“DIS-PLAY / RE-PLAY” Exhibition

Austrian Cultural Forum NYC

poster for “DIS-PLAY / RE-PLAY” Exhibition

This event has ended.

The Austrian Cultural Forum New York (ACFNY) presents DIS-PLAY / RE-PLAY. A group exhibition examining the roles of artistic and architectural display in the context of the ACFNY’s unusual exhibition space, DIS-PLAY / RE-PLAY coincides with the 40th anniversary of Brian O’Doherty’s seminal essay series, “Inside the White Cube.” DIS-PLAY / RE-PLAY will present a series of installations by six international artists that respond to the striking character of the ACFNY’s architecture, creating a dialogue between the works, the building, and the viewer.

First published as three essays in Artforum in 1976, “Inside the White Cube” argues that the pristine, sterile style dominating exhibition spaces has itself become a driving factor in the conceptualization and execution of art works. This artificial, ostensibly neutral setting, akin to both a showroom and a church, functions as an ideological and aesthetic proposition by presenting artworks as isolated, autonomous commodities. The Austrian Cultural Forum New York, a marvel of urban and architectural ingenuity in its own right, is far from a typical white cube. Its narrow dimensions and multi-level exhibition space—dominated by a prominent glass staircase and chrome elevator—provide a singular curatorial challenge. Bucking contemporary art’s trend toward increasingly sprawling white cubes, which present ever more numerous and larger-scale artworks, DIS-PLAY / RE-PLAY embraces the contingent nature of art-making and an attention to site. The confines of the ACFNY become both a challenge and an opportunity for individual artistic positions.

Works in the show include Parallax City, a new “rope drawing” by Brian O’Doherty that will transform the ACFNY’s Main Gallery (and most traditional exhibition space) into an immersive field of surfaces and color, in which the geometric lines of rope and wall-painting are activated through the viewer’s movement. In the building’s lobby, Gerwald Rockenschaub installs an angled plexiglass composition that mimics the colors of the Austrian flag, both responding to and hijacking the building’s native architectural gestures. In the Lower Mezzanine gallery, Judith Barry shows a new version of They Agape, a two-channel video installation set to 1970s punk rock that tracks the intense interpersonal dynamics and dialogue of two women architects. Continuing his investigations into exhibition display, management structures, and personal practice, Martin Beck presents a two-floor installation that features his digital “notebook” pages in their first public appearance. Hermes Payrhuber’s Ode to the Rope with a Knot with a Hole transforms the Upper Gallery into a kaleidoscopic room with a series of spatial interventions including blown-up photographs, and large-scale tripod sculptures. Investigating the performative potential of the ACFNY’s double-height wall, Mika Tajima’s work spans two interior floors with an installation that combines a finely-detailed wallpaper with a series of plexiglass “furniture art,” playfully transforming the building’s character to suggest new possibilities for interaction within the space.

The exhibition is accompanied by a newsprint publication designed by Project Projects that features the artists’ works, installation views, and reprints of key texts on exhibition display by Judith Barry, Martin Beck, and Brian O’Doherty.

Prem Krishnamurthy is a New York-based designer, curator, and writer. He is a founding principal of Project Projects, the recipient of the Cooper Hewitt Museum’s 2015 National Design Award for Communication Design, the USA’s highest recognition in the field. In 2012, Krishnamurthy founded P!, a critically-acclaimed space in New York City’s Chinatown that experiments with the conventions of exhibition-making. Since its opening, P! has mounted over thirty exhibitions and projects with artists, designers, musicians, and writers. Krishnamurthy is currently curating Container Artist Residency 01, an artist residency program that takes place on commercial cargo ships, culminating in a series of traveling exhibitions in 2016–2017. Lecturing and teaching widely, he is on faculty at the Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies.

Walter Seidl holds a PhD in contemporary cultural history and works as a curator, writer, and artist, based in Vienna, Austria. As a curator, he has been in charge of Kontakt. The Art Collection of Erste Group and ERSTE Foundation in Vienna, which focuses on conceptual art tendencies in the region of former Eastern Europe. Seidl has curated numerous exhibition projects throughout Europe, North America, Japan, South Africa, Turkey and Hong Kong. His writings include various catalog essays for artist monographs, exhibition reviews, and criticism. Seidl is a board member of the exhibition space and magazine Camera Austria International in Graz, Austria, and has been adjunct professor for curatorial studies at Webster University in Vienna.

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Schedule

from May 04, 2016 to September 05, 2016

Opening Reception on 2016-05-03 from 18:00 to 20:00

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