Spring 2010 Exhibitions

Beyond Participation: Hélio Oiticica and Neville D’Almeida in New York
Curated by Jocelyn Meade Elliott
February 4 – May 1, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday, February 4, 2010, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Hunter College presents Beyond Participation: Hélio Oiticica and Neville D’Almeida in New York. The collaboration between renowned Brazilian artists Hélio Oitica and Nevielle D’Almeida from the late 1960s though the 1970s changed how audiences perceived art, shifting them from passive viewers to active participants. Exhibited for the first time together, the slide-show environment Cosmococa—Programa in progress, CC1 Trashiscapes (1973)is shown alongside D’Almeida’s film Jardim de Guerra (1967), as well as two of Oiticica’s notebooks from 1973 reproduced in facsimile. The dynamic installation CC1 Trashiscapes comprises two projectors flashing 32 slide-photographs onto opposing gallery walls, accompanied by a soundtrack including forró music (typically from the Northeast of Brazil) such as Luis Gonzaga’s baião, Jimi Hendrix songs, street sounds, and voices. Mattresses line the floor, and nail files are available for use by visitors. The audience is invited to relax and recline horizontally while filing their nails in the dark as they watch the images on the surrounding walls.The slides themselves consist of three distinct photographic series: Luis Buñuel’s face on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, a series of black-and-white photographs of Luis Fernando Guimarães (an actor and friend of Oiticica) wearing Parangolé 30 Capa 23 M’Way Ke, and the album cover for Weasels Ripped My Flesh by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, all manipulated with white line of cocaine by the artists’. This work is an important progenitor of early video and installation art and influenced subsequent generations of artists tremendously.

The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery at Hunter College
S.W. Corner of 68th Street and Lexington Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10065
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 1 to 6 p.m.
The Gallery is free and open to the public

Smoke+Mirrors/Shadows+Fog
Curated by Tracy L. Adler and Mara Hoberman
February 18 – April 17, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday, February 18, 2010, 6-8 p.m.

The Hunter College Art Galleries are pleased to present Smoke+Mirrors/Shadows+Fog, an exhibition featuring 16 international artists whose use low-tech means to create astonishing and stirring illusions.  The intricate and elaborate works on view conjure deliberate deceptions (“smoke and mirrors”) and naturally occurring illusions (“shadows and fog”).  Although these works would seem to lend themselves to the digitized special effects and technology readily available today, this select group of artists tends to prefer age-old techniques such as trompe l’oeil painting, shadow play, and mirror anamorphosis. 

Several of the artists in Smoke+Mirrors/Shadows+Fog employ shadow, reflection, smoke, and even gravitational pull to create substantive permanent artworks.  For example, Jim Dingilian (whose latest works will be on view for the first time at the Hunter College/Times Square Gallery) captures smoke residue in empty liquor bottles and then uses Q-tips and toothpicks to draw detailed dimensional landscapes on the inside of the transparent glass.  Other artists included in the exhibition represent space, distance and dimensionality so convincingly that they seemingly dematerialize solid architecture (in a few cases the gallery walls themselves).  This phenomenon is epitomized in Sarah Oppenheimer’s site-specific installation—a custom-designed aperture fit directly into the gallery’s entrance wall which effectively distorts the depth of field so that the adjacent space appears flat, like a projected image.
ARTISTS FEATURED: Claudia Bueno, Jim Dingilian, Fred Eerdekens, Hanna von Goeler, Rebecca Hackemann, Susanne Kessler and Herbert Cybulska, Heather Lewis, Charles Matson Lume, Oscar Muñoz, Sarah Oppenheimer, Hiraki Sawa, Suzanne Song, Mary Temple, Kumi Yamashita and Bohyun Yoon.

Hunter College/Times Square Gallery
450 West 41st Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues)
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 1 to 6 p.m.
The Gallery is free and open to the public