Exit Biennial: The Reconstruction
8 March – 4 May 2003
www.exitart.org
Almost a thousand people turned out for the inaugural exhibition of New York’s Exit Art at its brand new location on 10th Avenue at 36th Street. What they found was not only a great space for contemporary art but also a show featuring the not yet finished works of 46 emerging artists. Their 34 interdisciplinary site-specific installations were selected from a pool of more than 400 submissions, sent in after an open call for proposals last December. Artists were asked to create an installation as a metaphor for Exit Art’s reincarnation and its relationship to the new location. The entries on show were all works in progress, with a second leg to the exhibition (beginning 5 April) presenting the evolution of the exhibition.
Although the opening night sported a who’s
who of the New York art world, the sad fact is that the work on show here
certainly wouldn’t stir more than a raised eyebrow if presented in London or
Berlin. Artist collective TAG’s Wall of Mist more closely resembled a school
science project than a radically progressive artwork, while the opening
night’s performances hardly fared any better. Artist Rob Andrews cleaned the
floor of the gallery with a toothbrush and will continue to do so for the
duration of the exhibition.
There is reason to hope, however, that finished projects will have more
pizzazz. In Orly Genger’s installation, the artist is obsessively knitting
herself into a core of scarves, sweaters and blankets. Matt Bua, Jesse
Bercowetz and Ward Shelley are constructing a sweatshop, where they’ll
create a product that will be marketed after the exhibition closes. Taking
the exhibition title literally, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz conducts ‘makeovers’ in
her Rican-struction piece, where, in a pseudo beauty parlour, she transforms
visitors into stereotypical Puerto Ricans. Allessandra Lee Michelle Torres
recreates the experience of the first few weeks of her life by spending 24
hours a day, seven days a week, in a reconstructed incubator. Christoph
Draeger is reconstructing an image of the TWA flight 800 hangar through an
interactive puzzle.
The Reconstruction, curated by Exit Art’s co-founders Papo Colo and Jeanette Ingberman, is the first in a series of five Exit Art Biennials slated to take place over the next ten years. Each biennial exhibition will have a theme, purpose and focus in which individual projects will contribute to a collective body of work. Founded in 1982, Exit Art is a non-profit interdisciplinary cultural centre for contemporary arts and culture with a mission to explore all aspects of the visual arts, design, music, film/video, and performance/theatre. Having spent the last 20 years in two separate locations in SoHo, the new space allows for further development and wider audiences.
Marcel Krenz