Albertine Monroe – Brown Gallery

January 12 – February 17, 2012

I’m Over Here Now

Daniel Arsham, Joe Diebes, Vlatka Horvat, Lovett /Codagnone, Rashaad Newsome, Amanda Tiller, Jill Magid

Eric Gleason, Curator

This exhibition focuses on six New York City-based artists and one collaborative team in varying stages of their careers whose ideas dictate their media.  Historically, painters painted, sculptors sculpted and photographers photographed, while constantly pushing the technical boundaries of their medium.  While there were of course prodigious anomalies, especially during the Italian Renaissance, this notion of “painters” and “sculptors” has evolved surprisingly little in the past 700 years.

However today, in the age of the Internet when images and information are rapidly and constantly distributed, digested and redistributed, contemporary artists are likely to see 10, 50 or 100 works for every one they see in person.  The artificiality of this visual experience allows only the works subject matter to be understood, rather than its physical or technical elements.  For this reason, there is a new generation artists who approach each work conceptually, and whose aspirations do not lie in advancing the medium in which they happen to be working during any given series.

The title of this exhibition, I’m Over Here Now, is one of many iconic comedic phrases of Andrew Dice Clay, whose crass yet visionary brand of humor had a profound influence on his art form for two decades.  The phrase was often employed by Dice Clay when abruptly changing subjects, which occurred with the same relative frequency as the artists in this exhibition change media.  More over, to the traditional artistic guard who struggle laboriously to advance their medium of choice, this new generation of artists who claim no allegiance to a particular media represent an inane evolution of art making, just as Dice Clay’s comedy was constantly assailed for its crudeness.

 

 

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Gwen Frostic School of Art