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D a n i e l l e R i e d e e d u c a t i o n Virginia Commonwealth University, MFA in Painting 2003 - 2005 Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Student of Daniel Buren 2003 - 2004 Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze 2000 - 2001 The University of Virginia, BA, Major: Studio Art, Minor: Art History 1994 -1998 s o l o e x h i b i t i o n s 2017 Wingspan New York, New York Garvey | Simon 2016 Hier und Jetz Berlin, Germany Takt Gallery Stories Untold Indianapolis, IN Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art 2014 Slow Television, Budapest, Hungary Higgs Field Contemporary Sustainable Growths Indianapolis, IN Rooftop Installation on Abandoned House, Community Alliance for the Far East Side 2011 Talking to Tecumseh Youngstown, OH Bliss Gallery, Youngstown State University 2009 Traces, Christopher West Presents Indianapolis, IN 2008 Peacemeal (catalogue) Indianapolis, IN The Erstwhile Gallery Washed Indianapolis, IN The Basile Gallery, Herron Galleries Wondrous Silence Charlottesville, VA Newcomb Hall Gallery, University of Virginia 2005 Paint Chip Dream Richmond, VA FAB Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University 2004 Lick, Bilkerbahnof, Kulturamt Düsseldorf Düsseldorf, Germany s e l e c t e d g r o u p e x h i b i t i o n s 2017 Cultivate! Grand Rapids, Michigan UICA Recover Mexico City, Mexico Departamento 2016 Herron New York, New York Garvey Simon Art Access A View from Within New York, New York Mark Borghi Gallery AB FAB 2 Richmond, VA ADA Gallery Curious Devotion Conway, AK Baum Gallery, University of Central Arkansas The Motherload Dundee, Scotland The Hannah McClure Centre Asphaltum Indianapolis, IN Curated by Kevin Teare and Katrina Murray Voyages of Discovery (two-person with Elizabeth Schoyer) Indianapolis, IN Basile Gallery 2015 Blickpunkt / Viewpoint, curated by Isolde Krams Berlin, Germany Takt Gallery, curated by Isolde Krams Secrets Indianapolis, IN Big Tent, Collaboration with Robin Cox & Benjamin Day Smith

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Indianapolis Museum of Art 2014 The Mother Load Dallas, TX Collaborative Project by Lesli Robertson & Nathalie Macellaio Dallas Museum of Art 2013 Object Object! : Curated by good good things San Diego, CA Helmuth Projects Alberto Baraya: Naturalism/ Artificiality: Expeditions & Research Miami, FL

of the Herbarium of Artificial Plants (Collaborative work exhibited) The Frost Museum – Florida International University

Nouvelle presentation des collections Serignan, France Musee Regional d'Art Contemporaine Languedoc-Roussillon The Mother Load Prescott, AZ Prescott College Art Gallery 2012 Effetto Biennial, Museo de la Cuidad Merida, Mexico Museo de la Cuidad Bowwow, Emde Gallery Cologne, Germany 2011 *Expedition Bogotá – Indianapolis (two-person with Alberto Baraya) Indianapolis, IN iMOCA, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art Brizzel Finale Düsseldorf, Germany Institut für Skulpturale Peripherie Re Cover: Ciclo de Cine y Vistas Guiadas Mexico City, Mexico Casa del Lago Juan Jose Arreola, Sala Lumière

Faction, curated by Jeffrey Courtland Jones Dayton, OH The University of Dayton 2010 Das Seewerk 2010 (catalog) Moers, Germany Das Seewerk *Brizzel, (two-person with Friederike Mainka) Düsseldorf, Germany Institut für Skulpturale Peripherie Proyecto Re-Cover Mexico City, Mexico La Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana Informal Relations, curated by Scott Grow Indianapolis, IN iMOCA, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art 2009 Nouvelle Anné Nouvelle Vue, The Sérignan Museum Sérignan, France Shades – Drawing the Space, curated by Anila Agha Houston, TX O’Kane Gallery, University of Houston 2008 Top Secret, exhibition in book form, Daniel Buren Studio Paris, France 2007 Material Presence, curated by Scott Grow, Indianapolis, IN The Marsh Gallery, Herron Galleries (catalogue) *Village of 10,000 Smokes (two person w/ Calvin Burton), Charlottesville, VA Off Grounds Gallery, McIntire Department of Art 2006 Inaugural show for the Sérignan Museum, The Sérignan Museum Sérignan, France Plan 06: Forum for Contemporary Architecture in Cologne, Cologne, Germany Sechsmal Baukunst, StadtRevue-Haus, Joint project with architect Norbert Goljan Scope Miami, ADA Gallery Miami, FL 2005 Double Chin, Stux Gallery New York, NY Counterpoints, The Benaki Museum (catalogue) Athens, Greece A Y Regarder de Pres, L’Espace d’art contemporain Sérignan, France Gustav Fayet, Curated by Daniel Buren (included in Contre Toute Logique) 2nd MFA Biennial, Wilmington, DE The Delaware Center for Contemporary Art Sweet Substitute, California Institute of the Arts Valencia, CA s e l e c t e d s y m p o s i a & l e c t u r e s 2017 Mind’s Eye, Ball State University Muncie, IN 2016 Unplugged, IU Gateway Berlin, Germany

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2016 The Motherload, The Hannah McClure Centre Dundee, Scotland 2016 On Movement, University of Central Arkansas Conway, AK 2016 Mapping the Aether: Nugent Dance, Indianapolis Museum of Art Indianapolis, IN 2012 Opekta Summit, Opekta International Artist Residency Cologne, Germany 2011 Talking to Tecumseh, Bliss Hall, Youngstown State University Youngstown, OH 2005 Counterpoints, The Benaki Museum Athens, Greece 2004 Vor Ort, La Esmeralda Mexico City, Mexico p u b l i c c o l l e c t i o n s Musée Regional d'Art Contemporaine Languedoc-Roussillon, Sérignan, France p u b l i c a t i o n s Object Object!: A Selection of Smaller Works, a project by good good things at Helmuth Projects, Lauren Lockhart and Lara Bullock, 2014 Expedition Bogotá – Indianapolis, Essay by Amanda York, 2012 “Re Cover”, Casa Del Lago Annual Review, Mexico City, 2012 Das Seewerk 2010, Mooers, Germany, 2010 Danielle Riede 2003-2008, forward by Jean Robertson, 2009 “A y regarder de près” in A Sérignan, Contre Toute Logique… 15 Ans d’Art Contemporain, Somogy Editions d’art, France, 2006 Counterpoints, Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece, 2005 Bouquet, issue no. 2, untitled poem, Dusseldorf, Germany, 2004 Vor Ort, Galeria Garash, Mexico D.F., 2004 s e l e c t e d h o n o r s Takt Residency, Berlin, Germany, 2015, 2016 Arquetopia Fibers Residency, Oaxaca, Mexico, 2014 DRIVE Grant, Material Landscape: Site and Form in Contemporary Painting, 2015 IUPUI Internal Arts and Humanities Initiative Grant, Color Bleed, 2014 New Frontiers, Sustainable Growths: Painting with Recycled Materials, 2012 Trustee’s Teaching Award, Herron School of Art and Design - IUPUI, 2012 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, Professional, mixed media, 2005-2006 Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture, 2005 J. F. Kostopoulos Foundation Grant, 2005 Dedalus Foundation Grant Nominee, 2005 DAAD (Deutsche Akademische Austausch Dienst) Grant, 2004 s e l e c t e d t e a c h i n g e x p e r i e n c e Associate Professor 2008-present

Herron School of Art and Design - IUPUI Indianapolis, IN Lecturer in Art 2008

University of Richmond Richmond, VA Adjunct Faculty 2004-2008

Virginia Commonwealth University (Art Foundation & Painting) Richmond, VA Lecturer in Art 2007

University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA

Danielle Riede 2003-2008

The Elusive Presence of Danielle Riede by Jean Robertson “I wanted to make a line that ran along the wall at torso height so that a viewer might walk alongside the wall and admire the paint pieces as they might roses on a rosebush.”

--Danielle Riede (From an artist’s statement, 2005) Danielle Riede is a connoisseur and collector of different kinds of paint. Her studio provides storage space for boxes filled with the detritus of other painters’ work processes—a marbled lump of unused oil or acrylic or tempera paints scraped off a palette; a flat pool of dried paint salvaged from the bottom of a can or bowl or tray; a surface of rejected marks scraped off a canvas, encoded with the trace of another painter’s brush or palette knife. The random fragments embody different mixtures of pigments and mediums in varying states of density and translucency. Some chunks of paint are packed together like the thickest impasto imaginable; other pieces are as translucent as an oil glaze. Riede always recognizes that a piece of paint, no matter how thin, is an object: the medium of paint literally gives tangible form to color. At first Riede systematically labeled each paint relic with the date and place where she collected it, as an archaeologist or forensic scientist might label a specimen. Later she abandoned such archival rigor for an expansive approach to collecting, cheerfully jumbling together her collections in a riot of colors, shapes, textures, and translucencies, assembling a kind of cabinet of curiosities of varieties of hardened paint fragments. More recently she has manufactured her own mixtures to add into the collections of readymade relics. She mixes pigments into heated resins that she pours into viscous puddles and peels when dry into translucent fragments with curling edges. Trained mainly as a painter, Riede works with the conventions of painting in an unconventional manner. Her signature artistic form is a room-sized installation of paint pieces that she selects from her collections and adheres individually to the walls in intricate configurations. Since she began collecting paint in 2003, she has installed paint in more than two dozen sites, in locations extending from Greece to Mexico. Some installations are as large as 40 rows deep.

Riede arrives at a gallery with her boxes, and spreads out her colored chunks and lumps and veneers of paint, which she sorts by color, shape, size, thickness, and translucency. Studying the interior as a designer might, she imagines lines and rows of colored fragments spreading across the walls and corners. The ground provided by a given wall is pictorially vital for Riede; its eccentricities of surface and dimension are integral to her process of composition. Likewise color relationships, light, and two-dimensional design are central concerns, as they are for many painters. Riede almost always works alone for the days or even weeks required to produce an installation on site. In bricoleur fashion she attends to the physical labor of carefully attaching each fragment into its allotted location. Skillfully she cantilevers fragments so that they bend and jut from the wall in low relief, reflecting light and casting shadows. Riede deploys each piece of paint as an individual element in the overall abstract pattern, just as a stone or tile serves as one mark in a mosaic, or beads combine in beadwork, or brushstrokes knit together in an Impressionist painting. Riede’s designs for her earliest paint installations were abstract in a systematic and grid-like manner; increasingly she plays at the margins of the geometric, eroding and bending the systematic in favor of fluidity and improvisation. The interplay between near and far is integral to the optical and conceptual effects of Riede’s paint installations. From a distance, her refined sense of color and design appears to dominate her aesthetic. Pieces of paint coalesce into distinctive arrangements of flowing lines, rows, arcs, and swirls. Riede, who never wields a brush herself, would seem to privilege composition, design, and color over facture. Yet up close, when we recognize lumps as paint rather than colored glass or minerals or stones, we see that Riede celebrates the glory of handcrafted paint. She generously offers us the artifacts of other people’s paint handling as objects of intense admiration. Like a display of specimens in a science museum, Riede’s installations of paint function as a kind of inventory displaying the physical matter of paint in all its mesmerizing physicality, tactility, and variety of colors and shapes. The gestalt of one of Riede’s installations is visually powerful but illusory. Like a theatrical set, the exuberant, convincing semblance of order and pattern is provisional and temporary; at the end of an exhibition Riede removes the individual fragments and returns them to their boxes. The “painting” as a coherent image dissolves while the paint pieces as physical matter by and large survive. Many fragments will be recycled into future installations of paint at another site. (Indeed, followers of

Riede’s work may delight in recognizing distinctive chunks reappearing in new positions in subsequent installations, their colors and shape literally seen in a new light next to new neighbors.) Danielle Riede is an artist of the twenty-first century in her embrace of interdisciplinarity, hybridity, transience, and impurity. At age 13 she was a budding archaeologist. As a university undergraduate she started out in the school of architecture before switching to painting. She loves mathematics. In her work process, she freely borrows from architecture, interior design, handicrafts, and sculpture. She is unabashed in her appreciation for beauty and her love for humor and playfulness. And she is well read in art history and theory: conversant, for instance, with the vocabulary and ideas of minimalism, post-minimalism, and process art. Art historical influences and affinities for Riede’s work are wide-ranging. For example, her installations resonate with the history of wall painting, where figure-ground relationships play out at large scale on the walls of rooms. One might think of the great fresco paintings of ancient Rome or the Renaissance, although those generally tried to hide the wall with illusionistic images. Riede’s installations of paint better evoke wall mosaics and stained glass windows, where the wall (the support), its architectural features (the frame or structure), and the materials used to make images (the surface) are all assertively concrete. Riede’s interest in walls as supports also reflects the influence of her mentor Daniel Buren, with whom she studied in Dusseldorf in 2003-04. In his work, the French conceptual artist rigorously considers the implications of painting in the space of architecture. Other artists whose works Riede cites as inspirations are the Impressionists, for their broken bits of color, and Jackson Pollock, for his organic process. She also admires Louise Bourgeois and Eva Hesse, two women invested in the conceptual and psychological implications of their materials and processes. One could argue on behalf of a feminist inflection to Riede’s work, found in the lightness of her touch, her engagement with fragility and time-based work, and her evanescent materials that have a feeling of use and mortality. In her process Riede at first appears systematic, sorting her collections and initially designing an installation within parameters that seem driven by geometric logic. She borrows from the vocabulary and tactics of minimalism and postminimalism—repetition, geometric arrangements, rows, grids. But her approach is not at all calculated. As she works she allows herself to improvise and be intuitive, without totally abandoning a sense of order. No installation is entirely systematic or entirely impulsive.

Digging deeper one also sees a sense of humor and even irony as a subterranean vein. Riede’s displays of paint are not as purely factual and archaeological as they might seem. Instead, they are hybrids of the historical, the manufactured, and the simulated. Besides the “authentic” paint pieces excavated from the remains of other painters’ work, Riede uses reproductions. For these, she makes molds of distinctive fragments from her collections, then casts multiples of the original fragments. In an installation she displays reproductions alongside found paint pieces and her own manufactured resin fragments. Sometimes there also is a half hidden tool or other artifact, such as the melted remains of a plastic spoon. Riede’s practice echoes that of certain natural history and archaeological museums, where artifacts, casts, and facsimiles of the past intermingle in a confusion of individual identities and real versus fictionalized histories. Danielle Riede’s installations of paint are conceptual, examining the conventions of painting and playing with vocabularies of art. She is among those dedicated emerging artists of the twenty-first century who are carrying on longstanding conversations about painting. For those devoted to painting, certain perennial questions never cease to be interesting, beginning with the most basic: What counts as painting and what doesn’t? The answers continue to expand and mutate. Riede’s installations also are sensual and beautiful to behold. To see them is to revel in the pleasures of the senses—color and light, mesmerizing patterns, physical presence, the body inhabiting space—while recognizing that the pleasure is fleeting. For this particular writer, Riede’s installations ultimately are about time— repetition and change, the inexorable passage of time, memory, history, nostalgia, loss. In the space of the moment, Riede’s installations are vividly and pleasurably alive and materially present. Then they vanish, leaving behind pieces of paint and photographic documentation as relics. Don’t despair, Riede urges. The relics are beautiful and poetic. Celebrate them as the remains of past artworks. Add to them. Return to them again and again. -Jean Robertson is Professor of Art History at Herron School of Art and Design. She is the co-author with Craig McDaniel of the following books: Painting as a Language: Material, Technique, Form, Content (Harcourt Brace: 2000); and Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art After 1980 (Oxford University Press: 1st Edition, 2005; 2nd Edition, 2010).

Images

Washed, recuperated artists’ materials, utensils, resin 2008

Right image, installation view

Following pages, installation views and details

Peacemeal, recuperated artists’ materials, utensils, resin, 2008 Right page, installation view from outside Following pages, installation views and details

Eric, donated frame and lace, lights, 2008

Left image, installation view

Above image, detail

Biography

1976 Born in Grand Junction, Colorado Danielle Riede is an Assistant Professor of Painting at Herron School of Art and Design. She lives in Indianapolis with her daughter Lucia and husband Rareş.

Education

2003- 2005 Virginia Commonwealth University , MFA in Painting 2003 – 2004 Kunstakademie Düssledorf, Student of Daniel Buren 2000 - 2001 Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze - Scuola del Nudo (Figure Drawing School) 1994-1998 The University of Virginia, BA in Studio Art and Art History

Publications

“A y regarder de près” in A Sérignan, Contre Toute Logique… 15 Ans d’Art Contemporain, Somogy Editions d’art, France, 2006

Counterpoints, Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece, Nov, 2005

Bouquet, issue no. 2, untitled poem, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2004

Vor Ort, Galeria Garash, Mexico D.F., 2004

Bouquet, issue no. 1, “Thoughts on Landscape: An Email to Sofie Frederiksen.”, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2003

Bibliography

Tim Bowring, 97.3 WRIR, “Zero Hour: Interview with Danielle Riede”, January 18, 2008.

Linda J. Kobert, A & S Online: University of Virginia, “Embracing Possibility – Danielle Riede’s installations blend color, form - and opportunity.”, October 24, 2007.

Clarisse Fabre, Le Monde, "Sérignan, Stupefiant Village Culturel”, December 16, 2006, p. 1, 29.

Daniel Croci and Virginie Moreau, Herault Juridique & Economique, “Musée y d’art contemporain de Sérignan: Ouvertures!” September 28, 2006, p. 34.

Midi Libre, “Tout l‘art contemporain a elu domicile a Sérignan”, Oct. 29 2006, p.4.

Bertrand Fassio. Gazette Economique & Culturelle, “il se passe toujours quelque chose a Sérignan”, September 26 2006, p.23-30.

Art 11.com, “Ouverture du musee de Sérignan”, 2006 http://www.art11.com/magazine/actu/2006/09/20/

Plan 06: Forum for Contemporary Architecture in Cologne, Sechsmal Baukunst, 2006, http://www.plan-project.com/german/projekte.html?id=16

Midi Blogs.Com, “23 septembre, 11 h: Inauguration du Musée de Sérignan et de l’exposition Daniel Buren/ Lawrence Weiner, en présence de 60 artistes”, 2006, http://serignan.midiblogs.com/archive/2006/09/13/23-septembre-11-h-inauguration-du-du-musee-de-serignan-et-de.html

Koln Architektur.de, “Plan 06: Sechmal Baukunst”, 2006, http://www.koelnarchitektur.de/pages/de/home/a_jugend/1563.htm

NEA Online - “∆ηµιουργίες στον καµβά”/ “Options” Contents, 2005, http://ta-nea.dolnet.gr/list_by_topic.php?fyllo=18382&tmhma=20

Anaba: Social Sculpture?, “Danielle Riede”, 2005, anaba.blogspot.com/2005/12/danielle-riede.html

ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΤΥΠΙΑ, Απο σηµερα η εκδεση 5 νεων καλλιτεχνων οτο Μπενακη “Αντιστιξειζ” στο Μουσειο/ “Five Artists in Dialogue in ‘Counterpoints’ Exhibition at the Museum”, December 4, 2005, p.20.

Sérignan en Languedoc: Le Journal, “Des nouveaux acteurs de la scène critique internationale reunis a Sérignan par Daniel Buren”, Sept. 8, 2005, p. 14.

Hérault Juridique & Economique, “De jeunes créatures en 'libre excés”, Sept. 2005, p.8.

Midi Plus, “Emules de Buren a Sérignan/ Buren’s Pupils in Serignan”, Sept. 12, 2005, p.7.

Midi Libre, “Sérignan Art Contemporaine: un expo ‘A y regarder de près‘”, Sept. 15, 2005, p.5.

Béziers Actualité, Daniel Buren: “Mieux vaut le qualitatif au quantitative, Sept. 12, 2005, p.9.

Replica 21, 2004, “Educacion y arte: Entrevista con Daniel Buren”, www.replica21.com/archivo/ articulos/q_r/331_replica_buren.html

Recent Honors

New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Exploration Traveling Fellowship, 2009 The Efroymson Family Fund Grant, a CICF Fund, 2008 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, Professional, mixed media, 2005-2006 Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture, 2005 Nomination for Dedalus Foundation Grant, VCU, Painting and Printmaking, 2005 Virginia Commonwealth University Art Scholarship, 2005-2003 Virginia Commonwealth University Teaching Assistantship, 2004 DAAD (Deutsche Akademische Austausch Dienst)for Vor Ort exhibition and symposium, 2004

Selected Exhibitions

2009

Nouvelle Anné Nouvelle Vue, The Sérignan Musem, Sérignan, France

Shades – Drawing the Space, O’Kane Gallery, University of Houston , curated by Anila Agha, Houston, TX

2008

*Peacemeal (solo), The Erstwhile Gallery, Indianapolis, IN

Top Secret, exhibition in book form, Daniel Buren Studio, Paris, France

*Washed (solo), The Basile Center, Herron School of Art, Indianapolis, IN

*Her Royal Majesty (solo), Newcomb Gallery, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

2007

Material Presence, curated by Scott Grow, The Marsh Gallery, Herron School of Art, Indianapolis, IN

*Village of 10,000 Smokes (two person w/ Calvin Burton), Off Grounds Gallery, Charlottesville, VA

2006

Inaugural show for the Sérignan Museum, The Sérignan Museum, Sérignan, France

Plan 06: Forum for Contemporary Architecture in Cologne, Sechsmal Baukunst, StadtRevue-Haus, Joint project with architect Norbert Goljan, Cologne, Germany

Scope Miami, ADA Gallery Booth, Miami, Florida

2005

Double Chin, Stefan Stux, New York, NY

Counterpoints, The Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece

A Y Regarder de Près, L’Espace d’art contemporain Gustav Fayet, Curated by Daniel Buren, Sérignan, France

*Paint Chip Dream (solo), MFA Thesis Exhibition, FAB Gallery, Richmond, VA

2nd MFA Biennial, The Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington, DE

Sweet Substitute, California Institute of the Art, Valencia, CA

A Tribute to Thomas Jefferson, ADA Gallery, Richmond, VA

2004

*Lick (solo), Bilkerbahnof, Kulturamt Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

The Apollonian Style, Bruno Marina Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

Vor Ort, Garash Gallery , Mexico City, Mexico

Natura: Malerei, Juried exhibition of paintings from the Art Academy of Düsseldorf, Cologne, Germany

Top Shelf, curated by the Lisa Schroeder of Brooklyn Gallery, Schroeder Romero, Richmond, VA

Candid, Plant Zero, Richmond, VA

Rundgang, Art Academy of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

2003

LEMONS, FAB Gallery, Curated by Kristen Beale, Richmond, VA

Nellie Appelbie and Danielle Riede: Recent Works, Les Yeux du Monde, Charlottesville, VA

2001

emergeNYC: Responses of Emerging Artists to Sept. 11th Tragedy, Crane Street Studio Building, Long Island City, NY

2000

Mostra Mercato di arte Contemporanea, Venturina, Italy

With special thanks to Jean Robertson, Scott Grow, Jeremy Efroymson and the Efroymson Family Fund, a CICF Fund.

Alberto bArAyA & DAnielle rieDe

ExpEdition bogotÁ-inDiAnApolis:

indianapolis MusEuM of ContEMporary art oCtobEr 7 – novEMbEr 19, 2011

An examination of the aesthetics

of a place and its plants

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Cover: Indiana Fakes/Falsos de Indiana (Detail).

This page:A Pumpkin Football (The Bulldogs)/ Una calabaza para futbol (Detail).

For Expedition Bogotá-Indianapolis at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, artists Alberto Baraya and Danielle Riede explored the environmental and cultural landscape of central Indiana through photography, video, sculpture, and installations of found objects. Baraya, a conceptual artist based in Bogotá, Columbia, was visiting Indiana for the first time during the implementation of the exhibition. Riede, a native of Virginia who has lived in Indianapolis for four years while teaching at Herron School of Art and Design, acted as his guide and cultural interpreter. This body of work grew out of Baraya’s initial impressions and Riede’s long-term understanding of the Indiana landscape, residents, and public spaces such as museums, stores, and state parks. The artists adopted the methods of discovery, collec-tion, and categorization used by early explorers in the Americas. Through these actions, the artists were better able to understand the particularities of their surroundings.

The two artists first met in Venice in 2009. Baraya was there creating the site-specific work Expedición Venecia for a group exhibition in the Latin American pavilion, and was in a trinket shop in search of crystal flowers when the two crossed paths. They soon recognized the similarities in their practices and the potential for collabora-tion. Riede was awarded a grant which enabled the artists to embark upon the new body of work featured in Expedition Bogotá-Indianapolis. The artists wanted to explore the potential of objects found in their respective environments as diagnostic tools, using cultural relics like artificial plants and ornamental fruit, vases, and display cases to understand, in their words, “the aesthetics of a place and its plants.” After departing Venice, they continued their conversation via email while Riede scoured Indianapolis for materials. Baraya visited Indianapolis for two weeks before the exhibition opened in October, 2011. During that time the artists captured photographs and video throughout the area, then assembled and installed their findings for the exhibition. The resulting works are a direct reaction to Indianapolis as the artists saw it, and contain a dialogue between the oppositions of natural and artificial, permanent and ephemeral, intuition and scientific methods, local and global.

Collecting, categorizing, and displaying found materials is a longstanding activity central to both artists’ practices. For the most part, Baraya’s works are part of a series titled Herbarium of Artificial Plants, 2001–ongoing, each component of which is comprised of a systematically dissected and labeled fake plant acquired by the artist. Drawing

Essay by AMAnDA YORkCuratorial assistant, department of Contemporary artindianapolis Museum of art

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from the practices of 18th and 19th century European explorers in the Americas, Baraya pockets these “specimens” from the decorations of waiting rooms, homes, or restaurants without permission. Most often, Baraya’s plants are affixed to paper, their individual parts labeled in pencil and preserved in austere wooden frames, referring to the antiquated form of a herbarium of real vegetation. Baraya states, “By picking up some plastic flowers on the street, I behave like the scientists that Western education expects us to become. By changing the goals of this simple task I resist this ‘destiny’. In that moment all assumptions are put into question, even History.”1 In 2004 Baraya retraced the steps of botanists for his project Expedición Putumayo, for which he sought out artificial plants as evidence of globalism—or “the laws of decoration,” as Baraya calls it—in even the remotest areas of the Amazon, evidencing that “…even the most ‘natural’ places need to be ornamented by any means.”2 The results of these pilgrimages are often contextualized on maps in the gallery space, and in this way all of Baraya’s bodies of work within the Herbarium series become “expeditions.”

Riede’s past work consists mainly of temporary site-specific “room paintings,” for which Riede collected castoff fragments of paint from other artists, bits of resin, and other ephemera and affixed them to the gallery wall with glue. Instead of creating her own markings, Riede carefully harvested the stray brushstrokes of others from their canvases or palettes, using them to create unique compositions in reaction to gallery spaces. Riede earned a BA from the University of Virginia before moving to Italy, where she took drawing classes. She then studied under Daniel Buren while attending the Art Academy of Düsseldorf, Germany. Riede returned to the U.S. and earned an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2005. The artist started collecting paint in 2003 when she stumbled upon a bridge with layers of peeling paint. But it wasn’t until Düsseldorf that her interest in this medium took the form of her signature room paint-ings. She began visiting studios of fellow painters, seeking remnants of dried paint as donations, which she meticulously catalogued. 3 Her early installations, with names like Düsseldorf Reds or Cools—Mexico–Düsseldorf, are imbibed with Riede’s personal history and associations with the places in which the fragments were collected. As Riede states, these works are a “…beautiful and eccentric record of my excursions and meetings with other painters.”4 Later, in order to be able to collect more broadly Riede allowed herself the freedom to no longer label each scrap of paint.5 Her installations became less conceptually tied to the place where they were collected, and the frag-ments became anthropomorphized in works with titles such as 300 Clouds Go Passing By or Runaway.

Indiana Fakes/Falsos de Indiana is the largest work included in Expedition Bogotá-Indianapolis, and consists of an expansive grouping of Riede’s collected artificial flowers, wreaths and ornamental fruit affixed directly to the gallery’s wall or arranged in a wood and glass display case. Some of the vegetation appears deceptively real, others are extravagantly ornamental or comically oversized. Overall, the arrangement appears more intuitive than systematic, and recalls Riede’s past room paintings. But

1. José roca, “alberto Baraya.” Frieze Magazine, issue 108, Jun-aug, 2007. accessed online http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/focus_alberto_baraya/ 2. ibid.3. Jean robertson, “The elusive presence of Danielle riede.” Danielle Riede: 2003-2008 (self published).4. riede, Paint Chip Dreams. Master’s thesis (virginia Commonwealth University: 2005) p. 1. 5. Jean robertson, “The elusive presence of Danielle riede.” Danielle Riede: 2003-2008 (self published).

the intuitive collection and installation of the individual components is undermined by a small paper tag hanging from each of the decorations. Branded on one side with a rubber stamp insignia designed by the artists and portray-ing a pile of corn and the humorous invented phrase “Expedition Cornfakes”, the reverse contains information about the “recollection” of the object—where, when, and who “discovered” the item.

The artists are intrigued by the associations a viewer may have with these lowbrow objects. When searching for the flowers in secondhand stores, Riede stated, “The flowers are arranged according to color and put in old vases, etc. Sometimes they are just cast aside in giant junk piles, especially if they are not in pristine condition. I am interested in public reaction to and use of the artificial plants.”6 The irony of these botanical specimens is that they’re not an individual output of nature (as is real vegetation), but mass-produced in China. However, many of the objects have been altered by their original owners—one is wrapped in a bow of billowy pink gauze, another “planted” in a dispos-able plastic cup. Through these processes, the widely produced objects become embedded with sentimentality and are relics of a childhood, wedding, or deceased relative that someone chose to cast aside. The unknown personal narratives these pieces contain is of interest to Riede, and parallels her thoughts of her room paintings. Riede stated of her donated paint fragments that she was “…interested in the idea of work generated by a community.”7

nearby, Two Triangular Casket Flag Containers/Dos contenedores triangulares para bandera funeraria is installed. For this work, the artists visited an Indianapolis branch of the chain craft store Hobby Lobby. There they purchased

6. riede in an email to Baraya, July 7, 2011.7. riede, Paint Chip Dreams. Master’s thesis (virginia Commonwealth University: 2005) p. 4.

This page: Indiana Fakes/Falsos de Indiana (Detail).Two Triangular Casket Flag Containers/Dos contenedores triangulares para bandera funeraria. righT page: Indiana Fakes/Falsos de Indiana.

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This page:Flying Corn/ Maíz volante (video).Tricky Tropical Forests (A Hero’s Stage)/Bosques tropicales engañosos (Escenariode heroes).

righT page:A Flying Peony/ Una Peonia Voladora (video).Two Inches on a Sunflower/ Dos pulgadas en Girasol (video).Auctioneer (video).

triangular casket flag holders as well as fake autumn produce indigenous to Indiana—such as ears of corn and a small pumpkin—which were incorporated into this and other artworks. Attached to the wall, one flag container remains empty except for its original packaging of a paper printed to look like the star-spangled corner of the American flag. On the front, a price tag sticker from Hobby Lobby contains information about where the container was purchased, along with the inventory code and place of manufacture (China). The sticker ironically portrays the same information as Baraya’s and Riede’s own handmade tags on Indiana Fakes, but also belies the proliferation of Western capitalism since the industrial revolution—a container to memorialize those fallen in wars abroad, made in China, and shipped to the U.S. for purchase. The other flag container is filled with an arrangement of artificial husks of corn. Indiana is known for being part of the “breadbasket of America,” and the rural landscape is charac-terized by seemingly never-ending rows of the crop.

Despite never having been the site of armed conflict, the landscape in and around Indianapolis is rife with reminders of war. Downtown, an aggressively neoclassical building based on the ancient Greek Mausoleum of Halicarnassus was erected after WWI. This building dominates an entire city block, and is home to the Indiana World War Memorial Military Museum. Baraya visited the museum and pocketed some samples of fake bamboo from a diorama about U.S. combatants in Vietnam. The resulting work, Tricky Tropical Forests (A Hero’s Stage)/Bosques tropicales engañosos (Escenariode heroes), is consistent with Baraya’s Herbarium methodology—the artist pinned the specimen to paper and labeled each component, complete with photographs of the display from where it was taken for the piece. This work draws connections between the history of colonialism Baraya’s work destabiliz-es, and the U.S. Military’s invasive polices of past and present. Tricky Tropical Forests also unveils the many inter-pretive and illusory tactics used in museums to tell a one-sided story about an actual and highly politicized event.

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The work Tree Video/Video de árbol was filmed in another central Indiana landscape altered by a distant war, Fort Benjamin Harrison, and is a subtle acknowledgment of humans’ manipulation of the environment. The densely wooded setting in the video appears to be untouched wilderness. However, this grove of walnut trees was planted because their straightness made them ideal for manufacturing rifles. For Tree Video the camera remains stationary, capturing the trunks of the mature trees and ambi-ent sounds of the forest. The tree’s tall, straight trunks create a regular and predict-able pattern in the landscape. Within this pattern, it’s easy to identify one small tree near the left side of the video’s frame. Slowly, we recognize Riede wearing green and crouched behind the small tree—she appears to be carefully planting the sapling. near the end of the short video, Riede reveals the artificiality of her endeavor by picking up the potted tree (the ease of her movements indicates that the tree is not heavy and must not be real). Riede walks off screen with the decoration—which is also on display as a part of the exhibition—and the loop starts again. Through email correspondence the artists discussed the types of places they’d like to visit when Baraya arrived in Indianapolis. When Riede suggested remote areas like Fort Harrison, Baraya responded enthusiastically, “I’m thinking on the possibilities of bringing some special fake flora to one of those parks, based on the idea that any traveler had an influence on the land-scape he/she crosses…”8 Tree Video cleverly illustrates how nature is manipulated to

8. Baraya in an email to riede, July 6, 2011.

This page:Tree Video/Video de árbol (Video).Fake Corn of Indiana/Maíz falso de Indiana.

righT page:A Pumpkin Football (The Bulldogs)/ Una calabaza para futbol (Detail). suit the desires of the humans who inhabit it.

Also filmed in this grove of trees is Two Inches on a Sunflower/Dos pulgadas en Girasol. Riede holds a large sunflower by the stem, so that it’s pointing towards the sky. At first she is nearly imperceptible, but her figure is revealed as she slowly makes her way across the screen from right to left. Clips of Riede are interspersed with close-ups of an inchworm navigating the flower’s leaves and petals—it’s obvious from these shots that the flower is fake, but it’s a poetic reflection of humans’ tendency to idealize nature, in decorations indoors as well as the “natural” spaces outdoors. Baraya’s and Riede’s preoccupations with the landscape of Indiana brings to mind the late 19th and early 20th century painters known as the Hoosier Group, whose most well-known member is T.C. Steele. His landscapes depict idyllic rural scenes of farms and meadows painted en plein air throughout the state.

The photographs comprising Fake Corn of Indiana/Maíz falso de Indiana also poetically explore how we adapt our surroundings to suit our needs. Riede states, “In the 1600s, Indiana was lush. Approximately 85% of it was covered with dense forests of giant hardwoods and the kanawakee Marsh spotted the state with nearly two million acres of wetlands.” 9 Today, large-scale corporate farming operations have filled much of the landscape with corn or soy fields, rendering the landscape completely different from its state hundreds of years ago. The Fake Corn photographs feature Riede in flat corn fields holding an absurdly large artificial ear of corn purchased

9. Expedition Bogotá–Indianapolis, indianapolis Museum of Contemporary art. http://www.indymoca.org/2011/09/expedition-bogota-indianapolis/

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from Hobby Lobby. The fake corn with its idealized proportions is even more ironic when juxtaposed with ears of actual corn, even if those—too—are modified, although genetically. The fake corn is on display within the grouping of photographs document-ing Riede’s action in corn fields and has been slightly dismantled and labeled like Tricky Tropical Forests.

A Pumpkin Football (The Bulldogs)/ Una calabaza para futbol is one of two works in the exhibition that are portraits of people the artists encountered while traveling throughout the area. The Bulldogs are the mascot of Brownsburg High School, located in a suburb west of Indianapolis. For this work, Baraya and Riede attended and photo-graphed the school’s homecoming football game. The photographs of football play-ers, fans, and the homecoming court all surreally contain a miniature fake pumpkin, which is on display in a glass vitrine like a prize game-winning ball. This disruption of our expectations echoes the artists’ interventions in the “natural” environment of Fort Benjamin Harrison. Through these actions—a fake tree being carried through the woods, a homecoming queen holding a plastic pumpkin—we begin to question the integrity of our environment. As Baraya and Riede expose, whether considering a forest

or a vase of artificial flowers, our surroundings are the way they are because we made them so.

The works Fallen Forest Undergrowth/ Sustratos boscosos caídos and Climbing Fakes/ Falsos trepadores portray Riede’s genuine appreciation for her accumulated artificial flowers through formal interventions and manipulations of their petals and stems. Fallen Forest Undergrowth consists of a multicolored pool of flower petals arranged on the gallery floor. The softness of the material and placement on the floor recalls one of Robert Morris’s felt scatter pieces of the late 60s, but—as with Riede’s room paintings—these individual pieces are thoughtfully arranged. As art historian Jean

Robertson stated, “In her process Riede at first appears systematic, sorting her collection and initially designing an installation within parameters that seem driven by geometric logic. She borrows from the vocabulary and tactics of minimalism and post minimalism—repetition, geometric arrangements, rows, grids. But her approach is not at all calculated. As she works she allows herself to improvise and be intuitive, without totally abandoning a sense of order. no installation is entirely systematic or entirely impulsive.”10 The work Climbing Fakes is of the same post minimal thread, and is comprised of beautiful reliefs of altered fake flowers, taken apart and reassembled with delicate stitches. One component of this work is comprised of the petals of a disassembled rose that have been reattached end-to-end in soft, vertical rows, bringing to mind the organic seriality of Eva Hesse.

As a whole, Expedition Bogotá-Indianapolis poetically describes Indianapolis as the artists experienced it.

The works speak of a specific time and place, but tell a story common most anywhere. no matter where we go—to a city in the Midwest or a remote village in the Amazon—our experiences are shaped by standardizations of products across a global marketplace. By highlighting things we don’t often consider, like our reciprocal relationships with our surroundings or the everyday objects we choose to purchase or cast aside, Baraya and Riede have provided a comprehensive social and geographic Hoosier landscape.

10. Jean robertson, “The elusive presence of Danielle riede.” Danielle Riede: 2003-2008 (self published).

This page:Fallen Forest Undergrowth/ Sustratos boscosos caídos.

righT page:Climbing Fakes/ Trepadores falsos (Peace Rose).Fallen Forest Undergrowth/ Sustratos boscosos caidos (Detail).Climbing Fakes/ Trepadores falsos (Red Rose Mutant).

Tree video/ Video de árbol, 2011, Video installed across from artificial tree in video. 1:32 minutes

A Pumpkin Football (The Bulldogs)/ Una calabaza para futbol, 2011, Photo installation with artificial pumpkin signed by team in display case. 8 ft. x 5.5 ft.

Fake Corn of Indiana/ Maíz falso de Indiana, 2011, Photo installation with artificial corn taxonomy. 7.5 ft. x 4 ft.

Tricky Tropical Forests (A Hero’s Stage)/ Bosques tropicales engañosos (Escenariode heroes), 2011, Taxonomy of tropical plant from war memorial, photos, drawing. 17 in. x 21 in.

THAnkS To: The Efroymson Family Fund, Internal Arts and Humanities Initiative Grant – Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, the Christel DeHaan Family Foundation, the Indiana Arts Commission, Penrod Foundation, and HotBed Creative

special thanks to: Jeremy efroymson, Katrina Murray, amanda York, paula Katz, Lukas schooler, shauta Marsh and the staff of the indianapolis Museum of Contemporary art.

Sunflower Taxonomy/ Taxonomía de Girasol, 2011, Artificial sunflower, photos. 3.5 ft. x 4.5 ft.

Dead nature - Still Life (The Auctioneer)/ naturaleza Muerta - Sin Vida, 2011,Video installed above display case with ceramic pitcher containing artificial flowers. 1:04 minutes

Fallen Forest Undergrowth/ Sustratos boscosos caídos, 2011, Dissected artificial plants gleaned from discarded crafts, yard sales and second hand stores. 8 ft. x 15 ft x 1 ft.

Climbing Fakes/ Falsos trepadores, 2011, Dissected red rose bouquet, peace rose bouquet and country wine bush. Parts sewn together by hand. Individual sewn forms: 6 in. x 1.5 in., 13 in. x 6.5 in. and 3 in. x 3 in.

Two Triangular Memorial Flag Cases/ Dos contenedores triangulares de bandera funerarias, 2011, Fake corn in two memorial flag cases. 24 in. x 14 in.

Indiana Fakes/ Falsos de Indiana, 2011,Archive of artificial plants and crafts decorated with plants collected in Indiana and glass display case.25 ft. x 10 ft.

Two Inches on a Sunflower/ Dos pulgadas en Girasol, 2011, Video installed across from artificial sunflower taxonomy and suspended sunflower in display case. 2:33 minutes

A Flying Peony/ Una Peonia Voladora, 2011, Video installed across from artificial peony. 51 seconds

Flying Corn/ Maíz volante, 2011,Video. 27 seconds

Alberto bArAyA & DAnielle rieDe

expeDition bogotA-inDiAnApolis:

An examination of the aesthetics of a place and its plants

October 7 – november 19, 2011

list of Works