Under the Influence. October 2008. 
Girls' Club's second exhibition, Under the Influence, will open in October 2008 at two venues concurrently: at the foundation's exhibition space located at 117 NE 2nd Street in downtown Fort Lauderdale and at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood located at 1650 Harrison Street in downtown Hollywood. Under the Influence is assembled by a curatorial team of three artists – collector and Girls' Club founder Francie Bishop Good, Girls' Club Director and arts writer Michelle Weinberg, and Curator of Exhibitions at Art and Culture Center of Hollywood and art consultant Jane Hart.
The exhibition explores the phenomenon of cross-pollination that occurs at every level of arts production today. The work on view is selected from the Girls' Club collection of works by contemporary women artists and from other artists and other art collections. The presentation of this exhibition is collaborative in nature.
Artists may influence each other through local social networks and collaborations, through mentor/student relationships, or by virtue of conceptual or aesthetic sympathies. Art derived from social networking and patterned after do-it-yourself business models – so popular among young artists today – has an antecedent in the feminist collectives of the 70s and 80s that challenged the originality of the individual artist, prominent at the time. The installation of works in Under the Influence will emphasize the connections among the artists across generations, such as the influence of feminist artist Nancy Spero on the younger generation, evident in the work of Kara Walker. Both artists will be represented in Under the Influence.
Several strands of artistic production will be highlighted in Under the Influence. Painters who work in a mode reminiscent of folkloric and illustrational or narrative styles include Amy Sillman, Shazia Sikander, and Claire Rojas. Re-inventing conventional craft media is covered by artists Alison Elizabeth Taylor (pictured left) who works in wood inlay, Frances Trombly and Ghada Amer in needlework. Abstraction in which repetitive motifs and drawing systems create eccentric and visionary environments describes the works of Joanne Greenbaum, Lynn Gelfman, Elisabeth Condon, and Lisa Sanditz. Artists who use the photographic image of the female body to explore its elasticity and capacity for shapeshifting include Wangechi Mutu, and Quisqueya Henriquez. The video program for Under the Influence features work by Ann Hamilton, Mariko Mori and Pipilotti Rist. Local artist Jen Stark's "Streaming Gradient" (bottom) will be projected onto the exterior of the Girls' Club building, layering a hypnotic moving image onto the architecture itself.
Under the Influence demonstrates the vital influence artists exert on the current moment in the art scene – and posterity – when they act as curators. The four curators/artists organizing the exhibition will place their own works in the context of the other exhibiting artists, and they will each discuss their own aesthetic and conceptual leanings. In keeping with the artist-centric focus of Girls' Club, Under the Influence will reveal diverse working methods and processes of contemporary visual artists to the public.
Girls' Club Collection
117 NE 2nd Street
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
954.828.9151
www.girsclubcollection.org
Be the first to comment