lawrence Rinder
Lawrence Rinder is Dean of Graduate Studies at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Adjunct Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.