Nicholas Muellner, assistant professor of cinema, photography and media arts, and Mikhl Sidlin are pleased to present Now Is the Winter, an exhibition of new works in video, painting, photography and installation at Proekt_Fabrika in Moscow. This project brings together contemporary artists from the United States and Russia to explore current states of experience in the cultures of late empire.
The Moscow program will be linked to an international symposium and screening program addressing intersections of media, art, and politics, hosted by Ithaca College in October, 2007.
Now Is the Winter Exhibition
May 24 to June 24, 2007
Contrary to Dada's angry, explosive response to a cruel and rapacious modernity, it is the thesis of this exhibition that contemporary art practice can point to moral, political, and social crisis through the presentation of disappearance: disappearance of logic, of narrative, of emotion and knowledge. Susan Sontag famously described the act of photographing as "a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time." Now Is the Winter offers artwork that maps our soft terror -- the abduction and discrete internment of the subject -- across the terrain of visual experience.
This show builds upon diverse strands of international art practice that enlace cultural and historical representation with a pervasive sense of icy remove, evoking the evacuation of meaning, in word and action, that a moral freeze implies. These artists employ a wide array of media and tactics to variously attack, mourn or mock the silent tyranny of reactionary socio-political culture. An associated program of experimental film and video work from the United States, curated by Michael Robinson, will screen concurrently at Proekt_Fabrika, the State Contemporary Art Centre and the The Meyerhold Theatre in Moscow.
Exhibition artists include: Miles Coolidge, Sharon Hayes, Ron Jude, Nebojša Šeric Shoba, Natasha Struchkova, Paul Swenbeck, Rostan Tavasiev, Gleb Vyshaslavsky and Marian Zhunin.
This project is supported by the Trust for Mutual Understanding, CEC Artslink, and the generous underwriting and organizational support of the Park School of Communications, Ithaca College.
For further information about the exhibition, screenings or symposium, please visit the website or contact project organizer Nicholas Muellner at nmuellner@ithaca.edu.
