Symposium
Material Witness:
Mario García Torres / Konrad Wendt
PAST - Saturday, June 25, 2011, 1:00 - 6:00 pm
Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
A symposium organized by Ian Wallace will discuss themes arising from the exhibition, Material Witness: Mario García Torres / Konrad Wendt. The symposium will be documented.
This event is free of charge. Seating is limited, so please arrive early.
This schedule is subject to change
1:00 – 1:15 pm
Welcome and introductions
1:15 – 1:45 pm
[+][-] Constance Lewallen >read more
Adjunct Curator, University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
California Artists – New Genres in Conceptual Art
This overview looks at the particular contributions of California artists to the development of Conceptual art and the new genres it spawned. While they shared many major tenets of Conceptualism with their East Coast counterparts, Californians tended to privilege the experiential over the epistemological, and to inject personal, political, and social content into their work. In so doing, they formed their own, broader version of Conceptualism, one that has had a long-lasting impact
Bio:
As Senior Curator at the BAM from 1998 to June of 2007, Constance Lewallen curated many major exhibitions, among them: Joe Brainard, A Retrospective, 2001; Dream of the Audience: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982), 2001; Everything Matters: Paul Kos, a Retrospective, 2003; Ant Farm (1968-1978), 2004, and, A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s, 2007. All of these exhibitions toured nationally and internationally and were accompanied by catalogues. Her recent exhibition, Allen Ruppersberg: You and Me or the Art of Give and Take was presented at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in 2009. She is currently co-curating State of Mind: New California Art ca. 1970, which will open at the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California, in October 2011.
1:50 – 2:20 pm
[+][-] Ian Wallace >read more
Artist, Vancouver
Bio:
Ian Wallace was born in Shoreham, England in 1943. After completing his studies at the University of British Columbia and graduating with a Master’s Degree in Art History, he taught art history at UBC from 1967 to 1970 and at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design from 1972 to 1998.
Wallace has been active in the creation, promotion and appreciation of innovative processes in contemporary art practice through writing, teaching and exhibiting his work. Wallace has been an influential figure in the development of an internationally acknowledged photographic and conceptual art practice in Vancouver. Ian Wallace is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery,Vancouver, Yvon Lambert Gallery, Paris, Hauser & Wirth, London and Zurich, and Galerie Greta Meert, Brussels.
2:25 – 2:55 pm
[+][-] Manuel Cirauqui >read more
Independent Curator and Critic, New York/Valencia
Art In The Subjunctive Mode (Notes For and Against)
In the last decades, many artists have used modern art history as their prime material: from cheap replicas to ready-made recontextualizations, fictional documentaries, essay-like montages, reenactments… The strategies are multiple, and all the more symptomatic if we consider that they happen in a time that remains suspicious about its own historicality. This presentation will address some of these strategies, attempting to grasp their sometimes irreconcilable differences and their meaning for art-historical criticism.
Bio:
Manuel Cirauqui is a writer and independent curator based in New York and Valencia (Spain). He has lectured at numerous universities and contemporary art venues including Aalto University for Art and Design (Helsinki, Finland), Université de Rennes and Universidad del País Vasco (Bilbao). He has also conducted various editorial projects in collaboration with artists, and is a regular contributor to international art magazines such as Frieze (UK), Lapiz (Spain), 20/27 (France) and Kaleidoscope (Italy). His most recent curatorial projects include: Jota Izquierdo: Region 4, 2011 (Cable Factory, Helsinki), Agusti Centelles: Photographic Journal of War and Exile, 2009 (Hotel de Sully, Jeu de Paume, Paris), Jordi Colomer: Fuegogratis, 2008 (Jeu de Paume, Paris), and La Forme Théorie, 2008 (LAIT, Albi, France).
2:55 – 3:25 pm BREAK
3:30 – 4:00 pm
[+][-] Shepherd Steiner >read more
Art Historian, Vancouver
Bio
Shepherd Steiner co-edited Cork Caucus: on art, possibility, and democracy (Frankfurt, 2007). Recent publications include: “Allergy Patch: Michael Fried’s Why Photography Matters As Art as Never Before” (Texte zur Kunst, January 2010) and “Corrective (><) Measures: Between the Discrete Work and Corpus of Jack Goldstein”, in Jack Goldstein (Frankfurt: Museum für Moderne Kinst, 2009). He and is currently writing two books: a first on American abstract painting, titled ‘Mnemotechnical Bodies: Close Readings in Modernist Painting, Sculpture and Criticism, 1945-1968’, and a second on contemporary photography, titled ‘The Outsides of Photography’.
4:05 – 4:35 pm
[+][-] Pan Wendt >read more
Curator, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown
In the social spirit that animates this exhibition, Curator Lee Plested asked me to talk about my father’s work.
Bio:
Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Pan Wendt is a Prince Edward Island-based curator, art historian and critic. He is currently Curator at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, P.E.I., and Phd candidate in the History of Art at Yale University, specializing in 1960s art. Past exhibition projects include Funkaesthetics, 2009 (Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Toronto), Colleen Wolstenholme: a Divided Room, 2006 (Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown), and James Lee Byars: Letters from the World’s Most Famous Unknown Artist, 2004 (Mass MoCA, North Adams, Mass.). Currently he is organizing a solo exhibition of Aganetha Dyck’s work, as well as Art in the Open/ART à ciel ouvert, an outdoor art festival in Charlottetown.
4:40 – 5:20 pm
[+][-] Mario García Torres, >read more
Artist, Mexico City and
[+][-] Lee Plested, >read more
Indepedent Curator, San Francisco/Vancouver
Mario García Torres: An Interview with Lee Plested and Others
Lee Plested has invited selected artists, writers, and curators to pose a question.
Bio:
Mario García Torres was born in 1975 in Monclova, Mexico. He received an MA from the Universidad de Monterrey (San Pedro Garza García) and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (Valencia). Exhibitions in 2011 include, Only God Knows Who The Audience Is (CCA Wattis, San Fransisco) and The Mirage of History (Haute Ecole d’Art et de Design, Geneva). In 2010 he presented at the 29th International Sao Paulo Biennale, the Taipei Biennial and the Ballroom Marfa (Texas); in 2009, Je ne sais si c’en est la cause, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger, and Some Reference Materials / MATRIX 227 (University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive), Il aurait bien pu le promettre aussi (Jeu de Paume, Paris), The Title of This Show Is A Long List… (Jan Mot, Brussels); and in 2008, he exhibited at the White Cube (London) and the Yokohama Triennale. García Torres received the Cartier Award in 2007. Mario García Torres is based in Mexico City and Los Angeles.
Lee Plested has invited selected artists, writers, and curators to pose a question.
Bio:
Mario García Torres was born in 1975 in Monclova, Mexico. He received an MA from the Universidad de Monterrey (San Pedro Garza García) and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (Valencia). Exhibitions in 2011 include, Only God Knows Who The Audience Is (CCA Wattis, San Fransisco) and The Mirage of History (Haute Ecole d’Art et de Design, Geneva). In 2010 he presented at the 29th International Sao Paulo Biennale, the Taipei Biennial and the Ballroom Marfa (Texas); in 2009, Je ne sais si c’en est la cause, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger, and Some Reference Materials / MATRIX 227 (University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive), Il aurait bien pu le promettre aussi (Jeu de Paume, Paris), The Title of This Show Is A Long List… (Jan Mot, Brussels); and in 2008, he exhibited at the White Cube (London) and the Yokohama Triennale. García Torres received the Cartier Award in 2007. Mario García Torres is based in Mexico City and Los Angeles.
Lee Plested has invited selected artists, writers, and curators to pose a question.
Bio:
Lee Plested is a curator who lives and works in Vancouver and San Francisco. Plested received an MA in Curatorial Practice (California College of the Arts, San Francisco). Past exhibition projects include American Gothic, Regionalist Portraiture from the Collection, 2011 (Richard L. Nelson Gallery, University of California, Davis), Common Threads, 2008 (Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Calgary), Street Scene , 2007 (Murray Guy, New York, NY), B Wurtz: Photo/Objects , 2006 (871 Fine Arts, San Francisco), Land of the Free , 2005 (Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco), From Our Land, Expo 67 Canadian Craft Collection, 2004 (Confederation Center Art Gallery, Charlottetown), and Thrown: Influences and Intentions of West Coast Ceramics , 2003 (Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, Vancouver). Plested also runs a curatorial project called, The Apartment in his Vancouver flat with his husband Erik von Muller. Artists they have shown include John Baldessari, Lawrence Weiner, Matthew Higgs, Lee Lozano, Steven Shearer, Francis Stark, and Bruce Conner.
5:25 pm – Discussion
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Please join us for the opening reception of Material Witness: Mario García Torres / Konrad Wendt from 8:00 to 10:00 pm on Saturday, June 25 at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery.
This project is made possible with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of Nova Scotia through the Department of Communities, Culture & Heritage, and our Belkin Curator’s Forum members. The symposium is supported by the UBC Curatorial Lecture Series which is funded by the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, the Museum of Anthropology, the Department of Anthropology, and the Faculty of Arts.
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For further information please contact: Jana Tyner at jana.tyner@ubc.ca,
tel: (604) 822-1389, or fax: (604) 822-6689
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