FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact for information: SculptureCenter 167 East 69th Street, Michele Valerio
212 879 3500
Söma, Söma, Söma
Performance/Installation project by
Patty Chang, Geoffrey Hendricks, and William Pope.L
June 20 to July 15, 2000
Tuesday, June 20th 6 to 9 pm
Opening reception and performances
Saturday, June 24th 10 to 5 pm
Ongoing performances
Saturday, July 15th 10 to 4 pm
Ongoing performances 4 to 5 pm Artist Dialogue
New York - SculptureCenter is pleased to present Söma, Söma, Söma featuring performances, video and installations by Patty Chang, Geoffrey Hendricks, and William Pope.L. Three generations of performance art are represented by these artists whose work asserts Body Art as a form of social inquiry and challenges aspects of media culture. Organized by William Pope.L, Söma, Söma, Söma is a hybrid project that opens up the exhibition site to engage aspects of the corporeal and the everyday towards a critical re-examination of the body politic. As Barbara Pollack writes in her essay on the project: Gender, age, and race are unavoidable in real time, in real skins and these artists ignore all attempts to erase these differences in the name of art.
Each of the three artists will create an installation which will become the site for performance pieces that examine social space and the shared nature of bodily experience. Performances will range in length from a few minutes to a few days. Some of them will overlap and some of them will not. In addition to the scheduled performances and events the artists will perform activities and present video within the context of their installation at unannounced times and days. A small gallery will become a reading room including a presentation of books, video and photo documentation related to the work on view. A brochure with an essay by Barbara Pollack accompanies the exhibition.
SculptureCenter's gallery will be open to the public from June 20 to July 15, during regular gallery hours Tuesday to Friday 11 - 6 and Saturdays 10-5 for this ongoing event. Please note: in observance of the holiday the gallery will be closed from July 1st to the 4th.
The Artists
Patty Chang's new piece using optical distortion and mirage will develop over the course of the project. In the past Chang has treated issues of ethnicity and gender in aggressive bodily demonstrations. Her work is characterized by its focus on erotic connotations of food, attention to female stereotypes, and photo and video performances that use water, blow-up dolls, candy, or mirrors to convey women's self-objectification. She will be in the gallery intermittently throughout the run of the exhibition.
Geoffrey Hendricks a veteran of the Fluxus movement will re-present Body/Hair and Dream Event, two works first performed in 1971 and premiere Eating/Breathing. In Body/Hair (presented on video) Hendricks shaves his entire body. Relics of this performance will be presented in the gallery. For Dream Event, Hendricks, while he is New York, will sleep in the gallery and record his dreams. He will also travel abroad during this time and fax his dreams to the gallery from wherever he likes. Eating/Breathing is a new work in which Hendricks is guided in breathing exercises by dancer/yoga teacher Christina Read.
William Pope.L will perform Eating The Wall Street Journal several times during the project. The performance is a consuming of the pages of this financial bible while seated on top of a large tower mounted with a toilet and fishing poles. Pope.L's work is simultaneously messianic, comic, visceral and troubling. In past work, he interrogated society's claims on the body through a series of endurance pieces in which he crawled, swam or was buried. In addition to the dates listed above, Pope.L will also perform this piece on June 22 and 23 at 2:30 pm.
For further information on the exhibition please contact the gallery at (212) 879-3500.
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SculptureCenter's mission is to support and encourage experimentation and excellence in contemporary sculpture by providing opportunities to produce and exhibit for artists working in three or more dimensions; to educate audiences about sculpture and its relationship to other art forms and fields; and to act as a catalyst for new ideas in contemporary art and culture.