Expo Chicago

P • P • O • W is pleased to present historical and contemporary works by Carolee Schneemann, David Wojnarowicz, Ann Agee, Karen Arm, Joe Houston, Anthony Iacono, and Carlos Motta.

 

In addition to our presentation in Booth 324, Carlos Motta will contribute his mixed media installation “The Shape of Freedom” to the IN/SITU program, curated by Pablo Leon de la Barra, Portia Munson will present her “Pink Project: Table” as part of OVERRIDE | A Billboard Project, and Adam Putnam will present his ongoing film “Reclaimed Empire” in the EXPO Video program, curated by Anna Gritz.

Carolee Schneemann (b. 1939) activated and took control over the formerly mute female nude with a multidisciplinary practice that includes painting, assemblage, performance, and film. By connecting the kinetic nature of her paintings and assemblages to her radical performances and films, Schneemann’s work has made a permanent mark on the history of art. P • P • O • W will present “Noise Bodies”, her 1965 “body sound system” involving costumes made from found objects activated by the artist and her then-partner James Tenney, with whom she also collaborated on her seminal early film “Fuses” 1964-67. “Noise Bodies” was first presented at the 3rd Annual Festival of the Avant Garde, in Judson Hall New York City. Schneemann’s work has been exhibited worldwide at institutions including the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Modern, London; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and The Reina Sophia Museum, Madrid. Her published books include Cezanne; She Was a Great Painter (1976); Early and Recent Work (1983); More Than Meat Joy: Complete Performance Works and Selected Writings (1979); Correspondence Course (2010) by Kristine Stiles, and Imaging Her Erotics – Essays, Interviews, Projects (2002). Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Paintings, a comprehensive retrospective of Schneemann’s work, recently traveled from Museum der Moderne, Salzburg (2015), to the Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (2017) and concluded at MoMA PS1, New York last year. “Chromelodeon” 1963, another of Schneemann’s early action installations, will be presented in Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done, opening September 16, 2018 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

 

David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) was an undeniable presence in the New York City art scene of the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s. P • P • O • W will present a selection of vintage photographic works from his iconic 1978-79 series “Arthur Rimbaud in New York” and his 1989 “Sex Series (for Marion Scemama)”, among others. Wojnarowicz’s work has been included in solo and group exhibitions around the world, at institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The American Center, Paris, France; The Busan Museum of Modern Art, Korea; Centro Galego de Art Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; The Barbican Art Gallery, London; and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. His works are in permanent collections of major museums nationally and internationally and his life and work have been the subject of significant scholarly studies. Wojnarowicz has had retrospectives at the galleries of the Illinois State University in 1990, curated by Barry Blinderman and at the New Museum in 1999, curated by Dan Cameron. A third retrospective, David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, co-curated by David Kiehl and David Breslin, opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in July 2018. The widely acclaimed exhibition has been reviewed in Artforum, The Guardian, The New York Times and The New Yorker, among others. The retrospective will travel to the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid in May 2019 and the Musee d/Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg City in November 2019. A concurrent exhibition of Wojnarowicz’s films and photographs will open at the KW Berlin in February 2019.

­­­­Ann Agee (b. 1959) investigates domesticity, material culture, feminism, and personal history to create ceramic sculptures and mixed media installations that explore appropriation, mimicry, and reproduction. P • P • O • W is delighted to present her 1992 porcelain and stoneware installation “Lake Michigan Bathroom”, which she created in residency at the Kohler Arts Center in Sheybogan, WI. Exploring bodily functions, hygiene, pollution, and wastewater treatment, this piece consists of a toilet, bidet, urinal, sink, and water fountain which extend from a tiled wall. All elements are painted in blue glaze in the tradition of English Delftware, a visual style informed by earlier traditions in Chinese pottery. This iconic work was first exhibited in 1994 in the New Museum’s Bad Girls exhibition and remains an important example of Agee’s three-decade career challenging the forms, applications, and utility of ceramics. Ann Agee has presented installations at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA, and her work has been included in notable ceramics exhibitions, including Dirt on Delight, Institute of Contemporary Art, PA and the Walker Art Center, MN, and Conversations in Clay, Katonah Art Museum, NY.  In 2011 she was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and has also been the recipient of The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, among others. Her works are included in the permanent collection of notable institutions including: The Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; The RISD Art Museum, RI; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; The Henry Art Museum in Seattle, WA; The Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, WI; and The Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, FL. Agee lives and works in Brooklyn.

 

Karen Arm (b. 1962) engages a dialogue between micro and macro, mark and object, structure and line. For over two decades, Arm’s paintings have been characterized by an obsessive virtuosity, where infinite spaces are conjured with a focus on the painting’s surface as a portal to the sublime. Her meticulous process of layering and glazing is essential in creating the dynamism in these meditative works. Arm references nature as a catalyst for ambiguity, abstraction, and exploration, seeking to capture an unseeable phenomenon; heightening nature by making the intangible visible. For Arm, the works possess action in their paused state, like the moment of fission that could be destructive or creative. These many ambiguities create a heightened tension that pushes and pulls from the surface into deep space. Arm lives and works in Brooklyn and Shelter Island, NY. Arm received her BFA from The Cooper Union in 1985, and while there, studied at the Tyler School of Art in Rome. Arm graduated from Columbia University with an MFA in 1989. Arm was the managing editor of The Book of Symbols (Archives for Research in Archetypal Symbolism), published by Taschen in 2010. In 2002 she received a New York Foundation for the Arts Award for Painting. Arm’s works were shown in the United States Embassy in Burma from 2012 to 2016.

 

Joe Houston (b. 1962) distills views of the everyday world into iconic images that examine our uneasy relationship to the natural environment and, ultimately, to one another. Executed with exacting detail and nuance, his evocative works also serve as a meditation on the precarious endeavor of painting in our time. “TAG” 2018 depicts a hand grasping a restless bird in an effort to tag its foot with a tracking number. This small, masterful painting engages with our need to define, harness, and control the natural world, as well as the current politics surrounding human migration and immigration. For Houston, this work also refers to personal identifications and his decision to put painting on hold for two decades while he pursued an alternate practice as a contemporary curator and author. Houston pursued undergraduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and earned his MFA from Northwestern University’s Department of Art Theory & Practice. His honors include an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, and the Bemis Foundation. His work is in numerous collections including the Allen Memorial Arts Museum, MIT List Visual Arts Center, RISD Museum, and Yale University Art Gallery. 

 

Anthony Iacono (b. 1987) is best-known for rigoroulsy composed figurative collages that infuse subtle contortions of form with narratives of longing and desire. Following the success of Talking to Strangers, his second solo exhibition at P • P • O • W, we will present a new work entitled “Smoke” 2018. Iacono’s work is characterized by a combination of chromatic excess and precise, yet flamboyant, geometric forms. Each work is composed of painted paper that is cut and assembled like parquetry, with intricately shaped fragments interlocking into the whole. Iacono’s exploration of physical and emotional estrangement is informed by his study of graphic and industrial design, specifically the Art Deco period. Anthony Iacono received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2010, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2013, and received his MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University's Sculpture + Extended Media program in Richmond, Virginia last spring. Crudités at Sunset, his first solo exhibition at P • P • O • W, was in 2015 and he has been included in group shows at Brennan & Griffin, 106 Green, Rockaway Topless, and Zevitas Marcus. In 2017 he was a recipient of the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship Award. He currently lives and works in New York. Iacono will have a solo exhibition of new works at Marinaro Gallery in November 2018.

 

Carlos Motta (b. 1978) examines multicultural political histories of those oppressed for their sexuality and gender in projects that engage an array of media, including installation, video, photography, and sculpture. P • P • O • W will present two works from Motta’s 1996 series of photographic self-portraits that depict the then 18-year old artist posing naked with a skull, reinterpreting the 17^th century vanitas motif. Motta’s work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern, London; the New Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, and MoMA/PS1, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; the Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogota; Serralves Museum, Porto; the Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona; the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson; San Francisco Art Institute; Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin; and X Lyon Biennale; among others. Motta was awarded the Main Prize of the Future Generation Award, Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev in 2014 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. He has received grants from Art Matters, NYSCA, and the Creative Capital Foundation. Motta lives and works in New York City and is a professor at Parsons, The New School of Design. L’Oeuvre du Diable, Motta’s second solo exhibition with Mor Charpentier, is currently on view in Paris. His second solo exhibition with P • P • O • W will open in April 2019.