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| HVCCA will be open by appointment only July 28th - September 12th. The museum will return to regular hours SAT & SUN 12:00pm - 6:00pm beginning September 13th. |
| Tours available upon request |
| 1701 Main Street PO Box 209 Peekskill, NY 10566 |
| tel: 914.788.0100 fax: 914.788.4531 |
| email: info@hvcca.org |
HVCCA exhibitions and programs are generously
supported by:
Symbolic Space
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| Jason Rhoades Sutter’s Mill, 2000 |
This exhibit benchmarks an important trend in contemporary art. Visual artists today are increasingly using a more formal architectural imagery in their work. In a time when architecture is in an ascendancy, when buildings such as Gehry's in Bilbao and Liebeskind's in Berlin are being visited to see the building, not just its contents, there is an inevitable blurring between fine art and architecture. This development challenges visual artists to include a more formal architectural vocabulary.
Among the important new visual artists whose work is steeped in architectural device is Gregor Schneider, a 34 year-old German who won first prize at the 2001 Venice Biennale. His scarified, reworked, old home outside Cologne was brought into the German pavilion room by room. Each room resonated with mystery and narrative of lives past and people passing through, as though the space and the occupant (and now the viewer) are constituents in a shared dialogue.
v In SYMBOLIC SPACE, HVCCA used 10,000 square feet of its space to mount an exhibit focusing on works that successfully use formal architectural language as powerful symbol and metaphor. Chen Zhen's "Traitment Musical/Vibratoire" references bodily wellness and the beating of the drum/heart on stretchers of home and hospital beds, inviting the viewer to beat the skins and join in a reparative ritual. Anselm Keifer's "Alexandria" is at first look an abstract work. Yet, against the scored lead an image evolves of books burning, perhaps referencing the burning of the great library of Alexandria, but then resonating with the horror of the destruction of an entire culture. Jason Rhoades "Sutter's Mill" focuses on the skeletal form of the great mill of the California gold rush with its rivers of clothing, rags, sweat and labor of the hopeful men of a bygone era. Included were also works by Jeff Wall, Mona Hatoum, Matthew Barney, Nigel Cooke and Susana Solano. Works from 17 countries and representative of artists, both well known and emerging, were included.
SYMBOLIC SPACE was timely in its exposure of an important artistic trend. It taught us how to look at and appreciate art as reflective of life and life as reflective of art more fully. It was timely as we continue to struggle to put in concrete motion a new project at the World Trade Center site. What is it to be? How can it provide function and authoritatively deal with its history. SYMBOLIC SPACE provided such clues.
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