On Limits: Estrangement in the Everyday

Opening Reception: Tuesday, May 24, 5-8pm

The Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program presents On Limits: Estrangement in the Everyday, curated by the ISP’s 2015–16 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellows: Daniella Rose King, Viktor Neumann, Samuele Piazza, and Kari Rittenbach.

On Limits: Estrangement in the Everyday features works by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Francis Alÿs, Hannah Black, Merlin Carpenter, Enrique Chagoya, Kevin Jerome Everson, Claire Fontaine, Harun Farocki, Toril Johannessen, William E. Jones, Barbara Kruger, An-My Lê, William Leavitt, Yolanda López, Tracey Moffatt, Catherine Opie, Claire Pentecost, William Raban, Allan Sekula, Jason Simon, A.L. Steiner, Milica Tomić, and Taocheng Wang.

On Limits considers the many ways in which artists and artworks address contradictions in day-to-day reality, whether in an explicitly political register or in more subtle, even satirical, modes that acknowledge an uneasy complicity with the dominant order. By examining the ways in which we are estranged from others, the exhibition questions the limits placed on our ability to imagine alternative forms of social organization in the face of catastrophic threats.

Rather than settle narrowly on a coherent theme or single issue, this experimental exhibition expands the perspectives and positions—mediated by more than twenty artworks—presented within the psychic and material space of the gallery, reaching beyond the limits of any one conceptual paradigm, consistent style, contemporary consensus, or clear narrative. This strategy allows particular themes—from social reproduction to queerness or the environment—to be highlighted momentarily in correspondences between artworks that, for example, work with language, or the documentary mode; works that use the form of the advertisement, calling out to the viewer; works that play on presence and absence, or expose techniques of capture or surveillance; works that probe the cultural notion of waste or decay; and still others that survey the body, under siege, at work, on the run, and online.

Under the ideological sway of neoliberalism’s relentless accumulation of capital, which reinforces the divisive status quo, we must think collectively—beyond the limits of thematic, regional, or categorical models—to see connections between exclusionary effects and oppression of all kinds and to produce solidarity through means other than fear.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Reading seminar with Silvia Federici
The Kitchen
Friday, May 27, 2pm
Seating is limited and reservations are required. Please register in advance by contacting: publicprograms.isp.2016@gmail.com.

Silvia Federici will discuss the recent work of women in indigenous struggles for land, resources, and political recognition, and against corporate and patriarchal forms of domination.

Kevin Jerome Everson: Park Lanes
The Whitney Museum
Floor 3, Susan and John Hess Family Theater
Friday, June 3, 10:45am
Free with museum admission 

Park Lanes (2015; 480 min) transposes the space of cinema to the factory floor, documenting the highly mediated and abstracted movements of its laborers across a full eight-hour day of work, in real time. The title of the film refers to the name of the bowling alley Everson used to frequent in his hometown of Mansfield, Ohio.

An-My Lê and Jason Simon: Against the Grain
The Whitney Museum
Floor 3, Susan and John Hess Family Theater
Friday, June 3, 7:30pm
Free admission

This panel invites two artists from On Limits to introduce their photography-based works on view at The Kitchen and to examine the role of the documentary form as a critical or conceptual strategy within contemporary art. A discussion with the ISP curatorial fellows will position these practices in relation to the preceding screening of Kevin Jerome Everson’s Park Lanes. A question-and-answer session will follow.

Tracey Moffatt: Montages 
The Kitchen
Friday, June 10, 2pm and 4pm

Two screenings of the full series of Moffatt’s Montages will accompany the regular showing of Other (2010; 7 min.) in the exhibition. In the series, Moffatt and her editor, Gary Hillberg, transform Hollywood studio films into stylishly subversive “hymns to cinema.” Created over the course of a decade, the videos include: Lip (1999; 10 min.), Artist (2000; 10 min.), Love (2003; 21 min.), Doomed (2007; 10 min.), Revolution (2008; 14 min.), Mother (2009; 20 min.), and Other(2010; 7 min.).

Photo: Kevin Jerome Everson, Century, 2012. 16mm transferred to digital, color, sound; 6:40. Courtesy the artist; Trilobite-Arts DAC; Picture Palace Pictures.

For more information, please click here.