Christian Boltanski

El Caso

1989

Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin Clock, 1987-94 Aluminum sculpture, mixed media and c-print photograph construction, c-print, felt tip marker 13 h × 13 w × 4 d in (30 × 30 × 6 cm) Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin were founding members of the underground conceptual movement Samizdat in the Soviet Union, described in their book Russian Samizdat Art. Based on a play of paradoxes, their work is rich with philosophic and mythological implications, reflected in their writing as well. Their book Concepts was published in Russia in 2012. The work by Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin is emphatically contemporary. The artist couple were part of the Moscow Conceptualists, their performance Costumes, from 1977, deepened their ongoing work with linguistic semiotic systems and their own bodies. Considering the context in which Gerlovina and Gerlovin made their work—that of political restrictions on public life, of unfreedom, and censorship—their collaborative togetherness must also be read as a space of possibility for political community and resistance. Rimma Gerlovina’s hair is featured prominently in the art of the Gerlovins as a constructing element of the body. Used for the linear drawings her braids transmit transpersonal waves reminiscent of an aura of live filaments. Long loose hairs function as threads of life; streaming in abundance, they allude to Aphrodisiac vitality and Samsonian strength. On the other hand, they are the haircloth worn during mourning and penitence. In New York they continued to make sculptural objects, and their photographic projects grew into an extended series called Photoglyphs. In their photographs, they use their own faces to explore the nature of thought and what lies beyond it. Since coming to the United States in 1980, they had many exhibitions in galleries and museums including the Art Institute of Chicago. The New Orleans Museum of Art launched a retrospective of their photography, which traveled to fifteen cities. Group exhibitions include the Venice Biennale, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, Washington D.C., Bonn Kunsthalle, Germany, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, and others. Samizdat or “self-published” began in the Soviet Union, and Samizdat art consists mainly of books and magazines published and distributed by the artists who made them. Samizdat art has sources in the innovative books and magazines turned out by the early 20th century Russian avant-garde—artists and writers like Olga Rozanova, Vladimir Mayakovsky, El Lissitzky, and Alexander Rodchenko. Artists as varied as Alexander Archipenko, Leon Bakst, Marc Chagall, Naum Gabo, Alexandra Exter...

Shimon Attie (b. 1957) Joachimstrasse, Ecke, Auguststrasse, Berlin, 1994 Edition 3/3 Dye coupler print on Kodak Ektacolor paper 27 x 34 inches (68.6 x 86.4 cm) (image) 34 x 40 inches (sheet) Presents well. Framed Dimensions 36.25 X 42.5 From series The Writing on the Wall. Attie projected found pre-war images of Jewish street-life in Berlin onto the same or nearby addresses in 1992/1993. Through this intervention, fragments of the past were introduced into the visual field of the present; long destroyed Jewish community life were visually simulated, momentarily recreated. The Writing on the Wall project was realized in Berlin’s former Jewish quarter, the Scheunenviertel, located in the Eastern part of the city, close to the Alexanderplatz. At the heart of Berlin, the Scheunenviertel was a center for eastern European Jewish immigrants from the turn of the century. The few historical photographs which remained after the Holocaust reflect the world of the Jewish working class rather than that of the more affluent and assimilated German Jews who lived mostly in the western part of the city.The juxtaposition between the projected images and the empty rooms reminds viewers of the fragility of memory, and how sites are activated/changed by presence and absence. Shimon Attie (born Los Angeles in 1957) is an American visual artist. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008, The Rome Prize in 2001 and a Visual Artist Fellowship from Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advance Study in 2007. His work spans a variety of media, including photography, site-specific installation, multiple channel immersive video installation, performance, and new media. Much of Attie's practice explores how a wide range of contemporary media may be used to re-imagine new relationships between space, time, place, and identity. Much, though not all, of Attie's work in the 90s dealt with the history of the second world war. He first garnered significant international attention by slide projecting images of past Jewish life onto contemporary locations in Berlin. More recent projects have involved using a range of media to engage local communities to find new ways of representing their history, memory and potential futures. Attie's artworks and interventions are site-specific and immersive in nature, and tend to engage subject matter that is both social, political and psychological. In 2013, Five monographs have been published on Attie's work, which has also been the subject of a number of films, which have aired on PBS, BBC, and ARD. Since receiving his MFA Degree in 1991, Attie has realized approximately 25 major projects in ten countries around the world. Most recently, in 2013-14, Shimon Attie was awarded the Lee Krasner Lifetime Achievement Award in Art. Judaica subject matter. He was born in 1957 and received an MFA in 1991. In 1991 he moved to Germany from his previous home in Northern California, and began to make work initially about Jewish identity and the history of the second world war. His work later evolved to engage broader issues of memory, place and identity more generally. Shimon Attie moved to New York City in 1997. Shimon Attie's work has been extensively reviewed by a wide variety of publications, including features and/or reviews in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Art in America, Art News, Art Forum, The Village Voice, The Boston Globe, and many others. Yasaman Alipour, writing in "The Brooklyn Rail: Critical Perspectives on Arts, Politics, and Culture", on Shimon Attie's solo exhibition "Facts on the Ground" at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City: Attie achieves something profound: he presents a unique opportunity to contemplate Israel/Palestine without the distraction that is simultaneously a manifestation of the limitations of visual of written language and the possibilities of their alliance." Norman Kleeblatt, writing in a cover story for "Art in America" "Like many other artists in the wake of Marcel Broodthaers...

An artist who puts his life on the line for his art. Chris Burden was at the forefront of the conceptual art movement in the early 1970s. Prelude to 220, or 110 is one of his most important works where the artist puts his life on the line for his art. Burden voluntarily lays on his back. His neck and wists are have copper bands that bolt him to the floor. To his immediate left and right are two buckets of water with a 110-volt line inside. If the buckets were compromised in any way by a passerby or an unexpected event - Burden would have been electrocuted in a literal shocking performance. Art history is replete with artists who put themselves in harm's way to accomplish their art. Michelangelo risked a misstep to a certain death as he elevated himself over 60 feet to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Francisco Goya's "The Disasters of War" may have put him at odds with a governing orthodoxy. Picasso walked a very narrow line with during the Nazi occupation. Gutzon Borglum dangled himself off the face of Mount Rushmore and War Photographer Robert Capa, landed on Omaha Beach during D-Day. But it was Chris Burden whose art spotlighted...

'Untitled' (Chinese Classical), 2003, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs, digital C-Print, POLAROID 809 Emulsion Transfer, 32 cm x 26cm, not mounted, Signed, embossed stamp and artis...