WASHINGTON, D.C.- The 47th Corcoran Biennial explores the legacy of conceptual art and the "new media" of the late 1960s through the work of 13 contemporary artists who employ familiar or popular forms, such as cinema, illustration, and interactive digital media, for overtly conceptual ends. Fantasy Underfoot opens at the Corcoran Gallery of Art on December 21, 2002, and continues through March 10, 2003. The exhibition incorporates a range of media, including video, film, photography, installation, digital media, drawing and painting.

 

Fantasy Underfoot showcases the following established and emerging artists: Linda Besemer, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Nancy Davidson, Marcel Dzama, Jacob El Hanani, Ken Feingold, Kojo Griffin, Tim Hawkinson, Bruce Nauman, Nigel Poor, Susan Smith-Pinelo and Bruce Yonemoto.

 

The title of the exhibition is a reference to two diametrically opposed notions - the conceptual and the concrete - that are suggested by this grouping of contemporary artworks. On the one hand, Fantasy Underfoot presents artists whose pieces are conceptual, abstract, and imaginary. On the other hand, the works suggest that fantasy and the abstract world of ideas are, in today’s art world, concrete matters, issues of the here and now.

 

"The artists in this exhibition were selected for the impact of their work and the ways they resolve aesthetic and conceptual issues using a conceptual vernacular," says Jonathan P. Binstock, the Corcoran’s curator of contemporary art who organized the exhibition. "Their work is complex, ambitious and challenging.

 

"At the same time, today’s artists understand the ability of multimedia formats like film and video to provide familiar environments that allow viewers to connect with works of art," he added.

 

Dances with Hip Hop is a video installation by Washington, DC-based artist Susan Smith-Pinelo. In this work, a stack of three television monitors depict a fractured female body. Video images of a head, chest and pelvis move suggestively to the sound of hip hop tunes, though the music cannot be heard by viewers. Dances with Hip Hop is an exploration of Smith-Pinelo’s love-hate relationship with hip hop music and video culture.

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s critically acclaimed cinematic installation, The Paradise Institute, was created in 2001. This 13-minute digital video is shown in a miniature theater (120 x 449 x 201 inches) that seats 16 people. The Canadian video and sound artist team use narrative and advanced technology to intentionally blur the distinction between what is real and what is fiction. Binaural audio creates the sensation that the film’s protagonists may be in the theater with the viewer and that the viewer, as a result, may have a role in the unfolding narrative. The work is making its U.S. museum debut at the Corcoran.

 

Using water and electricity, Tim Hawkinson created a 10-foot-high giant sea creature made from inexpensive, readily available materials and handcrafted aluminum buckets. The electricity triggers valves that cause drops of water to fall on different surfaces, thereby creating syncopated rhythms. This piece was produced specifically for the Biennial.

 

Bruce Nauman began making his seven-image video installation, Mapping the Studio II with color shift, flip, flop & flip/flop (Fat Chance John Cage) All Action Edit, in the summer of 2000. Nauman used infrared light to videotape the inside of his studio at night, capturing, among other things, night sounds and the comings and goings of a cat and mice. This work reveals the poetic fantasy that is literally under Nauman’s feet.