“Linea” Exhibition

BOSI Contemporary

poster for “Linea” Exhibition

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BOSI Contemporary presents Linea, an exhibition of new work by Katie Holten and Mariateresa Sartori curated by Kathy Battista.

The exhibition will consider the potential of drawing through works on paper, canvas, and cardboard, as well as video, found objects, and a series of walks. The two artists were chosen for their investigations into drawing as an expanded field. Drawing is the basis of their work – as an act of mark making, a tool for mapping presence and a device for tracing actions. In the twentieth century drawing was freed from representation, effectively liberating it from the flat surface, enabling it to venture into space. Holten and Sartori use various means to obsessively map their place in the cosmos – Linea refers to the geological strata on the surface of a moon or a planet and in Italian it means “line”, the basis of all drawing.

Katie Holten’s Constellations are a series of new white-on-black drawings that resemble aggregations of stars. In fact, the basis for her images is not “outer” space but the landscape of the Earth; Holten uses the NASA Earth Observatory’s 2012 satellite images of the planet at night as source material. She recently completed a MOOC on Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute in which she studied how complexity emerges and evolves in nature, society, and technology. She explored the tools used by scientists to understand complex systems, including dynamics, chaos, fractals, information theory, self-organization, iteration, and networks. Holten is compelled by the imperative of examining how our collective history is embedded in landscape. The Constellations interrogate how the physical structures of humanity are interwoven with the natural world as they map specific places – networks of cities and towns – with their connecting arteries. In these drawings, Holten uses chalk formed during the Cretaceous period, which she collected while walking along a former seabed in western Kansas. The site is plotted in Constellation, the Midwest.

Mariateresa Sartori’s double channel video The Drawers shows her students drawing, their eyes looking at the camera, darting to the pages below, and back again. Their subject is Sartori herself. An exploration of looking and, potentially, power, it is, as Samuel Bordreuil says in the Linea catalogue, “between the Velázquez of Las Meninas and the Panopticon of Jeremy Bentham.” A related series of drawings by Sartori, 1 minute and 15 seconds of drawers’ gazes, depicts the eye movements of the same group of students in small drawings. Resembling a grid of electrocardiographs, it turns gaze into line. In The Progressive, Sartori translates into signs the compositional principles of Brahms’ 4th Symphony, turning Brahms’ branch-like musical structure into a rippling, undulating series of lines, iterating themes into networks much as Holten does with landscape.

Sartori and Holten find beauty in their investigations of systemic composition and line. Telling stories with literal and metaphorical maps, they work within a great art historical tradition, yet extend this lineage with their personal choice of subjects and gift for subtle gestures. In today’s world of frenetic, fleeting and ephemeral communications, Holten and Sartori write love letters for posterity, reminding the viewer that beauty is found in the slightest of movements and the rhythms and patterns of language. Their common interest in mapping relates to the practice of walking, which brought the artists together in May 2013 when Holten was on a residency in Venice and walked the city as part of her Ten Years Later project in which she revisited her Irish Pavilion for the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. For the duration of Linea, Holten will lead a walk every day. Joined by a diverse group—including artists, scientists, and writers—she will trace the urban landscape and ‘mine’ objects, while creating drawings and photographs. On May 1st at 4pm the public is invited to join Holten and Sartori on a walk.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with texts by Kathy Battista, Samuel Bordreuil, and a conversation between Katie Holten and Sarah Sze.

Katie Holten (b. 1975, Dublin, Ireland) is an alumna of the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland (1998); Hochschule der Künste, Berlin, Germany (1997); Cornell University, New York, USA (2006); and Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, USA (2013). In 2003 she represented Ireland at the 50th Venice Biennale. She has had solo museum exhibitions at the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, USA (2012); Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, Dublin, Ireland (2010); The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, USA (2009); Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada, USA (2008); Villa Merkel, Esslingen, Germany (2008); and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Missouri, USA (2007). Recent group exhibitions include 1st Cartagena Biennale, Museo Naval, Cartagena, Colombia (2014); Contemporary Irish Art, BOZAR, Brussels, Belgium (2013); Light and Landscape, Storm King Art Center, New York, USA (2012); and Twenty, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland (2011). Her public projects include Ten Years Later, Venice, Italy (2013) and Tree Museum, Grand Concourse, Bronx, New York, USA (2009-2010). Her work is included in public collections including the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, USA; and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, USA. She lives in New York City.

Mariateresa Sartori (b. 1961, Venice, Italy) graduated in German language and literature at the University of Ca’ Foscari, Venice, Italy (1987) with a thesis on Freud and his psychology in art. She has had solo exhibitions at Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venice, Italy (2013); Greenhouse, Giardini Biennale, Venice, Italy (2011); a two person show with Antoni Muntadas, Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venice (2009); Foundation Querini Stampalia, Venice (2009); and Foundation Bevilacqua La Masa, Palazzetto Tito, Venice (2005). Among her group shows are Off Course: A Narration Between Italy and Greater China, Foundation Querini Stampalia, Venice (2013); At Heaven’s Door: Cyberfest, The State Hermitage Museum, Petersburg, Russia (2012); Movingimage, Contemporary Video Art Fair, Waterfront New York Tunnel, New York, USA (2012); In Other Words: The Black Market of Translation, Negotiating Contemporary Cultures, NGBK, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (2012); Fuori Centro, Hangar Bicocca Foundation, Milan, Italy (2009); XV Quadrennial of Rome, (2008); Energy, Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany (2003); Projekt Artist in Residence, Graz, Austria (2000); Pittura Immedia, Neue Galerie, Graz, Austria / Mücsarnok, Kunsthalle Budapest, Hungary (1995); and the 45th Venice Biennale (1993). Since 2000 Sartori teaches public drawing courses to absolute beginners, using Betty Edwards’ method that starts from the same neuroscientific assumptions that move her artistic research. She lives in Venice, Italy.

Kathy Battista is a writer, curator, and educator. She is Director of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York. She is the author of Re-negotiating The Body: Feminist Artists in 1970s London (IB Tauris, 2012) and the forthcoming New York New Wave (IB Tauris, 2014). She lives in New York City.

[Image: Mariateresa Sartori “The Progressive. Brahms’ Fourth Symphony” (detail), (2013-2014), New York Version, sgraffito on varnished cardboard, 246 x 550 cm]

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Schedule

from April 27, 2014 to May 31, 2014
Public walk with the artists: Thursday, May 1, 4pm

Opening Reception on 2014-04-27 from 18:00 to 21:00

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