William Wegman "Drawings for a Better Tomorrow and a Worse Yesterday"
Salon 94 Freemans
This event has ended.
Salon 94 announces Drawings for a Better Tomorrow and a Worse Yesterday, an exhibition of more than fifty early drawings and a selection of early videos by William Wegman. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with Sperone Westwater.
Wegman’s lightness of touch combined with slapstick irony inspired a younger generation of artists, from David Shrigley and Scott Reeder to Cory Arcangel and Jayson Musson. William Wegman’s work brought humor to conceptual art and opened up paths for younger artists to work in a multitude of media. He also became one of the first artists, like Andy Warhol or Keith Haring, to break down the boundaries between low and high culture. He collaborated with Sesame Street and Saturday Night Live on videos designed for TV broadcast and worked on many children's books and on fashion shoots.
The drawings are delightfully humorous and weird or, as one work says, “ funny and strange” – and definitely contemporary. Examples of motifs include a man in a bed underneath a picture of a large frightening octopus, with the subtext "No fun sleeping under a picture like this!" In another he copies the signatures of famous writers such as Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, and Truman Capote. In a third, a mummy in bed says "good night!" to a second mummy in bed, while in a fourth instructions are made on how to construct a sandwich; with bacon, tomato, lettuce - and plywood.
Also on view are thirteen videos from the 1970’s, many of which are leaning toward performance art. While their low tech and spontaneous look conjures up current home and YouTube videos, these works play a deliciously witty game of conceptual and minimalist art parody. In several videos, Wegman’s first dog Man Ray is an eager participant. In Alarm Clock (1973-74), Man Ray is in bed sleeping under blankets with a ticking alarm clock next to him. After a couple of minutes the alarm goes off and Man Ray awakes and jumps out of bed before the screen goes black. In the classic Spelling Lesson (1974-74), Man Ray appears contrite as Wegman corrects his spelling test: "You spelled it B-E-E-C-H which is like... well, there's a gum called Beech-nut, but we meant beach like the sand. So it should have been B-E-A-C-H."
In conjunction with the exhibition at Salon 94 Freemans, Salon 94 Bowery will show Wegman’s video Flo/Flow (2011) on its external video wall. The video is Wegman’s latest, and echoes Dog Duet (1974), which is on view at Salon 94 Freemans. In the video, two Weimaraners can be seen paying careful attention to a mysterious moving object off screen. The video is yet another example of Wegman’s uncanny imaginative universe, a reflection on both the human-ness of animals and the strangeness of humans.
Media
Schedule
from September 13, 2012 to October 20, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-09-13 from 18:00 to 20:00