8 Feb 2009 to 26 July 2009
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
Karen Sargsyan: Abroad Understanding (detail of work in process), 2008 Metal, paper, wood, 98 x 248 x 224 in Courtesy of the Artist.
Karen Sargsyan: "Abroad Understanding" HVCCA Artist-in-Residence Fall 2008 Exhibition Opening Sunday February 8th, 2009 Gallery talk 4:00pm with reception to follow
The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the exhibition opening of the museum's Artist-in-Residence, Karen Sargsyan, on Sunday February 8th, 2009. There will be a gallery talk at 4:00 pm with a reception to follow. Sargsyan is an Armenian artist residing in Holland and the recipient of the prestigious 2008 Thieme Award for the most promising new artist. He is known for creating elaborate figurative installations using paper. The artist began a three-month residency in October 2008, during which he has worked at the Hat Factory in Peekskill to produce his new installation "Abroad Understanding" for HVCCA's mezzanine gallery.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION "Abroad Understanding" Is a room size installation that tells the story of an overthrown king. Like actors on a theater's stage, Sargsyan's life-size figurative sculptures depict a theatrical scene of politics and power. The paper figures are symbolically arranged in contorted poses, highly suggestive of dance movements frozen in time and reminiscent of classic Baroque sculpture and dramatic gestures to provide energy and movement to a work. In the center of the installation sits an anonymous King on the floor, leaning up against his throne, dying, flanked by his once loyal and devoted subjects. The clothes hang in layers around their bodies, appear frayed, and eaten away. They might be costumes from long-gone ages, with puffy balloon trousers and sleeves, high rolled collars, head ornaments, frilled skirts, capes and loose, draped pieces of fabric. The images are part of a broader narrative in which the expressions stamped on the faces of the participants emote feelings of pain, of bacchanalian delight, of ecstasy. The viewer is drawn not so much into the narrative as into the pathos of the interrelationships as well as the solitariness of the human condition.
For Sargsyan, this existentialist search for the true and good core of humanity is fundamental, and god and man (the large and small figures) are two sides of the same coin. "I look at the influences that affect people the same way that I look at a theatrical production," says Sargsyan. "I want my work to reflect this play or game, but I also want to show the reduction and the purification. My work is not a static image. It shows an active process that expresses this 'cleaning up' My installations are a play in which the protagonists try to wipe 'the factories' off the playing field, as if the protagonists were holy beings in a theatrical production."
ABOUT THE ARTIST Karen Sargsyan was born in Yerevan, Armenia in 1973 and currently lives and works in Amsterdam. He studied at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten/Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, Amsterdam, NL in 2006-2007 and Atelier Winston Huisman, Arnhem, NL in 1999-2001. In 2007 he received the Thieme Art Award and a fellowship with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs/DCO/IC, NL in 2006. Recent 2008 solo exhibitions include 'The Theory of Art', Buro Leeuwarden, Leeuwarden, NL, and Suzie Q Projects, Bob van Orsow Gallery, Zurich, SW. Upcoming 2009 exhibitions include a group exhibition at The Museum of Arts and Design, New York and 'Stressed Shelter' at KW14, s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. Karen is represented by Galerie Juli�tte Jongma in Amsterdam.
This exhibition was made possible by generous support from The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture (Fonds BKVB).
ORIGINS September 13th 2008- July 26th 2009 Opening September 13th & 14th, 2008 Artist Reception Sunday September 14th at 4:00pm
The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the fall exhibition opening of Origins on Saturday September 13th, 2008 with a reception on Sunday September 14th at 4:00pm. Origins will occupy the 10,000 square-foot main gallery space at the HVCCA with several of the participating artists producing projects specifically for the exhibition. On view through Sunday July 26th, 2009.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION The artists in Origins approach the use of primal materials such as clay, fiber, wood, aluminum, stone, and soil, as mediums that have arrived in the present day with a tremendous amount of tradition attached to them. Handcrafted qualities and personal sensibilities are emphasized as well as work that addresses the value and beauty of our diverse ecology and its fragility. There is a reverential simplicity to the use of some materials as with artists such as Andre, Heizer, Long, Laib, and Schneider, where there is little or no embellishment of stone, wood etc. There is also a focus on the human figure as a locus of expressive possibilities: Bhabha, Bourgeois, Landau, Mendieta, Silver, Smith and others. Whether metaphorically presented or disfigured, shrouded, or animated, the body is offered as a spiritual totem, a monument to corporeal identity.
Participating Artists: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Carl Andre, Huma Bhabha, Ashley Bickerton, Bruce Bickford, Louise Bourgeois, Berlinde de Bruyckere, Nathalie Djurberg, Ann Hamilton, Michael Heizer, Zhang Huan, Anselm Kiefer, Brian Knep, Danielle Kraay, Wolfgang Laib, Sigalit Landau, Richard Long, Ana Mendieta, Cady Noland, Giuseppe Penone, Rona Pondick, Martin Puryear, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Gregor Schneider, Daniel Silver, Kiki Smith, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Rebecca Warren, Franz West, Daisy Youngblood
This exhibition is in association with the Westchester Arts Council's county-wide fall exhibition, All Fired Up, celebrating clay-based artwork.
