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Embracing Winter
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Feb - 31 March 2007 / Tues - Sat, 10 am - 6 pm Janet Morton / Bruno Munari / Takeshi Murata / Collin Olan / Lisa M. Robinson / Rudy Shepherd Events Hot Cocoa Reception / Thursday 15 Feb, 5-8 pm / Th3 NIght, free parking, Connective Corridor shuttle Artist Presentation / Thursday 15 Feb, 2-4 pm / Artist Takeshi Murata Lunchtime Talks / Friday 16 Feb, 12-1 pm / Artists J. Morton, R. Shepherd + Scientist Paul Fitzgerald Winter Light Film Screening / Thursday 8 March, 8 pm Winnipeg Babysitter Video Event / Tuesday 27 March / Curator Daniel Barrow |
| Playful,
interactive exhibition of knitted sculpture, psychedelic video, sly
photography, crisp audio works by American, Canadian, Italian artists Staging the coldest season as a playground for imagination, The Warehouse Gallery presents Embracing Winter, a group exhibition featuring knitted sculpture, psychedelic video, interactive displays, sly photography, and crisp audio and book works by American, Canadian and Italian artists. The show is on view Feb. 13 through March 31 and accompanied by a Hot Cocoa Reception on Feb. 15, Lunchtime Talks by exhibition artists and an earth scientist on Feb. 16, and an Experimental Film Screening on March 8. “As technology advances, our concept of physical comfort becomes increasingly narrow and artificially mediated,” remarks gallery director Astria Suparak. “We can program thermostats to the degree, swim in heated pools in the winter, and ice skate in tropical regions. We prefer to encounter the seasons as an aesthetic experience, when convenient, within the self-created myth of a weatherless society. Traces of snowfall are quickly removed from city streets while windows remain decorated with impossibly gigantic paper snowflakes.” As Mirko Zardini of the Canadian Centre for Architecture writes, “Forgetting the climate, ignoring it, or trying to eliminate it from urban reality and our imagination not only deprives us of the pleasure of different seasons, which foster agreeable as well as disagreeable situations and conditions, but inevitably leads to unexpected confrontations with the more dramatic consequences of weather.” Syracuse is the perennial winner of the Golden Snowball Award, for the most snowfall in New York State. Embracing Winter celebrates this crystallized precipitation as the key to a delightful set of activities, and as an ephemeral filter to make ordinary surroundings new again. |
PRESS: |
| • Janet Morton is knitting a model of her home in Guelph, Ontario, in time for the exhibition reception. Also in the show are Morton's absurdly large, 15-foot-long handmade mitten and a tree branch sculpture frosted with lace. Her prolific body of work, including cozies for buildings and sweaters for sub-Saharan animals in Canadian zoos, spurs consideration of human excess, perceived needs, imposed aesthetics, and the value of time and repetitive labor. “The intent has been to playfully transform objects, critically examining impulses of anthropomo rphization taken to extremes, misplaced sentimentality and control of nature,” Morton explains. •
Rudy Shepherd , wearing a brown bear costume sewn
by his mother, tromps in a New England winter scene. The casual,
immediate air of a snapshot in these large photographs belies heavier
implications. Selected from a series titled Ursa Major Contemplating
the Meaning of the Universe , Shepherd's performative work
questions the meaning of home, the idea of comfort, the structures
of transcultural and collective identity, and assumptions based
•
Italian Futurist Bruno Munari 's children's book,
Little White Riding Hood , shows there is substance in
seemingly empty pages if one is inventive enough. The International
Herald Tribune claims, “Munari is one of the most influential
designers of the 20 th century. Not because he has imposed a particular
style or look, but because he has encouraged people to go beyond
formal conventions and stereotypes by showing them how to widen
their • New York State transplant Takeshi Murata pushes the boundaries of animation and psychedelia with sophisticated code-based image processing. In the hypnotic video installation Monster Movie, a B-movie yeti decomposes and reconstitutes 30 times per second, becoming a seething, digital morass of color and form. “Murata's particular genius is an almost alchemical ability to transform forgotten relics of pop culture into dazzling jewels,” comments Artforum . • Available in a listening station as well as on the gallery's website, Collin Olan 's delicate audio piece encapsulates the melting process of contact microphones frozen inside a block of ice. A tiny picture of an awe-inspiring, voluptuously iced landscape from a family camping trip in the Midwest accompanies the recording. •
“In these familiar spaces, transformed in winter not only by a blanket
of snow but also by a state of inactivity, we are offered glimpses
of the sublime,” says Lisa M. Robinson about her
photographic series Snowbound . The selected images pristinely
capture a moment in time w hile pointing to the cycle •
Amidst these artists' works, The Warehouse Gallery has
produced interactive and informative displays. Visitors can compare
their heights against a full-scale graph charting the snowfall in
Syracuse over the last half century. Free samples are provided of
de-icing agents that are less damaging to the environment than the
conventionally used salt. A presentation of locally purchased snow
shovels was inspired by Marcel Duchamp's 1915 readymade In Advance
of the Broken Arm . As a munificent reversal of this historic
Dadaist work, the gallery renders the display useful again, allowing
guests to borrow the commercially made tools from an art gallery
setting. Embracing Winter is the third exhibition in a series at The Warehouse Gallery referencing the natural world and encouraging environmental consciousness. The de-icing agents were generously donated by Cryotech. The curator would like to acknowledge the inspirational exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Sense of the City, which explored the theme of urban phenomena and perceptions that have traditionally been ignored, repressed or maligned. |
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EMBRACING WINTER EVENTS:
Hot Cocoa Reception / Thursday 15 Feb, 5-8 pm
@ The Warehouse Gallery, 350 W. Fayette St (at West St), Downtown Syracuse,
NY 13202
Part of Th3 Syracuse
Arts Night, with outdoor projection by Urban Video Project. www.th3syracuse.com
Free parking (call gallery to reserve). Free Connective
Corridor bus (connectivecorridor.syr.edu)
Artist
Presentation / Thursday 15 Feb, 2-4 pm
@ Shaffer Art Bldg, Room 121 (at College Place and Sims Drive), Syracuse
University. Cosponsored by the Department of Transmedia.
Exhibition artist Takeshi Murata
(Saugerties, NY; takeshimurata.com) gives a talk and screens videos. Sponsored
by Video Art, Department of Transmedia at Syracuse University.
Lunchtime Talks / 16 Feb, 12-1 pm
@ Community Classroom #003, 350 W. Fayette (behind gallery on first floor).
Light refreshments served. Cosponsored by the Departments of Earth Sciences
and Transmedia, Syracuse University.
Exhibition artists Janet
Morton (Guelph, ON; ccca.ca) and Rudy
Shepherd (Harlem, NYC; mixedgreens.com) will talk discuss their work
and Paul Fitzgerald
(earthsciences.syr.edu), Associate Professor of Tectonics and Thermochronology
in Syracuse University's Department of Earth Sciences, talks about his
research and experiences in the Antarctic.
| Winter
Light Film Screening / Thursday 8 March, 8 pm
A
selection of seasonally inspired experimental films, videos and
audio by Arnait Women’s Video Workshop, Michael Bell-Smith,
Stan Brakhage, Thorsten Fleisch, Jake Kennedy, Kurt Kren, Peter
Lipskis, Guy Maddin, Collin Olan, Paper Rad and Wolf Eyes, John
Price and Joyce Wieland. Curated by Canadian filmmaker and writer
Brett Kashmere and The Warehouse Gallery director Astria Suparak,
with work from Austria, Nunavut, America, Germany and Canada.
Program
details. |
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| Winnipeg
Babysitter
Live Projection Event
/ Tuesday 27 March, 7:30 pm |
Excerpt from Winnipeg Babysitter. |
BASIC INFORMATION:
| Exhibition Name: |
Embracing Winter |
| Exhibition Dates: |
Feb. 13-March 31, 2007 |
| Gallery Hours: |
Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. |
| Images for publication: |
www.astriasuparak/thewarehousegallery/currentexhibitions.html |
| Artists' Names, Cities: |
Janet Morton (Guelph, ON), Bruno Munari (Italy), Takeshi Murata (Saugerties, NY), Collin Olan (Brooklyn, NY), Lisa M. Robinson (Queens, NY), Rudy Shepherd (Manhattan, NY) |
| Curator: |
Astria Suparak, Director, The Warehouse Gallery |
| Admission Cost: |
Free |
| What Is The Warehouse Gallery? |
The Warehouse Gallery is a new contemporary art space exhibiting and commissioning work by international artists in a variety of media. Housed in a former furniture warehouse, it is located on the edge of downtown Syracuse's Armory Square, south of the I-81/I-690 highway intersection. Our mission is to engage the community in a dialogue regarding the role the arts can play in illuminating the critical issues of our times. |
| Short Description of Exhibition | Embracing Winter is a group exhibition of knitted sculpture, psychedelic video, playful photography, and crisp audio and book works by international artists Janet Morton, Takeshi Murata, Bruno Munari, Collin Olan, Lisa M. Robinson and Rudy Shepherd. This show also features interactive displays with take-home elements created by The Warehouse Gallery, and a film screening titled Winter Light. |
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