Patrick McElnea “Dr. Super Igor”
Ortega y Gasset Projects @ The Old American Can Factory
This event has ended.
Ortega y Gasset Projects presents a 4-Channel video installation Dr. Super Igor by New York based artist Patrick McElnea, organized by Leeza Meksin in the main gallery.
When we get sick we seek refuge in small white rooms for consultation and instruction. More familiar with our bodies than ourselves, the doctor knows something about us that remains illegible. In Dr. Super Igor (MD) we are repeatedly diagnosed, turned into a scene of innumerable readings. Gentle, well intentioned, clumsy, and cryptic, Dr. Igor organizes our interior life and feels “invigorated” as he does so.
Borrowing from self-help culture, modernist poetry, and colloquial metaphor, Igor helps us picture our illness in language. When we’re not patients in his examination room, we play therapist to his confessions about life as a doctor, his adamant beliefs and personal insecurities, his longing for physical contact. Performance and painting merge to explore how symptoms are read like marks and how our bodies are consequently marked by diagnoses.
Patrick McElnea’s videos, paintings, and collages have been shown at David Nolan, Marc Jancou, and Daniel Weinberg Galleries. Museum shows include the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende in Santiago, and the Weingart Gallery at Occidental College. A recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, McElnea’s work has explored preventative medicine, memorialization, domesticity, and representations of otherness. He received his MFA from Yale School of Art and BFA from Cooper Union, where he has also taught. He presently teaches experimental video at Vassar College. http://mcelnea.com
Media
Schedule
from October 30, 2015 to November 08, 2015
Opening Reception on 2015-10-30 from 18:00 to 20:00