Museum of Arts & Design Presents Exhibition of Cutting-Edge Contemporary Art
Corporal Identity–Body Language
Reveals Artists’ Attitudes Toward the Human Body
Museum Premieres Exhibition in U.S. on November 14
NEW YORK – The Museum of Arts & Design (MAD), known for creating exhibitions that showcase emerging artists and new art forms, has collaborated with the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt (Museum of Applied Arts), and the Klingspor Museum for Book Art in Offenbach to organize Corporal Identity– Body Language. The exhibition features 200 works by emerging and established artists, many of them exhibiting for the first time, and reflects the new frontier of craft, decorative arts and design. The Museum of Arts & Design is premiering the exhibition in the U.S. on November 14 and it will run through June 4, 2004.
The Museum of Applied Arts, recognized as one of Europe’s premier destinations for innovative design presentations, is known for its Triennial exhibitions -- highly anticipated events that have been presented regularly since 1978. Corporal Identity–Body Language, the museum’s ninth Triennial, opened in Frankfurt and Offenbach in June. This is the first triennial project in which the Museum of Applied Arts has chosen an American museum as its partner. This experimental exploration into the significance of the applied arts and design as they relate to the human body crosses traditional boundaries among the arts, and embodies the Museum of Arts & Design’s expanded mission: to examine the intersections of international craft, art and design.
The work in Corporal Identity–Body Language spans a broad range of creativity – ceramics, glass, wood, metal, fiber, and mixed media – and includes both functional and non-functional objects as well as site-specific gallery installations. They demonstrate the range of media found in contemporary art and where the distinctions among creative disciplines are becoming increasingly blurred. A special section of the exhibition will focus on highly innovative artists’ books.
Holly Hotchner, director of the Museum of Arts & Design, notes, “The theme of Corporal Identity–Body Language is especially meaningful today, as we depend more and more on digital and cyber technologies in so many aspects of our lives, from communications and economics to politics and medicine. At the core of these changes, however, is still the human being whose life draws meaning through the mind and the senses. This exhibition embodies our expanded mission–to explore the rich interplay of art, craft and design on a global basis in this new century."
The exhibition reflects the broad spectrum of contemporary concerns about the human form. The artists scrutinize contemporary attitudes towards the human body with works that speak to the concept of the “corporal,” both directly and within the context of socially relevant issues. The broad scope ranges from works that examine symbolic associations with various parts of the body, to personal explorations of the relationship between body and self. The works probe the implications of advances in medical and biological technologies including gene manipulations, cloning, body implants and modifications and sensory augmentations.
The collaborative nature of this project is reflected in the curatorial team, which includes Ursula Ilse-Neuman, curator for the Museum of Arts & Design; David Revere McFadden, the Museum of Arts & Design’s chief curator; Sabine Runde, curator for applied arts at the Frankfurt museum; and Stefan Soltek, director of the Klingspor Museum of Book Art. The curators have selected nearly 150 artists from Germany and the U.S., and the works present a stimulating profile of creativity in both countries and an opportunity to explore their shared values and differing viewpoints. The curatorial team sought innovative works of the highest aesthetic and technical quality that would have the potential to contribute significantly to the development of contemporary art and design.
"It is not surprising that so many artists today are fascinated by the body and its multi-layered meanings in our world,” says Ursula Ilse-Neuman. “Our bodies are the most public signals of our identities; our bodies are also our most private and intimate reminders of who we are. Corporal Identity–Body Language looks at the fascinating and diverse approaches to the human figure in all arts, and in materials ranging from the most traditional, such as clay and fiber, to industrial foam and electronics.”
EXHIBITION OVERVIEW
The Body’s Inner and Outer Worlds
Many of the artists explore the inner and outer world of the body as mediated by the skin. The interface between the interior and exterior of human bodies, for example, is dramatically recorded in the Vascular Studies of jewelry artist Julia Barello. Designed as brooches, these silver simulations of essential veins are informed by a profound interest in medicine and the history of body adornment. Nancy Bowen’s Teraton Necklace is a powerful physical and sensual work that captures the ambivalence of a world somewhere between medical illustration and high fashion. Fiber artist Norma Minkowitz’s Body to Soul uses knotting as a metaphor for growth and evolution of the human form in a work that reveals the inner and outer body simultaneously.
The symbolic value of individual body parts is explored by Wendell Castle whose six-fingered wooden sculpture The Left Hand of Darkness suggests the sinister associations of the left hand; Alan Rath incorporates his engineering and computer skills into art that focuses on the human eye in his Neo Watcher VI. In his Interface series, Marek Cecula explores the ways in which parts of our bodies can represent the complex relationships we establish with others. His new works comprise a series of cast porcelain ears, arranged like specimens in a laboratory, which offer a striking juxtaposition to their roles as channels from the outside world to our brains. Rona Pondick’s Worry Beads, based on self-portraiture, use the image of the head to create a rhythmic visual mantra for the self.
Probing Identity, Memory and Gender
Many of the works suggest the body through vestiges and shadows in which the body asserts itself through its absence. Alan Wexler (I Want to Become Architecture) combines the role of artist and architect, as he literally translates the statement into an installation in which the negative impression of the artist is presented within a wall structure. An unseen figural presence pervades Christine Lo Faso’s Corner Chair, designed with a hole in the center and covered with images of female lips, fingernails and genitalia. Lo Faso comments on the passage of time, beauty, femininity and dignity, in which the absence of a figure compounds the poignancy of distant memories. Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese create a video sculpture, (The Last Minute) to capture a memorable emotional experience using the parallel imagery of the hands of a clock and our own hands to signify energy, movement and change.
A number of the artists explore issues of gender and sexual identity. Clarissa Sligh’s book (Wrongly Bodied) documents a woman going through a sex-change operation to become a man, and Sligh’s own reaction as a woman to this experience. Ghada Amer uses a traditionally feminine medium, embroidery, to depict images taken from pornographic magazines, repeated in a pattern that depersonalizes the depicted women, and examines the representation of the female body as a tool for pleasure. Keith Lewis’s pin (Sebastian–Imaginary Self-Portrait) reflects his identity as a homosexual male in modern society.
“This exhibition is provocative and powerful,” says David McFadden, chief curator at MAD, “as it focuses on the human body as a spiritual as physical entity. Each of the artists chosen for this exhibition engages the viewer on many levels with forms and images that are both familiar and foreign to us all.”
Related Educational and Public Programs
The Museum will promote the exhibition through a broad range of educational and public programs designed to explore the many provocative issues raised by the exhibited work. “Meet the Artist” programs are planned, as are workshops featuring exhibiting artists, who will explore the concepts and techniques used in their work. Seminars chaired by the curators will introduce students and collectors to the range of creative activity and approaches in contemporary arts and design, as well as the similarities and differences in approach between the partner countries. Hands-on workshops will offer adults and children the chance to probe some of the concepts presented in the exhibition.
Catalogue
Corporal Identity–Body Language will be accompanied by a full-color, illustrated catalogue in English and German, published jointly by the Museum of Arts & Design and the Museum of Applied Arts, Frankfurt. It includes biographies of all artists, entries of exhibited works, and a series of scholarly essays by the curators to interpret the works within current issues on the subject.
About the Museum of Arts & Design
For nearly half a century, the Museum of Arts & Design (formerly American Craft Museum) has served as the country’s premier institution dedicated to the collection and exhibition of contemporary objects created in craft media such as clay, glass, wood, metal, and fiber. The Museum celebrates materials and processes that are today embraced by practitioners in the fields of craft, art and design, as well as architecture, fashion, interior design, technology, performing arts, and art and design-driven industries. In order to further fulfill its mission and serve its growing audiences, the Museum will inaugurate a dynamic new space that stands at the very heart of New York City. Opening in 2006 at Two Columbus Circle, the new building will be three times larger than MAD’s current home on West 53rd Street, and will enable the Museum to more fully display its collection and greatly extend its exhibitions and public programming.
Funding for the Museum of Arts & Design's planning and presentation of Corporal Identity-Body Language has been provided by Altria Group, Inc. - parent company of Kraft Foods, Philip Morris International, and Philip Morris USA. For nearly 50 years, Altria Group has supported the arts as part of its commitment to enriching communities and fostering innovation, excellence and cultural diversity. Additional information is available at
www.altria.com/media_programs.