Inside/Outside: Dressing the Monument Opening Reception

September 25, 2011 - 4:30pm - 7:30pm

The opening will include a curators’ ambulatory talk, a chance to sample the specially-brewed beer, and Hannah Weinberger’s participatory concert at 6:15 pm.

This exhibit runs through November 27, 2011.

A video screening is planned for October.

Dressing the Monument is the culmination of an 18-month series of exhibitions entitled Inside/Outside. Pairs of artists were selected to exhibit work in the gallery and to undertake temporary installations on the grounds. The Lynden Sculpture Garden opened to the public in May 2010, and by choosing Inside/Outside as our inaugural theme, we hoped to initiate a dialogue between the new indoor gallery and the environment--both sculpture and nature--beyond its walls; to explore Lynden’s transition from a private, domestic space to a public space; and to define Lynden’s new position within the art community.

The central challenge of a permanent outdoor collection is its permanence, and though the changing seasons and the passage of time (trees grow, flora and fauna evolve, Corten degrades) introduce elements of change, Inside/Outside has provided a series of opportunities for artists to reframe the collection and to re-present it—and the individual works in it--to the public. This establishes the basis for ongoing engagement with Lynden and its collection.

With Dressing the Monument, an exhibition of temporary sculpture and performances across the grounds and in the gallery, we expand the dialogue to include artists from beyond the region and the United States, and we re-establish Lynden as a venue with an international scope and a continuing commitment to contemporary art.

Dressing the Monument features the first institutional collaboration of Tobias Madison & Kaspar Müller, and Hannah Weinberger’s first site-specific exhibition, in the United States. These Swiss artists will be joined by nine artists from New York and the American Midwest in an exhibition that responds to Lynden’s permanent collection of monumental sculpture.

Participating artists: Tobias Madison & Kaspar Müller (Switzerland); Hannah Weinberger (Switzerland); Nicholas Frank (Milwaukee); Michelle Grabner & Brad Killam (Chicago); Lucas Knipscher (New York); John Miller (New York) & Richard Hoeck (Vienna); David Robbins (Milwaukee); and Anicka Yi/Matt Sheridan Smith (New York). The exhibition is curated by Piper Marshall, assistant curator, Swiss Institute, NY, and John Riepenhoff, Green Gallery, Milwaukee, in association with Polly Morris, Lynden’s executive director.

The Lynden collection offers a snapshot of monumental sculpture production in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The works are meant to be permanent; they eschew pedestals, emerging from the earth; they are often made from industrial materials; and their size amplifies the heroic role of the individual artist. Dressing the Monument reframes this collection, and individual works within it, by challenging these modernist tenets, and most importantly the aspiration —audacious, arrogant or simply optimistic— toward permanence.

If optimism fueled the impulse to create large, permanent works in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the artists in this exhibition are more likely to rechannel that optimism into collaborative and collective experiences; to dwell on memory and the ephemeral by charting the traces of the just-happened; and to embrace the rich social, cultural and political meanings of their throwaway materials. They celebrate the fragmentary and the in-between, deploying strategies of impermanence in their dialogue with the permanent work. Sculptures will hang from trees, be conjured from thin air, or take the form of a sensation: the taste or smell of a pheromone-laced beer, the sound of untrained musicians.

This exhibition is supported in part by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, American Fantasy Classics and Furthermore Beer.

   

About the Artists

NICHOLAS FRANK (Milwaukee) is an artist, writer and curator. Recent solo projects: Poor Farm, Manawa, WI; Green Gallery, Milwaukee; Western Exhibitions, Chicago. Group projects: Picturing the Studio, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Halbjahresgaben at Tanzschuleprojects, Munich and 200597214100022008 at Laurel Gitlen, NY.

MICHELLE GRABNER is an artist, writer and the chair of the Painting and Drawing Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited her work at Musée d´art Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg; Stadtgalerie, Keil; Kunsthalle, Bern; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Daimler Contemporary, Berlin; Midway, Minneapolis; Rocket, London; INOVA, Milwaukee; Southfirst, Brooklyn; Gallery 16, San Francisco; Minus Space, Brooklyn; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; The Milwaukee Art Museum; Anne Mosseri-Marlio, Zurich; Bricks and Kicks, Vienna; Turbinehallerne, Copenhagen; Ulrich Museum of Art, Kansas; Leo Koenig Gallery, NY; Harris Lieberman Gallery, NY. With her husband, BRAD KILLAM, Grabner founded The Suburban, an artist-run project space in Oak Park, IL, and the Poor Farm, a not-for-profit exhibition space in rural Wisconsin.

LUCAS KNIPSCHER is based in New York. Recent group shows: Swiss Institute, NY; Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia; Sculpture Center, NY; and Balice Hertling, Paris.

TOBIAS MADISON (b. 1985 in Basel, lives and works in Zurich) & KASPAR MÜLLER (b. 1983 Schaffhausen, lives and works in Zurich and Basel). Their collaborative work has been featured at the Kunstverein Munich (2010), Johan Berggen Gallery, Malmo (2010); and The Modern Institute, Glasgow. Madison’s recent solo shows include Sammlung Haubrok, Berlin and The Vanity, Los Angeles (2011); Haus Konstruktiv; Frame, Frieze Art Fair, London, Æuroasia, Kunst Raum Riehen and Hydrate + Perform / Yes I Can! The Movie: A Preview, Swiss Institute, New York (2010). Madison co-runs New Jerseyy and the Basel-based published house Used Future. Müller’s recent solo shows include Société, Berlin and Circuit, Lausanne (2011); Manor-Kunstpreis Schaffhausen, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen (2010); and Paloma Presents, Zürich, and New Jerseyy, Kunsthaus Baselland, and Galerie Nicolas Krupp, Basel (2009).

JOHN MILLER (b. 1954, Cleveland, Ohio; lives and works in New York and Berlin). Recent solo exhibitions include Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich, Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (2010); and Kunsthalle Zürich (2009). RICHARD HOECK (b. 1965 in Hall, Austria; lives and works in Vienna). Recent solo exhibitions (2010) include ORF Landesstudio Tirol; Museum of Art, Ningbo, China; and Gallery Johann Widauer, Innsbruck. More information on their collaborations (1998-present) at www.lownoon.com.

Artist and writer DAVID ROBBINS investigates the intersections between art, entertainment, and comedy. As an artist he is best known for Talent, eighteen "entertainer's headshots" of contemporary artists including Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer and others, and The Ice Cream Social, a project comprising installations, performances, a novella, and a TV pilot. His sixth book, Concrete Comedy: An Alternative History of Twentieth-Century Comedy, has just been published.

HANNAH WEINBERGER (b. 1988, in Filderstadt, lives and works in Basel and Zürich). Her work has been exhibited at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, and Alte Fabrik, Rapperswil (2011); Kunsthalle Basel, Karma International, Zurich, The Modern Institute, Glasglow, and Kunsthaus Glarus (2010). Recent performances include Kunsthal Charlottenborg; Theatre de L‘Usine, Geneva; Jam Session, Museumsnacht, Kunsthalle Basel (2011); Regionales Konzert, The Village Cry, Kunsthalle Basel and Transdisziplinäres Konzert, ZHdK, Zurich (2010).

ANICKA YI is based in New York City. Her work has been exhibited at 179 Canal (solo), White Columns, Gavin Brown's Enterprise, The Artist's Institute, X Initiative, Karma International, among others. Upcoming projects: a solo show at 47 Canal, NY and a group show at Rudiger Schottle, Munich. MATT SHERIDAN SMITH (b. 1980, Red Bank, NJ) lives and works in New York City. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include galeria kaufmann repetto in Milan and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Selected group exhibitions include SculptureCenter, The Drawing Center, Galerie Lelong, Andrew Kreps, and Gavin Brown's Enterprise in New York, Karma International in Zurich, and the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore. His first public art commission is on view in downtown Brooklyn as part of the Public Art Fund's Total Recall exhibition.


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