19 Oct 2007 to 17 Nov 2007
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11 am - 6 pm
Opens Friday, October 19, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Winkleman Gallery
637 West 27th Street (Ground Floor
NY 10001
New York, NY
New York
North America
p: 212.643.3152
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f: 212.643.2040
w: www.winkleman.com
Carlos Motta Monument to Field Marshal Kutuzov, 2006 C-Print, 11 x 14 in. Ed of 7
Winkleman Gallery is very pleased to present “The Leningrad Trilogy,” the first New York solo exhibition by Carlos Motta. In a 3-channel video installation and a series of 36 photographic diptychs, Motta presents a thought-provoking meditation on St. Petersburg, Russia, a city whose rich and tumultuous history can be revealed through its public spaces, architecture, and monuments, as much as by how its current inhabitants relate to these historical markers.
“Leningrad,” (8 min., B&W, sound) is a contemplative montage of some of the city's monuments built during the years of political repression under Stalin. A reading of two important poems (Anna Akhmatova’s Petrograd, 1919, and Osip Mandelstam’s Leningrad, 1930) serve as a soundtrack to the images, which suggest Leningrad's character as a literary muse as well as a witness of political victory and defeat.
“Leningrad, Petrograd, Petersburg (Part 1)” (44 min., color, sound) offers an intriguing before-and-after look at landmark cityscapes, based on a 1954 government-published book of photographs of the city. Visiting the city 52 years later, Motta re-photographed each of these locations, revealing changes to Soviet monuments and architecture. The accompanying voiceover is a recorded conversation between curator Elena Sorokina, artist Yevgeniy Fiks, and Motta in which they respond to the images and the many political, historical and cultural aspects that these invoke. Thirty-six of the location pairings are presented also in photographic diptychs, which show a wide spectrum of degree of change over time.
In the third video, "Leningrad, Petrograd, Petersburg (Part 2)" (40 min., color, sound), Motta conducts a series of interviews with local residents around St Petersburg’s two most prominent Soviet monuments to V.I Lenin. The interviewees respond to questions that attempt to investigate the public perception of these monuments and how they affect the contemporary landscape of the city fifteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union.
As a whole "The Leningrad Trilogy" presents St. Petersburg as a contested site of confronted ideologies in an attempt to inquire about the imprint of historical events onto the fabric of individual and collective subjectivities.
Carlos Motta is a graduate of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (2006), received an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, in 2003, and a BFA in photography from The School of Visual Arts in 2001. His work has been widely exhibited, including in the CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Palazzo Papesse, Siena, Italy; Foam_Fotografie Museum, Amsterdam, Holland; Museum of Modern Art, Bogota, Colombia; SF; and Fries Museum, Groningen, Holland. Recent awards include the International Artists Studio Program in Sweden (IASPIS), 2007; the Swing Space Program, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, 2007; the DaNY Arts Grant (with HOMEWORK), Danish Arts Council, 2007, and the Subvention Grant, Cisneros Fontanals Foundation (CIFO), 2006.
---- Produced with the generous support of The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) 2006 Grants Program ----
*Image 1 : Leningrad, Petrograd, Petersburg (Part 1), video still, 2006 Single-channel video 44 min., color, sound, edition of 5
“Leningrad, Petrograd, Petersburg (Part 1)” (44 min., color, sound) offers an intriguing before-and-after look at landmark cityscapes, based on a 1954 government-published book of photographs of the city. Visiting the city 52 years later, Motta re-photographed each of these locations, revealing changes to Soviet monuments and architecture. The accompanying voiceover is a recorded conversation between curator Elena Sorokina, artist Yevgeniy Fiks, and Motta in which they respond to the images and the many political, historical and cultural aspects that these invoke.
In the Project Space October 25 to November 29, 2007 “Virtual Field: The Seed Project,”
The Winkleman Gallery/Schroeder Romero Project Space is pleased to present “Virtual Field: The Seed Project,” an installation of over 140 photographs by artists from around the world. The Seed Project is a global environmental installation, which began in 2006 by artist and publisher David Walter Cohen. The artist invited other artists and activists to plant wheat grass seeds creating individual art projects from what was grown. The result is a “Virtual Field,” which has continued to grow connecting the planters with one another. Currently the seeds can be purchased in Wholefoods, throughout New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.
People have become so disconnected from the natural environment and the natural cosystems which sustains them. The originating artist, David Cohen, believes it is important to promote a cultural shift towards sustainability by spreading the value of growing plants, which are the source of our fuel, fiber and food in our daily lives through creativity. The Seed Project accomplishes this through an interactive art project that’s both a mix of science and art.
The Seed Project is intended to address creatively environmental and social problems. It is a bridge between art and the environment as well as a creative cultural reclamation of our stewardship of the earth. The strategy is for individuals planting and re-foresting the earth to fight global warming and to create a global network of concerned citizens and activists.
The project fosters the creative act and encourages a widening cultural identification with artists, encompassing all people who have creative power. The Seed Project turns on the basic act of creating, in this case the organic energy of life. The outgrowth will be a heightened awareness of changes in our environment, our participation in power, as well as a growing community of artists, and a more sustainable environment. Art which, addresses and seeks to solve world problems will be created from this new collective.
“The Seed Project" conceptually collapses the physical space that separates people in the world to imagine a virtual field growing together, but the motivating goal is a growing community of artists, ideas and resources which will be linked and shared. A seed is a symbol of the incredible power to create and redefine the world that we all have, but are particularly aware of as artists. By defining the act of planting as a creative act the participant becomes an artist in a basic and sustainable way. The medium term goal of this project is for thousands of artists to participate in planting the seeds in creative ways. But the long-term goal is for millions and then billions of people to engage in creative growth and change. We, as a society, need to turn organized creative energy to nurturing our environment because the industrial age we are emerging from has hazardously degraded the one we have. But first we need the structures which support organized energy. Art can serve these needs.
‘Every human being is an artist, a freedom being, called to participate in transforming and reshaping the conditions, thinking and structures that shape and condition our lives’- Joseph Beuys.
The exhibition also includes other related projects by Aaron Storck, Christopher Kennedy, Gabriela Alva Cal y Mayor, Theresa Valla, and Michele Brody.
