FOUR MASTER'S DEGREE EXHIBITIONS, ASTONISHING KNOWLEDGE, CHANSCHATZ, MASTER BLASTER, AND PAST RECAPTURED, ON VIEW AT BARD'S CENTER FOR CURATORIAL STUDIES FROM APRIL 4 TO 18

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—This spring the Center for Curatorial Studies presents a series of exhibitions in March, April, and May, curated by second-year students in the Center's graduate program in curatorial studies and contemporary art. The students have organized these exhibitions and projects as part of the requirements for the master's degree. The second of the series features—Astonishing Knowledge, ChanSchatz, Master Blaster, and Past Recaptured—which will be on view from April 4 to 18. An opening reception will be held on Sunday, April 4, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. (Free transportation from New York City to the opening is available.) Museum hours are Wednesday through Sunday from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. Admission to both the museum and the reception is free.

The artists in Astonishing Knowledge, curated by Claire Barliant, adopt scientific data and reconstitute it as art. Ocean tide tables are plotted as grids in the drawings of Jill Baroff. Bird migratory patterns and geological measurements are templates for quilts made by Anna Von Mertens. DNA information and cloud structures form the basis for a series of prints by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, and physics and literature merge in a large-scale drawing by Spencer Finch. Through the exploration of scientific procedures and categories, the works play on the boundary between the literal and the abstract to offer the viewer a sense of the sublime.

The exhibition ChanSchatz, curated by Mary Katherine Matalon, focuses on the unconventional and highly inventive archive central to the work of collaborative artists Eric Chan and Heather Schatz. The archive consists primarily of a vast collection of intricate visual forms that the artists have continuously created since the beginning of their collaboration. Embracing a wide variety of media from digital animation to painting, each work featured in this exhibition articulates the contents of the archive in a different way, revealing its versatile and generative nature.

Master Blaster, curated by Stacey Allan, brings together five artists who use humor and noise to puncture art-world dogma and deflate figures of cultural authority. Videos and installations by Alex Bag, David Burrows, and Bob & Roberta Smith target the relationship between teacher and student, while Louise Lawler and the feminist punk electronic band Le Tigre (Kathleen Hanna, Johanna Fateman, and J. D. Samson) use text, performance, and sound to challenge the exclusive politics of art history. The exhibition will also feature a commissioned work by British artist Bob & Roberta Smith.

The Past Recaptured, curated by Caroline Knebelsberger, examines the complex relationship among history, fiction, and personal narrative. Film, video, audio, and photographic works created by Matthew Buckingham, Tacita Dean, Omer Fast, Joachim Koester, and Elisabeth Subrin reflect the roles of recorded media in depicting the past. The works strategically reveal and subvert the limits of their own media to explore the underlying artifices that influence the formation of historical knowledge.

The final group of master's degree exhibitions and projects—as yet unnamable, curated by Steven Matijcio; Far Away So Close, curated by Tairone Bastien; Great White, curated by Joanna Montoya; and Usual, curated by Mayumi Hirano—will be on view from Sunday, May 9, through Sunday, May 23, with an opening reception on May 9 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. The Black Factory, a performance installation by William Pope.L, will be on view at the Center on Saturday, May 15, from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.

Limited free seating is available on a chartered bus that leaves from Soho in New York City on the days of the exhibition openings (Sundays, April 4 and May 9). Reservations must be made in advance by calling the Center at 845-758-7598. Bus transportation is provided through the generosity of Audrey Irmas.

Programs at the Center, including the spring exhibitions, are supported by the Friends of the Center for Curatorial Studies and by the Center’s annual benefit for student scholarships and exhibitions. Additional support for the spring exhibitions has been provided by the Monique Beudert Fund and Marieluise Hessel.

For further information, call the CCS at 845-758-7598, e-mail [email protected], or visit the website www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions.

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(3.10.04)

This event was last updated on 12-03-2004

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