COLUMBUS, OH.- Six Solos, featuring six independent exhibitions of the work of six rising international artists, will be on view inside and outside the
Wexner Center November 9, 2010February 13, 2011. The artistsworking in a wide range of media, among them LED lights, stainless steel, flagging tape, plywood, paint, video, film, and fiberglassare Erwin Redl , Megan Geckler, Tobias Putrih/MOS, Gustavo Godoy, Katy Moran, and Joel Morrison. The work of each artist will occupy its own space. Organized by the Wexner Center, Six Solos opens in conjunction with the centers 21st anniversary celebrations.
Notes Wexner Center Director Sherri Geldin, The Wexner Center has a long history of supporting the production of new, often experimental work by younger artists looking for opportunities to push their practice in new directions. Each of the selected artists is on the cusp of greater renown, and we are particularly pleased to open this show on the occasion of the 21st anniversary of the Wexner Center, which might well connote a modicum of institutional maturitybut never creative complacency.
Notes chief curator Christopher Bedford, For many of these artists, this will be the first solo presentation in a U.S. museum, and its telling that most have used this occasion as incentive to broaden their scope of address and expand their already ambitious repertoire of forms and ideas. We are very proud to be able to support such work in a wide variety of media, some representing new hybrids altogether.
An overview of the six artists and their projects:
Erwin Redl outside on the Wexner Centers grid
For his site-specific project, Austrian-born artist Erwin Redl has created a time-based installation on the Wexner Centers exterior grid using approximately 100 multicolored LED light sticks in the top three rows of the structure, animating Peter Eisenmans signature architectural feature as never before. Entitled FETCH, the installation draws on a range of precedents, including Eadweard Muybridges experiments with rapid action photography and the work of California Light and Space artists. The work will be on view at night. Some of Redls other installations have been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria; Kunsthalle Krems, Krems, Austria; and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, New York. Redl currently lives and works in Bowling Green, Ohio.
Megan Geckler lower lobby/café
Los Angeles-based artist Megan Geckler has created one of what she calls site specific architectural installations, interlacing strips of vibrantly colored flagging tape throughout the Wexner Centers lobbies. The installation hovers above visitors and surrounds them in the café and lobby areas. Among her many exhibitions and installations have been a sculptural work at LAX Airport in 2010 and Every step you take, every move you make (2010) at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.
Tobias Putrih/MOS in the galleries
Working in collaboration, Tobias Putrih/MOSwho create quasi-functional constructions that mix formal sophistication with practicability (Art in America)has designed and constructed a cinematic environment (titled Majestic) made of aluminum and steel that serves as a programmatic vessel for a video series conceived by Wexner Center film and video curators. Visitors can walk into and around the cinema, absorbing it as a sculpture, and can also sit within the structure to enjoy the programming. The video program wil l change every few weeks and wil l feature, in order: Jun Nguyen-Hatshushibas Happy New Year: Memorial Project Vietnam II (November 927); Abbas Kiarostramis Shirin (November 29December 26); Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreigs Je Veux Voir (December 28January 23); and seven episodes from Leslie Thorntons Peggy and Fred in Hell (January 24February 13). Putrihs work was on view at the 2007 Venice Biennale and at Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt, and he is included in the 2010 São Paulo Biennale. Born in Slovenia, Putrih lives and works in Boston.
Gustavo Godoy in the galleries
Los Angeles-based, Mexican-American artist Gustavo Godoy is known for creating unconventional gallery experiences featuring room-sized mixed-media installations. The site-responsive installation for the Wexner Center galleries engulfs the entirety of a trapezoidal space with a dramatic plywood construction that visitors can move through and around. The work is illuminated from within by fluorescent bulbs, an effect that is amplified by a glossy white vinyl floor treatment. This work, called Fast-formal Object: Flayed White, is part of Godoys ongoing series that is as much concerned with aesthetics as with possible functionality. Visitors are invited to climb on the sculpture, one person at a time, at their own risk.Godoys work has been included in exhibitions in the U.S., France, and Mexico.
Katy Moran in the galleries
Featuring more than 30 works created between 2006 and 2010, this exhibition is British painter Katy Morans first solo museum presentation in the United States and provides a comprehensive survey of her development to date. Morans intimately scaled, deeply felt paintings exist along the fault lines of representation and abstraction. Her earlier paintings often transcribe a single found image into paint using the loose, brushy style that has become her signature. Paintings from 2008 onwards, by contrast, tend to be works of imagination or memory, sometimes incorporating collage elements that add a new depth to her sensual, dynamic paintings. This exhibition and accompanying publication, featuring an essay by the curator, will look at Morans compelling trajectory during the four-year period under consideration, contextualizing her paintings relative to important peers worldwide and drawing attention to her most salient predecessors, specifically the English painter Francis Bacon, with whom she shares many important affinities. Morans work has been shown in New York, Italy, and the UK (including at the Tate Britain). She currently lives and works in London.
Joel Morrison in the galleries
Seattle-born artist Joel Morrison is a sculptor who works primarily in stainless steel and fiberglass, often on a very large scale. The centerpiece of this exhibition is his gigantic Victor (rat trap), a stainless steel work depicting an air-filled latex glove caught in a rat trap, and Romeo (a gaping maw with bullets for teeth), as well as a major new fiberglass sculpture. Together, the works offer a selective survey of the material vocabularies Morrison has explored in recent years. In 2006, Morrison was a featured artist in the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, and his work has been on view across the U.S.