Curatorial Project: Site Specific

Site Specific features a group of artists, whose works explore the psychological, physical, and cultural notion of location. The exhibition includes works in various media, including paintings of politically and historically significant structures, a series of paintings dealing with the notion of an ideal tourist destination, and dioramas which recreate location scenes lifted from obscure movies. Other works include a childishly crafted, life-size shelter which identifies with vernacular living, and a video-loop exploring the tension of a potential shifting of political borders. Site Specific’s aim is not only to examine the commonalities and contradictions of our concept of a place, but also to understand and define our position within the increasingly global community. Held at artSPACE@16, Malden, MA. 2004 

SITE SPECIFIC
artSPACE@16 I July 26 – August 28, 2004

Site Specific features five artists, Hillary Baldwin, Lior Neiger, Maria Raponi, Daniel Rich and Lauren Warner, whose works explore the psychological, physical, and cultural notion of location. The exhibition includes works in various media, including paintings of politically and historically significant structures, a series of paintings dealing with the notion of an ideal tourist destination, and dioramas which recreate location scenes lifted from obscure movies. Other works include a childishly crafted, life-size shelter which identifies with vernacular living, and a video-loop exploring the tension of a potential shifting of political borders. Site Specific’s aim is not only to examine the commonalities and contradictions of our concept of a place, but also to understand and define our position within the increasingly global community.

 

Hillary Baldwin is a Brookline native. Her life-size sculpture of an igloo transports us to a nostalgic place which exists, for the most part, in the mediated cultural memory. This shelter is an icon of a far away location, and an artifact of a once-thriving, complex culture. Today, the igloo is more a symbol than a dwelling, and visitors are invited to interact with the piece on both levels. Baldwin describes her work as an eclectic mix of objects, images, and ideas excavated from the archives of the collective unconscious. They pay tribute to the precariousness of being human, borrowing their brand of humor from the tristesse of a Peanut’s strip. She adds, in the end, this is the stuff of everyday life, nature AND culture, human AND animal, stylish AND lumpen, where anything is possible. She is recipient of the 2004 Boit award.

 

Lior Neiger was born in Haifa, Israel, and has recently relocated to Boston. Neiger’s video loop, entitled “Globe,” examines the framework of boundaries, and the consequences inherent in the shifting of political, intellectual, and historical borders. The piece explores the possibility of not only territorial and cultural modification, but also the potential of one connected economic market. Neiger states that the work elicits questions concerning knowledge and orientation (or lack thereof), confronting us with the realization that between every two spots in the world there is always some kind of connection. In 2003, he was awarded the Americas-Israel Cultural Foundation grant. His recent exhibitions include a show at Exit Art in New York, NY, exhibits at Video Space at the Judi Rotenberg Gallery, the Drawing Show at the Mills Gallery, and The Artists Foundation in Boston, and a show at the Herzliya Museum of Art in Israel.

 

Maria Raponi is a photographer who originally hails from Canada. She recreates scenes borrowed from lesser-known movies such as Amelie and 400 Blows. Using set design and architectural model-making techniques, the pieces replicate our cinematic imagination of the places inhabited in the films, inviting the viewer to participate in a tactile and immediate way. Raponi describes her work as looking at the construct of the hyper-stylized medium which is cinema: particularly what it is reduced to in my memory as well as the elaborate production of tension, trauma, and the uncanny in the carefully orchestrated events that elicit the appropriate emotion at the appropriate time.

 

Daniel Rich was born in Ulm, Germany, to British parents, and now lives and works in the US. For Rich, who is accustomed to making a clear distinction between one place and another, it is not surprising that his experience is channeled throughout his work. His most recent paintings chronicle contemporary and historically politicized spaces and architecture, rendering more recognizable buildings and seemingly less iconic structures with equal significance. Rich’s work not only defines a location but also signifies a summed inter-national identity. He states, I depict examples of our built world that signify contemporary and recent political and historical events…. the ambiguity allows the viewer a range of interpretations while the titles attempt to point towards the more specific content. His recent shows include The Sublime is (still) now, at the Elizabeth Dee Gallery New York, NY, and Axiom, at Gallery 4, in Baltimore, MD. He will be attending Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine this summer.

 

Lauren Warner was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, and is currently residing in Boston. Warner enjoys outdoor activities such as spelunking, and is fascinated by the continuing romantic depiction of the American landscape. She writes, My paintings of mountains are inspired by indoor wall murals depicting the spectacle of nature, found in resorts and other tourists destinations. The paintings are arranged with national park scenic overlooks in mind – designed and constructed for viewers to experience ideal panoramas. Her paintings of idealized snapshots of national parks are illustrated with a sublime quality that suggests a pristine and staged perfect getaway. Warner’s subject matter of unspoiled landscapes and bucolic backdrops are truly at home in the American psyche, recalling the idealism of early 19th century American landscape painters. She is a recipient of Dana Pond award for excellence in painting.

*Italics are excerpt from the artists’ statement.

 

REVIEWS:

Hopkins, Randi. I’ll Take You There, Editor’s Picks, Boston Phoenix, August 13-19, 2004
Yang, Daphne. Site-Specific: Global Community, The World Journal, August 25, 2004
Gamber, Matt. Site-Specific @ Artspace@16, Big Red and Shiny, issue #10, 2004