New York: The 1980s, Part 1 & Part 2 (Extended Version)
Le Consortium Museum, Dijon, France
Part 1: Michael Corris, Steve DiBenedetto, Dan Graham, On Kawara, Louise Lawler, Allan McCollum, Chuck Nanney, Cady Noland, Steven Parrino, Laurie Parsons, and David Robbins.
Part 2 (Extended Version): Michael Corris, David Diao, Steve DiBenedetto, Peter Downsborough, Les Levine, Matthew McCaslin, Aimee Morgana, Olivier Mosset, Steven Parrino, Michael Scott, Jessica Stockholder, and Alan Uglow.
The Consortium Museum presents a new thematic display of artworks from its permanent collection focused on art made in New York in the 1980s (https://www.leconsortium.fr/en/new-york-1980s-part-i) ¶ The Consortium Museum collection holdings are particularly rich in works from this era, which requires a 2-part presentation ¶ For the artists living in New York in the 1980s, their visual environment was saturated with all kinds of images, from record covers, magazine, cartoons and comics, billboards, to movies and television, with the first video clips and the beginnings of MTV ¶ They were confronted with a Zeitgeist that proclaimed the end of Modernism in art and most specifically the end of painting and the impossibility to create new art forms. In the atmosphere of esthetic and political disenchantment of the Reagan years, with its celebration of Wall Street financial cynicism, these artists often influenced by French theory adopted a critical yet uninhibited attitude toward this profusion of consumerist images, unveiling the mechanisms of desire and seduction they elicited ¶ Their work cultivated ambiguity, tooled with irony and detachment, established the basis for Appropriation and demonstrated a deep skepticism vis-à-vis the mechanisms of public recognition in the art world, issuing prophetic warnings about widespread surveillance, omnipresent medias, and the emptiness of the cult of celebrities at a time when the internet didn’t exist yet but where the technological invasion of everyday life through the first home computers started to manifest itself ¶ These artists used photography, video, installation, sculpture but also painting as their medium, to appropriate their visual environment and point out its artificial and manipulative dimension under a sleek, sophisticated appearance, thus foretelling the excesses of the 21st century Instagram crowds ¶ As with the first part, the works selected for part 2 (extended version) (https://www.leconsortium.fr/en/new-york-eighties-part-two-extended-version) reflect on the shared history of the Consortium Museum and the artists it has followed over the years, and on the friendships and social relationships that have linked the artists with each other and with guest curators such as Bob Nickas, who regularly invited them for his exhibitions ¶ The choice here is to highlight artworks created at the end of the decade and at the beginning of the 1990s, and to exhibit additional works by artists previously shown in the other two installments such as Jessica Stockholder, David Diao, Michael Scott, Olivier Mosset, Steven Parrino, and Michael Corris, together with pieces by Scott Grodesky, Les Levine and Peter Downsbrough. The artworks selected here reflect an evolution contrasting with the art made at the beginning of the 1980s; with the exception of Les Levine they leave behind subjects themes related to emerging technologies or the massive spread of commercial images (ads, video clips, magazines, etc.), to turn to a more formal type of work ¶ In contrast with the first installment of the collection presentation, in which Steve DiBenedetto’s works were already exhibited, these artworks created at the end of the decade and at the beginning of the 1990s ¶ This was a time when aesthetic shifts came to the fore, most notably demonstrated by the Jessica Stockholder work exhibited here, which signaled the emergence of the large, sculptural installations that became predominant in the art of the 1990s. Installations are also the chosen medium for Matthew McCaslin and Aimee Morgana, whose artworks detach from the wall to expand onto the floor and into space, and use familiar objects to induce a certain kind of absurdist poetry while remaining aware of art history with their nods to Surrealism for Morgana and to Duchamp’s readymades for McCaslin ¶ If geometric abstraction is still very present, most specifically with artworks by Alan Uglow, David Diao, Olivier Mosset and Michael Scott, it starts to disintegrate within Steve DiBenedetto’s paintings that leave the influence of the Neo-Geo art movement behind to take a much more organic appearance inspired by writer Don DeLillo’s mazelike plots and bridge the gap between literary and artistic Postmodernisms ¶ These visual explorations, formal inventions and aesthetic choices also represent a structural shift happening after the 1987 stock market crash and the numerous subsequent gallery closures, the economic recession giving space for artists to experiment more freely, away from the pressure of the burgeoning art market of the early 1990s.
Part 1:
Michael Corris
The Whip
1988
Serigraphy on Formica, acrylic, wood
36 x 48 x 12-inches overall
Collection: Le Consortium Museum of Contemporary Art, Dijon, France
Michael Corris
The Gift
1988
Serigraphy on Formica, acrylic, wood
36 x 48 x 12-inches overall
Collection: Le Consortium Museum of Contemporary Art, Dijon, France
Part 2: extended version:
Michael Corris
From Margin to Mainstream
1987
Photoprint and gold leaf
3 parts: 72 x 24 x 2-inches; 36 x 12 X 2-inches; 18 x 6 x 2-inches
Collection: Le Consortium Museum of Contemporary Art, Dijon, France
INVISIBLE COLLEGE CONVERSATIONS 