Gallery Archive
Fact or Friction, curated by Geir Haraldseth & Ruba Katrib
Images
EXHIBITION DATES: January 4 - 27, 2008
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday January 4 from 6-11pm
GALLERY HOURS: Wednesday - Sunday 12-6pm
GALLERY TALK: With the curators, Saturday January 26 at 3pm
Each January, Vox invites a guest curator (or two) to Philadelphia and gives them the run of the gallery. Vox Populi is pleased to present this year’s guest curated exhibition, Fact or Friction, curated by Geir Haraldseth and Ruba Katrib.
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FACT OR FRICTION
Curated by Geir Haraldseth and Ruba Katrib
“Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.”
Nikita Khrushchev
Fact or Friction collects work from artists and cultural producers who are skilled (and not so skilled) spin-doctors, turning historical facts and situations into exaggerated and dubious retellings. Ranging from the poetic, to the humorous, to the prophetic, all the works in the exhibition reexamine the lines between truth and fantasy. The works test limits in how far truths can be stretched before they enter the realm of absurdity and parody. Even though we are taken on multiple journeys in the exhibition, they always return to a central question: what is history?
The exhibition includes ten artists and projects that blur reality and fiction. Marco Boggio Sella (Italy) uses ethnographic techniques to create his multifaceted projects. Lene Berg (Norway) makes inquiries into the power of history through her video work. Adam Chodzko (United Kingdom) solves a real-life mystery in the form of a publication. Aramis Gutierrez II (Venezuela) creates paintings that depict fantastical events with literary and news references. Scott Hug (USA) estimates the emotional states of historical figures. If I Did It: Confessions of a Killer is OJ Simpson’s hypothetical confession to the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Tova Mozard (Sweden) creates a video work about unconventional love and history. My Barbarian (USA) illustrates historical information through music and theater. We all Laughed at Christopher Columbus, is an exhibition-as-publication curated by Krist Gruijthuijsen and November Paynter, which includes contributions by Mieke Bal, Matthew Buckingham, Jeremiah Day, Omer Fast, Leyla Gediz, Runo Lagomarsino, Deimantas Narkevicius, Dee Williams, and Florian Wüst. wikiality.com is a website initiated by comedian Stephen Colbert in response to wikipedia.com, an online encyclopedia with often ambiguous information.
Throughout history artists have documented significant events, perhaps with a bias towards their sponsor or commissioner. The selection of works in Fact or Friction responds to the new found potential for absurdity in the way we learn about current events and consider historical ones. The producers of these works don’t hold back in the formation of their commentaries, and in the end create perspectives that might possibly contend with the fiction distributed by mainstream news and other purveyors of facts.
AT SCREENING
Adam Putnam
shadowroom II
Screening is proud to present Adam Putnam’s shadowroom II and III in the artist’s first exhibition in Philadelphia. Expanding on a diverse artistic practice that includes photography, sculpture, drawing, performance and installation, Putnam’s videos make substantial a nearly erotic tension between interior and exterior space, often depicted in his work as the corporeal and the architectural. In his shadowroom series, Putnam presents images of static, dark and entirely vacant rooms. The muted images beckon viewers to enter and occupy these spaces, while simultaneously halting one’s gaze at the projection screen itself, where flickering light and digital grain skitter across its surface. shadowroom II and III lend an almost physical presence to darkness and emptiness, perhaps referencing the phantasmagoric or the spiritual, while physically situating viewers before an alternate-dimension mirror of the gallery itself.
shadowroom II and III will be presented as a two-part exhibition beginning with shadowroom III, on view from December 7-30, and shadowroom II on view from January 4-27.
Adam Putnam was born in NYC in 1973, where he continues to live and work. Since earning a MFA from Yale in 2000, his work has been shown widely, at venues including PS1 Contemporary Art Center and Artists Space (NYC), Museum of Contemporary Art (San Diego), Serpentine Gallery (London) and The 2007 Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. His work will also be included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Putnam is represented by Taxter and Spengemann (NYC).
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