Dynamic Collections Exhibition, Event Horizon, Draws Upon Walker Art Center's Rich Cross-Disciplinary Programming and Holdings
A cross-disciplinary blend of film, video, performance, painting, sculpture, and photography drawn from the Walker Art Center’s rich, multidisciplinary holdings is presented in
Event Horizon
, an exhibition opening November 21, 2009. Unfolding over a nearly three-year period, the exhibition features a range of subplots and visual contrasts by both established and lesser-known artists represented in the Walker’s collections. In galleries animated with installations that change over time, Event Horizon offers a new context in which to view and experience connections to real-life events as well as artistic moments. Organized by a team of curators and realized in its final form by chief curator Darsie Alexander and curator Elizabeth Carpenter, the exhibition features some 90 pieces ranging from avant-garde film of the 1960s to live performances to newly created environmental works. Active zones of rotating works and dialogues serve as sites for screenings, performances, and public conversations. Event Horizon runs through August 5, 2012.
“The theme of ‘event’ operates on many levels at once, tapping into the deep strata of collections and programs here at the Walker. From film and video to visual and performing arts, this concept enables us to consider the major events of art and life that have shaped culture since the 1960s,” Alexander says.
Inspired by the idea of the event horizon, a term used in astronomy to describe the edge of observable space as well as the outer limits of darkness and light, the exhibition presents works that reflect the many voices, perspectives, and programs advanced by the Walker—expanding its boundaries as an art center and its role as a collecting as well as presenting institution. Reversing the traditional precedence of the object over the event of its creation, artists such as Raymond Hains, Kara Walker, and Andy Warhol have used the very images of culture as material for exploration and critique. Appropriating mass media images, French artist Hains transformed the mundane into art with his collages created from torn posters found on the streets of Paris. Warhol’s melancholy black, blue, and white Sixteen Jackies (1964) quotes from the incessant television coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, after which footage of the event was repeated for weeks. Kara Walker depicts her own version of the past using the antebellum South, one of America’s darker historical locations, as backdrop. In her screenprint Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) (2005), her signature silhouettes are paired with rephotographed Civil War lithographs of battle and strife.
While some galleries will be quiet and contemplative, others will be animated with performances, screenings, and conversation, demonstrating the Walker’s unique multidisciplinary platform. Changing selections of moving images from the Ruben/Bentson Film and Video Study Collection will be screened in a designated space, beginning with Bruce Conner’s poetic and mesmerizing film CROSSROADS (1976), which combines multiple camera shots of the first underwater atomic bomb test into a 36-minute meditation on the image of the resulting mushroom-shaped cloud. Films by Hollis Frampton, Derek Jarman, and Chris Marker—others whose work has captured events that have shaped our history—also will be featured during the exhibition’s run. Video monitors in each gallery will showcase the Walker’s 40-year performing arts history with landmark performances that have defined the program by such artists as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Trisha Brown, Romeo Castellucci, Merce Cunningham, Bill T. Jones, Ralph Lemon, and Elizabeth Streb. Also on view will be Cao Fei’s video installation i.Mirror by China Tracy (AKA Cao Fei) (2007), depicting a simulated romance between avatars in the artist’s 3D virtual world Second Life, which blends documentary and magical realism.
In addition to performances captured on video, renowned Japanese American dance creators Eiko & Koma will be in residence throughout the month of November 2010 to perform Naked, a new “living installation,” six hours a day, six days a week. Commissioned by the Walker to celebrate its 30-year relationship with the artists, the piece features the duo’s characteristic glacially paced movement amidst sound, light, video, and organic set elements of their own design.
Frequent participatory moments—from handling the sculptural Three Adaptives (1997) of Franz West to seeing one’s reflection in the mirror of Olafur Eliasson’s Convex/Concave (1995–2000)—enable a variety of experiential encounters to occur in Event Horizon, which will take shape and change during the run of the exhibition. According to Carpenter, “gallery-to-gallery opportunities to reflect as well as act will unfold as the visitor moves through space.”
Event Horizon reflects the Walker’s collecting practice, which in recent years has tended to focus around the edges of the obvious, resulting in collections distinguished by the embrace of hybrid or otherwise unclassifiable works that might fall between the cracks in more traditional institutions.
Art on Call Audio Guide
Load up your MP3 player or use your cell phone to hear about some of the works on view. To hear more, call 612.374.8200 in the galleries, or download Art on Call to your iPod before visiting newmedia.walkerart.org/aoc.
Collectible Cards
As part of Event Horizon, the Walker will launch an evolving series of “collectible” cards on exhibition topics, themes, artworks, and artists. Visitors can collect the cards, which will be introduced several times a year for the duration of the show.
RELATED EVENTS
Opening Weekend
Walker After Hours Preview Party
Event Horizon and Benches & Binoculars
Friday, November 20, 9 pm–12 midnight
$35 ($25 Walker members)
Tickets: walkerart.org/tickets or 612.375.7600.
Celebrate the opening of two exhibitions showcasing the Walker collections. Preview the shows and enjoy cocktails, complimentary Wolfgang Puck appetizers, a cameo appearance by percussionist Dafnis Prieto and dancer Judith Sanchez Ruiz, music by Lookbook and DJ Scott Stulen, a curatorial art lab activity, screenings of Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising, and Party People Pictures.
New members receive one free party ticket (or other premium) for joining, while supplies last.
Walker After Hours sponsored by Target.
Opening-Day Tour
Saturday, November 21, 2 pm, Free with gallery admission
From the screening of Bruce Conner’s CROSSROADS to Andy Warhol’s painting Sixteen Jackies, Event Horizon surveys political and socioeconomic shifts in our culture and the ways in which artists have responded. Visual arts curator Elizabeth Carpenter and film/video curator Sheryl Mousley lead a tour that highlights the depth and breadth of the Walker’s collections as well as the collaborative process that produced the current installation.
Target Free Thursday Nights
Thursday, December 10
Tour with Darsie Alexander
Event Horizon and Benches & Binoculars, 7 pm
Chief curator Darsie Alexander leads visitors through the newest collection exhibitions.
Target Free Thursday Nights sponsored by Target.
Pre-Performance Gallery Tour
Pre-Performance Tour: Choreographers’ Evening and Event Horizon
Saturday, November 28, 6 and 8:30 pm, Free with event ticket
Meet in the Bazinet Garden Lobby
Before the performance celebrating Minnesota’s most vibrant choreographers, tour Event Horizon, which features work by Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, and others who have nimbly navigated both dance and visual art.
Note: Tours are limited to 25 people. Please register in advance by calling 612.375.7600.
Pre-Screening Gallery Tour
Pre-Screening Tour: British Television Advertising Awards and Event Horizon
Saturday, December 11
Friday, December 17
Thursday, December 30
2 pm, Free with event ticket
Meet in the Bazinet Garden Lobby
Whether they’re peddling soda or pushing a more personal vision, advertisers and artists of all kinds draw from pop culture and spectacle. Before the awards show, learn a bit about artists who work along this spectrum—from legends to contemporary figures.
Note: Tours are limited to 25 people. Please register in advance by calling 612.375.7600.
Open House
Wall–to–Wall Walker: A 10-Hour Open House
Saturday, December 5, 10 am–8 pm, Free
Join us for a daylong celebration of all things Walker: music, film, performance, and an array of artworks from the new collection exhibitions Event Horizon and Benches & Binoculars. Come early for family fun; stay late with friends and enjoy gallery tours, cocktails, dinner, film in the Cinema, or a performance in the McGuire Theater.
Gallery Tours
3–7 pm on the hour, Free
Join Walker tour guides for special mini-tours of Event Horizon and Benches & Binoculars.
Free First Saturdays Are for Families!
The Big Event
Saturday, December 5, 10 am–3 pm, Free
Celebrate art, music, film, performance, and much more at this all-day (and into the night!) open-house extravaganza.
Performance: Erik Friedlander, 1 pm
Jazz cellist Friedlander combines inventive music with travel stories and images created by his renowned photographer father.
Free First Saturday is sponsored by Ameriprise Financial. Program support by Medtronic Foundation. As part of the Walker Art Center’s Raising Creative Kids Initiative, additional support is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Gallery Tours
Sunday, December 6, 2 pm
Saturday, December 12, 2 pm
Thursday, December 17, 2 pm
Friday, December 18, 2 pm
Sunday, December 20, 2 pm
Sunday, December 27, 2 pm
Sunday, January 3, 2 pm
Saturday, January 9, 2 pm
Friday, January 15, 2 pm
Thursday, January 21, 2 pm
Thursday, January 28, 2 pm
Sunday, January 31, 2 pm
Thursday, February 4, 2 pm
Thursday, February 11, 2 pm
Saturday, February 13, 2 pm
Thursday, February 18, 2 pm
Saturday, February 20, 2 pm
Sunday, February 21, 2 pm
Friday, February 26, 2 pm
Gallery Hours and Admission
$10 adults; $8 seniors (65+); $6 students/teens (with ID)
Free to Walker members and children ages 12 and under.
Free with a paid ticket to a same-day Walker event.
Free to all every Thursday evening (5–9 pm) and on the first Saturday of each month (10 am–5 pm).
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday 11 am–5 pm
Thursday 11 am–9 pm
Closed Mondays
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