On view June 19–July 25
Recognizing that Greater New York is introducing many new voices and practices to a broad audience for the first time, the backroom invites the exhibitors to present source materials that inform and support their thinking, extending the potential for getting to know the artists and their work. More akin to a temporary archive and reading room than an exhibition, the backroom consists of participant’s influences, inspiration, and research.
Of the artists that responded to the invitation some loaned ephemera referencing a person or event that is inspirational to them, while others’ contributed documents, objects, other people’s artwork, written anecdotes, audio, and video footage that has ongoing relevance. Whether the materials relate to their processes, or reveal social, cultural, and political stimuli, together the contents of the backroom creates an informal and non-systematic record of what the artists currently pay attention to in their daily practice. Visitors are invited to browse the materials according to their own interests, or search by referencing the binders that catalogue the items submitted by each artist.
Contributions include: An hour-long, taped astrology reading of one of the artist’s life from infancy to age 30 that she heard for the first time when she was 31; images of unknown artworks found on the internet; “La Peinture Incarnee,” a text by Georges Didi-Huberman dealing with ‘pan’ and the incarnate in painting, referring to Balzac's ‘Unknown Masterpiece,’ translated and repeated as a mantra; material about Combatants for Peace; a cardboard candy box with cellophane and strings; a personalized Indian rag composition; clothes that inspire photo shoots; participatory research into artists’ economies; photos of eastern European interiors with women in semi-erotic poses; a Schiaparelli hat box lid with projected snapshots of Trisha Brown dances re-enacted in the Tuileries; a compilation of photographs from press releases of every exhibition the artist visited in the last year; a recording of ‘Touching you in ways that don’t feel comfortable’ by Blood Sausage (1992); objects that reference the artist’s understanding of her life in relation to her parents; data and maps of the 'arc of deforestation' and the production of soy in the Amazon; photos of Carl Van Vechten’s ceramic cat collection; and more….
the backroom is an extension of a project initiated by Magali Arriola, Kate Fowle, and Renaud Proch over 4 months in 2005 in Los Angeles, that has since had incarnations in San Francisco, Paris, Mexico City, and Orange County. Over 60 artists, filmmakers, writers, and architects from around the world have participated in past versions.
