Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Inside-Out
—SPONSORED POST—-
February 6-May 30, 2010
Ryan Gander Felix provides a stage # 8 - (Eleven sketches for 'A sheet of paper on which I was about to draw, as it slipped from my table and fell to the floor'), 2008 Poster paper 118 x 177 inches; 300 x 450 cm Series 8 from a series of 11 (each unique with 1 AP) Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York
Throughout art history, artists have reflexively looked at the very site where art work is produced — the studio — as a source of inspiration for their work. Production Site reexamines the artist’s studio as subject, presenting work that documents, depicts, reconstructs, or otherwise invokes that space, revealing how the studio functions as a place where research, experimentation, production, and social activity intersect.
“Production Site presents work that documents, depicts, reconstructs, or otherwise invokes that space, it reveals how the studio provides for the intersection of research, experimentation, production, and social activity, and how our romantic notions of the artist’s studio both celebrate and constrict its role in contemporary art-making,” says Pritzker Director Madeleine Grynsztejn. The studio is used as a focus point to explore the nature of creativity; aspects of chance; and how artists have used it as a source of inspiration for their work.
William Kentridge, Balancing Act, 2003 16mm film including live-action film and animated drawings and video Video and DVD transfer 1 minute, 20 seconds
The exhibition reflects and addresses the pivotal role of the studio in artists’ practice while alluding to its enduring status in the popular imagination. MCA Curator Dominic Molon says Production Site “brings a tradition of representing the artist’s studio since the Renaissance into the present day. It provides a rare opportunity to see the studio – a space typically kept private by the artist for contemplation, conceptualization, and production – through the eyes of the artists themselves.”
The works that comprise Production Site include multi-channel video projections, photographic light-boxes and installations, and life-sized fabrications of artists’ studios — real and imagined — that either extol the virtues of the studio or problematize the preconceived and often highly romanticized notions associated with it. The exhibition provides the viewer with an unprecedented and illuminating look at how some of the most compelling artists of our time have demystified, remystified, and reconsidered this site within the physical and conjectured space of the work of art.
Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Painter), 2009 Acrylic on PVC 44 5/8 x 43 1/8 x 3 7/8 in. (113.4 x 109.5 x 9.8 cm) Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, gift of Katherine S. Schamberg by exchange 2009.15 © 2009 Kerry James Marshall Photo by Nathan Keay
On February 9 and 10, Mumbai-based Nikhil Chopra performed Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing XI in the MCA galleries. Chopra brought the artist’s studio into the gallery using a variety of costumes and props, and wall drawings that he created during the performance. These remain in the gallery as an installation for the Production Site exhibition. While performing, Chopra made drawings that reflect on Production Site, blackening the walls with his obsessive charcoal drawings to emphasize the studio as a place where an artist’s internal anxieties and struggles are confronted and resolved.
In addition to Chopra’s work, Production Site features works by William Kentridge, Bruce Nauman, Tacita Dean, Justin Cooper, Deb Sokolow, Kerry James Marshall, Andrea Zittel, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Amanda Ross-Ho, Ryan Gander, Nikhil Chopra, Rodney Graham and John Neff. Production Site is organized by MCA Curator Dominic Molon and a catalogue accompanies the exhibition.
Andrea Zittel, Studio at A-Z West Courtesy the artist and Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York © Andrea Zittel
