Justine Ludwig

Kiki Smith’s Mortal explores life as an ultimate pilgrimage. Amassing works from the last ten years of Smith’s oeuvre, the exhibition focuses on images of birth, learning, love, and death. The artist draws upon a spectrum of religious and spiritual iconography, from the annunciation to baptismal fonts, to explore the relationship between the quotidian and the sacred. Through the incorporation of a multitude of different figures, the exhibition ultimately speaks to the life cycle and shared human experience.

Central to Mortal is Smith’s massive installation Pilgrim, comprised of thirty mouth-blown, stained-glass panels portraying the stages of a woman’s life. This work was inspired by an eighteenth-century silk needlepoint by Prudence Punderson entitled The First, Second, and Last Scene of Mortality. The work depicts the life cycle of a woman from cradle to coffin: infancy, womanhood, and death. Similarly, Smith presents a human life to be explored through a single environment. The weightless figures, painted onto the glass panes have no fixed identity, but are instead place markers for birth, loss, death, and milestones in a woman's lifetime. Taken as a whole, Mortal is a meditation on the human life cycle, the inheritance of ritual, and the transference of information between individuals.

Kiki Smith was born 1954, Nuremberg, Germany and is based in New York. She uses a broad variety of materials to continuously expand and evolve a body of work that includes sculpture, printmaking, photography, drawing and textiles. Smith has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions worldwide including over 25 museum exhibitions. Her work has been featured at five Venice Biennales, including the 2017 edition. She is an adjunct professor at NYU and Columbia University.

Dallas Contemporary, Dallas Texas

September 29 – December 17, 2016

Photography by Kevin Todora

Courtesy of Dallas Contemporary

Through a wide variety of media ranging from installation to performance and ceramics, Pia Camil explores themes of art history, consumerism and the Mexican urban landscape. Investigating urban ruin through interpretations of abandoned billboards, dollar stores, and iconic works of art, Camil addresses the aesthetic language of modernism and its relationship to retail and advertising.

The exhibition Bara, Bara, Bara draws its name from the rythmic cry of street vendors in Mexico City. Short for the Spanish word barato, which means cheap, the exclamation is aimed to draw people’s attention to a wide variety of low-cost goods available for sale. Furthering the exhibition’s connection to consumer culture, Camil is inspired by the aesthetic of outdoor markets and discount retailers. Slat paneling, market awnings, and jewelry displays all function as inspiration.

Camil’s massive site-specific installation Divisor Pirata is comprised of t-shirts acquired from the street markets of Iztapalapa, Mexico City. The shirts were originally produced in Latin America, sold to retailers and organizations in the United States, and then illicitly found their way to the bargain markets of Mexico. Camil furthers the transit of the t-shirts by bringing them back to the United States and displaying them at Dallas Contemporary. In doing so, she brings attention to contemporary trade routes and the permeability of borders. The artist deconstructs the shirts and then sews them together, creating large stretches of fabric. In Bara, Bara, Bara, the work is installed to reflect the markets at which the shirts were purchased. The work formally draws inspiration from Lygia Pape’s seminal 1968 performance Divisor, in which community members of Rio de Janerio, Brazil were invited to walk together through the city connected by an enormous piece of white fabric which each participant popped their head through. The work illustrates the tension between the identity of the individual versus that of the collective.

Bara, Bara, Bara brings attention to shared experiences with commerce and the mechanisms of globalization. The works together present the breadth of Camil’s practice over the past five years. Camil lives and works in Mexico City, where she was born. She has exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the New Museum, New York; Frieze Projects, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and NuMu, Guatemala City. 

Dallas Contemporary, Dallas Texas

April 8 – August 20, 2017

Photography by Kevin Todora

Courtesy of Dallas Contemporary

Ambreen Butt’s What is left of me addresses current political oppression and violence globally through large-scale resin installations and collage-based works. The creation of each piece is labor intensive and built upon meditative repetitive forms. Butt studied traditional Indian and Persian miniature painting at the National College of Art in Lahore and has built a unique visual language based upon that training.

Throughout her practice, Butt continually engages with themes of feminism, globalization, and identity. Earlier works on paper from the Dirty Pretty series present direct visual quotations from historical miniaturist works intermingled with images pulled from news media. Butt’s more recent works are comprised of resin casts of fingers or locks, chains, and hooks, brought together to create ornamental patterning that is reminiscent of sacred geometries. In contrast, her collage works are created from shredded dollar bills and socially charged texts. For the series In God We Trust, Butt reinterprets the iconography of US currency in swirling lines of paper. In her text-based works, the source material is obscured beyond recognition, leaving only the title and single words to give insight into its original meaning. In the diptych, Pages of Deception, the text seen in the two mirrored panels was taken from both the defense and prosecution transcripts of a trial on terrorism. Manipulated through dyes and painstaking deconstruction, the content of the trial is lost and the ability to discern which side is which is all but impossible.

Butt was born in Lahore, Pakistan and is currently based in Texas. Among the many institutions that have exhibited her work are the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn; the Heard Museum, Phoenix; the Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena; the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel; the National Art Gallery, Islamabad; and the Sunshine Museum, Beijing. 

Dallas Contemporary, Dallas Texas

April 8 – August 20, 2017

Photography by Kevin Todora

Courtesy of Dallas Contemporary

For Future Reference explores the legacy of Greek statuary and philosophy—creating a bridge between sculpture and the investigation of knowledge. Featuring newly created stone sculptures in concert with earlier works, the exhibition explores the use of space and volumes to organize ideas. Reyes’s sculptures are playful in their references. Drawing from disparate traditions, the works form a hybrid language.

Reyes pays homage to key figures in Greek philosophy such as Epicurus, Aristotle, Hypatia, Socrates, and Plato. He recreates their likeness as stone-carved busts influenced by the disparate traditions of abstraction and figuration, modern and ancient visual languages. One such work, Plato’s Cave, realizes the philosopher’s famous allegory as an architectural model. The parable describes a group of prisoners who live chained in a cave facing a blank wall. All they see are shadows projected on the wall from things passing in front of a fire behind them. The shadows are as close as the prisoners get to witnessing reality. Plato equates the position of the philosopher to a freed prisoner who discovers that what was thought to be reality was merely a shadow. In Reyes’s interpretation, the philosopher’s cranium is the allegory’s cave.

Philosophy is also the starting point for Philosophical Casino, a set of dice that feature quotes from global theorists ranging from Confucius to Marx. The aim of the work is to offer the tools of philosophy in a casual, yet meaningful manner. These geometric sculptures are not dissimilar in function to an oracle or Magic 8 Ball—predicting futures and answering both life’s most elusive and banal questions. Other geometric works focus on form and are inspired by modernism and totemism. These sculptures create a conversation between geometry and the mystical. 

Flat Statues, re-worked photographs of statuary from different geographies and periods, evoke the feeling that art history has folded in on itself. These images are printed on cloth, cut, and reassembled on a canvas. The works bring attention to both similarities and differences between distinct visual practices.

Taken together, the works presented in For Future Reference explore the means through which thought is organized into images. Figures and forms act as an echo of the globalized reality we live in today. Much like a library, the exhibition is a compendium of perspectives on the human condition.   

Pedro Reyes was born in Mexico City in 1972, where he lives and works. He studied architecture at the Ibero-American University in Mexico City. Solo exhibitions include the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Power Plant, Toronto; Whitechapel Gallery, London; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. He has taken part in such important art events as the Carnegie International, Liverpool Biennial, Gwangju Biennial, and Documenta 13.

Dallas Contemporary, Dallas Texas

September 18 – December 18, 2016

Photography by Kevin Todora

Courtesy of Dallas Contemporary

Laercio Redondo unearths memories, often using architecture and its practitioners as a point of departure. Deeply invested in researching cultural dynamics, Redondo merges poetic narrative with personal vision to create multi-faceted installations. This exhibition examines such important Brazilian figures as Oscar Niemeyer, Athos Bulcão, Lota de Macedo Soares and Lina Bo Bardi. Often giving voice to those who have been silenced, Redondo illuminates the universal implications of collective forgetting.

Past Projects for the Future amasses work in diverse media, created between 2008 and the present. Central to the exhibition is a new film installation, Detour. The film traverses the distance between Flamengo Park, designed by Lota de Macedo Soares, and Casa Samambaia, her private home outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. Detour’s voice-over addresses de Macedo Soares’s conspicuous absence from Brazilian collective memory.

Also integral to the exhibition are architect Lina Bo Bardi and her Glass House. Redondo explores her masterpiece in two works—the video The Glass House and a series of photographs titled Blow Up/ The Glass House. The video documents the home on two occasions, one in 1999 and the other in 2008. Bringing attention to the lived-in nature of the house rather than presenting it as an architectural remnant, the work focuses on the eclectic nature of the owners’ possessions. The accompanying photographs of the home are magnified beyond focus—a tableau of displacement and memory. 

Past Projects for the Future ruminates upon architecture’s relationship with identity, both personal and national. Redondo, through his practice, revives cultural practitioners whose works still remain relevant today. He suggests an alternative reading and experience of their work by highlighting important aspect of their practice.

Laercio Redondo was born in Brazil, and is currently based between Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Stockholm, Sweden. He received his MFA at Konstfack, University of Art, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. He has had solo exhibitions internationally in Brazil, Spain, Germany, and Cuba.

Dallas Contemporary, Dallas Texas

September 18 – December 18, 2016

Photography by Kevin Todora

Courtesy of Dallas Contemporary

Diverse and enigmatic, Paola Pivi’s oeuvre appears to be the work of multiple creative minds. With ambitious and spectacular acts, as well as simple gestures, Pivi playfully appropriates cultural symbols, resulting in unexpected visuals that also appear surprisingly familiar. In each work, subject and materiality are manipulated leading to surprising transformations. The complexity of Pivi’s work is deepened by her belief that comprehensive explanation curtails the viewer’s freedom of interpretation.

Paola Pivi’s first museum solo exhibition in the United States addresses the viewer as “ma’am.” Women, men, and children are greeted with this term of reverence and kindness along with its common, unintentional undertones of comedy and pretension. Ma’am brings together iconic past works with new commissions. Pivi’s feather-covered polar bears occupy the gallery in the company of an inverted Fiat G-91 fighter jet. Canvases of cascading real pearls converse with photographs of zebras on a snowy mountaintop. Spinning, feather-dressed wheels evoke dream catchers, while a giant inflatable ladder elicts wonder and aspiration.

Originally from Milan, Italy, Paola Pivi (b.1971) is currently based in New Delhi, India, but she considers Anchorage, Alaska to be her permanent home. In 1997, as a student, Pivi placed an 18-wheeler truck on its side as part of the exhibition Fuori Uso in Pescara, Italy. Two years later, she installed an upside down G-91 fighter jet in the Venice Biennale’s Arsenale, helping Italy win the coveted Golden Lion for Best National Pavilion. Recently, Pivi has created major commissions for the Public Art Fund and the High Line in New York City. She has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Basel, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan and MACRO Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma. Pivi’s work is included in the permanent collections of many renowned institutions including the Guggenheim Museum and the Centre Pompidou.

Dallas Contemporary, Dallas Texas

April 16 - August 21, 2016

Photography by Kevin Todora

Courtesy of Dallas Contemporary

Her Marks, a Measure explores the role of women's labor in the history of astronomy and ballistics. In both fields women made significant contributions to observation, data collection, and computation. Between the Bullet and the Hole is a newly commissioned film focused on the elusive and complex effects of war on women's role in ballistic research and early computing. The film combines new and archival high-speed bullet photography, schlieren and electric spark imagery, bullet sound wave imagery, forensic ballistic photography, slide rulers, punch cards, computer diagrams, and a soundtrack by electronic musician Scanner. Like a frantic animation storyboard, it explores the flickering space between the frames, testing the perceptual mechanics of visual interpolation, the possibility of reading or deciphering the gap between before and after. Interpolation - the main task of the women studying ballistics in WW2 - is the construction or guessing of missing data using only two known data points. The film tries to unpack this gap and opens it to interrogation. It questions how we interpolate or construct the gaps between bullet and hole, perpetrator and victim, presence and absence. 

The exhibition also includes Her Luminous Distance, a slide-based installation featuring a device used by astronomers to detect small pattern differences between photographic plates by alternately switching between images, blinking back and forth between the two. Invented by amateur astronomer Ben Mayer, the PROBLICOM (Projector Blink Comparator) uses two juxtaposed slide projectors and a rotating disc to alternately obscure the images at a stroboscopic pace. The accompanying binaural soundtrack is a pulsing rhythmic drone, which plays on the perception of patterns.

Her Luminous Distance honors the lesser-known women who contributed to important astronomical discoveries, in particular the women known as 'Human Computers' at Harvard who were engaged in painstaking astronomical observation and classification. Specifically, the work was developed from research on the pioneering deaf astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921). In her extensive studies of variable stars, Leavitt discovered the period-luminosity relationship, which ultimately helped calibrate a method to determine the size of the universe. The blinking slide sequence includes images drawn from Leavitt's original annotated photographic plates of variable stars, archival images from the ‘Human Computers' workplace, and a series of over 20 images of craters on the moon named after women astronomers.

Aura Satz (b. 1974) was born in Barcelona and is currently based in London. Satz’s work has been performed, exhibited, and screened internationally. This includes events and exhibitions at Tate Modern, the Hayward Gallery, the Hayward Project Space, Barbican Art Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, (London); the Rotterdam Film Festival (Rotterdam); the New York Film Festival (NY); De Appel Art Centre (Amsterdam); and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead). 

Dallas Contemporary, Dallas Texas

January 17 - March 20, 2016

Photography by Kevin Todora

Courtesy of Dallas Contemporary

Jeff Zilm engages with screen-mediated culture in his practice. Through diverse bodies of work, he deconstructs the language used to navigate digital realities. From paintings created using film stock to antennae ready-mades, LOSSLESS FORMS FOR PICTURE PLANE adopts symbols of information and subverts their purpose.

In his Film Paintings Zilm strips the emulsion from 8mm, 16mm, and 35mm black and white films using a process he developed. Combining the liquefied emulsion with acrylic paint, the mixture is sprayed and brushed onto canvas. Each painting is comprised of a single film with all of its visual information reduced to abstract, ghost-like forms. Also created using film is a large floor sculpture made from a print of the movie Alien. The work draws attention to the materiality of the film, while creating windows into its narrative, as there is minimal intervention from the artist.

Zilm’s Password Paintings are created using real passphrases that offer potential access to private data. Employing a password strength-checking program, Zilm has explored the value placed upon spacing and terminology that determines the durability of passwords that have come to govern our digital existence. Similarly engaging with virtual realities are Zilm’s Cheats. These works adopt the language of computer game cheats—a series of instructions that allow for individuals to circumvent the established gameplay benchmarks. The artist’s version applies these cheats to real life situations, making references ranging from politics to pop culture. The result is instructions to achieve surreal and essentially unobtainable life outcomes.

Through various media, LOSSLESS FORMS FOR PICTURE PLANE explores the interrelations of film, coding, text, and Internet technologies. It probes the glut of information that we are faced with on a daily basis, while removing hierarchy between the banal and the exceptional.

Jeff Zilm was born in 1958 in Iowa City, Iowa. He studied at the University of North Texas before receiving his MFA at Southern Methodist University. Solo exhibitions include Oliver Francis Gallery (Dallas), AND NOW (Dallas), The Journal Gallery (Brooklyn), and Preteen Gallery (Mexico City). He has taken part in group shows at the Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston) and The Jewish Museum (New York). Zilm lives and works in Dallas, Texas. LOSSLESS FORMS FOR PICTURE PLANE is his first museum solo exhibition.

Dallas Contemporary, Dallas Texas

January 17 - March 20, 2016

Photography by Kevin Todora

Courtesy of Dallas Contemporary

Laercio Redondo (b.1967) unearths memories, often using architecture and its practitioners as a point of departure. Deeply invested in researching cultural dynamics, Redondo merges poetic narrative with personal vision to create multi-faceted installations. In this exhibition he examines such important Brazilian figures as Athos Bulcão, Lota de Macedo Soares and Lina Bo Bardi. Often giving voice to those who have been silenced, Redondo illuminates the universal implications of collective forgetting.

What ends every day brings together work in diverse media created between 2007 and the present. Central to the exhibition is a new film installation, Detour, that traverses the distance between Flamengo Park designed by Lota de Macedo Soares, where the museum is located, and Casa Samambaia, her private home outside the city of Rio de Janeiro in the hills of Petrópolis. The soundtrack of the film brings attention to de Macedo Soares’s conspicuous absence from Brazilian collective memory.

Also highlighted in the exhibition are Lina Bo Bardi and her Glass House. Redondo explores her masterpiece in two works—the video The Glass House and a series of photographs Blow Up/ The Glass House. The video shows documentation of the home on two occasions, one in 1999 and the other in 2008. It brings attention to the lived-in nature of the home, in contrast to being seen as an architectural remnant.

The focus of Blow Up/ The Glass House is on details and objects that have been blown-up from the original images of the house to the point that they lose their sharpness. They act as a counterpoint to traditional architectural photos as the building itself is obscured. The images bring focus to objects that remained in the house during a period of restoration—transforming them into artifacts devoid of their original purpose.

Two other individuals evoked in the exhibition are Brazilian artist, Athos Bulcão, and American, Cuban-born artist, Félix González-Torres. Bulcão is highlighted in the video Retoque. In this work a tile mural by Bulcão is translated into a musical score. In Para mirar al sur – After Untitled / Perfect Lovers Redondo reimagines González-Torres’s clocks as a pair of sundials brought to life by the Cuban sun. The work brings attention to the role of context as the work only truly functions in Havana. Redondo creates conversations with these two artists that traverse space and time.

What ends every day is a reflection of the city and country that surrounds it, with all its complex societal dynamics. It ruminates upon architecture’s relationship with identity, both personal and national. Redondo, through his practice, resurrects cultural practitioners whose works still remain relevant today.

Laercio Redondo was born in Brazil and is currently based between Rio de Janeiro and Stockholm, Sweden. He received his MFA at Konstfack, University of Art, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. He has had solo exhibitions internationally in Spain, Germany, and Cuba in addition to Brazil.

The Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

December 12, 2015 - February 14, 2016

Photography by Sergio Araujo

Skins reflects upon contemporary society by exploring the intersection of commodification and performance. For this newly commissioned body of work, Camil merges the aesthetics of commerce with that of Frank Stella’s iconic Copper Paintings. Stella’s works created between 1960 and 1961 call attention to the flat nature of the medium, while breaking with the set parameters of painting through the use of abnormally shaped canvases. Camil recreates Stella’s forms out of slat paneling used in merchandising display.

Within stores, slat paneling functions as a skin—covering every architectural surface and rendering it useable. Camil appropriates this material and affixes shelves and hooks upon which ceramic masks sit and cloaks hang. The masks draw inspiration from forms seen in shops created to display jewelry. They are a commentary on the manipulation of the female image in marketing and, in taking on the appearance of masks, they articulate the artifice of advertising.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is a stage made after a Stella painting. This piece invites interaction from the viewer—allowing the viewer to create a persona by wearing the different cloaks placed throughout the exhibition. It is an opportunity to explore the different aspects of our own personality and become part of the exhibition.

Pia Camil was born in 1980 in Mexico City where she continues to live and work. She received her BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from The Slade School of Fine Art. Camil’s work is in the permanent collection of La Colección Jumex, la Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and the Kadist Art Foundation amongst others. Skins is the artist’s first museum solo exhibition.

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati Ohio

November 6, 2015 - March 13, 2016

Photography by Tony Walsh

Courtesy of the CAC

Expanded Cinema is a program of video art works wrapping the exterior of the Omni Dallas Hotel, Texas, with audio simulcast by 91.7 KXT. This year’s edition, curated by Justine Ludwig, Director of Exhibitions/Senior Curator at Dallas Contemporary, will consist of works by artists from across the country addressing the inter-relationship of memory and place. Artists include Andrea Sisson, Andrew Scott, Jeff Gibbons, Gregory Ruppe, Jordan Tate, Wyatt Niehaus, Chris Collins, Joey Versoza, Michael Morris, Rick Silva, Darryl Laster, Pierre Krause, and Kris Pierce.

Each piece has been specifically designed for display on the large exterior LEDs on the Omni Hotel Dallas. Expanded Cinema, first presented in 2012, was named the number one art event in Dallas by several local news publications and attracted media attention worldwide. This year, Expanded Cinema will close VideoFest in the week after the festival on Sunday, Oct 25 at 8 pm. This unique public art project has already added cultural prestige to the City of Dallas.

Downtown, Dallas Texas

October 25, 2015

Courtesy of the artists

Bani Abidi presents an immersive site specific video installation of her 2014 work Funland (Karachi Series II) as well as a new video, commissioned by Dallas Contemporary, titled An Unforeseen Situation. Through vignettes presenting different locals throughout the city, Funland (Karachi Series II) considers how melancholia and amnesia become etched into the urban topography of cosmopolitan Karachi, Pakistan. A library in Karachi puts itself under a harsh regiment of censorship; threatened by suspicious visitors asking questions about the vast reserve of books on comparative religion and history, the board decides to hide seventy percent of its collection. In the city center, a cinema hall from the 1950’s is burnt down by an outraged mob protesting a video posted on the internet; an amusement park built in the 1970’s fears closure as construction on the country’s tallest skyscraper begins next to it. Juxtaposed to these captured moments in scarcely inhabited public spaces, man sits on the seashore in a set of meticulously laid out chairs, watching the sea.

In parallel, Abidi’s new video examines notions of patriotism, masculinity and foulplay through a narrative based on real events. The work explores orchestrated mass events and spectacular individual feats hosted by the Punjab Ministry of Sports in 2014 during which multiple world records were reportedly broken by Pakistan. Picking up from the popular rumors, newspaper clippings, and video footage surrounding the events, the artist spins her own version of the events as they unfolded.

Bani Abidi (b.1971) lives and works between Karachi, Pakistan and Berlin, Germany. Her work has been exhibited at institutions such as The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; and Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom. She has participated in many biennials, including the Asian Art Biennial, Taichung, Taiwan; AiM International Biennale, Marrakech, Morocco; and the 10th Lyon Biennale.

Dallas Contemporary, Dallas Texas

September 20 - December 20, 2015

Photography by Kevin Todora

Courtesy of Dallas Contemporary

Nadia Kaabi-Linke presents six diverse projects documenting current cultural climates. Together the works as a reminder of the past as omnipresent in the now. Throughout the exhibition Kaabi-Linke unearths the complex dynamics surrounding subject matter such as trauma, gender, and borders. Each work explores the artifacts that carry the remnants of memory. In bringing these disparate issues together, Walk the Line is a poetic reflection of the structures that define human existence.

The centerpiece of the exhibition, a new installation and performance titled Walk the Line, explores national borders. In this performance piece, commissioned for Dallas Contemporary, community members wrap string the length of the border separating Texas and Mexico around two of the building’s columns.

Nadia Kaabi-Linke (b.1978) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. The recipient of a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne University in Paris in 2008, she has had exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca; Center of Modern Art, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Nam June Paik Art Center, Gyeongg-do, South Korea; the HKW and KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. She participated in the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, the Liverpool Biennial in 2012, and the 9th Sharjah Biennial in 2009. She was awarded the Discoveries Prize from Art Basel Hong Kong in 2014, and the Abraaj Capital Art Prize in 2011.

Dallas Contemporary, Dallas Texas

September 20 - December 21, 2015

Photography by Kevin Todora

Courtesy of Dallas Contemporary

In Intersections Anila Quayyum Agha has created a non-denominational spiritual space inspired by her trip to the Alhambra Islamic Palace in Spain. Agha emulated patterns of the Alhambra in this installation—drawing upon the location’s history as a site where Islamic and Western discourses came in contact with one another and co-existed.

The artist looks to the use of geometry in Islamic art as opposed to figurative forms seen in other artistic traditions. Agha uses the aesthetic openness of this patterning to show how it may be interpreted in a myriad of manners. In doing so, she engenders a conversation about the similarities and variances amongst cultures as well as the permeability of borders between them.

In 2014 Intersections received both the public and juried prizes at ArtPrize Grand Rapids. The work is presented as a celebration and inauguration of ArtPrize Dallas, which will take place in 2016.

Anila Quayyum Agha was born in Lahore, Pakistan and received her MFA in Fiber Arts from the University of North Texas. She is based in Indianapolis. Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows at international galleries and institutions including the Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston; Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids; Heritage House, Dubai; and Rohtas 1 Art Gallery, Islamabad. 

Dallas Contemporary, Dallas Texas

April 9 - August 23, 2015

Photography by Kevin Todora

Courtesy of Dallas Contemporary and ArtPrize Dallas

Is This It draws its title from Michael Jackson’s 2009 tour, This Is It, which was unrealized due to Jackson’s sudden passing. The exhibition, like its name, explores the immense impact of simple alteration of source material. Additionally, it draws upon the veneration of cultural icons and the failings of this occurrence.

Versoza’s artwork manifests as video, photography, and installation. From this array of media he creates a new body of work that functions as a single installation. Elements of the exhibition change over time due to the naturally occurring decay of their components.

The central installation, baring the same name as the ill-fated Jackson tour, is comprised of a series of video clips appropriated from films. The central installation, This Is It, is comprised of a series of video clips appropriated from films. Versoza loops the clips and re-scores them with familiar songs that cross musical genres. The resultant collages of visual detritus unearth hidden meanings and establish new connections. They illuminate a relationship between the synthetic and the emotional — a themed echoed throughout the exhibition.

At its core Joey Versoza: Is This It presents popular culture as both personal and poignant.

Versoza (b.1978) is a graduate of the Cincinnati Art Academy and has exhibited at The Contemporary Museum in Baltimore and in Cincinnati at Aisle Gallery, U-turn Art Space, Art Damage Lodge, and Publico.

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati Ohio

September 23, 2013 - February 2, 2014

Photography by Tony Walsh

Courtesy of the CAC

We go through our daily lives responding physically and emotionally to the concept of space.  These often unrealized responses to our environment shape how we behave, think, and communicate. The Living Room takes the idea of personal living space and transports it to the public space of the museum, leading us to question how we respond to different presentations of space. The first section of the exhibition is a transitional area that appears the most like a traditional museum exhibition; however, the space then unfolds as a private living space and outdoor scene complete with a tree house. Much like one’s own home, it is hard to imagine this space without human interaction. Therefore each room invites the audience to interact, occupy, converse, and lounge.

The first section of the exhibition, presents Paul Coors’s video installation which draws from the language of advertising and interweaves the different facets of Coors’s creative practice, which encompasses design and curation. Within the living space various furniture and design elements were created by Guy Michael Davis, Terence Hammonds, Katie Parker, and the design collective Such + Such. Featured within the exhibition is a fireplace created by Davis, Hammonds, and Parker in collaboration with the legendary Cincinnati-based Rookwood Pottery Company.

Guy Michael Davis was born in 1978 and raised in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. He attended the Kansas City Art Institute and received a BFA in ceramics and an MFA from The Ohio State University in 2008. Guy works for multiple designers across the country and is a full time lecturer at the University of Cincinnati.

Paul Coors (b. 1982) is a Cincinnati native and 2004 graduate of the Art Academy of Cincinnati. In addition to his studio practice he operates Chow Records, co-edits Perfect Lovers Press with Dana Ward, co-operates Platter Party Records with Chris Burgan, and hosts events at the Ice Cream Factory in Brighton where he lives and works.

Terence Hammonds was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1976. He grew up on Main Street in Over-the-Rhine and attended the School for Creative and Performing Arts. He attended The School of the Museum of Fine Art, Boston and Tufts University in partnership with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (BFA, 2002).

 Katie Parker was born in 1980 in Jonesboro, Arkansas and grew up in Plano, Texas. She attended the Kansas City Art Institute from and received a BFA in ceramics, going straight to the Ohio State University for an MFA, received in 2005. Currently Katie is an Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati, running the ceramics department.

Such + Such started at the University of Cincinnati in 2010; the brainchild of Alex Aeschbury, Zach Darmanian-Harris and Mike Nauman. As students they had the opportunity to work at over a dozen companies both domestic and overseas. Following that experience the group launched their own firm. Currently operating out of Cincinnati, Such + Such designs and produces objects for a wide variety of clients nationwide.

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati Ohio

May 18 - September 2, 2013

Photography by Tony Walsh

Courtesy of the CAC

“From a place apart, Morpheus, god of dreams, awakes. Detached from the benevolent folds of the muse he presses against the blue and burns into form. Flying high, with neither love nor remorse, he regards his charge—a young man asleep within the cloth of a voyage, which is turning, ever so slowly, even as the widening skirt of an ecstatic.”                                                                                    -Prologue, The Coral Sea

Patti Smith wrote the collection of poems titled The Coral Sea in the wake of the passing of her friend, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The text presents a metaphoric and dream-like meditation on life, death and transition. This exhibition, by the same title, explores universally familiar themes such as loss, remembrance and transcendence through a melding of language and image. The Coral Sea is staged in four sections—affliction, cremation, remembrance, and transformation.

Patti Smith (b. 1946) began as a visual artist and has been making drawings and taking photographs since the late 1960s. In addition to being an artist, she is a singer, songwriter, and author. 

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati Ohio

May 18 - October 21, 2013

Photography by Tony Walsh

Courtesy of the CAC

Illuminated Geographies explores how contemporary miniaturist painting is evolving from its roots in Mughal painting, as it is brought into different contexts and its stylistic foundation is adapted through different artistic visions. The practice of Mughal miniature painting originated during the 16th century in the Mughal Empire, spanning what is now India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan. As this Muslim empire fell into decline, so did its art form, marked by a meticulous attention to minute detail, lush jewel tones, epic subject matter, and diminutive scale. Today we are experiencing a renaissance in this mode of artistic expression, due, in large part, to the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan (NCA), which since the 1980s has taught this traditional practice of wasli paper- and brush-making techniques, paint mixing, narrative style, and iconography. Two generations of artists have now studied at the NCA and have reinvigorated this practice as a relevant, globalized contemporary art form by infusing it with their individual visions and contemporary subject matter.

The exhibition focuses on four artists trained at the NCA now living outside of Pakistan each of whom are pushing the boundaries of miniaturist practice in different directions. These artists --Ambreen Butt, Faiza Butt, Murad Khan Mumtaz, and Saira Wasim -- all deal with themes of cultural amalgamation in their work. Influenced by their current location and distance from Pakistan, they address political, social and cultural realities of Pakistan and their present environments. The works in this exhibition are eloquent illustrations of hybridity—of language, place, and time. They draw parallels between divergent traditions and allow for different perspectives to occupy a single space. Despite a shared origin in Pakistan, the subject of Illuminated Geographies is both translocal and transcultural in nature—reaching across national boundaries and beyond Islamic traditions.

Tufts University Art Gallery, Aidekman Arts Center, Medford Massachusetts 

January 17 - March 31, 2013

Photography by 

Courtesy of Tufts University

Francis Upritchard aims to walk the line between fine art and kitsch fantasy sculpture. The work exists in the space where art, design and craft intersect. Upritchard describes these figures as “holy fools” as they seem to take part in actions with deep personal attention that are completely devoid of meaning. Each figure looks out at the world with pupil-less eyes as if to imply that they are incapable of seeing and that they are simply receptacles waiting to be inhabited by souls. Playing the part of an archeologist, she places these figures in the context of artifacts of the everyday—plates, vases and lighting fixtures. They appear as relics from societies and as rituals both familiar and foreign. The work is both humorous and personal.

Employing the skills of artisans to construct a mode of display that values the support structures and subject equally, Upritchard creates a unique vision. Upritchard’s small meticulous figures made out of techno-color painted Supersculpty clay, either nude or attired in found material, take on nonsensical poses. The artist’s fingerprints cover each sculpture and their size is dictated by the artist’s own physicality—allowing her to work on the pieces without help from others. As a result the artist is present in all of her work. Upritchard aims to create figurative sculpture that simultaneously looks back at the history of the art form and to its future.

Francis Upritchard was born in New Zealand in 1976 and is currently based in London. She represented New Zealand in the 53rd Venice Biennale and has shown extensively in the UK. This is her first museum exhibition in the United States.

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati Ohio

May - September 2012

Photography by Bob Scheadler

Courtesy of the CAC

The practice of Mughal miniature painting began in the 16th century. It was an art form marked by a meticulous attention to minute detail, lush jewel tones, epic subject matter, and diminutive scale.  As the Mughal Empire fell into decline, so did this style. Today we are experiencing a renaissance for this mode of artistic expression. This is in large part due to the National College of Art in Lahore, Pakistan (NCA) which revived this practice into a relevant contemporary art form.  By taking the miniaturist practice that had been reduced to something copied for the tourist trade and infusing it with individual thought and contemporary subject matter it breathed new life into this ancient technique. 

In the 1990s the program found its stride and began producing important contemporary artists, many of whom are featured in this exhibition—Ambreen Butt, Faiza Butt, Imran Qureshi, Nusra Qureshi and Saira Wasim. While the artists all studied for a period at the NCA, they currently live in different places around the world.  The artists are all greatly influenced by their current location and address the political, social and cultural reality of both Pakistan and their present environment. Through beauty these artists ask difficult questions and confront us with the realities of the world we live in. Realms of Intimacy explores how miniaturist painting evolves as it is brought into different contexts as well as how its stylistic foundation may be adapted through different artistic visions. 

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati Ohio

September 24, 2011- January 22, 2012

Photography by Tony Walsh

Courtesy of the CAC

For over a hundred years, the motorcycle and its surrounding mythology has been evolving. First invented in 1885 in Germany as a bicycle with an attached motor, it grew into a fast-moving and easily maneuvered machine that would play a major role in World Wars I and II. The history of the American motorcycle began in 1901 with the creation of both the Harley Davidson and Indian motorcycle and by 1920 the United States was the largest producer of motorcycles in the world selling motorcycles through 2,000 dealers in 67 countries.

It was the American G.I.s returning from war that brought motorcycles into mainstream culture. Familiar with the machines from battle, returning soldiers sought out American models back home to retain the thrill of the ride without the horror of war.  This machine so attached to the concepts of war, victory and leisure quickly came to stand for freedom and the American way of life. As the motorcycle transformed from a common form of transportation into an icon, motorcycle culture ­began to infiltrate film and literature.  Films like Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider and books such as, Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga helped solidify the motorcycle’s place in modern America.

Rosson Crow is interested in this history. She has read the writings of motorcycle legends, collected back issues of Easy Rider magazine and explored leather shops and biker bars.  In the resulting body of work, she explores nostalgia-laden places, symbols, and objects relating to motorcycles and the American road-trip. The environments and sites encountered in her paintings were made famous through popular culture in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Crow’s paintings are that of a collective history of the motorcycle. Drawing simultaneously from many sources, these places don’t quite exist in reality, but they have become an integral part of its narrative.

Customized motorcycles selected from the Cincinnati area punctuate the exhibition and enter the landscape of Crow’s large scale canvases.  These bikes become storytellers, relating autobiographical tales of the relationship between rider and machine. They are built for performance, but have been altered until each takes on its own unique style reflecting the identity or desired identity of their owners. The vision of each rider is interpreted through the paint jobs executed by Jim Farr, known by most as Dauber. He is a master freehand pin-striper, graphic designer and illustrator with a unique ability to translate individual personalities and stories onto the surface of motorcycles. These individual narratives come to life in the environment created by Crow’s paintings. 

Rosson Crow was born in Dallas, Texas in 1982. She studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York and Yale University. In 2006 she had a residency at Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris. She most recently exhibited her work at Deitch Projects in New York and has had a solo exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas.

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati Ohio

November 2, 2010 - April 3, 2011

Photography by Tony Walsh

Courtesy of the CAC

Shinji Turner-Yamamoto: Disappearances elevates a collection of discarded and decaying architectural materials into a meditative installation infused with serene beauty. This exhibition was created as a companion piece to The Global Tree Project that the artists describes as, “an international art initiative that seeks to open and affirm connections between audiences and the natural world.” This body of work, which spans ten years and three continents, strives to highlight the interaction between nature and humanity. Turner-Yamamoto continues The Global Tree Project in Cincinnati with Hanging Garden at the Holy Cross Church in Mount Adams. The installation consists of two trees—a live tree supported by a dead one with roots intertwined. 

While surveying the grounds of Holy Cross Church, Turner-Yamamoto was drawn to the fallen plaster and paint chips that littered the ground.  These fragments have become the raw material for the exhibition. In visiting the church, Turner-Yamamoto related the large sections of fallen plaster to suiseki, stones traditionally used as meditation aids in Japan.  The organic shapes of the rubble reminded the artist of landscapes. Viewed together they create a horizon line. Plaster fragments are painted gold, have paint chips painstakingly glued to them, and circular forms are incised on the surface—techniques commonly used in churches. These works evoke a linear constellation, with light reflecting off the gilded surface like starlight. The remaining plaster and paint chips were pulverized to create a fine powder, which the artist used to create the fragile floor installation.

Shinji Turner-Yamamoto was born in 1965 in Osaka, Japan and studied fresco painting Kyoto. He has exhibited all around the world—from New Delhi, India to Cork, Ireland. 

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati Ohio

September 18, 2010 - January 30, 2011

Photography by Tony Walsh

Courtesy of the CAC

For Shilpa Gupta, all art is a form of activism as it reveals the world in a new way. The pieces in the exhibition, Shilpa Gupta: A Bit Closer, use familiarity as a starting point—children’s games, a book, tape, soap, balloons, and a building’s foundation. Gupta subverts the identity of inanimate objects by breathing life into them—a book has the ability to provide warmth and to burn, balloons become hopeful declarations, and a brick foundation is given a voice to speak with.

Shilpa Gupta employs performance, video, photography, sculpture, and new media to realize her artistic vision. Words are carefully intertwined with visual elements in order to provide a deeper level of understanding. Through this synthesis of text and image, the artist tackles issues of war, security, fear, and borders. While Gupta’s work is inspired by life in India, it truly looks at larger global phenomenon. Works such as Half Widows, which is about the plight of women in Kashmir whose husbands have gone missing, also addresses issues of loss and war on a global level. Shilpa Gupta: A Bit Closer encourages the questioning of assumptions and biases about how we live and our place in the world.

Shilpa Gupta was born in 1976. She lives and works in Mumbai, India. She studied sculpture at the Sir J. J. School of Fine Art. Shilpa Gupta: A Bit Closer is her first solo museum exhibition.

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati Ohio

February 20 - May 2, 2010

Photography by Tony Walsh

Courtesy of the CAC