ARCHIVIO OPHEN VIRTUAL ART

giovedì 11 marzo 2021

Upcoming | Ray Johnson: WHAT A DUMP at David Zwirner

The Ray Johnson Estate:

Upcoming | Ray Johnson: WHAT A DUMP

at David Zwirner

“… if you take the cha cha out of Duchamp you get what a dump.” — Ray Johnson

The Ray Johnson Estate and David Zwirner are pleased to present an exhibition focused on American artist Ray Johnson curated by Jarrett Earnest at David Zwirner’s West 19th Street location in New York. Organized in collaboration, the presentation will feature many never-before-exhibited collages and drawings from the 1950s through the 1990s, focusing on Johnson as a seminal and influentially queer artist as well as on his recurring fandoms and obsessions—from Arthur Rimbaud, Yoko Ono, and Shelley Duvall to false eyelashes —situated within an array of archival materials from his friends and collaborators, including Jimmy DeSana, General Idea, David Wojnarowicz, John Giorno, and Peter Hujar, among others. Viewed together, these works upend our notion of Ray Johnson as a solitary figure working in isolation, situating him at the nexus of a network of avant-garde artists of his time, while deepening our understanding of the strategies of dispersion and displacement at the center of his artistic persona.

Jarrett Earnest writes: "Ray Johnson fastidiously archived the contents of his Locust Valley, New York, home, arranging it for discovery after his mysterious suicide in 1995. There was over fifty years’ worth of accumulated clippings stacked from floor to ceiling, completed collages wrapped in cellophane (cut open to make later additions), shelves and shelves of books, files, letters. On one stack, a yellow rubber glove was laid out with cartoon eyes drawn over the knuckles, rolling themselves to the side, as if surveying the room. Propped above was a sign proclaiming “WHAT A DUMP.”

Aside from commenting on its immediate environment in staging this tableau, Johnson cast the humble glove as the melodramatic lead in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962). In the famous film version, Elizabeth Taylor stumbles into her home one night to proclaim, “What! A! Dump!” giving her best drunken Bette Davis impression, then commences to harangue her partner into helping her remember which film she was quoting. “Don’t you know anything?!” It perfectly encapsulates Johnson’s sensibility, where every gesture is suspended in a loopy yet precise universe of suggestion and association. The biting camp performance, with its dark humor and merciless cultural acumen, made the film a touchstone for queer sensibilities then arising in and around postwar New York. As a scene played in Ray Johnson’s “Pink House,” it pinpoints how central queerness was to his attitude and art.

Ray Johnson: WHAT A DUMP is the first exhibition to foreground him as a queer artist, bringing together previously unseen collages, drawings, and ephemera from The Ray Johnson Estate. By paying attention to the particular subject matter of his ongoing obsessions—from poets Arthur Rimbaud and Gertrude Stein to movie stars Shelley Duvall and River Phoenix—a fuller picture of his complex visual logic emerges than ever before, one steeped in drag, teenage fan clubs, and S-M. Johnson’s work will be amplified by art and archival material from several artists he was in dialogue with—including General Idea, Peter Hujar, Jimmy DeSana, Sari Dienes, Geoffrey Hendricks, and David Wojnarowicz—to trace the contours and strategies of a broader milieu.

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PHOTOGRAPH OF THE INSIDE OF RAY JOHNSON'S HOUSE BY FRANCES BEATTY, 1995.

Evento segnalato da Archivio Ophen Virtual Art di salerno

martedì 9 marzo 2021

Como, UN FILO LUNGO 30 ANNI | il 9 marzo 1991 la prima edizione di Miniartextil

FIBER ART, UN FILO LUNGO 30 ANNI

il 9 marzo 1991 la prima edizione di Miniartextil

Così il 9 marzo 1991 venivano esposti per la prima volta a Como i minitessili, e dall’entusiasmo e dalla curiosità di Mimmo Totaro e Nazzarena Bertolaso nasceva MINIARTEXTIL, la manifestazione promossa e organizzata dall’associazione Arte&Arte in collaborazione con il Comune di Como, che ogni anno porta in città le creazioni in tessuto, fibre, intrecci, di grandi artisti e giovani promesse.

Con mostre sempre più grandi, installazioni site specific, allestimenti in spazi storici cittadini, la manifestazione è cresciuta anno dopo anno, fino a diventare uno degli appuntamenti più importanti dedicati alla Fibert Art in Italia e nel Mondo.

Molti i grandi artisti che hanno “abitato” con le loro installazioni i luoghi storici di Como, dal Broletto alla Chiesa di San Francesco, dalla Pinacoteca a Villa Olmo; tra gli altri, icone dell’arte contemporanea come Magdalena Abakanowicz, Marina Abramovic, Jagoda Buic, i migliori esponenti internazionali della scena africana come El Anatsui, Joel Andrianomearisoa, Yinka Shonibare e William Kentridge, artisti storici italiani come Maria Lai, Fausto Melotti, Mauro Molinari e giovani sperimentatrici come Marzia Migliora e Claire Morgan.

La primavera 2021 sarà per MINIARTEXTIL un momento importante: la manifestazione si prepara a celebrare la sua trentesima edizione, e lo fa con una mostra diffusa nel tessuto cittadino: minitessili e opere di grandi artisti internazionali in dialogo con la collezione della Pinacoteca, grandi installazioni site specific al Broletto e al Mercato coperto, e Villa Olmo che torna a ospitare l’arte contemporanea con la mostra Metamorphosis.