ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. -- On Saturday, October 22, Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies will open an exhibition of Recent Acquisitions from the Rivendell Collection. The exhibition, featuring works by Sophie Calle, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Jenny Holzer, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Carter Kustera, Sean Landers, Robert Longo, Pieter Laurens Mol, Richard Serra, Kiki Smith, and Christopher Wool, will be open through December 23.
The Center's permanent collection, The Rivendell Collection of Late Twentieth Century Art, consists of more than 700 paintings, sculptures, photographs, works on paper, videos, and video installations from the mid-l960s to the present. The collection is international in scope, with works from Europe, Asia, Latin America, and North America. Altogether, over 170 artists are represented. Works from the Center's collection have been included in numerous museum exhibitions, including exhibitions at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and other major museums in the United States, Australia, Europe, Japan, and Latin America. Works in the Center's collection are available to graduate students, faculty, and guest curators for study and for use in exhibitions at the Center, including students' master's degree projects.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Sophie Calle was born in 1953 and resides in Paris. Her one-person exhibitions include "Sophie Calle -- Les Tombes," Galerie Sollertis, Toulouse Galerie Crousel-Robelin, Paris, I992; ARC Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville\ie Paris, 1991; and Luhring Augustine/Pat Hearn, New York, 1991. Best known for her individual, narrative, and intimate scaling down of a conceptual approach, Sophie Calle is represented in this exhibition by two works. The Wedding Dress, from her series "Autobiographical Stories," transfers long-standing obsessions to adult desires. The other is from the "Graves" series: two la,rge photographs of grave headings, one reading "Mother," the other half-buried in the ground reading only "Fat," as if alluding to Calle's autobiography, or perhaps to a more generic situation, where gender and memory are conflated.
Larry Clark was born in 1943 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and currently lives in New York. Earlier this year he had a one-person exhibition at the Karsten Schubert Gallery, London. In 1992 his work was displayed at the Kunsthalle Lucerne and the Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York, both as one-person exhibitions. Smells Like Teen Spirit appeared as part of a group exhibition with Galeri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen, 1994, and "Puber-Alles (Why am i who i am?)," Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1994. Clark's Tulsa ( 1971 ), a portfolio of photographs documenting the lives of young men that reflected Clark's own at the time, will be on view in "Recent Acquisitions." These photographs -- intimate, direct, and brutal -- established Clark's career as one of the foremost photographers of our time.
Nan Goldin has held one-person exhibitions at the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York. She was also represented in the Whitney Museum's "1993 Biennial." Her book projects include A Double Life, 1993 Scalo/Parkett, Zurich with David Armstong; The Other Side, 1972-1992, Parkett, Germany; and The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, Aperture. Nan Goldin has been photographing her friends, transvestites, transsexuals, and their friends for the last two decades. At age 18 she started hanging out with drag queens in Boston: "They became my whole world... I never saw them as men dressing as women, but as something entirely different -- a third gender that made more sense than either of the two," she writes. The work in "Recent Acquisitions" comes from The Other Side, her latest book.
Jenny Holzer was born in 1950 in Gallipolis, Ohio and resides in New York. Her one-person exhibitions include the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, 1994; the Bergen Museum of Art, Bergen, Norway, 1994; and the American Pavillion, 44th Venice Biennale, 1990. The photographs in the exhibition are selections from Holzer's LUSTMORD (sex-death). They represent a body of writing developed over the past two years as a reaction to rape and violence in general, as well as a response to the recent violent war crimes against women in the former Yugoslavia. LUSTMORD examines the brutal reality of sexual violence and its psychological aftermath. The texts, handwritten on human skin, alternate between voices as victim, perpetrator and observer.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres has had individual exhibitions at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, 1994. The exhibition includes Untitled (North), a seminal work by Gonzales-Torres consisting of 12 light strings each with 24 light bulbs. The source of the work seems to be the Niagara Falls, which has a mythic importance for many Cubans.
Carter Kustera was born in 1962 in Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario, Canada. His 1994 one-person exhibitions include "America's Most Wanting," presented by John Goodwin at Lake Galleries, Toronto, and "Consciousness," Josh Baer Gallery, New York. His group exhibitions include the "Open 93: Emergency," selected by Francesco Bonami; Aperto, 45th Venice Biennale, 1993. "Recent Acquisitions" features Kustera's acclaimed work Disappearing Family, a video documentation of a group of four wax figures being melted on a couch under a heat lamp. In that the institution of "family" turns into a ruin in this work, Kustera himself has changed his name from Kevin Carter to adopt his wife's family name, after arranging a mock funeral for himself, as if transforming into another figure.
Sean Landers's one-person exhibitions in 1994 have been with Jay Jopling/White Cube, London, and the Stuart Regen Project, Los Angeles. His group exhibitions have included Thread Waxing Space, New York; "Don't Look Now," curated by Joshua Deeter and Galerie Walcheturm, Zurich; "Passing Through," curated by Ugo Rondinone, 1994; and "Die Sprache der Kunst (The Language of Art)," Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 1993. His Hard Male/Soft Male, 1993, ink on paper, is included in "Recent Acquisitions." Sean Landers's one-person exhibitions in 1994 have been with Jay Jopling/White Cube, London, and the Stuart Regen Project, Los Angeles. His group exhibitions have included Thread Waxing Space, New York; "Don't Look Now," curated by Joshua Deeter and Galerie Walcheturm, Zurich; "Passing Through," curated by Ugo Rondinone, 1994; and "Die Sprache der Kunst (The Language of Art)," Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 1993. His Hard Male/Soft Male, 1993, ink on paper, is included in "Recent Acquisitions."
Robert Longo was born in 1953 in Brooklyn and resides in New York. His 1993 one-person exhibitions include "Killing Time," Galeria Joan Prats, Barcelona. His group exhibitions include "A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation," The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1989; "Allegories of Modernism: Contemporary Drawing," The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1992; "New York on Paper," Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, 1994. The exhibition features his Bodyhammer: Glock, 1993, from his series of large-scale charcoal and graphite drawings of handguns shown last year. The Bodyhammer faces us directly, foreshortened to the point of abstraction as an industrial gadget which is both male and female at the same time. It also maintains an iconic quality in contradiction to the social and political reality of the 20,000 deaths caused by handguns in the United States last year.
Pieter Laurens Mol was born in 1946 in Breda, The Netherlands. His recent one-person exhibitions include List Visual Arts Center, Boston, 1994; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, 1994; and Contemporary Arts Center, Houston, 1994. His recent group exhibitions include "The Ideal Place," HCAK's-Gravanhage. "Recent Acquisitions" includes It's All Right (Whispering), 1974. The work is composed of 33 small black and white photographs showing the artist's face just below his eyes to the chin. Appearing at first glance to be identical, the photographs show his mouth moving slightly from frame to frame. By slowing down the communication, the work suggests a visual amalgam to an aural one and breaks down the narrative potential of the piece. Mol's works defy analytic investigation and touch on the magical through poetic means.
Richard Serra's most recent one-person exhibitions include "Weight and Measure 1992: A Sculpture by Richard Serra," Tate Gallery, London; "Richard Serra: Drawings," Serpentine Gallery, London, 1992; "Richard Serra," Gagosian Gallery, New York, 1993; "Works on Paper," Galerie Jamileh Weber, Zurich, 1994. "Recent Acquisitions" features a Weight and Measure drawing, 1993.
Kiki Smith was born in 1954 in Nuremberg, Germany. Her individual 1994 exhibitions include the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art; Humlebaek, Denmark; and Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Her group exhibitions include Aperto 1993, Venice Biennale, and Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Among her works in "Recent Acquisitions" are the drawings Untitled (Eyeball), Untitled (Four Fetuses with Flowers), and Good Witch Blue Eyes.
Christopher Wool's recent one-person exhibitions include Bruno Brunnet Fine Arts, Berlin 1994, and Galerie Max Hetzler, Cologne, 1993. Recent group exhibitions include the National Gallery, Prague; "Some Like IT Cool," Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston; The InterArt Center, New York; Museo Cantonale d' Arte, Lugano, Switzerland; Luhring Augustine, New York; and Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago. His paintings with floral patterns use the notion of the multiple, but are not derived from a tradition of photomechanical reproduction. The work in this exhibition is Untitled, 1993, enamel on aluminum.
Also open in the Center's main gallery through November 13 is "Transformers," an exhibition organized and circulated by Independent Curators Incorporated (ICI), New York. In "Transformers," guest curator Ralph Rugoff explores the subject of transformation as it relates to contemporary society through paintings, sculpture, photography, and prints by 18 contemporary artists. "Transformers" features works by Jimmie Durham, Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Jenny Holzer, Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy, Komar & Melamid, Charles LeDray, Glenn Ligon, Christian Marclay, Paul McCarthy, Yasumasa Morimura, Catherine Opie, Adrian Piper, Cindy Sherman, Anna Deavere Smith, Meyer Vaisman, Kukuli Velarde, and Fred Wilson.