This project was originally submitted to De Appel Curatorial Programme and was rejected in its original format (my original idea was to have the project proposal to be the project in itself).
Freida Abtan, Peter Dobill and Aïda Ruilova. Curated by Guillermo Creus
Settled in New York City’s Russian and Turkish bathhouse, in the East Village, the idea of this exhibition was to bring artists and invited audience come together to the East Village bathhouse for an afternoon of relaxation and body-mind experience.
This gathering, advertised to members of the New York City’s art world - artists, art dealers, critics, collectors, art students, art lovers and anyone else interested - would bring together a wide range of art personalities to this event.
In the relaxingly dim, yet pressure filled, cavernous basement of the Russian baths, the art community would gather semi naked, confined to the scorching heat of the saunas, the steam rooms and the ice cold of the pool. Intellectual words would be exchanged despite the instinctual drive to prevent the body from reaching its physical limit, and to collapse under pressure. The art interventions would have the artists creating works that related to their own artistic practices while additionally:
• Taking into consideration the unique space and physical environment of bathhouse to create site-specific and situation-specific works for the exhibition. • Allowing for the experience of being in a bathhouse and experiencing it, to run parallel to the experience of being in an art exhibition and experiencing the art works under those conditions. The participant artists planned for this exhibition are: • Freida Abtan • Peter Dobill • Aida Ruilova
Freida Abtan is a Canadian multi-disciplinary artist and composer from Quebec. As her Facebook page explains, her music falls somewhere in between musique concrete and more modern noise and experimental audio and both genres are influential to her sound. Her work has been compared to bands such as Coil, and Zoviet France, and to that of performers such as Andrew Liles because of her use of spectral manipulation and audiovisual collage.
Abtan will perform a piece in the main, larger open area of the bathhouse. While people we’re going in and out of the saunas, in and out of the Turkish baths, and the main Russian room - known as the Russian Oven – the artist will perform her pieces, by playing sounds in relation to baroque images being shown on a gigantic video projection.
Peter Dobill’s work focuses on the body in what the artist calls actions, where mental and physical planes of existence are created establishing autonomy in endurance, physical movement, and structure. With his body under constant pressure, the artist alters and constructs his own “vessel of experience” as he calls it.
Peter Dobill, a self defined actionist from Brooklyn, NY, recreated a version of an earlier work titled La sal cuece al horno. In this action, Dobil went on for 45 minuts, wrapped in salt, his body taking the heat of the Russian Room, like in inside an oven, he went on baking. For safety reasons, ice cold water being applied during the process at 5 minute intervals. Aïda Ruilova, is a video artist and musician whose work was featured in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, in a 2009 Hammer Museum show and in a 2010 group film screening at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin among others art exhibitions. Ruilova creates short video loops out of discrete but intense sounds -- a breath, the screeching sound of the chords on an electric guitar being walked upon, a muttered phrase, a sob - which are edited in counterpoint to images of characters performing mysterious, usually uncomfortable acts. The use of fast loops and repetition, build up in the audience, feelings of both attraction and repulsion, through the pressure of a constant hammering of both sounds and images.
For the exhibition, Aida’s work Two Timers, 2008 shows a woman swimming in a dark pool with a rat, reciting a poem in which celestial and physical bodies collide. Her work will be projected above the actual pool in the space.
The works from these three artists will somehow fill up the whole physical space of the Russian Baths adding another layer of experience to the already intense experience of being at that setting.
Artist resources: http://www.freidaabtan.com/ http://www.peterdobillactionist.com/actionsimagesvideo.htm ttp://www.aidaruilova.com/
This project was originally submitted to De Appel Curatorial Programme and was rejected in its original format (my original idea was to have the project proposal to be the project in itself).
Freida Abtan, Peter Dobill and Aïda Ruilova. Curated by Guillermo Creus
Settled in New York City’s Russian and Turkish bathhouse, in the East Village, the idea of this exhibition was to bring artists and invited audience come together to the East Village bathhouse for an afternoon of relaxation and body-mind experience.
This gathering, advertised to members of the New York City’s art world - artists, art dealers, critics, collectors, art students, art lovers and anyone else interested - would bring together a wide range of art personalities to this event.
In the relaxingly dim, yet pressure filled, cavernous basement of the Russian baths, the art community would gather semi naked, confined to the scorching heat of the saunas, the steam rooms and the ice cold of the pool. Intellectual words would be exchanged despite the instinctual drive to prevent the body from reaching its physical limit, and to collapse under pressure. The art interventions would have the artists creating works that related to their own artistic practices while additionally:
• Taking into consideration the unique space and physical environment of bathhouse to create site-specific and situation-specific works for the exhibition. • Allowing for the experience of being in a bathhouse and experiencing it, to run parallel to the experience of being in an art exhibition and experiencing the art works under those conditions. The participant artists planned for this exhibition are: • Freida Abtan • Peter Dobill • Aida Ruilova
Freida Abtan is a Canadian multi-disciplinary artist and composer from Quebec. As her Facebook page explains, her music falls somewhere in between musique concrete and more modern noise and experimental audio and both genres are influential to her sound. Her work has been compared to bands such as Coil, and Zoviet France, and to that of performers such as Andrew Liles because of her use of spectral manipulation and audiovisual collage.
Abtan will perform a piece in the main, larger open area of the bathhouse. While people we’re going in and out of the saunas, in and out of the Turkish baths, and the main Russian room - known as the Russian Oven – the artist will perform her pieces, by playing sounds in relation to baroque images being shown on a gigantic video projection.
Peter Dobill’s work focuses on the body in what the artist calls actions, where mental and physical planes of existence are created establishing autonomy in endurance, physical movement, and structure. With his body under constant pressure, the artist alters and constructs his own “vessel of experience” as he calls it.
Peter Dobill, a self defined actionist from Brooklyn, NY, recreated a version of an earlier work titled La sal cuece al horno. In this action, Dobil went on for 45 minuts, wrapped in salt, his body taking the heat of the Russian Room, like in inside an oven, he went on baking. For safety reasons, ice cold water being applied during the process at 5 minute intervals. Aïda Ruilova, is a video artist and musician whose work was featured in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, in a 2009 Hammer Museum show and in a 2010 group film screening at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin among others art exhibitions. Ruilova creates short video loops out of discrete but intense sounds -- a breath, the screeching sound of the chords on an electric guitar being walked upon, a muttered phrase, a sob - which are edited in counterpoint to images of characters performing mysterious, usually uncomfortable acts. The use of fast loops and repetition, build up in the audience, feelings of both attraction and repulsion, through the pressure of a constant hammering of both sounds and images.
For the exhibition, Aida’s work Two Timers, 2008 shows a woman swimming in a dark pool with a rat, reciting a poem in which celestial and physical bodies collide. Her work will be projected above the actual pool in the space.
The works from these three artists will somehow fill up the whole physical space of the Russian Baths adding another layer of experience to the already intense experience of being at that setting.
Artist resources: http://www.freidaabtan.com/ http://www.peterdobillactionist.com/actionsimagesvideo.htm ttp://www.aidaruilova.com/