Justine Kurland

November 18, 2002

The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania is pleased to present the photographs of Justine Kurland. Presented in the ICA's Project Space, this exhibition continues the museum's tradition of exhibiting the work of talented emerging artists.

Justine Kurland's photographs are about adolescence, awkwardness, girls, the American landscape, secrets, and quiet, private dreams of community that hide behind tough exteriors and blank faces. Relatively large-scale, and often theatrically staged, Kurland's images position their subjects hanging out together in forsaken corners of forgotten fields, forests, highway underpasses, lakes and beaches. Her landscapes and her figures are analogies of each other, in-between spaces where identity and function have not yet been fixed or have begun to slip ambiguously into freedom. Recent work considers community more generally, focusing on present-day communes and people united by a choice to live "off-the-grid."

Kurland (b. in 1969, Warsaw, NY, lives and works in New York) has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe. Recent exhibitions include one-person shows at The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago and Gorney Bravin + Lee, NY. This exhibition is organized by Bennett Simpson, ICA Associate Curator.

The Opening Reception, which is free and open to the public, is scheduled for Friday, January 17, 2003 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. An Exhibition walkthrough, led by Justine Kurland and Bennett Simpson, will take place on Friday, January 17 at 4:30pm. The ICA is located at 118 South 36th Street at the University of Pennsylvania. The ICA is open to the public, except during installation, from 12:00pm to 8:00pm on Wednesday through Friday and from 11:00am to 5:00pm on Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $3 for adults; $2 for students over 12, artists, and senior citizens; and free to ICA members, children 12 and under, PENN card holders, and on Sundays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For more information, call 215-898-7108.

ICA acknowledges the generous support of The Honickman Foundation, The Jerry and Emily Spiegel Family Foundation, Inc.- Pamela Spiegel Sanders (C'78) and Lise Spiegel Wilks (C'80), and The Buddy Taub Foundation for this exhibition. We are also grateful to the following individuals for their support: Sallie G. and Berton E. Korman; Alan Sandman and John Pcsolar; Kirk Kirkpatrick and John Wind; Suzanne and Jeffrey Koopman; and Larry and Norma Reichlin. Additional funding has been provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Dietrich Foundation Inc., the Overseers Board for the Institute of Contemporary Art, friends and members of ICA, and the University of Pennsylvania. (Information complete as of 11/6/02.)

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