1996 | Dates | The Activation Map

October 8, 1996 to November 2, 1996
Uncategorized
I would like to propose a show of paintings and text to be presented at the grunt gallery. The title of the show would be called The Hardy Boys Revisited. The premise of the work would be that the Hardy Boys would be freed from the narrative time warp in which they are trapped perpetually as seventeen and eighteen year olds. By using fictitious book covers and titles the works chronicle their progression into adulthood and bring Frank and Joe Hardy into the 90's. For the purposes of this show they will begin aging from the late 60's, making them in 1995 in their mid 40's

Touch

September 17, 1996 to October 5, 1996
Exhibition
Johannes Zits' paintings explore representations of gay sexuality within the context of painting. His new work continues in this vein, presenting images of bar interiors and gay couples, on a scale and in the style of Abstract Expressinoism. The result is a kind of warring of two disparate languages: the extreme America machismo of Abstract Expressionism with its almost hyperbolic expression of a private subjective state and the contemporary representations of the more politicized private spaces of gay bars. Zits' work poses questions pertaining to the language of painting-laden with a modernist history-and the language of contemporary media culture with its emphasis on issues of identity and social space and sets up a tension between the two.

July 16, 1996 to August 3, 1996
Exhibition
This exhibition traces the various strategies Laiwan has chosen over the years (from 1982 to present) in her investigation of categorized identity. These works don't posit right/wrong, us/them dichotomies, nor do they get washed away in liberal post-modern ambiguities. Using language as a primary source of engagement, Laiwan draws the viewer into a position that only self examination of our own "uniqueness" and sense of moral responsibility can complete. With just ourselves to consider, these art works become powerful reminders of the limits of our constructed perceptions.

May 29, 1996
Performance
The artist religious leaders who are participating in this exhibition of sacrificial art (sacrificial in the sense of gift or offering) are the new wave of human beings who are discovering their own truths. They are not hanging back and waiting for the cogitations and directives of official functionaries.