Brazilian Curator Ivo Mesquita to Present Two Exhibitions
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.-- This summer's exhibitions at Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies will explore the advent of film as an artistic medium and the ways that its images have become an indelible part of contemporary culture. Beginning Sunday, June 14, guest curator lvo Mesquita will present two exhibitions, each of which focuses on how film, film images, the language of film, and theater architecture have all become part of our collective memory.
The first exhibition, entitled "Stills: A Selection from the Marieluise Hessel Collection," will be shown in the museum's main galleries. The second, entitled "Hiroshi Sugimoto: 9 Motion Pictures," will be shown in the museum's prints and drawings gallery. Both exhibitions will be open through Sunday, September 6.
"I have chosen a group of thirty-eight works that I believe were informed, influenced, and even generated by the linguistic and technological universe brought about with the advent of the cinema," writes Mesquita of"Stills." The exhibition presents paintings, sculptures, and photographs that demonstrate ways in which the huge bank of images amassed throughout the history of cinema have become a fundamental part of our collective cultural memory. Works by Joe Andoe, John Baldessari, Matthew Barney, Peter Campus, Larry Clark, Chuck Close, Ronnie Cutrone, Nan Goldin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Neil Jenny, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Allan McCollum, Pieter Laurens Mol, Mariko Mori, Bruce Nauman, Ed Paschke, Perejuame, Cindy Sherman, Kenneth Shorr, Martin Silverman, Loma Simpson, and Rhonda Zwillinger all share the qualities of time fragmentation, dazzling effects, dream, consciousness, and iconography as methods for producing images.
"Stills" is an expanded version of "Fotogramas: arte e cinema na colecao Marieluise Hessel" curated by lvo Mesquita and organized with Bard's Center for Curatorial Studies Museum, which was presented in Brazil at the Centro Cultural Light in Rio de Janiero, and the Museu de Arte Modema de São Paulo.
"Hiroshi Sugimoto: 9 Motion Pictures" features nine works from Sugimoto's series of black-and-white photographs taken of the interiors of American movie houses of the 1920s and 1930s. The photographs, taken when the theaters were empty, with a bright white light shining on the screen, illuminate each theater's architectural settings.
Ivo Mesquita is an independent curator and a visiting research fellow at the Center for Curatorial Studies. He has organized many exhibits in Brazil, Canada, and Mexico.