Installation shot from "Pictures" at an Exhibition, 2001

Opening reception: May 24, 6-8pm
Opening night gig by Dick Slessig

Artists Space will present a re-creation of the seminal 1977 Artists Space show Pictures, originally curated by critic Douglas Crimp. Created under the directorship of Helene Winer (who went on to co-found Metro Pictures), the exhibition featured work by Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, and Philip Smith. "Pictures" at an Exhibition provides an opportunity to re-activate history while also allowing us to experience firsthand an exhibition considered critical in defining a particular moment in contemporary art history.

<<Installation Shot image from the original Pictures exhibition, 1977 <Troy Brauntuch image from the original Pictures exhibition, 1977

<<Robert Longo image from the original Pictures exhibition, 1977 <Jack Goldstein image from the original Pictures exhibition, 1977

The original Pictures press release describes the show as follows:

The exhibition identifies the work of a group of young artists that represent a new sensibility. Their work is as yet almost wholly unknown. If it has been shown at all, it has appeared in group shows with no pretense to a thematic coherence. The Artists Space show will group a number of artists together with the express purpose of contextualizing and defining this new art for the first time. The well illustrated catalogue and essay will serve as an important means of explicating this new work.

The fundamental relationship between the artists under consideration for the show is their use of recognizable, non-abstract images, without, however, resurrecting representation as it is traditionally understood. (The return to figurative painting is at the farthest remove from this new work.) Within the general context of what has become known as "Post-Modernism," these artists reject the notion that art is predicated on an investigation of the medium as such. For these artists the medium functions in direct relationship to the presentation of the image. Because the image itself is of primary importance, the means of its presentation is chosen for its transparency and efficiency. As a result, the artists work in a variety of mediums and shift with ease from one to another. Thus the works range from painting and sculpture to photography, film, and audio recordings.

Usually the images in this work are immediately recognizable, simple and direct. Often they are "found" rather than invented images. But though they are comprehensible and often common, they are removed from a context of normal association and made autonomous within an esthetic structure. In this sense they share the concreteness of Minimal sculpture. They are inescapably what they are. They are not symbols or icons or even metaphors, although they incorporate the implied potential of all three.

Seth Kelly A Statue to Generality, 2001 polyurethane foam

Santiago Cucullu

To further contextualize the moment that Pictures embodied, a show of emerging artists, organized by Artists Space curator Jenelle Porter, will also be presented. There exists no straight line between Pictures and the ideas presented by these four artists; rather, their work encourages us to consider the evolution of the conceptual practices behind appropriation. Their work demonstrates the sampling, re-programming, reorganization, that artists today employ to create their work. Santiago Cucullu (Minneapolis) makes large-scale wall paintings and drawings that in their imagery reference everything from Joan of Arc and the Great Lakes in one work, to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, marzipan, and even Disney in others. The densely layered results feel cinematic, like flickering images rather than paintings. Heidie Giannotti (New York) will create a large-scale sculpture based upon Courbet's last romantic painting of 1861, Stag Taking to the Water, or The End of the Run; and that uses imagery from a Robert Longo work (which was included in Pictures), and a Sergei Eisenstein film, among other things. Her works are extremely intuitive, riffing on the output of culture's image machine, especially the moments we don't notice. Seth Kelly (New York) takes from sources ranging from Rosseau, Courbet's Woman with a Parrot, and classical contraposto poses, culling and remixing to produce stunning objects whose subject matter and visual cues, in the end, are completely obfuscated. Dick Slessig (Carl Bronson, Steve Goodfriend, and Mark Lightcap) is a music trio hailing from Los Angeles. Dick Slessig re-works songs from the era that, for them, signals the "end of the rock auteur." Drawing on well-honed improvisational skills, they play cover versions of significant covers of classic songs from the late 1960s and 1970s. They will play a gig on opening night.

Project Space 2: Adam Ames, Schmuck for a Lifetime

Schmuck For a Lifetime (2000) is part of Ames' Becoming series, multi-channel video installations and stills that disturbingly explore the act of constructing and playing cult film characters in an attempt to define self-identity. In The King of Comedy Robert DeNiro's delusional character, the stand-up comic Rupert Pupkin, embodies all the frustration of a hack talent who has nothing but criminal determination to push his career forward. Schmuck For a Lifetime positions the artist in three pivotal filmic moments. Breaking in and out of character, Ames attempts to achieve Pupkin's level of mediocrity, a feat which is instrumental for the comic's success, and by extension, the artist's.

Special Exhibition, front gallery

Our Perceptions/Urban Reality is an exhibition of original public artworks curated by high school students enrolled in ABACA's curatorial studies class held at Satellite Academy. The works of art, created especially for this exhibition, will be featured at various sites throughout the Lower East Side and SoHo. Artists Space will act as an exhibition site and information center for the project, distributing maps and displaying documentation and student interpretations of the selected projects.

Arts Benefit All Coalition Alternative (ABACA) was founded in 1992 through partnership among five organizations (Artists Space, Art in General, The Drawing Center, Franklin Furnace and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council) and Satellite Academy/Forsyth Campus (SA/F), an alternative public high school serving students throughout New York City.