HVCCA, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art:AFTER THE FALL Emerging Artists from East and Central Europe DANIEL PITIN - GARRISON LANDING - 19 Sept 2010 to 24 July 2011
19 Sept 2010 to 24 July 2011
Hours : Saturday & Sunday 12 � 6pm and by appt
HVCCA, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art
1701 Main Street
PO Box 209
Peekskill, NY
NY 10566
New York
North America
p: 914.788.0100
m:
f: 914.788.4531
w: www.hvcca.org
Zsolt Bodoni, Tito's Cadillac, 2010 acrylic and oil on canvas 210-195 cm
AFTER THE FALL Emerging Artists from East and Central Europe September 19, 2010 - July 24, 2011
Peekskill, NY -The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art (HVCCA) is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition After the Fall, opening on Sunday, September 19th, 2010, at 3 pm, followed by a round table discussion with the participating artists at 5 pm.
Some of the most impressive new art today, especially in painting and video, is coming from Eastern and Central Europe's former communist countries. After the Fall attempts to understand how this art differs from art in the West and, more importantly, why artists from this region are making such compelling work at this moment.
Countries included in After the Fall are Croatia (Elvis Krstulovic, Marin Majic, Goran Skofic, Josip Tiric, Zlatan Vehabovic) Czech Republic (Josef Bolf, Daniel Pitin), Hungary (Zsolt Bodoni, Alexander Tinei, Attila Szucs), Latvia (Janis Avotins), Romania (Leonardo Silaghi, Marius Bercea, Adrian Ghenie, Ion Grigorescu, Serban Savu, Ciprian Muresan) and Slovenia (Matija Brumen). This is a heterogeneous political, social, cultural and religious region, each having evolved differently after the fall of their governmental systems.
The young artists in the exhibition were born under Communist rule, but their art schooling occurred following Communism. They live in a society that has struggled to redefine itself. While many artist communities tend to migrate to other countries, they choose to continue to remain in their native lands. They feel a responsibility to the small community of the older generation of artists who worked in isolation from the West during a time of repression. They are not afraid that their work will reflect their genes and landscape - they welcome it. Yet, they are the internet generation and they want to compete on the international stage. It is this conflation of imperatives that makes this work so compelling.
What informs these artists' works is a deep respect for their heritage. Much of the work has a dark brooding quality but the narrative remains open and not pessimistic. Many are reflective of life lost or in transition; buildings in semi-ruin, beautiful land being misused. The palette, the memory, the sense of tone, is not anything you see in America or Western Europe.
During After the Fall, Leonardo Silaghi, a 23 year-old from Cluj, Romania, and Daniel Pitin from Prague, Czech Republic, will each spend 3 months in Peekskill as artists-in-residence, creating new bodies of work, followed by solo exhibitions at HVCCA. Goran Skofic of Croatia will have a 3 month winter residency, in partnership with HVCCA and State University of New York, New Paltz, also followed by a solo exhibition at HVCCA. No artists in the residency program have had previous solo exhibitions in the US. Finally, After the Fall will conclude with a one-person exhibit by Geta Bratescu, an 85 year-old Romanian treasure who has never exhibited in the US either.
For After the Fall, founders of HVCCA, Marc and Livia Straus, visited over 1,500 artists' studios, galleries, art schools, alternative spaces, and museums. Yet it was not possible to see every city and every artist. In the end painting predominates in the exhibition because that is a large part of what is happening now in this part of the world. Rather than showing a broad survey, HVCCA restricted itself to 18 artists who each have at least two major works featured in the show.
HVCCA, founded in 2004, focuses on contextualizing current trends in contemporary art. Its exhibits have been highly regarded with visitors coming from around the globe. HVCCA is also focused on the education of its local and regional community and participation in the betterment of Peekskill, a lower economic multicultural riverfront town with a large presence of artists.
This exhibition will travel to the Knoxville Museum of Art.
DANIEL PITIN Fall / Winter Artist-in-Residence GARRISON LANDING
January 9 - April 17, 2011 Opening Reception: January 9, 4:00- 7:00 PM
The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art (HVCCA) is pleased to announce the opening of Garrison Landing, the second solo show in the United States by Czech Artist Daniel Pitin, on view in the mezzanine gallery from January 9 - April 17, 2011. This new body of work was created under the tutelage of HVCCA's Artist-in-Residence program where the artist lived and worked in Peekskill for three months. As a result, the paintings feature Pitin's trademark fictional settings evocative of theatrical stage sets, but with a resonance of the locale; in works like Psycho House, Victorian architecture looms forlornly amidst a bed of brushstroke and NY Times clippings. Elsewhere, in small paintings on canvas, Pitin crafts architectural structures of gesture, facial expression, and existential aura. Continued to be inspired by Communist-era television and film, most evident perhaps in Lost House, Pitin fuses the fictional with the personal, creating paintings that allow for the interplay of memory to take stage.
Pitin was born in Prague and studied at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts from 1994 - 2001 in both Classical Painting and Conceptual Media. During his studies at the Academy, he twice received the prize for the best work of the year, was the recipient of the Henkel Art Award for artists from Central and Eastern Europe in 2004, and in 2007 was awarded the Mattoni Prize for the best new artist work at the Prague Biennale. His work as been the subject of solo shows at Mihai Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, and Charim Gallery, Vienna.
For more information, please contact: Irma Jansen Associate Director [email protected] 914-788-0100
