The Big Nothing

May 1 - August 1, 2004

The void, the ineffable, the sublime, nonsense, nihilism, zero—all are encompassed by “nothing.” Filling two floors and both main gallery spaces, the exhibition at ICA will include painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, video and film. Co-curated by ICA Senior Curator Ingrid Schaffner, Associate Curator Bennett Simpson, and Whitney-Lauder Fellow Tanya Leighton, the show will draw primarily on artwork from the 1970s to the present. It will be accompanied by a catalog publication. In addition, it will anchor a series of independently curated exhibitions and events throughout the Philadelphia region.


Installation View
Photo by Aaron Igler

ICA's first floor gallery will trace a number of distinct approaches to nothing. Works by Andy Warhol and Richard Prince will explore pop art's portrayal of a vacuous consumer culture. Another section will approach nothing from a more metaphysical, or even cosmological angle: paintings by Jack Goldstein, for instance, depict “invisible” natural phenomena like heat or star clusters, while Yayoi Kusama's paintings try to represent “infinity” with shimmering allover patterns of dots, cells and lines. Philadelphia artist Thomas Chimes, for his part, makes quiet, nearly all white paintings of romantic, dreamlike landscapes. He is also known for his ghostly portraits of Alfred Jarry and Edgar Allan Poe, nineteenth century writers who, themselves, are often associate with “nothing.”

Installation View
Photo by Aaron Igler

In yet another section, reduction, refusal and negation provide entries to thinking about nothing. Included will be photographs by Louise Lawler, who, since the 1970s, has taken pictures of empty or deinstalled museum spaces. Minimalist paintings by Jo Baer update an interest in reductivist abstraction and the monochrome. “Black Paintings” by Jutta Koether also figure here, their imagery darkened out and painted over by the artist during intense, piercingly loud musical performances. A fourth grouping of work in the main space will document artistic projects that have sought to close or empty the gallery space. This surprisingly recurrent gesture in contemporary art—Yves Klein, Robert Barry, and Gareth James have all made signature works by removing or displacing art from its normative contexts—will be traced through photographs, manuscripts, manifestos, and other ephemera.

Installation View
Photo by Aaron Igler

ICA's upstairs gallery will be devoted entirely to film and video, and will include works by Bernadette Corporation, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Pierre Huyghe, John Smith, Nicolas Guagnini and Karin Schneider, and Charlemagne Palestine among others.

Artists in the exhibition at ICA: Bas Jan Ader, Ayreen Anastas, Richard Artschwager, Michael Asher, Michel Auder, Jo Baer, Robert Barry, Larry Bell, Bernadette Corporation, James Lee Byars, Maurizio Cattelan, Thomas Chimes, Bruce Conner, Day Without Art, Jessica Diamond, Roe Ethridge, Lili Fleury, Rene Gabri, Jack Goldstein, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Nicolas Guagnini, Heavy Industries, Nancy Holt, Richard Hoeck, Roni Horn, Pierre Huyghe, Gareth James, Ray Johnson, Yves Klein, Joachim Koester, Jutta Koether, Yayoi Kusama, Louise Lawler, Gordon Matta-Clark, Allan McCollum, Patrick McMullen, John Miller, Matt Mullican, Eileen Neff, Gabriel Orozco, Raphael Ortiz, Charlemagne Palestine, Philippe Parreno, William Pope.L, Doris Salcedo, Karin Schneider, Allan Sekula, Arlene Shechet, Santiago Sierra, John Smith, Robert Smithson, Paul Swenbeck, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Andy Warhol, James Welling, John Wesley, Steve Wolfe, and David Hammons (at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia).

Philadelphia-wide Initiative
ICA's exhibition spearheads a Philadelphia-wide initiative that includes projects by nearly thirty museums, science centers and performing arts groups to address “nothing” in its many forms. Working with a core-group of curators and organizers over the past year—from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Edgar Allan Poe House to the American Philosophical Society—the various independently conceived projects will occur throughout the summer all around the city.

Read "The Empty House", an essay by author and poet Thomas Devaney who gave a tour of the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in conjunction with the exhibition. Published by The Sienese Shredder.

FREE Admission for Members! During “The Big Nothing” there will be free reciprocal admission for members of: Abington Art Center, African American Museum in Philadelphia, Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Rosenbach Museum and Library, Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Wagner Free Institute of Science and Woodmere Art Museum.

Funders

ICA is grateful for the generous sponsorship of Lois and Jerry Magnin. We are also grateful for the support of The Stephen A. and Diana L. Goldberg Foundation, Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation, Nancy Olnick, Locks Foundation, and the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative (PEI), funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by the University of the Arts. Additional funding has been provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Dietrich Foundation Inc., William Penn Foundation, the Overseers Board for the Institute of Contemporary Art, friends and members of ICA, and the University of Pennsylvania. (Information complete as of 4/16/04.)


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