Udi Aloni, Elaine Angelopoulos, Eleanor Antin, Cory Arcangel, Ina Archer, Kenseth Armstead, Conrad Atkinson, Brandon Ballengeé, Guy Ben-Ner, Sanford Biggers, Chris Burden, Luca Buvoli, Nick Cave, Gordon Cheung, Sue Coe, Liz Cohen, Brody Condon, Keith Cottingham, Chris Doyle, eteam (Franziska Lamprecht & Hajoe Moderegger), Alessandra Exposito, Roy Ferdinand, Terry Fox, Yishay Garbasz, Rico Gatson, George Gittoes, Leon Golub, Brent Green, Jane Hammond, Kelly Heaton, Christine Hill, Shih-Chieh Huang, Junky Styling (Annika Sanders & Kerry
Seager), Peggy Jarrell Kaplan, Suzanne Lacy, Deborah Lawrence, Ja Rhim Lee, Ellen Levy, Jane Marsching, Jennifer & Kevin McCoy, David McDevitt, Lori Nix, David Opdyke, Pepón Osorio, Sarah H. Paulson, Frank Perrin, William Pope L, Erika Roth, Christy Rupp, Jason Salavon, Alan Scarritt, Dread Scott, Andrew Sendor, Marie Sester, Paul Shambroom, Todd Siler, Eve Sussman, Mark Tribe, Mark Wagner, Carrie Mae Weems, Hannah Wilke.
The Feldman Gallery will present Resurrectine, a large-scale group show of more than fifty artists. The selection of artworks embraces the notion of transformation – the creative act of taking form, appearance, nature, character, or meaning, and making it new again. The title of the exhibition is based on the name of the fictive elixir which restores life as imagined by Raymond Roussel in his 1914 novel Locus Solus and “rebottled” by the conceptual artist Terry Fox in 2007.
Resurrectine, the exhibition, is a guide to the always changing possibilities of language, signifying a rebirth and an expansion or narrowing of language, which in turn is linked to the visions of artists. In the spirit of the fanciful conceit of Roussel’s potion, the theme introduces new ways of thinking and the power of creativity.
As a form of time travel, the artworks incorporate contradictions: a low budget home video reenacts Moby Dick; a Medieval painting of the Resurrection becomes a video game; a flash animation combines the looting of Iraq’s antiquities with 3-Card Monte; trees inhabit libraries and museums exhibit human taxidermies; a mirror transforms
the viewer’s reflection into that of Andy Warhol; doilies are stained with menstrual blood and Audubon prints are productively vandalized. We are also engaged by the invention of nursing, fallen angels, a parent’s footsteps to a concentration camp, remembered spaces, the story of the Black film industry, escapes from death, Old Masters reborn, a Cheshire Cat, apocalypse management, a living electronic painting, reenacted famous protest
speeches, and dozens of other resurrectines.
Burden continues his interest in built structures and the role they play in reflecting cultures. In
three individual but interrelated works, he turns his attention to the beauty and metaphorical
possibilities of the architectural folly.
At one end of the gallery Burden has recreated Nomadic Folly (2001). First presented at the
Istanbul Biennial in 2001, this installation is his fantasy of a cultivated nomad’s tent. The structure
is comprised of a large wooden deck made of Turkish cypress and four huge umbrellas. Visitors
can relax and linger in this tent-like structure, replete with opulent handmade carpets, braided
ropes, hanging glass and metal lamps, and rich, sensuous wedding fabrics embroidered with
sparkling threads and traditional patterns. Soothing, seductive Turkish-Armenian music spills
from the tent’s interior. At the other end of the gallery is Dreamer’s Folly (2010), a series of three
highly ornamental cast-iron gazebos reminiscent of those common to traditional English gardens.
The three gazebos have been reconfigured to form one structure. Lacy “Tree of Life” fabrics are
draped around the exterior to complete a beautiful sanctuary in which to dream.
But the calm and beauty of this environment is violently disrupted by the video projection The
Rant (2006), where Burden’s goggled face appears in close-up and many times larger than life,
hovering just above water. In this performance he is a ranting xenophobic preacher delivering a
short, intense message in French (with Italian subtitles), an impassion rejection of the Other.
Like all of Burden’s exhibitions, The Heart: Open or Closed resonates with ambiguity on many
levels. This disarmingly beautiful installation may be his most tender and humanistic to date,
pointing to the beauty in the heart of two different cultures and the hate that can divide them.
Chris Burden was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1946. He received his BFA from Pomona
College in Claremont, California and his MFA from the University of California at Irvine. Burden’s
solo exhibitions include “14 Magnolia Doubles” at the South London Gallery (London, 2006); “Chris
Burden” at the Baltic Center of Contemporary Art (Gateshead, 2002); “Tower of Power” at the
Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (Vienna, 2002); “When Robots Rule: The Two Minute
Airplane Factory” at the Tate Gallery (London, 1999); and “Chris Burden: A Twenty Year Survey”
at the Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, 1988). His permanent outdoor installation
at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) entitled Urban Light was unveiled in 2008,
comprising of 202 restored antiques streetlights. Later the same year, What My Dad Gave Me, a
65-foot skyscraper made entirely of Erector Set parts was installed at Rockefeller Center in New
York City. His work is featured in prominent museum collections such as the LACMA and the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of Modern Art and the Museum
of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, London; the Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium;
the Inhotim Centro de Arte Contemporanea, Brazil; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art,
Kanazawa, Japan; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others. Burden currently
lives and works in Topanga, California.