Score @ White Columns

Hello. If you're planning to be in New York, this summer, I hope you
will check out Score: Action Drawing, at White Columns. The opening
reception is a week from Friday, from 7-9pm on the 25th, and the show
is up through July 31. Details below.

I hope to see some of you while I'm in town.

Best,
Marisa


Score: Action Drawing
curated by Marisa S. Olson
White Columns - 320 W. 13th Street
(enter on Horatio btwn 8th Ave & Hudson)
June 25 - July 31, 2004

Score is meant to ask questions about the object in relation to
performance, while poking fun at our romance with the hand of the
artist. The title of this thematic exhibition is premised on a double
entendre, referring to a line etched, or a composition for a
performance. In contrast to traditional "action drawing," this show
implicates the figure of the artist in drawings that are somehow
related to a performance–whether the drawing is the fruit of the
action or a scheme for one. "Drawing" is loosely defined, and the
materials, surfaces, and "lines" presented in the exhibition vary
widely, ranging from works on paper to painting, installation, video,
and sound art.

Matt Volla's Bartology is a series of drawings and recordings mapping
people's movement on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transportation). Each
drawing has an accompanying sound composition in which musical
elements correspond to the actions annotated by the drawings. While
formulating new characters for his tragicomic performances, James
Bewley makes hundreds of sketches, fleshing out the figures'
identities, gestures, costumes, and histories. Bewley will exhibit a
group of drawings associated with his newest character, "The Bat."
Lee Walton's drawings record actions according to an invented system
of action-classification that determines the color, quality, and
location of each responsive mark. Here Walton will show a group of
performative drawings documenting a series of New York Yankees
baseball games. In his video Glass, Bob Linder "draws" on windows
with his camera, scratching them with his lens in a work that is
simultaneously performance and performance-documentation. Through an
elaborate use of paint and textiles, Heather Johnson's site-specific
wall drawing refers to the gridded map of an unidentified city.
Johnson's work is concerned with the ways in which individuals
experience public spaces, and this project seeks to construct a
personal, performative landscape. Amanda Hughen's sculptural anomalys
result from a series of carefully-considered abstractions of drawn
marks. Using a variety of unconventional objects and methods, Hughen
employs a line of disposable goods associated with the landscape of
consumer culture, inverting the templates of vernacular
representation (screenprinting, spraypainting, and blob-loving
industrial design) to perform a synthetic drawing. Jennifer Kaufman's
work is as much drawing as it is performance. Her
non-representational work transposes meditative etchings, paintings,
and photographic prints. Invoking the corporeal backbone of
action-art, Kaufman relies on a full-body approach to the drawing,
asserting her figure as she creates rigorous pieces sized in
accordance with the body and reflecting the extreme extension of the
hand. Lines are stretched across hinged pages just as manically as
her fingers trace chemical etches on photosensitive paper. Tommy
Becker combines drawing and musical performance in his video, Behind
the TV He Keeps A Diary. In a precarious infusion of 8-bit computer
drawing systems and Photoshop palettes, Becker's absent hand draws
color-coded lines over video stills in a narrative about a man, a
television, and a virtual sketchbook. Marching through Brooklyn and
NYC in a parade-style fashion, with a HyperSonic speaker Jeff
Karolski "drew a line of sound" by projecting the sounds of a full
street parade at the unsuspecting. His video reveals that the speaker
used is extremely directed, so that only a single person can
participate in Karolski's "one man parade," at any time. While not
originally posited as performative, Dawn Clements's drawings have
conceptual, body-intensive, and often endurance-oriented
underpinnings. In this case, her panoramic drawings aggregate the
interiors of three film sets depicting Connecticut interiors,
exploring the way in which this location has become symbolized in the
world of Classical Hollywood cinema. Lyle Starr's playful drawings
feature lacy renderings of people "licking" each other in witty
send-ups of "action drawing." Gesturing fervently with their tongues,
his line-drawn portraits of faces are beset by fuzzy, abstract nests
of looping, vivid-color airbrush lines. These two styles of
mark-making and gesture coexist uneasily within the picture space, as
a kind of gestalt, where the whole overwhelms its parts.

About the curator: Marisa S. Olson has curated exhibitions at a
number of museums and alternative spaces, including SF Camerawork,
where she is Associate Director. She contributes regularly to Flash
Art, Afterimage, Mute, Wired, Artweek, and a number of other
publications. Her own performance and installation work has been
exhibited internationally.

Opening reception: Friday June 25, 7 - 9 p.m., featuring a
performance by Margaret Tedesco.
Gallery summer hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 12 - 6 p.m.

http://www.whitecolumns.org/schedule.html