The La MaMa gallery is reopening after a 2 year renovation.  While the gallery building once stood alone on the block it is now surrounded by the one of the largest redevelopment programs in New York City’s history.  The improved appearance of this block gives a new vitality to an already dynamic neighborhood and provides new audiences for the artists we exhibit.  La MaMa’s La Galleria (a not-for-profit gallery) was opened in the late 1980’s.  The Gallery’s mission is an extension of the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club’s mission to exhibit as many artists and art forms as possible. We exhibit a wide variety of artists at various stages of their careers. The gallery is a place where artistic experimentation is nurtured. 

Performative Aspects in Art from Eastern Europe Works from Kontakt.
The Art Collection of Erste Group

Curated by Walter Seidl

February 6 - March 7, 2010
Opening reception on February 5,  6 to 8pm

Artists: Ion Grigorescu, Sanja Iveković, Edward Krasiński, Natalia LL, Raša Todosijević,

This exhibition focuses on the historically important decade of the 1970s in Eastern Europe, demonstrating how artists articulate performative gestures on a visual level, in opposition to the dominant, politically conservative and restrictive reality. The presented artistic statements create performative environments that reflect on given societal processes and their models of inclusion and exclusion. This exhibition is apart of THE PERFORMING REVOLUTION FESTIVAL. A performing arts festival in New York City marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe. November 6, 2009 - March 31, 2010

www.performingrevolution.org

Works in the exhibition:

Ion Grigorescu, Romania
Electoral Meeting, 1975
b&w photographs, 10.6 x 15.7 inches

Ion Grigoresu’s photos were clandestinely taken, during a masquerade electoral meeting organized by the Communist Party and strictly supervised by the infiltrated members of the secret police. The confused, alienated and docile masses as well as the individuals enforcing control are all part of desolate circularity of mechanical development of actions that lead nowhere and have no consistent meaning other than filling the roles set by an outer structure, the discreet but tormenting evil.

Sanja Iveković, Croatia
Inter Nos, 1977
Performance on video, b&w, 49 min, 6 sec
Music: Claude Debussy

The video documents the performance in two rooms connected by two closed TV circuits without audio link, and an entrance space where a direct transmission takes place for the audience. During the performance, the artist is shut in one room while visitors enter the second room. Between artist and visitors, a dialogue develops as the artist interferes with the visitor’s screen image.

Edward Krasiński, Poland
Retrospective, 1988
10 photographs on wooden boxes, blue scotch tape, dimensions variable

Edward Krasiński’s installation sums up the work he has begun in the late 1960s, when he started to work with blue scotch tape. The artist used the blue stripe in his „axonometric drawings” and „interventions” of the 70s and 80s, as well as in numerous site specific installations in museums and galleries. “Retrospective” consists of photographs of Krasiński’s objects which are mounted on wooden boxes and linked via the blue scotch tape. A performative and moving element is introduced through the boxes in different heights and the tape moving along the wall and around corners.

Natalia LL, Poland
Word, 1971
12 b&w photographs,
Total size: 175.5 x 106.3 inches

For Natalia LL, the body has always remained a central metaphor in her works. This also accounts for her photo series Word, in which a woman speaks a word and is captured in several close-ups which only show parts of her face and, most of all, the changing movements of her lips. As is the case in many of her works, the action performed in reality is transferred into another reality as the result of artistic reflection, addressing the relationship between woman’s simultaneous roles as subject and object.

Raša Todosijević, Serbia
Was ist Kunst? (What is Art?), 1978
Video, color, sound, 16 min 20 sec

Was ist Kunst? (What is Art?) is the general title of a series of performances by Raša Todosijević held in the period 1976-1981. In the video, we can only see a silent woman  and hear artist's husky, powerful voice whispering, shouting, screaming, pleading, simply asking the same question over and over again. The literal meaning of „What is Art?“ is confronted with the absence of its performative impact by way of the automatism of repetition, the indefinite recurrence of the same question which in Todosijević’s commanding speech stood for a verbal act related to the question, which, nonetheless, exceeded its limits.

Raša Todosijević

2009 - 2010 Archives page