[ad_1]
John Gerrard, X.laevis (Spacelab), 2017.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND PACE GALLERY
Monday, September 30, 2019
Artists Withdraw from Mattress Factory Auction in Protest
Two artists—Ann Hamilton and Kathleen Montgomery—have pulled their work from an auction at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, as a protest against the art space’s decision to put its director, Michael Olijnyk, on temporary paid leave following an inquiry into the way he handled a complaint by four female employees. A third artist, Hans Peter Kuhn, also reportedly emailed the museum to let leadership know that he disagreed with the institution’s treatment of Olijnyk. “This is not the way a cultivated people deal with problems,” Kuhn told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which first reported the news.
The investigation into Olijnyk was first taken up last year, after a WESA report revealed allegations of harassment and rape against one male employee at the Mattress Factory. After one female employee went to Olijnyk with her accusations, the director made the employee take a harassment training course and reportedly kept him on staff for several more months. Following a National Labor Relations Board investigation, Olijnyk was placed on temporary paid leave in September 2018. —Alex Greenberger
Queer|Art and Robert Giard Foundation Partner for $10,000 for LGBTQ+ Photographers
The New York–based arts nonprofit Queer|Art has partnered with the Robert Giard Foundation, named after the late queer photographer, to relaunch its signature prize for emerging or under-recognized LGBTQ+ photographers, which comes with $10,000 and supports the creation of new work. Previously administered since 2008 as the Robert Giard Fellowship with an award of $7,500, the grant has been renamed the Robert Giard Grant for Emerging LGBTQ+ Photographers and will honor artists working in that medium whose practice specifically “address issues of sexuality, gender, or LGBTQ+ identity,” according to a release. The prize will be selected through an open-pool application, open until November 24, and the winner will be announced next March. The jury for this next round includes artists Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Elle Pérez, and Guadalupe Rosales, and curator and writer Efrem Zelony-Mindell.
Giard first worked as a photographer of landscapes and the nude figure, concentrating on the vistas and communities of South Fork on Long Island. In 1985, after seeing a performance of Larry Kramer’s groundbreaking play The Normal Heart, about the early days of the AIDS crisis, Giard turned his lens on the activists of that community, producing his best-known series, “Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers,” which documented over 500 of the people involved in the fight to end HIV/AIDS. The series was published as a book in 1997, and in its introduction, Giard wrote, “How can it not count to recognize at some level, no matter how submerged or close to the surface, that for many people you are somehow less—less man or less woman, less human, less serious, less significant, less deserving? Can it really make no difference realizing that some feel subtle or downright contempt for who you are, even hate you, and are convinced that you have no history, no story worth telling or worth listening to, that you are not even out there in the world, existing? … I want the world to know that we are here, have a past, and many stories to tell.” —Maximilíano Durón
Pace Gallery Now Represents John Gerrard
John Gerrard has been added to Pace Gallery’s roster. Gerrard, who creates moving-image works that he terms “simulations,” often addresses notions of power. He has said that he relies on digital moving-image work because “this medium can talk to the complexity of contemporary conditions as no other medium can.” Gerrard currently has work on view at this year’s Pierre Huyghe–curated Okayama Art Summit in Japan, and it was also on view earlier this year at Desert X, a biennial-style exhibition for outdoor artworks in California’s Coachella Valley. His art has also appeared in the 2009 Venice Biennale and the 2016 Shanghai Biennale.
Pace, which will co-represent the artist with Thomas Dane Gallery in London, plans to bring the Vienna- and Dublin-based artist’s work to its booth at the Frieze art fair, which opens to the public on Thursday. On view at the booth will be two works that will be shown on a large LED wall at the fair. (Gerrard also previously showed with Simon Preston Gallery in New York, whose founder recently closed up shop to become a senior director at Pace.) “John’s simulated worlds have helped us understand where art can go in the 21st century,” Marc Glimcher, the CEO and president of Pace, said in a statement. —Alex Greenberger
Ceramics Collection Goes to Alfred University
Alfred University in New York said that it is acquiring the Miller Ceramic Art Collection for its Ceramic Art Museum. Put together by Marlin Miller and his with his first and second wives, Marcianne (Maple) Miller and Ginger it consists of more than 200 pieces. The news was first reported by The Leader.
[ad_2]
Source link