Descriptive Acts

This group exhibition features contemporary video and installation works that specifically address acts of recording, speaking, and writing, underscoring the performative quality of much contemporary art practice. Works by Anthony Discenza, Shilpa Gupta, Lynn Marie Kirby and Li Xiaofei, and John Smith will be included, as well as three recent acquisitions by artists Dora García, Aurélien Froment, and Tris Vonna-Michell, which receive their U.S. museum debut with this presentation. In García's Instant Narrative (2006–8), visitors enter a seemingly empty gallery with a video projection of gradually appearing text, only to discover the running description of the space and visitors is typed in real time by a performer seated nearby. Froment's video Pulmo Marina (2010) consists of a single long shot of a jellyfish in an aquarium, the voice-over drawing attention to the conditions of display as experienced in natural history museums, educational films, or commercials. Vonna-Michell's room installation GTO: hahn / huhn, variation 1 (2010) evokes an archive of personal narratives by the artists with an arrangement of slide, photographic, and audio materials to explore, including his rapidly delivered monologue of impressions, emotions, and urban histories of Berlin and Detroit.

Descriptive Acts

Künstler: Anthony Discenza, Aurelien Froment, Dora Garcia, Shilpa Gupta, Lynn Marie Kirby / Li Xiaofei, John Smith, Tris Vonna-Michell