ASPEN, CO.- The Aspen Art Museum presents an exhibition of work by artist Simon Denny (b. 1982, New Zealand), on view May 18 through July 15, 2012. Titled Full Participation, the exhibition employs a variety of media to present a hybrid artistic practice located somewhere between research project, retail display, and promotional campaign. Denny invites viewers to reflect on the relationship between form and content as the technology of television and video evolves. Full Participation also grows, in part, out of Denny’s research into the history of Aspen’s own GrassRoots Community Television—the oldest public access cable channel in the U.S.
Denny’s recent works have included investigations into the form and “architecture” of the TV set itself (the physical depth of which, we are reminded, has shrunk along with the medium’s loss of dominance as a content provider). He has also explored the genre conventions of documentary, and the myriad processes by which content is translated from one medium to another—be it in television program stills woven into beach towels, or in video montages derived from outdated trade magazines. Denny’s diverse practice reflects on the production, distribution, and consumption of media in an age of accelerated technological obsolescence and cultural overproduction.
Simon Denny: Full Participation is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the AAM that traces the arc of the artist’s career, with special emphasis on projects realized since 2009. It features a Foreword by AAM CEO, Director, and Chief Curator Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, as well as texts by exhibition curator Jacob Proctor, critic Pablo Larios, and conservator Hanna Hlling. It also includes a transcribed in-time exchange between Denny, Daniel Keller, Nik Kosmas (Aids-3D), and Timur Si-Qin in relation to an historical GrassRoots Community TV Aspen broadcast production dating from the 1980s.
Simon Denny (b. 1982, Auckland, New Zealand) is based in Berlin. He graduated from the Staatliche Hochschule fr Bildende Knste (Stdelschule) in Frankfurt am Main. Recent solo exhibitions include Cruise Line, NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen; 7 Unreachable Elevators, IMO, Copenhagen; Chronic Expectation: CFS/ME Documentary Restoration, T293, Rome; Corporate Video Decisions, Michael Lett, Auckland, and Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York (2011); Negative Headroom: The Broadcast Signal Intrusion Incident, Halle fr Kunst, Lneburg, and Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2010). Recent group exhibitions include That’s the way we do it: The Techniques and Aesthetic of Appropriation from Ei Arakawa to Andy Warhol, Kunsthaus Bregenz; and Based in Berlin, KW Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2011). This exhibition is organized by the AAM and funded in part by the AAM National Council.
