Todd Madigan Gallery at CSU Bakersfield is pleased to present Open House, a group show of works by Paul Elliman, Asha Schechter, Martine Syms, Jean- Pierre Jacquet/Madelon Vriesendorp/Teri Wehn-Damisch, Hannah Weiner, Pae White.
The works in painting, animation, text, sound and digital printing are applied directly to wall, mask the windows, are clumped and scattered about the room, and appear and disappear as a sudden sonic eruption. There are images of bodies as objects and objects as bodies, immersed in the animistic and anthropomorphic.
The exhibition takes it title from a book of the collected writing’s of Hannah Weiner, a Language Movement poet and self described clairvoyant who was active in the performance/dance/ writing scene in New York in the 70's and 80's. Her work, especially the Code Poems and her Clairvoyant Journal Project, present multiple simultaneous voices cohabitating in a dialogue with ones self.
The title also points to the disruption of the interior and exterior achieved by the works on view. The ambient languages that surround us- the commercial and cultural, and the space filling detritus in our experience- becomes so many found texts through which these artists speak their individual narratives. This production of cloaked histories, the small personal spaces carved out of far-reaching languages we share, is the subject of Open House.
*In conjunction with the main show a library of printed materials related to the artists, as well as lent from the collection of the artists will be installed near the back entrance of the gallery.
Martine Syms was born in Los Angeles. In 2007 Syms received an MFA in Film, Video, and New Media at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. From 2007-2011 Syms ran Golden Age, an artist-run project space in Chicago. Syms is the director of Dominica Press. Syms has lectured at Yale University, SXSW, Project Row Houses, the Houston Museum of African American Art, California Institute of the Arts, University of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, Maryland Institute College of Art, and MoMA P.S.1. Her artwork has been exhibited at the 2015 New Museum Triennial Surround Audience, Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), MCA Chicago, The Green Gallery (Milwaukee).
Paul Elliman (b. 1961, UK) is an artist and designer based in London. His work combines an interest in typography and the human voice, often referring to forms of audio signage that mediate a relationship between both. He has exhibited widely in venues such as the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Tate Modern in London, the New Museum and Moma (Ecstatic Alphabets, 2012) in New York, APAP in Anyang, South Korea, Kunsthalle Basel. In 2009 his project “Sirens Taken for Wonders” was commissioned for the New York biennial Performa ‘09, and took the form of a radio discussion about the coded language of emergency vehicle sirens, as well as a series of siren-walks through the city. During 2010 he contributed a series of whistled versions of bird song transcriptions by Olivier Messiaen for the show “We Were Exuberant and Still Had Hope”, at Marres Centre for Contemporary Art, Maastricht. Elliman is also visiting critic at Yale School of Art, New Haven, and a thesis supervisor at the Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem, Netherlands.
Pae White (b. 1963) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She attained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Scripps College in 1985. In 1990 she studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In 1991 she attained a Masters of Fine Art from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Recent shows have included Directions: Virgil Marti and Pae White, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2007), Venice Biennale (2009), Whitney Biennial (2010), Sumer XX, The Fabric Workshop and Museum(2012). She is represented by greengrassi gallery, 1301PE, and China Art Objects.
Asha Schechter works with Photography, Video and Sculpture. He has a BFA from CCA and an MFA from UCLA. Solo exhibitions include “The Bucket” at metro pcs in Los Angeles, “Mockup” at Artium in Vitoria-Gasteiz and “Bloopers II” at The Finley, Los Angeles. Group Exhibitions include Gavin Brown, Laurel Gitlen, Albert Baronian and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. Other activities include running The Vanity, a gallery in a closet inside of 356 Misson as well as the DVD distribution company A2Z video.