Six Feet Under: Elections/Final Charade
White Box
Chelsea
525 West 26th Street, 212-714-2347
July 10 - August 27, 2008
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Courtesy of White Box.WHITE BOX is pleased to announce the final chapter of Six Feet Under: Elections / Final Charade, a theme-driven annual Summer Series traditionally featuring six proposals by six curators over six years. With this unaccounted for, seventh year, we break all the rules- a bit biblically- extending Six Feet Under into its seventh and final installment, with seven curators over seven weeks, culminating in the last exhibition ever in White Box's 26th Street Chelsea location before we move to our new Bowery location.
The purpose of the series is to offer each curator/artist team a week-long opportunity to tackle this year's theme using White Box's unique architecture and its six feet below ground exhibition space. Acting as a prop, the gallery space is impenetrable, the summer viewer kept at bay and exhibitions are viewed only through White Box's sidewalk-level large window, lobby, and (VideoBox)- an outdoor window.
Elections / Final Charade- a forewarning to 'Sedition', our upcoming election time exhibition- brings an exciting end to this theme-induced variegated summer series with a topic on all our minds: the November 2008 Presidential Elections, possibly the most significant, unpredictable political event in recent history. Seven young, cutting edge, emerging curators are invited to select seven rather paticular artists or collectives, who will present and install a work each reflecting on the topic in their own surreptitious ways. Each team will touch upon the new realities and relationships the new societal shift may bring in this plausibly changing political environment we have coming forth.
WEEK 1:
Up and Down
Sophie Rusiok
Curated by Claire Luna
Immersed in a peep-show atmosphere for five consecutive evenings starting July 10th, White Box will dress to impress.
In order to highlight the artificial dramatization process of such a show as the presidential election campaign, Sophie Rusniok has chosen to outstage a staging without anything or anyone. She puts candidate-free elections to the test, by exposing empty, almost eerie-looking podium.
Up and Down, a polysemous and obvious reference to the elections also has an additional, deeper meaning in Sophie Rusniok's work; "I always consider the possibility of the two extremes, without ruling one out. My work explores the limit, the true/false. I am interested in the prospect that opposites can be interchangeable." Rusniok asserts.
In the same way that the mechanisms of an electoral campaign function, the artist leads us to forget about "true" realities, giving free rein to the imagination.
Most of Rusniok´s work can be regarded as a meditation on absence, conveyed with minimalist means; it is used here to define her stance vis-a-vis the presidential campaigns from her perspective as an artist in the Berlin scene-with a dizzying surfeit of exhilarating sound effects and verbal abuse.
Translated by Jodie Dinapoli and Vanina Géré.
WEEK 2
TRASHNAMI!
CIRCA 2012: Ruminations on a Changing World
Kim Holleman
Curated by Jason Goodman
July 17-22
WEEK 3
Uncharted Waters
Patrick O'Dell and the artists of New York Adorned
Curated by Lori Leven
July 24-29
WEEK 4
NEIL BELOUFA
Curated by Jarrett Gregory
July 31-August 5
WEEK 5
Exit Poll Cocktail Toll
Dean Baldwin
Curated by Chen Tamir
August 7-12
WEEK 6
SUMMERTIME USA!
Curated by Ryan Finn
August 14-19
WEEK 7
Moving on South
Virginia Overton
Curated by Dana Orland
August 21-27