Exhibition news from Odili Donald Odita

Posted on | March 2, 2010 | No Comments

I wish to invite you to my exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, “Perspective 169″.  The exhibition dates are February 12 to May 2, 2010.  If you are in Houston, please visit my exhibition.  At this time other artists on view in Houston include Maurizio Cattelan at the Menil Collection from Feb. 12th through August 15th; El Anatsui at the Rice University Art Gallery till March 14th; and the beautifully installed Barkley Hendrick’s retrospective also at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston through April 18th.

http://www.houstontx.gov/events/cam.html

http://www.camh.org/exhib_MAIN.html

Also, there is a fantastic Art Forum on-line review of the group exhibition, “Wild is the Wind,” curated by Laurie Ann Farrell of the Savannah College of Art and Design – the link and further info is below.  If you are in Savannah before March 22nd, it would be great if you could make it out to see the exhibition.

http://www.artforum.com/picks/section=us#Savannah

Jan. 22-March 12

“Wild is the Wind” Exhibition at Pei Ling Chan Gallery

Pei Ling Chan Gallery, 322 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Savannah, GA

Paying homage to the 1957 American standard Wild is the Wind, made popular over several decades by musical icons including Johnny Mathis, David Bowie, George Michael, Cat Power and Nina Simone, this exhibition brings together a collection of recently produced work that resonates in profound ways with the enduring tune. The song lyrics make an appeal for love, intimacy, escapism and transcendence as love is like the wind, and wild is the wind. Similarly, each work in the exhibition offers poetic visual and emotive moments through the exploration of translation, fantasy, epic voyages, and deep engagements with melancholia. Artists include Ghada Amer, Lara Baladi, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Nicholas Hlobo, Odili Donald Odita, Zineb Sedira and Penny Siopis. Organized as part of the Africa on My Mind: Contemporary Art, Home and Abroad exhibition series held in conjunction with SCADs third biennial art history symposium. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

Lyle Ashton Harris: Ghana

Posted on | March 2, 2010 | No Comments

LYLE ASHTON HARRIS | Ghana

FEB 25 – APR 3, 2010
(opening reception: Thursday, February 25th, 6-8pm)

CRG presents a new body of work by Lyle Ashton Harris titled “Ghana” which has been inspired by the cultural space that is taking shape at the confluence of contemporary globalization and a rich cultural tradition haunted by the relics of the slave trade.

As spectator and participant, Harris is insider and outsider simultaneously; exploring his personal experience in Ghana, Harris excavates the shared historical legacy of America and Africa. In his video installation, “Untitled (Cape Coast)”, 2008, Harris combines multiple layers of video over hanging panels of printed silk organza. Images of a serene and idyllic beach scene are superimposed with images of the surrounding environment evoking different historical and anthropological layers; fleeting images of traditional Ghanaian festivals overlay a landscape that is home to what was once one of the largest slave trading forts on the former Gold Coast.

While collage has long been integral to Harris’s practice, in his recent “Jamestown Prison Erasure Images,’ exhibited here for the first time, Harris undertakes a visual conversation with wall collages by prisoners who resided in a former colonial era fort, that at one time also held Kwame Nkrumah as a political prisoner prior to taking office as the first president of Ghana upon its independence as a nation in 1957.

The prison collages, consisting of images of cars, women, and other objects of desire, bear an uncanny resemblance to Harris’s large-scale wall collages that incorporate his own photographs with layers of ephemera and other printed material.

“Untitled (Black Power),”2010, a new three channel video work borrows its title from the controversial yet seminal 1957 travel essay by literary giant Richard Wright. Captured here are intimate moments as powerful metaphors for embodied cultural hybridity. Inhabiting the space of a local gym in Accra, Harris traces the rituals movements of Herculean body builders performing repetitions with improvised weights fashioned out of what appear to be welded tractor gears. Harris has divided his time between New York and Accra, Ghana, since 2005, serving as a professor at New York University’s Accra campus. This current body of work has emerged from Harris’s experiences living in Ghana and provides a framework with in which he continues expanding on themes characteristic of his past work: meditations on race, masculinity, and performative gestures captured within the photographic medium. The exhibition includes video as well as collage-based installation and still photographs.

Harris was born in the Bronx and raised in New York City and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. For the past twenty years Lyle Ashton Harris’ work has explored narratives of ethnicity, identity and shifting definitions of self, resulting in significant contributions to the field of contemporary art and photography. Works from earlier projects—Americas, (1987/88); Constructs (1989); The Good Life (1994); Memoirs of Hadrian (2002); and Billies (2002)—have been included in landmark exhibitions such as “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art”, at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1994) and “Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose: Gender Performance in Photography ” at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1997). Works produced throughout this period continue to be selected for museum shows, including “For the Love of the Game: Race and Sport in America,” at The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (2007); “Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970,” at Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2005); “Photography of the Self: The Legacy of F. Holland Day,” at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2007); and “Kreyol Factory,” at Parc de la Villette, Paris (2009).

This Spring 2010 …. Excessive Exposure: The Complete Chocolate Portraits. This book, to be published in Spring 2010 by Gregory R. Miller & Co., includes an introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a critical essay by Okwui Enwezor and an interview with Chuck Close

CRG GALLERY
535 W 22nd St, New York, NY 10011 | T 212-229-2766 F 212-229-2788 | www.crggallery.com
(Google Maps)

Transportation: C and E trains to 8th Ave at 23rd St / M23 Bus to 10th Ave and 23rd St

MAK Billboards in LA

Posted on | March 2, 2010 | No Comments

Artwork by Kori Newkirk Commissioned by the MAK Center. Photograph by Gerard Smulevich

Dear MAK Center audience members,

It is with great pleasure that I invite you to join the MAK Center and me in exploring and celebrating How Many Billboards? Art In Stead. Twenty-one newly commissioned works on billboards by leading contemporary artists are currently being installed throughout central Los Angeles. The first five have appeared; Los Angeles now has a Kenneth Anger in Beverly Hills, a Jennifer Bornstein on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, a Kori Newkirk in McArthur Park, and a Kira Lynn Harris and a Kerry Tribe near the 10 Freeway and the Culver City art district.

Check the map on at www.howmanybillboards.org for the locations of these installations and for updates on works by the other participating artists, Michael Asher, Eileen Cowin, Christina Fernandez, Ken Gonzales-Day, Renée Green, John Knight, David Lamelas, Brandon Lattu, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Yvonne Rainer, Martha Rosler with Josh Neufeld, Allen Ruppersberg, Allan Sekula, Susan Silton, James Welling, and lauren woods.

We will be holding a reception for the artists at the Schindler House on Saturday, February 27, from 1 pm – 6 pm, and panel discussions with the artists on Sunday February 28 from 1 pm – 5 pm.

The show will run in February and March 2010, I strongly encourage you to make the effort to see the works. We can help by providing an online map, easy to use on your portable electronic device.

The MAK Center will also run open-topped bus tours of the show on Saturdays starting with the artist reception on February 27. Purchase tickets here.

An overview exhibit will be on view at the Schindler House through May 30, including documentation of the billboard works after they are installed, and reference materials about the artists.

An array of programs will accompany the show, please check the calendar for details.

I hope to see you at all the related events.

Sincerely,
Kimberli Meyer
MAK Center Director

How Many Billboards? upcoming related events:

March 6, 2010 – Bus Tours
1:00 pm & 4:00 pm
Bus tours will run at 1:00 pm to see selected west side billboards & 4:00pm to see selected east side boards.

Tickets: $14 / $9 for Friends of the MAK Center.

Purchase tickets for the bus tours online and in person at the Schindler House. Bus tours will be approximately 2 hours long and will cover a portion of the exhibition.

The MAK Center for Art & Architecture at the Schindler House is located at 835 N. Kings Road in West Hollywood. Public hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Free admission for Friends of the Schindler House and on Fridays, 4 to 6 p.m. Parking is available at the public structure at the northeast corner of Kings Road and Santa Monica Boulevard. For further information, contact www.MAKcenter.org or call (323) 651-1510.

Venus 2010 @ NYU: Symposium

Posted on | March 2, 2010 | 1 Comment

March 27, 2010
721 Broadway, Riese Lounge
(Room reservation 8am – 7pm)

8:00 – set up
· Check in table (entranceway, 2 chairs)
· Panel table (west wall, 4 chairs)
· Refreshments table (south wall near entrance)
· Bookselling/signing tables
· Reserve seating for presenters

9:00 – check in

9:30 – Welcome
Deb Willis, Manthia Diawara

10:00 –11:00: Sarah Baartman in Context
Presenters: Charmaine Nelson, Zine Magubane, and Carole Boyce Davies.
Moderator: Cheryl Finley

11:30-12:30: Sarah Baartman’s Legacy in Art and Art History
Presenters: Lisa Gail Collins, Cheryl Finley (moderator), Kianga K. Ford and Simone Leigh.
Moderator: Cheryl Finley

12:30 – 2:00: break, book signing

2:00-3:00: The “Hottentot Venus” in Art and Film
Poet: Holly Bass
Presenters: Renee Cox, Lyle Ashton Harris, Ada Pinkston and Carla Williams (moderator).

3:30-4:30: Iconic Women in the Twentieth Century
Poet: Linda Susan Jackson
Presenters: J. Yolande Daniels, Terri Francis and Michael Harris.
Moderator: Carla Williams

4:30: Keynote: Elizabeth Alexander

5:00: Performances, film screening, book signing

Hair Tactics in Jersey City

Posted on | March 2, 2010 | No Comments

HAIR TACTICS
Artist Reception: March 5 from 5 p.m. – 8 p.m.
February 5 – August 22, 2010
Guest Curated by Rocio Aranda-Alvarado

Hair Tactics explores hair as subject matter and medium. Increasingly, artists have begun to use both real and synthetic human hair to create works of art. Some use synthetic hair because it is widely and inexpensively available in urban neighborhoods, others because it is laden with social and political meaning, and still others because they are exploring the human obsession with hair. Texts written in hair, fancy hair motifs used to decorate a love letter, extravagant and multi-colored wigs, drawings featuring hair-covered bodies, and ladies with elaborate up-dos are all featured in Hair Tactics. The exhibition includes works in a wide range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, prints, photographs, video, and installation.

Artists in the exhibition: Manuel Acevedo, Amina Ahmed, Elia Alba, Firelei Báez, Nina Lola Bacchuber, Melody Boone, Melissa Calderón, Ursula Endlicher, Zachary Fabri, Carson Fox, Chitra Ganesh, Asha Ganpat, Bill Gaskins, Renée Green, Hermanas Iglesias (Janelle and Lisa Iglesias), Kristina Jacob, Tamara Kostianovsky, Jessica Lagunas, Simone Leigh, Sharon Louden, Felicia Megginson, Irvin Morazán, Omar Obdulio Peña Forty, Sa’dia Rehman, Kenya (Robinson), Nadine Robinson, Roger Sayre, Roger Tucker III, Quintín Rivera-Toro, Jayoung Yoon, and So Yoon Lym.

Location
Jersey City Museum is located at 350 Montgomery Street
at the corner of Monmouth Street in Jersey City, NJ.

Here’s a link with directions to the museum: http://www.jerseycitymuseum.org/template.cfm?cid=117