ECSTATIC ALPHABETS/HEAPS OF LANGUAGE.
02/07/2012.
MoMA [NYC] tough 27/08/2012.
metalocus, ANA SEGURA
metalocus, ANA SEGURA
For those who plan to visit or be in New York the current summer, we present this exhibition in which letters, words, and phrases, not only can be readen. Also can be transcribed, revolved, and refused, to become into ways of experimentation. Until August, 27 at MoMA.
USA. 2003. Photography © Shannon Ebner. Courtesy of MoMA.
RAW WAR. 2004. Photography © Shannon Ebner. Courtesy of MoMA.
Zang Tum Tum. If You Want It. 2003. © 2011 Experimental Jetset. Courtesy of MoMA.
Raw War. 1970. © 2012 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of MoMA.
How to Spell the Alphabet. 2005. © Tauba Auerbach. Courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. MoMA.
Ugaritic Alphabet. 2006. ©Tauba Auerbach. Courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. MoMA.
Vive la France. 1914–15. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the Benjamin and Frances Benenson Foundation. © 2012. Artists Rights Society(ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome.
La Crevette Amoureuse. 1967–73. Henri Chopin. Courtesy of Supportico Lopez, Berlin, and Fondazione Morra, Naples. MoMA.
A Heap of Language. 1966. Robert Smithson. © Estate of Robert Smithson/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Courtesy of MoMA.
Imagen the exhibition at MoMA. © The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Thomas Grischkowsky
AGITATE. 2010. Photography © Shannon Ebner. Courtesy of MoMA.
Literal usage becomes incantatory when all metaphors are suppressed. Here language is built, not written.”
Robert Smithson, “Language to be Looked At and/or Things to be Read,” 1967.
Works by 12 contemporary artists and artists’ groups are presented in juxtaposition with works by key 20th-century artists, all of which concentrate on the material qualities of language—visual, aural, and beyond. The exhibition includes painting, sculpture, film, video, drawing, prints, and audio. The title is taken from two touchstone objects in the exhibition, one historical, the other contemporary: Robert Smithson’s seminal illustration of words as material, A Heap of Language (1966), and Shannon Ebner’s video The Ecstaticalphabet (2011), which animates, atomizes, and presents language as a time-based experience. Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language is organized by Laura Hoptman, Curator, with Eleonore Hugendubel, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art.
The contemporary works featured in this exhibition belong to a distinguished history of poem/objects and concrete language experiments dating to the beginnings of modernism, and include from Futurist and Dada objects as well as Neo-Dada experiments of the late 1950s, and international literary movements to contemporary movements that represent a radical updating of the concrete language experiments of the 20th century.
The exhibition is divided into two sections, with the first featuring an abbreviated timeline of language in modern art culled primarily from drawings, sculptures, prints, books, and sound works from MoMA's collection. Artists in this historical section of the exhibition include: Carl Andre, Marcel Broodthaers, Henri Chopin, Marcel Duchamp, Ian Hamilton Finlay, John Giorno, Kitasono Katue, Ferdinand Kriwet, Liliane Lijn, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Bruce Nauman, Lawrence Weiner, and others. Artists in the contemporary section of the exhibition include: Ei Arakawa/Nikolas Gambaroff, Tauba Auerbach, Dexter Sinister (David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey), Trisha Donnelly, Shannon Ebner, Paul Elliman, Experimental Jetset, Sharon Hayes, Karl Holmqvist, Paulina Olowska, Adam Pendleton, and Nora Schultz. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication designed and produced by Dexter Sinister.
Venue: The Museum of Modern Art. 11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019. USA.
Dates: Till August 27, 2012.
Curator: Laura Hoptman with Eleonore Hugendubel.
