The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) is pleased to present the exhibition SWARM, organized by guest curators Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller, renowned designers, curators and writers. The artists selected for SWARM explore and engage the uncanny intelligence conveyed by masses of simple objects, organisms and systems. In the works of these artists, large groups of small things yield intricate patterns of growth and change across a broad range of media and diverse cultural and geographical contexts. The exhibition will be accompanied by a major publication, designed by curators Lupton and Miller. FWM's Annual Holiday Party will mark the exhibition's opening on Friday, December 2, 2005, at 5:30 pm.
SWARM brings together works that express swarming as a social effect generated by masses of objects, images, data, or organisms. The fascination with swarming reflects a contemporary view of nature, politics, and social life-one that favors unplanned and decentralized modes of organization. The exhibition combines emerging and historically significant artists, revealing a series of unlikely and previously unimagined relationships between artists who have not been connected before. These artists included Julie Mehretu, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Sarah Sze, Tara Donovan, Fred Tomaselli, Ben Rubin, Casey Reas, Shahzia Sikander, Paul Pfeiffer, Jason Salavon, Yukinori Yanagi, Peter Kogler, Siebren Versteeg, John Maeda, and the design teams of the Bouroullec and Campana brothers.
Swarm theory is an idea animating contemporary art, science, design, digital media and social theory. "Swarm logic" is seen in works that use vast numbers of small parts to create systems whose final behavior or effect cannot be wholly predicted. Artists working with computers and new media construct rules that draw together data and generate behaviors that evolve over time. Sculptors and painters create structures and patterns based on the interrelationships and inherent properties of individual elements. SWARM connects the social life of bees, birds and slime molds to contemporary aesthetics and technology, as seen in the "ground-up" models of the internet, and the fascination on the part of artists and designers with how simple, discrete units accumulate into complex systems.
About the Curators
Ellen Lupton is a writer, curator, and graphic designer. She is director of the MFA program in graphic design at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. She also is curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City, where she has organized numerous exhibitions, each accompanied by a major publication, including the National Design Triennial series (2000 and 2003), Skin: Surface, Substance + Design (2002), Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age (1999), Mixing Messages (1996), and Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office.
Abbott Miller is a designer, editor, and art director. He is a partner in the New York office of the international design firm Pentagram, where his clients include the Guggenheim Museum, Harley-Davidson, The Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, and Knoll. He is editor and art director of the visual and performing arts magazine 2wice, and Creative Director of Steuben Glass. He has designed numerous books, magazines, and exhibitions, and is co-author with Ellen Lupton of Design Writing Research (1996) and The Bathroom, the Kitchen, and the Aesthetics of Waste (1992). He teaches design at MICA, in Baltimore.
About The Fabric Workshop and Museum
The Fabric Workshop and Museum is the only museum of its kind, offering internationally renowned artists the resources to create new work in experimental materials. Artists come from all mediaincluding sculpture, installation, video, painting, ceramics and architecture - and use FWM's facilities and technical expertise to create works of art that they could not create on their own. Research, construction and fabrication occur onsite in studios that are open to the public, providing visitors with the opportunity to see works of art from conception to completion. FWM's permanent collections include not only completed works of art, but also material research, samples, prototypes and photography and video of artists making and speaking about their work. Access to the creative process provides visitors with a point of entry into understanding challenging works of contemporary art. FWM offers an unparalleled experience to the most significant artists of our time, students and the general public.