New York, November 2005-Opening January 7 is the dynamic exhibition Acute Zonal Occult Outer:Selections Winter 2006, which will bring together drawing, sculpture, action, endurance, and sound art through an amalgamation of installation and performance works by nine artists from around the world. As part of a multi-year collaboration, Fritz Welch (New York) with Elena Beelaerts (The Netherlands) and Jovi Schnell (San Francisco) will take over the Drawing Room with a large-scale installation and wall drawing that will grow and creep throughout the space. The three artists will then cede control of the exhibition to six action artists who will adopt the installation as a platform for their individual performances and interventions.
Acute Zonal Occult Outer was organized by Fritz Welch, through the Viewing Program, and is presented as part of the Selections series of new work by emerging artists. This is the third in a trilogy of collaborative exhibitions by Welch, Beelaerts, and Schnell. Beelaerts hosted the first exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam in Summer 2004, and the second exhibition was hosted by Schnell at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco in Fall 2004.
Acute Zonal Occult Outer will make visible the often unseen threads that connect installation art and live art. The installation by Welch, Beelaerts, and Schnell will be a starting point and a stageset for performances by six local and international artists: Rudolf Eb.Er (Switzerland/Japan), Kim Jones (New York), Ryoga Katsuma (Japan/New York), Alastair MacLennan (Northern Ireland), Andre Stitt (Wales) and Crank Sturgeon, a.k.a. Matt Anderson, (Portland, Maine). Working separately and sequentially, the artists will be given free rein to modify the space and the evolving installation through their on-site works in the fields of Endurance, Noise, and Neo-Actionism.
Each of the six invited artists approaches performance as a gesture of drawing, and their contributions will add to the dialogue between action and drawing in the installation. During the exhibition, Welch, Beelaerts, and Schnell will yield their individual and collective authorship of the installation to a series of unpredictable encounters by the action artists. In turn, Eb.Er, Jones, Katsuma, MacLennan, Stitt, and Sturgeon will question the limits of the context and throw thesetting into a state of flux, making manifest the principle of the exhibition that action is drawing.
Crank Sturgeon: Friday, January 6, 6 - 8 pm
Alastair MacLennan: Tuesday, January 10 and Wednesday, January 11, throughout the day
Ryoga Katsuma: Saturday, January 21, throughout the day
Andre Stitt: Saturday, January 28, throughout the day
Kim Jones & Derek Bernel: Tuesday, January 31, 6 - 8 pm
Rudolf Eb.Er: to be announced
Performance dates are subject to change. Please check www.drawingcenter.org for updated program information.
In conjunction with the exhibition, The Drawing Center will publish an 8-page issue of its Drawing Papers publication series. Drawing Papers 58: Acute Zonal Occult Outer will feature an essay by Robert Thill, seven illustrations, and a collaborative drawing by Welch, Beelaerts, and Schnell.
Acute Zonal Occult Outer has been made possible, in part, with the support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Greenwall Foundation. Individual artist support has been provided by Arts Council of Northern Ireland, British Council Northern Ireland, and Cardiff School of Art & Design
