Opening reception February 3, 6-11 p.m.

This exhibition takes on sports and masculinity as its central themes in a collection put together especially for iMOCA by Christopher Bedford, chief curator of the Wexner Center for the Arts.

Images of women—from the goddess Venus to the Virgin Mary—have long been a classic subject in visual arts. In Hard Targets, varied treatments of masculinity get a turn in the spotlight. Hard Targets seeks to revise and complicate our time-honored stereotypes of male athletes and athleticism (as aggressive, heterosexual, hypercompetitive, and remote) by presenting alternative, possibly more democratic, interpretations of subjects frequently revealed to us only in authorized and frankly commercial images. The artists in the show instead investigate sports and masculine identity through topics ranging from biology to business to celebrity, played out in locker rooms, stadiums, and advertising campaigns.

In the videos, photographs, paintings, sculptures, and installations of Hard Targets, you’ll find projects that are funny, irreverent, sexy, incisive, and poignant. Featured artists in the show are: Mark Bradford, Cary Leibowitz, Glenn Ligon, Catherine Opie,  Joe Sola, Hank Willis Thomas, and Jonas Wood.

In their examinations, you’ll discover how the ways we view and consume sports stars and athletic events are structured by systems of desire and identification more complex (and more fascinating) than most spectators and fans ever realize.

Images:
Hank Willis Thomas
Scarred Chest, 2003
Lambda photograph
60 X 40 inches
Courtsey of the Artist and Jack Shainman Gallery

Joe Sola
Saint Henry Composition
Single Channel Video with sound
Courtsey of the Artist, Blackston, NY, Nye and Brown, Los Angeles

Click here to see images from the opening.

Brian James Priest’s exhibit Animalcules centers on human beings as both collectors and collections, the exhibit will feature large-scale prints, sound and floor installations, and live performance art.

Priest’s exhibition takes its name from Anton van Leeuwenhoek, inventor of the microscope and discoverer of microorganisms. Leeuwenhoek looked at an ordinary drop of pond water and discovered the beauty and monstrous face of the microscopic world. He “found Eden in every drop of water”, so the world instantly became more dense, more wonderful, and more terrifying.

“We are a collection of experience as well as ecology. I am both marveled and frightened by the reality of being mostly bacteria cells (9 to 1 actually),” says Priest. “Essentially, by harboring 4 billion organisms we are each walking planets. This implies the possibilities of agendas unbeknownst to our scale of day to day survival.”

His piece Body Zoo is a tiny zoological garden of these organisms contained within a sub dermal silicon structure implant in his arm, is inspired by this.

Priest seeks to draw connections between our very distant pasts and our distant futures. “We have but only a short tenure of these molecules,” says Priest. “We eventually offer them back to the universe.”

Sand is the dominant material within this show. With Grains, he makes contoured forms of individually collected grains of sand. Within that established border he invents bizarre landscapes for the surface. “These grains were collected by me over the last 6 months,” says Priest.

Wind and Life works with one single grain of sand from the Bodele depression near Lake Chad in Africa, one of the world’s driest spaces. By the combined effort of dust storms and the Bodele low level jet stream this specific region of the world, that contains little life, produces more than half the dust needed for fertilizing the Amazon rainforest. “While these grains act as transports of life, I use that as a way to discuss them as transports of imagination,” says Priest. “Little single units of inspiration of form.”

In all, Priest’s work asks for different levels of belief. “Artists tell stories; we convince you that a chunk of material is something else, that it stands for something else, that it represents something bigger and more profound. I want people to question everything, not just my creations, but the world around them.”

Brian James Priest received his BFA from Herron School of Art and Design in 2004 and his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2007. He is currently a visiting lecturer at California Polytechnic State University where he instructs sculpture, intermedia, and art theory. Other professional activities have included operating the Biscuits and Gravy Gallery and working in various set design and fabrication shops. He has recently had exhibitions at Midwest Museum of Art, Kemper Museum of Art, and White Flag Project Space and is a 2008 Efroymson Fellow.

This exhibition is sponsored by:
The Efroymson Family Fund, Hotbed Creative, the Christel DeHaan Family Foundation, Murphy Art Center L.L.C., and The Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation.

Click here to see pictures from the opening night of My Son The Future Time Traveler.

Cincinnati based artist Ryan Mulligan’s work has always revolved around magical thinking. His show My Son The Future Time Traveler opening at iMOCA June 3^rd is no exception. A 30 foot wall mural and “TV drawings” will take over the front gallery. In the back gallery of iMOCA, a time machine built for Mulligan’s 5 month old son, Hobbs.

The time machine deals with his new role of being a father and will feature collections related to the idea that one day his son will be a time traveler.

“These shelves of objects and clusters of paintings are my way of dealing with the fear that I can’t protect this little guy,” said Mulligan.  “That I can’t accurately communicate with him.  And that I’m not supposed to be his best friend; I’m supposed to take care of him.”

Most of Mulligan’s work is autobiographical. He’s kept the themes and obsessions that previously drove his work; becoming a parent has added weight to those obsessions. It gives Mulligan’s new body of work both intensity and lightheartedness.

Before his own fatherhood, his work revolved around his father. In 1985 when Mulligan was four years old his father was hit by a drunk driver.

“It scrambled his brains, says Mulligan. “Of course I didn’t really know him before that but everyone said he was different.”

His dad deteriorated as the years went by. In 1990 when Mulligan was in high school, his father beat up his mother. Mulligan’s anger at his father led to him create artwork.

“I spent the night writing on this display board then realized people shouldn’t read it so I tried to cover it up with house paint and then by beating it to a pulp. I realized it was art and I wanted to do it forever.”

By 2006 his father was in assisted living.

“All my work was all about figuring out how to deal with this. In college the anger stopped and turned into nuanced conversation about what it means to be a man. I figured out, the less story I told directly, the more universal it became.”

In 2008 his father died. Mulligan continued to use his art to cope with the loss. He dabbled in nearly every medium of art, from painting, to video, to performance. But found he was soon was successful in dealing with his father’s death. It had a negative effect on his drive to create work.

“ I had to realize that once the anger was gone, I could still make work.  I don’t think enough people are honest about that in their work.  Something motivates us, and it is almost always an internal motivator.”

Ryan Mulligan’s show, My Son Future Time Traveler ,will be up at iMOCA, 1043 Virginia Avenue, Indianapolis, In 46203, June 3-July 16 Monday-Thursday 11 a.m.-6 p.m. iMOCA will host an opening reception June 3^rd 6-11 p.m.

About Mulligan

Born and raised in rural Virginia, Ryan Mulligan attended Virginia Commonwealth University for his MFA and is now Assistant Professor of Art for the University of Cincinnati. He currently is the coordinator of the Art Foundations Program, and teaches students to continually explore their own lives as source material, and maintain a ceaselessly productive studio practice.

This exhibition is sponsored by:

The Efroymson Family Fund, the Christel DeHaan Family Foundation, Murphy Art Center L.L.C., Penrod Foundation, and HotBed Creative.

October 1 – November 20, 2010

NEIGHBORHOOD

Click here to see photos from the opening reception.

Neighborhood brought together 6 Los Angeles-based artists who looked at the developed environment as a subject matter of investigation. In this group exhibition, the title “neighborhood” is used loosely, as it refers either to a specific place (sometimes the artist’s own neighborhood) or an abstract location (something that’s been imagined in the artist’s mind, or studied and accessed virally). Different art-making strategies, sometimes overlapping, are employed to create the final pieces. Not limited to one medium,Neighborhood features paintings, drawings and photography; the artists included are Jennifer Celio, Jennifer Lanski, Alia Malley, Nikko Mueller, Shelby Roberts and Devon Tsuno. The group show will run through November 20, 2010.

Jennifer Celio, who primarily works in graphite pencil on watercolor paper and wood panels, offers 5 meticulously rendered drawings that focus on aspects of the city that are often over-looked. With earlier works, Celio’s drawings are directly translated from her photographs of urban environments such as a street corner or the façade of a tract house. Although photography still acts as a starting point, Celio’s more recent drawings have evolved from the literal to the fantastical, now amalgamating selected elements from her collection of images and integrating them to make a single drawing. In Can’t See the Forest (2008), for instance, individual cell phone towers outfitted as fake pine trees from different locations throughout her surrounding neighborhoods are drawn together to create a fictitious forest. Here, the artificiality of our natural environment as well as our quest for it are questioned.

Jennifer Lanski’s American Dream examines the reality or fading possibility of the “American Dream” through the generally understood ideal that hard work can lead to home ownership. Here, the artist looks at this ideal on a national level and presents the viewer with a grid installation of 50 drawings, one drawing for each of the 50 states. Combing through real estate websites of every state, Lanski selects and downloads the image of each house that’s in the same city and zip code as a Target or Wal-Mart. Each drawing—measuring 14-by-12 inches and made of India ink and lightfast colored pencil on BFK Rives paper—depicts a single-family house with text below showing the asking price and the equivalent number of hours at the minimum wage that one would have to work in order to acquire the house in that location and time. By juxtaposing the asking price of a modest, single-family home with the number of hours of labor at minimum wage required to equal that value, the reasonableness of both the current minimum wage and the housing prices in a given area are brought into question. The serial nature of the work also invites comparisons between different geographical locations; the housing versus minimum wage metric can be further examined with respect to the desirability of the given locations.

Alia Malley presents the viewer with 3 archival pigment prints from her Southland series. This project represents Malley’s continued investigation of photography’s role in relation to its documentation of the environment. The artist frequently drives through the streets and along the highways of greater Los Angeles, seeking pockets of unchecked terrain that often reside unnoticed or completely ignored. In fallow sites such as an abandoned inner-city rail line or the grounds of a shuttered fraternity house, Malley attempts to forge a bridge between capturing the sense of place and also its beauty and loss within the environs. Her images exist in the space between the pastoral and the entropic, resembling a Hudson River School or a Dutch landscape painting from afar but with a darker narrative upon closer inspection.

Nikko Mueller works from aerial imagery and architectural plans to engage the developed terrain as abstraction and data. With each selected site, Mueller—primarily using Google Earth and physical maps—creates an acrylic painting that is a translation of such location. His works are meant to critique the templates of social values and desires; the painted pieces are like autopsies, revealing but also questioning the developers’ blueprints of intentions. Channel (2006), a dark painting measuring 38-by-33 inches, depicts an aerial view of a planned city block; the dominant structure on top, resembling a figure with both arms stretched out, is the largest church existing in Orange County, a right-wing, conservative suburb 60 miles outside of Los Angeles. Depicted from the aerial perspective, this alien-like structure and the black color palette throughout the work evoke an ominous quality, dwarfing the neighboring residents.

Shelby Roberts makes photographic works about the ironies and paradoxes of the landscape; his current work is a series of black-and-white photographic panoramas of built environments in the landscape that are failing the ambition that conceived them. Without the use of a tripod, each location is photographed digitally, taking multiple overlapping frames. The final panorama offers a greater sense of place than is possible from a standard frame, linking the built environment to the land beneath it and allowing the gaze to follow the horizon. Parker (2008), an archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper measuring 24-by-48 in., depicts an abandoned drive-in movie theater decaying in the arid landscape; the unused screen has fallen apart, a metaphor for the failure of the American Dream in a town once destined for prosperity. In Pioneertown (2008), a hip and modernist house, famously designed to showcase uninterrupted glass walls and open floor plan, sits amidst the serene desertscape. Outfitted with the most up-to-date amenities, this structure houses the inhabitants in a zoo-like vitrine, where the wildlife on the outside looking in ironically becomes the voyeur.

Devon Tsuno often traverses the LA neighborhoods on his fixed gear bike at night, photographing the contrapuntal elements and strange phenomena within the urban grid. Back at his studio, Tsuno works from such photographs and oftentimes combines them to create source images; and from them, he makes works on paper that obfuscate not only the origin of the locales, but also the line between abstraction and representation. His paintings are made of layers upon layers of spray paint and acrylic paint, using psychedelic colors reminiscent of those existing and seen only at night.  As a whole, his pieces create a non-linear narrative that is defined not by a specific place or time.

Panel discussion with artists Alia Malley, Nikko Mueller, Shelby Roberts and Devon Tsuno:Saturday October 2, 11 a.m. -12:10 p.m.

NUVO gives the show 4 stars.

____________________

August 6-September 18

POSTSECRET: CONFESSIONS ON LIFE, DEATH, AND GOD

Click here to see photos from the opening reception.

The Indianapolis Museum of Contempory Art (iMOCA) will exhibit Frank Warren’s PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God. The opening reception is August 6, 6-11 p.m. at iMOCA, located inside the Murphy Art Center in Fountain Square.  It will feature the original postcards Warren received during a community art project where people anonymously mail in their secrets.

The senders created a handmade piece of artwork on one side with the secret which ranged anywhere from,” I send birthday cakes to people on Death Row.”  to “I jerk off to other people’s Facebook photos.” Warren posts the images and confessions every Sunday on his website: www.postsecret.com.

“This project has shown me that art can be like a new tongue that allows us to speak and pray in ways that might otherwise be impossible,” says Warren. “And if we listen, we may come to understand that we are always on our spiritual journey—even when we feel most lost.”

The website receives more than 6,000,000 visitors per month. The popularity of the website led to several books of the postcards being published, all of which made the New York Times bestseller list. Most recently the book “PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God” (the namesake of the art exhibition) released in October 2009 hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

Warren’s PostSecret project is also credited to “moving the cause of mental health forward” by the National Mental Health Association and raised over $200,000 for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.

iMOCA is open Thursday-Saturday 11 a.m.-6 p.m. and closed on holidays. Admission is free and made possible by The Efroymson Family Foundation, The Murphy Art Center, The Haddad Family Foundation, and The Nicholas H Noyes Jr. Memorial Foundation.

The exhibition was organized International Arts &Artists, Washington, D.C. in cooperation with Frank Warren.

____________________

August 6-21

THE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF GINGER GAYLORD

The Private Collection of Ginger Gaylord will bring to Indianapolis three of today’s top illustration based “pop surrealist” artists, Ken Garduno, Angie Mason, and Christopher Umana.

The show will take place in the Mt. Comfort Gallery.

Ginger Gaylord is one of the pseudonyms a Chicago-based art collector uses when she purchases a piece of art. Gaylord prefers to use a pseudonym because she desires to keep the contents to her collection private. As she frequently says, “If people don’t know who you are or what you have, people won’t want to steal it.”

When offered to curate a show, Shauta Marsh contacted Gaylord looking for artists with an illustration base. “I find pop surrealism and lowbrow art  very appealing,” says Marsh. “It is accessible and has its fingers on the pulse of western pop culture. When art borrows from pop culture and combines it with illustration, it appeals to us the way cartoons and/or picture books did when we were children. But these artists create work that reflects what we’ve learned as adults and the problems of society, pair this with familiar images from our youth. Collectors are buying these pieces and we are beginning to see more of this kind of work in museums.”

The artists in this show are a few of the most recent artists Gaylord has collected with an illustration focus. iMOCA is pleased to offer Indianapolis patrons the opportunity to own the work of these artists.

About Ken Garduno: Ken Garduno graduated with honors from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California with a Bachelors of Arts degree in illustration.  Since graduation, he has been working in Los Angeles as a freelance illustrator/fine artist.  Ken’s work has been shown in numerous galleries internationally, and has done illustrations for various clients.  Some of these past clients include: The Penguin Group, LA Weekly, The Village Voice, The New York Times, Clandestine Industries, Pacific Sunwear, as well as design for the bands Fall Out Boy and As Tall As Lions.

About Angie Mason: Angie Mason grew up all over Northern New Jersey and spent time in Puerto Rico living on her grandfathers farm and also lived in Florida during her formative years. A chaotic disjointed upbringing helped form her visual imagination and sensibilities at an early age. She attended Parsons School of Design where she lived in New York City for a brief period. While at Parsons, she studied in both the fine arts and illustration departments.

Mason has been creating her inner world since a very young age developing the characters and telling the story of her life through paintings, drawings and sculpture. Exploring the twisted combination of opposites through the creation of slightly off characters using them as a way to paint truths about being human. Mason’s works are both horrific and humorous, yet speaks of what it means to be human. Her works are a visual examination and narrative of life in modern times as seen through her menagerie of creatures which act as mirrors for us when looking directly at ourselves is too frightening to do, giving us a glimpse of reality through a grotesque folk pop lens.

Angie Mason exhibits her work extensively throughout the United States as well as exhibiting her work internationally. Her grotesque folk pop sensibility has put her in the center of the new contemporary movement having her work collected and shown all over the world in such places at France, Germany, Japan, London, New York City and Los Angeles. She currently resides and works out of her home in Northern New Jersey, a spooky old colonial house that she shares with her husband and very bad kitty.

About Christopher Umana: Christopher Umana is an illustrator and native of Southern California who now resides in Northern Nevada.  He earned his BFA in Illustration from the Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, California.  His work depicts everyday occurrences from the monumental to the mundane.  Every moment in one’s life is a piece of a puzzle that should always call attention to itself regardless of its importance or impact.  Everything we do has relevance and an effect on ourselves and those around us.  Umana uses anthropomorphic figures as representations of the people he encounters everyday. He believes there is a connection between people, animals, and insects. He also uses flora and fauna in his work to represent the personality traits of people and how they react and adapt to their lives and surroundings.”  His recent work focuses on personal topics such as family life and death in correlation with different cultural reactions and superstitions related to these subjects.

Umana has shown extensively across the United States and is in private collections worldwide with various shows scheduled at home and in Europe for next year.  He has also done editorial and commercial illustration, most recently an album cover for the pioneer of breakcore music worldwide, Venetian Snares.  He draws inspiration from the importance of drawing, and the emotional impact you can create through expressions.  This is why Umana’s characters have a tightly “drawn” quality on top of the loose paint.  This is his homage to the comic artists who influenced him growing up.  It is also a tribute to the expressive and raw style he remembers from preschool finger painting.

____________________

June 4-July 17

EVANS WOOLLEN: THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE

Click here to see photos from the opening reception.

The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) will open a photography exhibition focused on the six-decade career of one of Indianapolis’s most accomplished architects.  Evans Woollen: The Art of Architecture will open at 6 p.m. on June 4 in iMOCA’s gallery in the Murphy Art Center.

Woollen is an internationally recognized architect responsible for significant projects around the country.  However, Woollen had the most impact shaping the landscape of his native Indianapolis, with buildings ranging from progressively modern homes to notable local landmarks including Clowes Hall, the Minton-Capehart Federal Building and the recent expansion of the Indianapolis-Marion County Central Library.  The show, curated by Mary Ellen Gadski and iMOCA board members Brandon Judkins (Board President) and Tom Vriesman (Board Secretary), will feature photographs spanning Woollen’s entire career from world-renowned photographers including Balthazar Korab, Ezra Stoller, and Timothy Hursley – as well as the local talent of Wilbur Montgomery, Craig McCormick, and Serge Melki.

“From the beginning, iMOCA’s mission has been centered on connecting contemporary art with everyday life,” Judkins said. “Over the past six decades, Evans has created, and continues to create, work of true artistic expression that touches the daily lives of countless people in our city. By bringing images of his important work together in one space, people will hopefully walk away with a better sense of the impact Evans’s work has made on our daily routines and rituals.”

In addition to his architectural work, Woollen has spent a great deal of time developing his skill as a painter.  A collection of twelve of Woollen’s abstract paintings, many of which are being exhibited for the first time, will be on display upstairs in Mt. Comfort Gallery.

Evans Woollen: The Art of Architecture will run through July 24th with hours Thursday-Saturday 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. The exhibit is part of a series of events that will occur across the city focused on Woollen’s work. The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) will begin the events with a lecture by Woollen on June 3rd at 7 p.m. titled “To Build in Context.” Then, the day after iMOCA’s reception, Indiana Landmarks will offer a tour of six of Woollen’s early homes.  The tour takes place on June 5th and runs from 1 – 6 p.m., with the tour headquarters at Butler University’s Clowes Hall.

About Evans Woollen

Woollen was born into a prominent Indianapolis family whose forbearers first settled here in the 1820′s.  He attended high school at the prestigious Hotchkiss School (Lakeville, Connecticut), and then went on to study architecture at Yale.  After graduating from Yale (1952), Woollen worked in the office of architectural and artistic giant Philip Johnson (Pritzker Prize winner and architect for such projects as the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, Crystal Cathedral, and his seminal “Glass House”). After working for Johnson in Connecticut, Woollen returned to Indianapolis in 1955.  He began his practice in Indianapolis with a flurry of modest, but progressive and modern residential projects.  In 1963, Clowes Hall, designed by Woollen in collaboration with John Johansen, opened and proved to be a breakthrough in his career.  In the decades that followed, Woollen, and his partners at Woollen Molzan & Partners, Inc., developed innovative libraries, churches, government building, and performing arts venues around the country. Woollen has now returned to residential work. His latest project, finished earlier this year, is a complex of three homes on densely wooded land in Carmel.

To read NUVO art critic Dan Grossman’s review, click here.

____________________

Opening Friday, April 2 at 6 p.m.

SEEING IS BECOMING

Seeing is Becoming brings together six artists who create objects that might be described as potential portraits. These works play with the ambiguity inherent in all images and treat visual perception as an interpretive act involving both memory and imagination.

The artists in Seeing is Becoming propose a conception of portraiture in which artist, subject and viewer occupy symmetrical, equal and interchangeable positions. They resist easy, fixed notions of identity and point to potential new ways of seeing and being.

The work in Seeing is Becoming does not aim at a single, correct interpretation, but rather examines the artist’s attempt to grapple with the problematic nature of reality. In the seriesLooking at Art, The Reception, Shizu Saldamando slyly reverses the position of the viewer and the subject. The subjects, the artist’s friends attending a gallery opening, are drawn in ballpoint pen on canvas. They gaze out expectantly, placing the viewer in the unusual position of the artwork. Louis Bickett’s carefully archived objects appear to be the collected personal effects of a presumably fictitious ‘Daddy.’ The objects and their labels suggest a complex and often contradictory narrative around their absent owner.

These artists introduce ideas, and to a certain degree they explain them, but they don’t tell us, not completely anyway, the problems to which those concepts are a response. These gaps are openings, allowing us as viewers to become co-conspirators with the artists.

The work in Seeing is Becoming does not aim at a single, correct interpretation, but rather examines the artist’s attempt to grapple with the problematic nature of reality. These artists introduce ideas, and to a certain degree they explain them, but they don’t tell us, not completely anyway, the problems to which those concepts are a response. These gaps are openings, allowing us as viewers to become co-conspirators with the artists.

Artists: Louis Bickett (Lexington, KY), Julie Orser (Los Angeles, CA), Letitia Quesenberry, (Louisville, KY) Chris Radtke (Louisville, KY) , Shizu Saldamando, (Los Angeles, CA) and Dmitry Strakovsky (Lexington, KY).

The show will run through May 15.

____________________

February 5-March 20

RECORDS

Click here to see photos from the opening reception.

Athens, Georgia-based artist Kathryn Refi creates unique visual documentation of her daily experiences by dissecting her ritually performed actions and reconfiguring them into often-abstracted records. The presentation of her work mainly utilizes the media of painting and drawing, though Refi often uses technology to capture her initial information. Creating works that are exquisitely rendered and striking, these “products” of her actions are very much contingent on the process Refi defines to capture her data. Records, which presents several bodies of work including: “All Things Considered”, “Color Recordings” and “My Address Book”, is the most comprehensive exhibition of her work to date.

In her most recent body of work, All Things Considered, Refi created large drawings based upon the information she received from listing to National Public Radio’s (NPR) program of the same title during 2007. During each one hour episode, which covers global news, Refi noted all the geographical locations that were mentioned in each segment. Using small adhesive dots Refi then created her own global maps on paper with a marker for each mention of a particular location. Without adding in country boundaries a map of the world emerges. These maps beg the viewer to ask “Are all things really considered” as one can see the areas of the globe that are covered by this global news radio program.

Refi’s painting Color Recordings detail the dominant colors that she saw in her daily life during a one week period. Wearing a surveillance camera embedded in a hat for a week, the footage was then put into a customized computer program which organized the video recording into 729 distinct hues. Refi then established a minimum amount of color for inclusion in the paintings (.125 percent/day) and calculated how much of each color to paint. The resulting “abstract” works truly take on a different presence when the method of their creation is known.

The My Address Book series offers striking portraits of the important locations in Refi’s life: the addresses of her friends and relatives through the perspective of the satellite.  Exploiting technology for her initial images, Refi hand-painted the 43 locations in the series. The works remind the viewer that our understanding of location, and how to determine geographic place, is now often completely dependent on technology.

Frequently using technology to capture data which is the basis for her works, Kathryn Refi finds a way to put handcraft into all her creations, fashioning items that are as visually intriguing as they are thought-provoking. Realized with an autobiographical vision, these sophisticated records are a glimpse of our own everyday life, resonating with personal significance for all of us.

Show curated by Paula Katz.

Kathryn Refi has exhibited her work nationally including solo and group exhibitions at the Fugitive Art Center, Nashville Tennessee; Solomon Projects, Atlanta, Georgia; Mixed Greens, New York City; The Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina; University Galleries, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida; Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta, Georgia; Fe Gallery, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Refi received her MFA in 2002 from the University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia where she currently resides. She received her BFA from the Maryland College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland in 1997.

Hansel and Gretel: Never Eat a House

In the fairytale, a hungry Hansel and Gretel are lured to the witch’s house in hopes of a meal. By contrast, Hansel and Gretel: Never Eat a House from the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) is a feast of irreverent, thought-provoking contemporary art.

The exhibitions are part of collaboration with the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library and the Indianapolis Opera. iMOCA’s portion consists of modern takes on the dark fairytale from the Brothers Grimm–typical of the only Indianapolis museum dedicated to emerging contemporary art.

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin, Efroymson Fund, 92.3 WTTS, Rowland Design, IMC, NUVO, The Indianapolis Foundation, Allen Whitehall Clowes Charitable Foundation, Stellar Gin, Arts Council of Indianapolis, and LevelSix.
Above: Christoph Niemann

____________________

September 26 – November 1, 2008

Doppio Songo Dell’ Arte (Art’s Double Dream)

Some of the beautiful artwork in Doppio Sogno Dell’Arte includes delicate engravings by Alberto Burri, explosions of color by Sam Francis and the geometrical dreams of Basaldella. Other artists represented include Enzo Cucchi, Victor Pasmore, Amaldo Pomodoro, Henry Moore, George Segal and Louise Nevelson.

The exhibit’s promotion of an art form without borders, as well as its emphasis on graphic design from the 1970s to the present, dovetails with the mission of iMOCA. It is the only museum in Indianapolis dedicated to showcasing original, groundbreaking contemporary and modern art.

After successful showings in Milan and Chicago, Doppio Sogno Dell’Artearrives in Indianapolis thanks to some Italian help. “I wish to thank Dr. Carlo Romeo, the Italian consul in Detroit, who has been instrumental in generously allowing iMOCA to present Doppio Sogno Dell-Arte,” Nagler said. “My thanks also to Paola Santini for alerting me to this high-quality show and helping us bring it to Indianapolis.”

iMOCA’s goals include stimulating minds and inspiring new discoveries.Doppio Sogno Dell’Arte will inspire viewers to think—perhaps dream—in new ways about graphic art.

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin, Efroymson Fund, 92.3 WTTS, Rowland Design, IMC, NUVO, The Indianapolis Foundation, Allen Whitehall Clowes Charitable Foundation, Stellar Gin, Arts Council of Indianapolis, and LevelSix.
Above: Alexander Calder: Presenza Grafica, 1972, etching and aquatint on zinc plate.

____________________

July 22 – September 6

Chakaia Booker: The Making of a Public Art Exhibition

How does a tire become a work of art? Chakaia Booker: The Making of a Public Art Exhibition explores through video and finished sculpture how the artist created her works for her citywide installation Mass Transit. Follow the artist as she creates some of the pieces you can find around downtown Indianapolis in our videos featuring interviews with Booker herself. Meanwhile, the maquettes show different stages of a work before it can be considered finished.

The pedestal and hung pieces serve as a window into the creative mind of Chakaia Booker. While rubber tires appear crude and purely utilitarian at first glance, Booker sees greater potential in the material. She manages to transform the rubber tread into flowing forms that explore transformation, beauty, line, and texture. At the same time, the concept of using tires maintains references to Indianapolis racing and the city’s history.

Chakaia Booker was born in 1953 in Newark, New Jersey and now resides in NYC and Allentown, Pennsylvania. She attended Rutgers University and received a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology in 1976 and continued on to The City College of New York for a Masters in Fine Arts in 1993. Booker’s work has been exhibited in the 2001 Whitney Biennial, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C. and the Akron Museum of Art in Akron, Ohio among many others. Mass Transit is Booker’s largest outdoor urban exhibition to date.

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin, Efroymson Fund, 92.3 WTTS, Rowland Design, IMC, NUVO, The Indianapolis Foundation, Allen Whitehall Clowes Charitable Foundation, Stellar Gin, Arts Council of Indianapolis, and LevelSix.
Above: Chakaia Booker: Black Hole, 2001, rubber tire and wood, 46″ x 50″ x 7.” Copyright Chakaia Booker, courtesy of Marlborough Gallery, New York.

____________________

April 17, 2008

Is You Is or Is You Ain’t

Is You Is or Is You Ain’t helps us understand ourselves through what we aren’t when the collection of seven video works, ranging from satirical to heartbreaking, opens at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art on April 17th from 5 until 8 pm. Visuals available upon request.

The new exhibition draws its title from the Louis Jordan song Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby. One of its verses reflects the themes of the videos: “A man is a creature/that has always been strange/Just when you’re sure of one/You find that he’s gone and made a change.”

In this vein, the funny, poignant Mustache2 by the Indianapolis based film collective AnC follows a cabinet salesman who barely maintains a façade of optimism while advising a protégé to find his own way. With Dead White Men, Zoë Charlton assumes the poses of famous nudes in art to question her role in art and society as an African-American woman. Transvestites talk about relationships, sex and art world habits in Kalup Linzy’s KKQueens Survey. In Oh, Juliette, Karen Yasinsky uses line–drawing animation to capture the fraught emotional space between a man and a woman.

Other works explore danger—of the streets as well as the sensual. Winter in America by Hank Willis Thomas in collaboration with Kambui Olujimi, reenacts the true story of a sidewalk robbery and murder with toy figures. Simone Montemurno transforms the threatening into the sensuous by gliding through a pool with a homemade shark fin on her head in Fin. Laura Parnes’ untitled work suggests how we’ve lost touch with our primal survival instinct by juxtaposing images of a blissful family overlooking a peaceful landscape with footage of wildlife stampeding from danger.

Curators for Is You Is or Is You Ain’t are Kristen Anchor and Jed Dodds of Creative Alliance at the Patterson in Baltimore and Christopher West of iMOCA. After its Indianapolis run, the exhibition will open in Baltimore in September and in New York at a time and date to be determined. Special thanks to all of the artists for their participation, Mari Spirito, Jack Shainman Gallery and Taxter & Spengemann.

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin, Efroymson Fund, 92.3 WTTS, Rowland Design, IMC, NUVO, The Indianapolis Foundation, Allen Whitehall Clowes Charitable Foundation, Stellar Gin, Arts Council of Indianapolis, and LevelSix.
Above: Simone Montemurno, Fin, 2006-2007, digital video.

____________________

January 18, 2008

Adam Pendleton’s Rendered in Black and Events Are

The Rendered in Black sculptural installation occupying the main gallery space will consist of approximately 100 ten-inch, black-ceramic cubes in an improvised arrangement. Their presentation will play with the ideas of minimalism and performance art.

The Events Are series is made up of an expanding selection of culturally and historically significant images that are silk-screened and presented as small “paintings” with white backgrounds and black detailing. Works on display will include fragmented text from a Scalapino publication, an abstract painting by a student at Black Mountain College and a small Cy Twombly painting.

Artkrush observes that Pendleton’s work often splices together wildly disparate source materials to offer insights on how language and rhetoric shape human experience.

Pendleton has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S., notably at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2005); the Studio Museum in Harlem (2005-2006); and the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2007). Last year he launched Performa 07 in New York with The Revival, which included Pendleton delivering a sermon based on the writings of playwright Larry Kramer and poet Paolo Javier; passionate jazz music; and declarations by poet Jena Osman and artist Liam Gillick.

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin, Efroymson Fund, 92.3 WTTS, Rowland Design, IMC, NUVO, The Indianapolis Foundation, Allen Whitehall Clowes Charitable Foundation, Stellar Gin, Arts Council of Indianapolis, and LevelSix.
Above: Adam Pendleton: Rendered in Black. Courtesy of the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago.

New Work by Jeff Gabel

Gabel specializes in scribbly, small-scale pencil drawings of people or faces, possibly imaginary, with a line of text explaining who they are or what they were thinking at the time they were observed. Gabel’s empathetic exploration of the contemporary American landscape finds moments in the everyday that transcend the banal.

The iMOCA show will include a large graphite and charcoal drawing which Gabel will create directly on the museum’s walls; a number of graphite drawings on gesso board; and a video piece, an illustrated audio-visual adaptation of Thomas Mann’s short story “Gladius Dei,” rendered from the original German into “a grammatically impoverished (yet profanity-rich) contemporary vernacular.”

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin, Efroymson Fund, 92.3 WTTS, Rowland Design, IMC, NUVO, The Indianapolis Foundation, Allen Whitehall Clowes Charitable Foundation, Stellar Gin, Arts Council of Indianapolis, and LevelSix.

____________________

July 13 – September 1, 2007

XANADU

Armageddon is set to a disco beat in Robert Boyd’s four-part video installation Xanadu, which kicks off the grand re-opening of iMOCA. Boyd, a New York-based artist, used rapid editing to combine images from vintage documentary films, TV and Internet clips, and cartoons into a history of apocalyptic thought–presented as a series of MTV-style music videos in a disco-like setting.

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin, Efroymson Fund, 92.3 WTTS, Rowland Design, IMC, NUVO, The Indianapolis Foundation, Allen Whitehall Clowes Charitable Foundation, Stellar Gin, Arts Council of Indianapolis, and LevelSix.

____________________

February 3 – March 24, 2007

Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellows

The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) is proud to exhibit artworks by ten talented local contemporary artists, all of whom have been awarded $20,000 grants from the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship program over the past two years. Since 2004, the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship, which is managed by the Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF), has recognized some of the city’s most gifted contemporary artists. A reception for the artists will take place Friday, February 2, 2007, from 6:00 – 9:00 pm at iMOCA. The exhibition will continue through March 24, 2007.

In 2004, Fellowships were awarded to Indianapolis artists Gregory Hull, Linda Adele Goodine, Eric Nordgulen, Marc Jacobson, and David Russick. 2005 Fellows include Katrin Asbury, Stuart Hyatt, Emily W. Kennerk, Brian Myers, and Jamie Pawlus.

This award is unique because it is available to almost any central Indiana artist with very few restrictions. While the artists must be 25 or older and work in photography, painting, sculpture, new media or installation art, those applying for the award are not required to have a degree or a minimum amount of experience. Efroymson Fellows can use the money any way they choose — for living expenses, equipments and supplies, studio rental, travel essential to artistic research, or to complete work.

“The Efroymson Fellowships are intended to get funds directly to individual creative people in our city,” said Jeremy Efroymson, vice chair and one of three Efroymson Fund advisors. “By supporting creativity we can make Indianapolis a vibrant cultural center, a place where creative people choose to live.”

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin, Efroymson Fund, 92.3 WTTS, IMC, NUVO, The Indianapolis Foundation, Allen Whitehall Clowes, Arts Council of Indianapolis, and Jim and Meg Irsay.
Above: Stuart Hyatt: Shrimp Attack. Courtesy of the artist.

Home: Living with Contemporary Art

The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art is proud to present Home: Living with Contemporary Art. In conjunction with the iMOCA 101 series of panel discussions on collecting contemporary art, and with the support of Helmut Fortense and Form + Function, iMOCA will transform its gallery space into a domestic interior. Showcased amidst this setting will be some of the most provocative and innovative artworks currently in private collections throughout central Indiana.

Artists included in this exhibition include Josh Azzarella, John Baldessari, Chuck Close, Lucinda Devlin, Jeff Koons, Ellen Kooi, Loretta Lux, Shiran Neshat, Shazia Sikander, Rosemary Trockel, Banks Violette, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, Kehinde Wiley and many others.

Exhibition made possible through the support of Form+Function, Katz & Korin, the Efroymson Fund, 92.3 WTTS, Arts Council of Indianapolis, NUVO, Allen Whitehill Clowes, IMC, Jim and Meg Irsay, and the Indianapolis Foundation.
Above: Loretta Lux: Boy in Blue Raincoat 1, 2001, Ilfochrome print. Courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery, New York. Collection of Lee Marks & John C. DePrez Jr., Shelbyville, IN.

____________________

September 23 – October 21, 2006

Photographs, the work of Mpozi Mshale Tolbert (1972-2006)

The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) is proud to announce Photographs, the work of Mpozi Mshale Tolbert (1972-2006). Taken from both his photojournalistic and fine art photography, this small retrospective will showcase Mpozi’s unique ability in capturing the American experience.

Moving to Indianapolis from Philadelphia in 1998 to work for The Indianapolis Star, Tolbert captured his subject matter, from the tragedy of the September 11th terrorists attacks to the most intimate moments between a father and daughter, with a simplicity and sophistication unmatched by his peers.

Above: Mpozi Mshale Tolbert. Courtesy of Indianapolis Star

____________________

July 15 – August 19, 2006

Peripheral View: New Installations by Jamie Pawlus and Ryan Wolfe

The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) is proud to announce Peripheral View: New Installations by Jamie Pawlus and Ryan Wolfe. This exhibition will include interior and exterior site-specific installations by Jamie Pawlus (Indianapolis) and Ryan Wolfe (San Francisco). Pawlus and Wolfe transform both man-made and natural landscapes causing the viewer to become more aware of their everyday surroundings.

Pawlus’s work involves the creation of conceptually based site-specific installations. Much of this work is expressed through a public vernacular; made with the same industrial grade sign materials used for public communication. The literal and visual imagery of her works are individual antidotes and anecdotal expressions of personal experiences. For this exhibition, Pawlus has created both interior and exterior installations, and celebrates, along with the Arts Council of Indianapolis, the debut of her new installation on Massachusetts Avenue.

Wolfe’s work explores the idea that a memorable time, place or experience can be condensed in a singular, physical object that embodies the essential qualities of that experience. For Peripheral View, Wolfe will transform the north gallery into a simulated and computerized field of grass that encapsulates the experience of watching the rise and fall of a summer breeze across a field.

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin, the Efroymson Fund, 92.3 WTTS, Arts Council of Indianapolis, NUVO, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Fundation, IMC, Wayne Zink, Jim and Meg Irsay, and the Indianapolis Foundation.
Above: Left: Ryan Wolfe: Sketch of a Field of Grass, Individually programmed circuits, mottors, sand and grass. Courtesy of the artist and Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery, New York
Above: Right: Jamie Pawlus: Care/Don’t Care, Neon, 2006. Courtesy of the artist

____________________

May 12 – July 1, 2006

Untitled Projects: Auto Economies
a solo exhibition by Conrad Bakker

The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) is proud to announce Untitled Projects: Auto Economies, an exhibition of original handmade artworks by Conrad Bakker. This exhibition will be a series of three separate, interconnected projects that investigate the subtle intersections of capital and power that permeate general car culture and are specifically oriented to the car culture of Indianapolis.

Conrad Bakker lives and works in Urbana, IL and has exhibited his work nationally and internationally in places such as the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Fargfabriken Center for Contemporary Art (Stockholm), Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (North Adams), Southern Exposure (San Francisco) and Art in General (New York) among many others.

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin, the Efroymson Fund, 92.3 WTTS, Arts Council of Indianapolis, NUVO, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Fund, IMC, Jim and Meg Irsay, Wayne Zink, and The Durfee Foundation.
Above: Conrad Bakker. Courtesy of the artist.

____________________

March 25 – May 6, 2006

I’m Brian Presnell
a solo exhibition by Brian Presnell

The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) is proud to present I’m Brian Presnell, an exhibition of new paintings and installations by Indianapolis based artist Brian Presnell. For his first solo exhibition, Presnell is creating over 50 paintings, sculptures and site specific installations borrowed from his earlier performances and videos. Presnell has incorporated this new media with the much more tangible and traditional practice of painting. By utilizing found, or ‘thrift store’ type paintings and making them his own, the artist has been able to take his characters off of the stage and screen and essentially cast them into a new narrative.

Presnell’s performances are documented via video and photography, excerpts of which are cut and collaged into paintings. The collaged aspects of the pieces include the artist’s diverse cast of characters taken from both regional and national fame. Characters such as Abe Lincoln who was carved from a silver maple tree by chainsaw in the artist’s back yard; Billy Bob, the Southerner who carved the tree along with his brother John Wayne; P. Nelson Swisher, an international socialite and Hollywood producer; Bobby Knight who does battle in a bicycle competition with the famed Wheelie Man; as well as the artist himself bring to light the diversity of Mr. Presnell. Presnell’s goal is to make his characters adapt humorously to the different surroundings of these paintings.

This exhibition marks the first solo exhibition by a local artist in iMOCA’s gallery at the historic Emelie Building and will be celebrated with the debut of a new catalogue on the work of Brian Presnell.

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin, the Efroymson Fund, 92.3 WTTS, Arts Council of Indianapolis, NUVO, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Fund, IMC, Jim and Meg Irsay, Wayne Zink, Penrod Society, The Indianapolis Foundation, Christel DeHaan Family Foundation, Carter-Lee, Norwood, PRN Graphics, Editions Limited, and Firehouse.
Above: Brian Presnell. Courtesy of the artist.

____________________

February 4 – March 18, 2006

Contradictory Impulses
a solo exhibition by Reanne Estrada

The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) is proud to announce Contradictory Impulses, an exhibition of original handmade artworks by Reanne Estrada. Estrada’s on-going work of free standing and wall hung packing tape and delicately cut erasers are based on the idea that every seven years the human body renews itself on a cellular level. She began the work in 2001 and she will continue to reconfigure, stick and re-stick, add and remove and develop her artworks until the year 2008 when her body has completely finished its renewing cycle. Estrada carries this message further by continuing to change and alter her works with every new location. The iMOCA exhibition will include existing works and site-specific installations.

Estrada, born in Manila, Philippines, now resides and works in Los Angeles, CA. Estrada’s unique work establishes a balance between the two and three dimensional worlds. Her process-intensive work is a comfortable combination of high-relief drawing and low-relief sculpture. These handmade pieces defy the information overload that is just part of everyday life in today’s digital society. Recalling the traditional task of creating art by hand gives her art a touch of delicate sensitivity. Her idea of the continual process of renewal of the body coincides with her continuously morphing art.

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin, the Efroymson Fund, 92.3 WTTS, Arts Council of Indianapolis, NUVO, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Fund, IMC, Jim and Meg Irsay, Wayne Zink, and The Durfee Foundation.
Above: Reanne Estrada: Factus Black 18 (365), Detail, Erasers mounted on plexiglass. Courtesy of the artist and Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery, Los Angeles

When Contemporary Art Speaks

Artists have been fascinated with words as images since ancient times, but particularly in the 20th century. When Contemporary Art Speaks takes this literal visual language (words and letter forms as subject matter) a step further. Some are witty. Some require a bit of thought. Most question the traditional notions of the viewer purely as a spectator. The exhibition is an exploration of direct communication between the artist and their audience and encompasses a multitude of mediums from vinyl wall installations and drawings to video and interactive art.

Participating Artists

Stephanie Brooks
Harrell Fletcher
Kevin Hamilton
Adam Pendleton
Tomas Schmit
Erwin Wurm

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin and the Efroymson Fund.
Above: Stephanie Brooks: Politeness Strategies #3, Vinyl, 2004
Courtesy of Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago

____________________

August 27 – November 6, 2004

Out of Place TWO
Conclusion of a two part series

Place…the landscape in art has been represented by artists through the centuries. From the earliest cave paintings to the impressions of Monet, we have been amazed by what surrounds us every day.

Four artists from different geographical areas throughout the United States take an updated and fresh approach to this most traditional of subjects. Via a multitude of mediums and the utilization of the latest technology, Ken Fandell, Anthony Goicolea, Dwayne Moser and Kari Thomas create their own versions of the contemporary landscape.

Artists

Ken Fandell – photography
Anthony Goicolea – video
Dwayne Moser – mixed media
Kari Thomas – installation

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin and the Efroymson Fund.

____________________

May 15 – July 15, 2004

Out of Place ONE
iMOCA’s opening exhibiton

Place is a subject that has been contemplated by artists over the centuries. A permanent place for the advancement of contemporary art has been something that has been missing from the cultural landscape of Indianapolis, until now. Out of Place One is the first exhibition at the new and first home of the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art at The Emelie Building at 340 N. Senate Avenue.

Out of Place One will include four nationally exhibited artists from different cities using different media to explore that place between who we think we should be and who we are, how we interact with and interpret what we see everyday. Those artists are Craig Doty, Theresa Gooby, Nikcy Hoberman, and Lee Walton.

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin and the Efroymson Fund. 

____________________

January 23 – February 21, 2004

Earth, Air, Fire & Water
The Four Elements by four artist

The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) and Herron Gallery will collaborate to present this exhibit of site-specific art. All of the participating artists (Charles Gick, Jeremy Tubbs, Bill Viola and Patrick Zentz) will present unique experience-based installations for the Herron Gallery.

Herron Gallery, Herron School of Art / IUPUI
1701 North Pennsylvania Street, Indianapolis, Indiana, 46202
(317) 920-2420

Exhibition made possible through the support of Katz & Korin.