figures of thinking  :  convergences in contemporary cultures

Co-curated by Vicky A. Clark and Sandhini Poddar.

Ours is an era that distrusts language, that fears figures of speech, and especially what could be called figures of thinking—ideas and associations that beget ideas, that link to other links in culture rather than in hypertext, ideas that are regarded as dangerous because they are not end-stopped. Marjorie Garber

One of the ways we learn is by differentiating—a cat from a dog, red from blue, humans from chimps, one strain of flu from another, ad infinitum and ad nauseum.  In the current atmosphere of increasing and hardening ideas of geopolitical realities, it is easy to separate ourselves by envisioning a world increasingly defined by nationalism.  Even with recent talk of the global village, transit lounges, and hybrids or academic discussions of simultaneous appearances, it seems as though our brains remain hardwired to perceive differences rather than commonalities.   Despite immense differences in backgrounds, experiences, and approaches, the artists selected for this exhibition are all products of the impulse to move: either physically into new environments, or through their work that has to do with transformation in some way. They share certain visual and conceptual sensibilities, as evidenced by their considered and metaphorical use of materials, willingness to share the intimate and the personal, confrontation of stereotypes, regard for beauty, and immersion in process.

By conceiving an exhibition where multiple points of view yield connections, many which only become apparent when looking and thinking, we attempt to reveal the connective tissue linking contemporary ideas. Just as synapses firing in the nervous system activate communication, this exhibition offers a conceptual and visual environment where similar gaps can be broached across apparently disparate work.  Moving beyond the cerebral deconstruction and analysis of postmodernism, we wanted to see how artists were creating meaning in a world that has shifted dramatically in the last five years.  Politics and alliances have changed, rhetoric has hardened, and many feel that we are retreating into more stringent categorizations and judgments.  Yet we felt a need to avoid the curatorial tendency to categorize, theorize, and conceptualize.  Instead, we offer an open-ended discussion of issues that affect us.   We have, in essence, organized a dinner party for some of the most interesting artists we know and had an enjoyable evening of serious talk, sharing of opinions and stories, and even fun and laughs.  In the process, we found a shared interest in several important notions concerning place, identity, politics, belief, thoughts, feelings and memory.

These convergences reference:

• An interest in materials and a belief that materiality and sensuality have both tactile and associative characteristics.
• Ways of creating identity through ideas about home, personal testimony, mythology and language.
• Investigations into the physical, psychological and geographic dislocations that occur from stereotyping, politics and colonialism.
• Challenging accepted norms, and breaking down clichés of what is appropriately beautiful, violent, feminine or ethnic.
• Broaching the gap between the public and the private, urban and rural, man-made and natural, real and fictitious, while intervening in both.
• Uncovering the role of systems, theory, the media and globalization in determining our place and beliefs.
• Usages of irony, humor and satire in commenting on the body and our relationship with our surroundings.

Concentrating on these issues does constitute a shared point of view that underlies the organization of this exhibition, but we have tried to avoid the kinds of shows that define movements or peoples.   Whether it is the street culture of Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture (2004) or the new role of imagery in Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art (2002), these shows differentiate by inclusion or exclusion.  At the other end of the spectrum are Dorothy Miller’s ground-breaking shows of eight or ten Americans at The Museum of Modern Art in the 1950s that concentrated, instead, on emerging or new artists.  Figures of Thinking: Convergences in Contemporary Cultures falls somewhere between these points of view.

While not immediately obvious, all of the artists are women, but unlike exhibitions of the past decades from Making Their Mark: Women Artists Moving into the Mainstream, 1970-1985 (1989) to Inside the Visible (1996) to Sexual Politics (1996), feminism isn’t foregrounded in this show. Issues of gender, race, and religion inform the work of these artists but do not define it. We have assembled a group of artists we deeply respect to initiate a conversation about our world.  This dialogue will hopefully offer up possibilities for confrontation with how we sometimes too easily define and limit understanding. The curators and artists will present possibilities, but so too will the viewer, whose own experiences and insights will continue the conversation in new venues.

For more information about this exhibition please contact our office. The accompanying exhibition catalogue is available for sale for $22.95.

Participating Artists:

• Rina Banerjee (born in Calcutta, lives and works in Brooklyn) Banerjee is interested in post-colonial studies, and the role of culture and travel in forming hyphenated identities. She uses iconic symbols such as the Taj Mahal as well as pop imagery from painted trucks to discuss the international perception of the ‘other’, both in installations and video pieces.
• Lesley Dill (born in Bronxville, lives and works in Brooklyn) Dill’s work incorporates fragile material that is torn, stitched, wrapped, and written on. This process unlocks connections between the physical and psychological, the conscious and unconscious, text and image, as her fragile materials gradually reveal both their literal and figurative meanings. She primarily works in paper, or else with installations.
• Ellen Gallagher (born in Providence, lives and works in Rotterdam and New York) Gallagher's paintings and mixed media collages address the very concept of identity, in a manner that combines exquisite beauty with satiric wit, making the work aesthetic and transgressive. Working with an intense dedication to detail and a layering of form and subject matter, her work represents one of the most important commentaries on this issue today within the arena of contemporary art.
• Zarina Hashmi (born in Aligarh, lives and works in New York City) Hashmi has lived in so many places that she carries her “home” around with her.  Working primarily with woodcut prints and paper, she maps the home in literal and figurative ways and places it within local and international politics, accessing memories in the process.
• Mona Hatoum (Palestinian, born in Beirut, lives and works in London) Hatoum's work often draws on the everyday using recognizable familiar objects that have been transformed into unfamiliar and disquieting sculptures. She uses a variety of materials (steel, glass, marble, human hair) and a range of media (sculpture, photography, video, drawing).
• Adrienne Heinrich (born in Akron, lives and works in Pittsburgh) Heinrich uses cast rubber as a canvas for her work, which ranges from life-size figures to flat “paintings”, embedding objects in the rubber to allude to personal and public histories. Most of her work explores the roles of women.
• Nina Katchadourian (born in Stanford, lives and works in Brooklyn) Katchadourian intervenes in all kinds of situations- attempting to repair damaged spider webs found in nature or rearranging books in personal collections, revealing hidden assumptions and systems while commenting on our relationship with objects in our world. Her works range from photography and video to installation-based art.
• Simone Leigh (born in Chicago, lives and works in Brooklyn) Caribbean artist Simone Leigh’s ceramic sculptures draw parallels between the history of colonialism and the history of ceramics. By commenting on the stereotyping of race and ethnicity through subtle changes in ceramic glazes, Leigh provokes viewers into confronting their own superficial prejudices about the female body & the tradition of craft.
• Wangechi Mutu (born in Nairobi, lives and works in Brooklyn) Mutu uses paper and mylar as the backdrop for her animated figures whose skins are mottled with a variety of washes and pours as well as collaged magazine photos.  These hybrid creatures are based on myths, which attempt to explain our place in the world.
• Yuki Onodera (born in Tokyo, lives and works between Paris and Tokyo) Onodera’s black and white photographs explore themes of absence, anonymity and the equivocal - second-hand clothes fight gravity without any ownership, a pinhole camera captures ghost-like outlines of suburban houses, men and women dress in each other’s clothes.
• Kathy Prendergast (born in Dublin, lives and works in London) Prendergast’s symbolic and intimate installations have to do with love, separation, the cycle of life and death, and ephemerality, and employ diverse objects like hair, thread, pebbles, eggs and wool to full effect.
• Barbara Weissberger (born in New Brunswick, lives and works in Hoboken and Pittsburgh) Weissberger uses gouache drawings on paper, hand-made books and animation to comment comically on our insatiable thirst as humans for consumption and satisfaction. Her characters embody the grotesque and pathetic sides of human nature and revel in their debaucherous appetite for meat and hamburgers. The body is a prime subject of inspection in all of her work.
• Heesung Yang (born in Pusan, lives and works in New York City) Yang spends hours coating canvases with acrylic, to then gouge the paint into thin strips and create sculptural forms with them. Her work has to do with transformation, process and meditation, & blurs the boundaries between painting and sculpture.
• Cheryl Yun (born in Montclair, lives in Lafayette) Yun creates a range of image-based sculptural objects or “products” from handbags to clothing, which simultaneously mirror and subvert fashion and consumer culture to reveal, question, and reevaluate one’s relationship to the world. Objects are presented as an installation that mimics a boutique.