International and National Projects Spring 2007

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents the work of six artists as part of the International and National Projects program. Featuring new and recent works by an intergenerational group of artists, these solo exhibitions showcase a range of media, including video, photography, and installation. The International and National Projects open on February 11, 2007.

Joe Deutch's -----, A Cottage Industry is part of an on-going investigation into public acts and pictorial theater. Comprised of video, photographic, sculptural, and audio elements, the project presents different facets of a singular idea. On a plinth in the center of the room is the Alcoholics Anonymous bible known as "The Big Book," surrounded by clandestine audio recordings of moral conflict, transgression and confession made during these ostensibly private and anonymous groups. In a projection on the opposite wall the artist is engaged in a series of performative gestures which test the limits of what constitutes socially acceptable public behavior and seek out the point at which moral sense and social justice intervene. Speaking in the language of public declaration and private consensus, Deutch's photographs of signage call into question the larger assumptions underpinning this same moral economy. In all -----, A Cottage Industry is a harsh interrogation of the right to speak when we have little or nothing to say.

Joe Deutch is based in Los Angeles, California. He has shown at Crowe T. Brooks Gallery, St. Louis; Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles; Track 16 Gallery, Santa Monica; and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York. This exhibition will be the artist's first museum presentation.

This exhibition is organized by P.S.1 Curatorial Advisor Neville Wakefield.

Stefan Eins has been working in a variety of media including painting, collage, sculpture, and photography for over twenty years. For his project at P.S.1, Eins presents a suite of digital photographs investigating phenomena and coincidences in the urban environment. Central to his process is the incorporation of scientific research and the highlighting of objets trouvés (found objects) in New York City—what the artist refers to as a re-invention of Dada practice. Using a combination of images, maps, and texts written in English, Russian, Spanish, and Chinese—the four most widely-spoken languages—Eins documents encounters and findings that challenge accepted perceptions of the world.

Stefan Eins (b. 1958) was raised in Austria and has exhibited internationally since the 1970s. His installations have often appeared in New York City nightclubs and parks as well as galleries and museums, recently at Gallery X in Harlem. In the 1970s and '80s, Eins was part of the collaborative artist group Colab, whose members included Kiki Smith and Tom Otterness. In 1978 he established the seminal Bronx art space, FASHION MODA, a museum of science, art, technology, invention, and fantasy. At the space Eins presented artists and graffiti writers such as John Ahearn, Crash, Jane Dickson, Daze, Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Kenny Scharf and many others. He lives and works in New York.

This exhibition is organized by P.S.1 Director Alanna Heiss.

Stefan Eins' project at P.S.1 is supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum New York.

McKendree Key's investigation of unnecessary material waste connects her broad artistic practice, but is posed most aggressively in her installations. For her P.S.1 project, Key will create a site-specific installation that fragments the room into cubic yards with mason twine. The project continues an investigation of space that she initiated with her 2006 work Pier 17: Space # 2085 Divided into Cubic Yards, an installation which divided the space of a vacant sporting goods store in the South Street Seaport with spandex. Each installation is an interactive environment in which viewers are invited to physically negotiate the tensile composition. A seemingly incongruous element in her P.S.1 room is Key's inclusion of several pieces of her own furniture. If Key's division of the space into cubic yards nods to the system of measurement favored by New York City realtors, her employment of the gallery as a warehouse for the term of the exhibition conjures the grim narrative of gentrification's rapid commodification of space.

McKendree Key (b. 1978; Vermont) has had solo exhibitions at Galería Senda in Barcelona and Caren Golden Fine Art in New York City. She has exhibited her work at Socrates Sculpture Park in the Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition (2003), the Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia (2006), and The Sculpture Center (2006). McKendree is a 2004 NYFA fellow and has participated in residency programs at CUE Art Foundation, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

This exhibition is organized by P.S.1 Curatorial Advisor Nick Stillman.

Mark Lewis' films, through their attention to light, depth, color, and geometry, evoke pictorial tradition and suggest ways in which film can be said to reinvent it. For his project at P.S.1, Lewis presents Northumberland, shot in 2005 in the northeast of England. Consisting of a single uninterrupted tracking shot on Super 16mm, this film moves slowly along an ancient moss-covered stone wall. Beyond a stark forest, the viewer catches a glimpse of a distant world. Over the course of the last decade, Lewis' visual language has combined cinematic process with digital technologies. His time-based compositions are enigmatic, drawing on the tension between naturalism and abstraction, realism and theatricality.

Mark Lewis (b. 1957; Canada) has had solo exhibitions at the Hamburger Kunstverein; MUDAM, Luxembourg; Kunsthalle Bern; Columbia University, New York; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Patrick Painter, Los Angeles; Triple Candie, New York; among many others, and has participated in numerous group exhibitions. He lives and works in London. His work appears courtesy of Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver and Toronto and Galerie Cent8, Paris.

This exhibition is organized by Klaus Biesenbach, P.S.1 Chief Curatorial Advisor and Chief Curator, Department of Media, The Museum of Modern Art.

David Maljkovic presents the tripartite video work, Scenes for a New Heritage, which focuses on Petrova Gora, a memorial to the victims of World War II that was built in Croatia between 1970 and 1981. Set in the future, specifically the years 2045 and 2063, the video investigates both the architecture of the monument, its historic implications, and societal memory. According to the artist, "My work is about the future, about collective amnesia, about what is going to happen and whether people are going to create a new heritage for themselves... Your moment is your heritage. I'd like to create a complete collective amnesia, which would open new possibilities for the museum of nothing, where you may bring anything you like."

David Maljkovic (b. 1973; Rijeka, Croatia) is currently a studio artist at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. He has exhibited at Centre de Creation Contemporaine, Tours, France; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands; Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland; Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark; De Appel, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Croatia; the Tirana Biennial 3; and the Istanbul Biennial 9, among others. Maljkovic lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia.

This exhibition is organized by P.S.1 Director Alanna Heiss.

David Maljkovic's project at P.S.1 is supported by the Croatian Ministry of Culture, The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, and Neda Young.

Senam Okudzeto's wide-ranging practice incorporates performance, painting, and sculpture. At P.S.1, she will present, Portes-Oranges, an installation featuring metal sculptures used by Ghanaian fruit sellers to display oranges. Scattered across the gallery floor will be one thousand oranges accompanied by a video projection documenting the fruit sellers at work. This project is part of her on-going Ghana-Must-Go series which, according to the artist, explores the concepts of "modernity, memory and material culture," using images of contemporary Africa as a point of departure to annotate a growing global awareness of social complexity. Questioning the status of the art object in a manner reminiscent of Duchamp, Okudzeto's recent work references the marketplace of art and food, raising questions about the politics of necessity (food) versus the politics of luxury (the art object). Engaging both the formal qualities and social aspects of the sculptures, Okudzeto addresses the role and function of art, global and local economics, and tourism.

Senam Okudzeto (b. 1972; Chicago, Illinois) was raised in Ghana and Nigeria, Europe and the U.S. She received her B.A. from the Slade School of Fine Art, London University College, her M.F.A. from the Royal College of Art in London, and participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York City. She was an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, at the Stiftung Laurenz Haus in Basel, Switzerland, and recently completed a 2003-4 fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Okudzeto's work has been shown internationally since 2000, including in Africa Remix at Centre Pompidou in Paris and the 2006 Dak'art Biennial in Senegal. She has received numerous awards, including a Pollock-Krasner Award in 2002. Okudzeto lives between Basel, Accra, and London.

International and National Projects Spring 2007
Kurator: Franklin Sirmans

Künstler: Joe Deutch, Stefan Eins, McKendree Key, Mark Lewis, David Maljkovic, Senam Okudzeto