Momentum 1: Carol Bove

Momentum is a new exhibition series that presents work by under-known and emerging artists from the United States and around the world. The series is dedicated to the development of young blood and fresh ideas, helping those artists who have achieved momentum in their field gather pace in their work and profile. New York-based artist Carol Bove, whose work reflects on social, political, and artistic movements of America in the 1960s and 1970s, is the first participant in the series.

For the artist's first solo museum exhibition, Bove will present new work she has created specifically for it as well as a number of past works. Following her fascination with the '60s and '70s, Bove has been delving into the ICA's archives, researching the the renovation and opening of the ICA's current building in the mid-1970s. This research led to the artist's planned modification of the exhibition space to reveal the original interior details that have been modified or covered up in the enusing years and a sound element -- a reading of the 1969 Alan Watts science fiction story by a French Count who attended the 1975 opening of the ICA. Watts's story addresses people of the period during which it was written from the perspective of the year 1990.

Bove's interest in interior design from these earlier decades is reflected in an assemblage of shelves, books, and magazines, and the design of a bench from a piece of driftwood found near her Brooklyn home that are included in the exhibition. One of Bove's largest shelf pieces to date, What the Trees Said adapts a vintage shelving unit by modernist designer George Nelson as the support for an assemblage of staced, propped, and open books, mostly first edition publications. The piece gets it title from one of the included books: an account of "life on a new age farm" by Stephen Diamond. It documents the life of a group of anti-war activists who set up a commune known as Montague Farm in Massachusetts in 1968.

Carol Bove was born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1971. She lives and works in New York. She has had solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Zurich in Switzerland (2004), Hamburg Kunstvereing in Germany (2003), Team Gallery in New York (2003), Art Basel|33 in Basel, Switzerland (2002), and Bronwyn Keenan Gallery in New York (2000). Bove has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions including The Joy of Sex: Carol Bove and Charles Raymond at Cubitt in London (2004); Influence, Anxiety, and Gratitude at the List Visual Arts Center, M.I.T., in Cambridge, MA (2003); Reproduction II at Georg Kargl in Vienna, Austria (2003); and Transformer at La Panaderia in Mexico City (2001).

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Momentum 1: Carol Bove