FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art 2018

FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art 2018
14.07.2018 - 30.09.2018
Professional preview days: July 12–13

FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art announces the opening of Press and Professional accreditation and the Triennial's initial group of project highlights, which includes FRONT commissions and exhibitions that will activate unique and unconventional spaces throughout the city of Cleveland. These projects spotlight particular sites, buildings and locations in Cleveland that carry social, cultural or political significance in its history and current reality. In these unique spaces, FRONT artists will unveil a range of projects including site-specific works that engage the city’s rich identity, while allowing a broader contemplation of people and place to both residents and visitors.

FRONT welcomes press and professionals in the arts to register to attend the Press and Professional Preview Days of the Triennial. Registration is free via the FRONT website. Preview days will take place July 12 and 13, 2018 at venues throughout the city of Cleveland.

Opening in July 2018, FRONT’s multi-part presentation will investigate the significance and meaning of staging a large-scale international triennial in the contemporary context. Bringing together more than 70 local, national and international artists across mediums and disciplines, FRONT will partner with sites throughout the city of Cleveland and beyond to explore artistic collaborations, intellectual exchanges and curatorial dialogues connecting the city and the Great Lakes region to broader global, political and economic networks.

Program highlights for the Triennial include artist commissions and site-specific projects at diverse cultural sites throughout Cleveland:

The American Library
Yinka Shonibare, MBE (RA) at the Cleveland Public Library
Commissioned for Cleveland in partnership with the Cleveland Public Library, Yinka Shonibare, MBE (RA) has created The American Library, an installation of approximately 6000 books, to celebrate the richness that immigration brings to
 a nation. Open borders, freedom of speech and blended heritage are all central themes to Shonibare’s work.

A Color Removed
Michael Rakowitz at SPACES
A Color Removed is a city-wide artwork that contemplates the right to safety by Chicago based artist Michael Rakowitz, whose work in installation and performance brings to the fore issues of political conflict in American culture. For FRONT, he has created an expansive participatory project to remove all orange colored objects from Cleveland, reflecting the critical conversations on race and police brutality. This project is in collaboration with the Beamer-Schneider Professorship in Ethics at Case Western Reserve University.

Fish Story and Lottery of the Sea
Allan Sekula at the William G. Mather Iron Ore Ship/Great Lakes Science Center Installed within the decommissioned William G. Mather Steamship, its cargo hold will host an installation of film and photography projects by Allan Sekula (1951–2013), the prominent photographer, filmmaker and writer who took the sea as a defining subject for the work he produced for 30 years, beginning in the 1980s.

FRONT Film Program at Transformer Station
The FRONT Film Program will manifest in a purpose-built theater inside the Crane Gallery of Transformer Station, presenting a scheduled program of film, including both feature length and short form works by an international group of artists active in gallery and experimental film spaces.

Julian Stanczak in downtown Cleveland
This project reexamines the important public art effort, City Canvas, that covered walls in downtown Cleveland in 1973-74 with colorful murals by established Cleveland artists, including the late abstract painter Julian Stanczak. As an homage to Stanczak, FRONT’s new project will reinstate his mural on its original site at the Winton Manor on Prospect and 9th Street.

Love Story
Candice Breitz at Playhouse Square
Love Story, a seven-channel video installation by Breitz, interrogates the conditions under which empathy is produced. Evoking the global refugee crisis, the work evolves out of interviews with six individuals who have fled their countries.

Night Coming Tenderly, Black
Dawoud Bey at St. John’s Episcopal Church
For this FRONT commission, the artist has created a series of brooding photographs evoking the imagined experience of escaped slaves moving northward through the city of Cleveland and the surrounding area to Lake Erie and boats bound for Canada.

Volatility Smile
Philip Vanderhyden at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
Vanderhyden will create a new 24-channel video animation piece displayed on monitors in the Federal Reserve Bank’s historic main lobby. The screens will be networked together to create a single seamless animation, running the length of the room, featuring quasi-abstract animated vignettes that draw from familiar animation styles.

FRONT acknowledges the support of our presenting partners Akron Art Museum, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Public Library, MOCA Cleveland, SPACES, and Transformer Station.