Inside/Outside: Dressing the Monument, Opens September 25
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For immediate release: 1 September 2011
For further information: Polly Morris, (414) 446-8794
pmorris@lyndensculpturegarden.org
lyndensculpturegarden.org/press
INSIDE/OUTSIDE: DRESSING THE MONUMENT, OPENS SEPTEMBER 25
Artists from Switzerland, New York and the Midwest Respond to Lynden Collection
The Lynden Sculpture Garden opens Inside/Outside: Dressing the Monument on Sunday, September 25, 2011 with a reception from 4:30-7:30 pm. 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. The opening will include a curators’ ambulatory talk and a chance to sample a specially-brewed beer. Hannah Weinberger’s participatory concert begins at 6:15 pm.
The exhibition, the sixth and final installment in the Inside/Outside series, remains on view through November 27, 2011. A video screening is planned for October. The exhibition is supported, in part, by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Furthermore Beer, and American Fantasy Classics.
The Lynden Sculpture Garden is located at 2145 West Brown Deer Road, Milwaukee, WI 53217. Admission to the reception is free.
Dressing the Monument is the culmination of an 18-month series of exhibitions entitled Inside/Outside. 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.
For the previous five exhibitions, pairs of artists were selected to exhibit work in the gallery and to undertake temporary installations on the grounds. With Dressing the Monument 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.
About the Exhibition
Participating artists in this exhibition of temporary sculpture and performances include
Nicholas Frank (Milwaukee); Michelle Grabner & Brad Killam (Chicago); Lucas Knipscher (New York); Tobias Madison & Kaspar Müller (Switzerland); John Miller (New York) & Richard Hoeck (Vienna); David Robbins (Milwaukee); Hannah Weinberger (Switzerland); and Anicka Yi/Matt Sheridan Smith (New York). The exhibition is curated by Piper Marshall, assistant curator, Swiss Institute, New York, 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 (a Madison/Müller hammock made from rope and bamboo; a Grabner/Killam mobile incorporating a cast iron tree grate), stand in groves (Robbins’s open-air writing desk), occupy benches (Miler/Hoeck’s mannequin), be conjured from thin air (Frank’s ghostly light-shadow photograms of since-disappeared Plexiglas towers and ziggurats), or take the form of a poster (Knipscher) or a sensation: the taste or smell of Yi/Smith’s pheromone-laced beer, the sound of Weinberger’s untrained musicians.
The Lynden Sculpture Garden offers a unique experience of art in nature through its collection of more than 50 monumental sculptures sited across 40 acres of park, lake and woodland. The sculpture garden is open to art and nature lovers of all ages on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays from 10 am to 5 pm; on Wednesdays from 10 am to 7:30 pm; and on Saturdays and Sundays from 12 noon to 5 pm. Closed Thursdays. (Hours change seasonally). Admission to the sculpture garden is $9 for adults and $7 for students, seniors and active military; children under 6 and members are free. Annual memberships are also available.
About the Artists
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).
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).
NICHOLAS FRANK (Milwaukee) is an artist, writer and curator. Recent solo projects include the Poor Farm (Manawa, WI), Narrator at Green Gallery (Milwaukee), and Reality, whatever that is… at Western Exhibitions (Chicago). Group projects include Picturing the Studio at Sullivan Galleries, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Halbjahresgaben at Tanzschuleprojects (Munich) and 200597214100022008 at Laurel Gitlen (New York). Upcoming projects include a solo project at LUMP (Raleigh), and an audio release on the Augarari label (Miami).
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.
JOHN MILLER (b. 1954, Cleveland, Ohio; lives and works in New York and Berlin) is an artist, writer, and associate professor of Professional Practice at Barnard College. 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 books include High Entertainment, The Velvet Grind: Essays, Interviews, Satires, 1983–2005, The Dr. Frankenstein Option, The Camera Believes Everything, and Concrete Comedy: An Alternative History of 20th-Century Comedy.
ANICKA YI and MATT SHERIDAN SMITH are based in New York City. Yi’s work has been exhibited at 179 Canal, White Columns, Gavin Brown's Enterprise, The Artist's Institute, X Initiative, Karma International, among others. Upcoming projects include a group show at Rudiger Schottle, Munich and a solo show at 47 Canal. Smith’s recent solo shows include Blanks, Templates, Undos, Redos, Lisa Cooley, New York (2009); Untitled (open/shut), List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Flotsam/Jetsam, Western Bridge, Seattle (2010); Front Room, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and kaufmann repetto, Milan (2011). Upcoming exhibitions include Forde, Geneva and Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin. He has received grants from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation and the Public Art Fund (NY), and held the Paris Residency administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council from March through August 2010.
Media Images
Two collaborations by Tobias Madison/Kaspar Müller.
