Erik Wysocan "A Thousand & One Night"
Andrea Rosen Gallery (525 W 24th St)
This event has ended.
Andrea Rosen Gallery is proud to present Erik Wysocan's first solo exhibition in New York, A Thousand & One Nights in Gallery 2. It begins with a document entitled Titled 2011 that was prepared during the lead-up to the show and chronicles the lengthy process of locating Gunilla Weiss, the widow and collaborator to the late playwright Peter Weiss, and the correspondence that followed. Having referenced Peter Weiss' seminal work Marat/Sade as the structural model for this body of work, Wysocan asks Gunilla to recount the process of staging the play in 1963. Through this dialogue, Titled 2011 considers the uncertainty produced by the repeated resuscitation of history in Weiss's play—a mise en abyme first staged in 1963, set in 1808 and encapsulating an interior play taking place in 1793—and its radically politicized mediation of chronology.
As time passed, Wysocan repeatedly sought guidance from Gunilla Weiss in the development of these pieces, but with no apparent resolution. In the end, Titled 2011 chronicles the intermittent and then fading correspondence that developed between Gunilla and Erik over the course of several months. It concludes with a quote from Gunilla's final message before she cut off contact: "I just found out that I cannot find you…"
Media
Schedule
from March 18, 2011 to April 23, 2011