Site-Specific Work ROBERT LONGO: AMERICAN BRIDGE PROJECT Opens Tomorrow at Hunter College

The Hunter College Art Galleries and Department of Art & Art History present a site-specific, monumental, political work by the legendary conceptual artist Robert Longo that will comprise his largest public artwork to date.

The work will be installed on Hunter's iconic sky bridges across Lexington Avenue at 68th street, and feature a reproduction on vinyl of two of Longo's recent charcoal on mounted paper drawings. American Bridge Project will coat the windows of Hunter's third and seventh floor sky bridges, resulting in an immersive experience for viewers passing through, but also a powerful billboard-sized image visible from Lexington Avenue, both north and south of 68th Street.

The 3rd floor sky bridge is based on Longo's 2017 charcoal on paper drawing, Untitled (First Amendment, September 25, 1789), a labor-intensive portrayal of the handwritten First Amendment. The First Amendment, which affords us the right to protest, the right to freedom of religion, and the right to freedom of speech, is once again at the center of a number of American debates. The enlarged handwritten text of the First Amendment reinstates humanity into the law, a reminder that a human hand wrote it.

Longo's seventh floor sky bridge installation presents a cropped image of a charcoal on paper American flag drawing, Untitled (Berlin Flag) (2012), created by the artist in a dark, seductive chiaroscuro. Yet the image evokes something rather ominous. Longo's interpretation of the symbol implores the audience to reconsider the truth behind this image.

As Longo explains, "Drawing has a unique intimacy of notation, which I have amplified to an Epic scale [...] I hope to slow down images through the medium of drawing, to urge the viewer to consume the full power of each image. I am presenting images we see in media, images the viewer could easily scroll through on a phone. Rather, I am asking for the viewer to spend time, to really look."

Critiques of capitalism, mass culture, and race relations are common themes in Longo's works, but the Hunter project marks a departure from his usual subtlety. In a time when the values enshrined in the Constitution are under attack, and some would question the patriotism of those in power, the act of literally enlarging such American artifacts takes on new meaning. "I don't usually like to be so explicit," Longo said, "but the First Amendment is very important to me. There's a reason I'm drawing it, and the American flag, at this moment."

"Hunter College is one of New York's most ethnically and economically diverse schools, and positioned at the gateway to the Upper East Side," guest curator Jill Brienza said in a statement. "Since the beginning of my career I've striven to organize shows that spur conversation, and I think in today's political climate, Robert's works will certainly do that."

Robert Longo, American Bridge Project is made possible by Artnet, Arthur and Carol Kaufman Goldberg, Metro Pictures, and Barbara Nessim.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Robert Longo (American, b. 1953) is a New York-based artist, filmmaker, and musician. Longo moved to New York in 1977. The same year, Longo participated in a five-person show entitled Pictures-curated by Douglas Crimp at Artists Space in New York- the first protagonist exhibition to contextualize a young group of artists who were turning away from Minimalism and Conceptualism and instead towards image-making, inspired by newspapers, advertisements, film, and television. Over the next decade Longo became known as a leading of the "Pictures Generation," working across drawing, photography, painting, sculpture, performance, and film to make provocative critiques of the anaesthetizing and seductive effects of capitalism, mediatized wars, and the cult of history in the US. Longo has been represented by Metro Pictures-the first New York commercial gallery to establish a market for the Pictures Generation artists-since they opened in 1980. He presented the Men in the Cities drawings that were to establish his name at his first solo show at Metro, in 1981.

Since the 1990s, Longo has been pushing the limits of the charcoal medium, producing monumental, hyper-real charcoal on paper drawings on a scale that competes with that of sculpture.

In 2005, Longo was the recipient of the Goslar Kaiserring, and in 2010 he was inducted as Officier de L'ordre des Art et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture.

Alongside Chief Curator of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Kate Fowle, Longo co-curated "PROOF: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo," which opened at the Garage Museum in Moscow last year. The exhibition is currently on view at The Brooklyn Museum until January 7, 2018. Additionally, Longo has two solo exhibitions on view, "Let the Frame of Things Disjoint" at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in London and an eponymous exhibition at The Sara Hildén Art Museum in Tampere, Finland.

ABOUT THE CURATOR
Jill Brienza has been involved in the field of contemporary art and culture for over twenty years. When She was 19 she was given a room at Webster Hall, to curate an art show at the nightclub. More than 2,000 people came and she has been curating ever since. She is well-known for her work as Director of the Roger Smith Gallery (formerly at 47th & Lexington Avenue) , which during her ten-year tenure from 1993 to 2003 was an influential destination for the work of emerging and mid-career artists and cultural producers. The gallery showed the likes of Wangechi Mutu, Rachel Harrison and Peter Fend, and her roster of emerging International Artists often ended up in shows at the Museum of Modern Art, El Museo del Barrio and the Whitney Museum. In addition, Brienza produced events with writers, filmmakers and performers, including the Tony-award winning Sarah Jones. Brienza's exhibitions have been reviewed by The New York Times, The Atlantic, ARTFORUM, and Art in America, among others. She is a recognized expert on the work of Alan Shields, and curated Alan Shields: A Survey, a traveling museum exhibition of Shields' work and the exhibition Alan Shields: In Motion, most recently at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, NY. Her writing has been featured in Frieze, Art Basel Magazine, and publications for the Aspen Art Museum, and the Beach Museum of Art. Brienza is a board member of Creative Time, the Chairperson of the Stephen Petronio Company and on the Hunter Art and Dance Advisory Boards.

ABOUT HUNTER COLLEGE
Hunter has never wavered from its commitment to providing education and opportunity for all. Today, the College has one of the most diverse student bodies of any institution of higher education in the nation. Its students come from over 150 countries, speak 100 different languages, and represent virtually every major religion of the world. More than half of the freshmen entering Hunter have at least one immigrant parent, more than one in five were themselves born outside of the United States, and about 60% of Hunter undergraduates speak a language other than English at home. Over 50% of its students belong to ethnic minority groups; at least 23% identify themselves as Latino, 23% as Asian, 13% as Black. Most of these students are the first in their families to go to college, in pursuit of the higher education that will allow them to better succeed in the global economy.

ABOUT THE HUNTER COLLEGE ART GALLERIES & THE DEPARTMENT OF ART AND ART HISTORY
The Hunter College Art Galleries, under the auspices of the Department of Art and Art History, have been a vital aspect of The New York cultural landscape since their inception over a quarter of a century ago. The galleries provide a space for critical engagement with art and pedagogy, bringing together historical scholarship, contemporary artistic practice, and experimental methodology. The galleries are committed to producing exhibitions, events, and scholarship in dialogue with the intellectual discourse generated by the faculty and students at Hunter and serve as an integral extension of the department's academic programs.

Widely regarded as one of the leading art programs in the country, Hunter's Department of Art and Art History serves both our undergraduate and graduate populations, offering an undergraduate major in Art, a BFA and an MFA in Studio Art, and an MA in Art History. In its 2012 and 2013 rankings of "America's Best Graduate Schools," U.S. News & World Report ranked Hunter's Master of Fine Arts program 13th in the nation, and within this, the painting and drawing program 7th - a phenomenal achievement for a public institution. The MA in Art History program is renowned for its rigorous academic requirements, which include a written comprehensive exam, a foreign language proficiency exam, and a thesis. Many graduates of the Department of Art and Art History have successful careers as working artists and as curators in galleries and museums throughout the United States and abroad.

Pictured: A rendering of Robert Longo's "American Bridge Project." Courtesy of Hunter College Art Galleries.