SculptureCenter LIC Announces Upcoming Exhibitions

SculptureCenter 44-19 Purves Street, Long Island City 718 361 1750
www.sculpture-center.org

Exhibitions Opening
Sunday, January 10, 5-7pm
Please join us on Sunday, January 10th to celebrate the opening of SculptureCenter's winter exhibitions on view January 10 - March 30, 2010.

Leopards in the Temple
Lothar Baumgarten, Strauss Bourque-LaFrance, Nina Canell, Latifa Echakhch, Aleana Egan, Patrick Hill, Nina Hoffmann, Kerstin Brätsch and Adele Röder (DAS INSTITUT), Lucas Knipscher, Kitty Kraus, João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, Lucy Skaer, Kathrin Sonntag. Curated by Fionn Meade
Leopards in the Temple is a parable by Franz Kafka that reads as follows:

"Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony."

The group exhibition of the same name focuses on moments of metamorphosis, paradox, and formal adjacency, borrowing from the parable an ability to promote multiple readings of succinct forms and extraordinary occurrences. Protean moments where materials elide, transform, and overlay take place in the work of Lothar Baumgarten, Nina Canell, Strauss Bourque-LaFrance, and Kitty Kraus, while the rules of image production are triangulated and problematized in the painting configurations of Patrick Hill, Lucas Knipscher, and Kerstin Brätsch and Adele Röder's DAS INSTITUT. Kathrin Sonntag and Nina Hoffmann (working in collaboration) and the collaborative duo João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva present slide and film projections that explore the uncanny through acts of magnetism, doubling, and transference. And sculpture is framed and distributed as an effaced and often fictional artifact in the work of Latifa Echakhch, Aleana Egan, and Lucy Skaer. Gathering together an international group of artists, the works in this exhibition share an extra-linguistic interest in moments of translation and a resistance to fixed forms.

Ann Sperry: Harmonic Convergence
This solo exhibition presents an overview of the work of Ann Sperry (1934-2009) reflecting on four decades of experimentation with the emotional and psychological potential of material. Sperry began making sculpture in the 1970s. In an era that valued postmodern coolness and detachment, Sperry was not afraid to reach into her heart and soul. She made art about her experience as a woman, a Jew, a human being awestruck at the immensity of the cosmos.

On Long-term View:
Front Gate: Ann Craven, Against the Stream, 2008.

Opening Event
3pm - Walkthrough with the artists

Upcoming Events

Silver and Salt
Monday, January 18th, 7:30 PM
at Anthology Film Archives

Exploring the dissonance between object and image, Silver and Salt is a program of artists' films that avoid cinematic narrative. While narrative has become increasingly sophisticated and atomized within contemporary culture, this program presents alternative ways of relating to objects as images. From Nashashibi/Skaer's exploration of the Metropolitan Museum at night, Flash in the Metropolitan (2006), to the visual and linguistic interplay of John Smith's Associations (1975), this program highlights ruptures in the relationship between the filmed object and the image that it becomes. Marie Menken explores sculpture in four dimensions in Visual Variations on Noguchi (1945), Lois Rowe's Argument from Design (2006) constructs an absurdist monologue around a glass house, and Margaret Salmon's PS (2002) excavates the tensions of pastoral images and a sun-bleached suburbia.

Films selected by artist Lucy Skaer and curator Isla Leaver-Yap. A conversation with Skaer and Leaver-Yap follows the screening.

João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva
Monday, March 8, 7:30 PM
at Anthology Film Archives

Described as "poetic philosophical fiction", João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva's 16mm films explore and interpret the uncanny through acts of magnetism, transference, and material transformation. Influenced by alchemy, science fiction, ethnography, and speculative philosophy, their silent films question the boundaries of the perceivable world through short, enigmatic scenarios. Having represented Portugal at last year's Venice Biennial, Gusmão and Paiva (collaborators since 2001) will present a selection of their highly suggestive meditations on the paranormal, including recently completed 35mm works.

Part of the SculptureCenter exhibition Leopards in the Temple, the filmmakers will be on hand.

Please visit www.sculpture-center.org for complete information on exhibitions and events.

Directions
7 to 45th Road / Courthouse Square, E or V to 23rd / Ely, or G to Courthouse Square (note: the V train does not run on weekends). From all trains, walk north on Jackson Avenue one block past 44th Drive and turn right onto Purves Street.

SculptureCenter is five minutes from Midtown by subway.