It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the new Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. This dynamic building culminates over ten years of effort by many extraordinary individuals. These walls are full of possibility; the potential is truly exhilarating.

This exceptional moment builds on the legacy of founders Marjorie Talalay, Nina Sundell, and Aggie Gund. From its humble beginnings in a storefront in 1968, the Museum has evolved through five locations to become the leading venue for contemporary art and culture in Northeastern Ohio. Having outgrown its last space on Carnegie Avenue, MOCA Cleveland set out to realize a transformational new building.

Once the site at University Circle was secured in late 2005, the Board of Directors committed to an iconic building that would be a significant architectural landmark, technologically advanced and environmentally friendly. Following a thoughtful international search, Foreign Office Architects was selected for its innovative, rigorous design principles and site responsiveness. Lead architect Farshid Moussavi (now principal of Farshid Moussavi Architecture) developed a vision aligned with MOCA Cleveland’s exacting program requirements.

Along the way, new design ideas were offered and tested. Unquestionably, we were pushed and we pushed back. In the end, this vision, that dream, is now a reality which has exceeded anything predictive: the unfolding geometry, the dramatic canted walls and vertiginous monumental stair, the fluid passage between program spaces, the extraction of natural light through sliced windows. One revelation after another.

Inside Out and From the Ground Up marks a new chapter in MOCA Cleveland’s history. Chief Curator David Norr has produced a critical exhibition that is responsive to, even inextricable from, the architecture of the new building. Many of the works burst through, embed inside, and layer themselves onto the walls. Some have been made in response to the visual qualities of the building; in other instances, the galleries have been adapted in response to the works.

The new MOCA Cleveland was designed to support the many ways contemporary artists are working today, while also challenging expectations of museum space. The spirit and drive behind this new building will carry forward, as MOCA Cleveland leverages its new capacities to produce engaging programs and groundbreaking exhibitions. This is just the new beginning.

Jill Snyder, Director

INSIDE A NEW MUSEUM

Above, clockwise from top left: Barry Underwood, Oberon and Titania, 2012; Tesla, 2012; Agincourt, 2012; Ophelia, 2012,pigment prints mounted on Dibond, 36 x 36 inches each. Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by MOCA Cleveland. Cover: Henrique Oliveira, Carambóxido, 2012, demolition wood, PVC, plywood, foam, drywall, scrap metal and rubber, dimensions variable.Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Millan, São Paolo. Commissioned by MOCA Cleveland. Photo: Tim Safranek Photographics.

©2012 Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland OCTOBER 8, 2012—FEBRUARY 24, 2013

INSIDE OUT AND

FROM THE

GROUND UP

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CLEVELAND11400 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44106 216.421.8671 www.MOCAcleveland.org

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video work, Phat Free (1995/1999). Shot handheld at night, the video follows Hammons as he kicks a bucket through the streets of Harlem. His figure stages a dramatic contrast between the museum, a space designed for conscious viewing, and these particular streets, a space of invisibility. Phat Free powerfully illustrates the potential of making work outside of a system, and as the first work presented in the Video Salon, initiates a dialogue on the spatial tactics of the lens.

Likewise situated elsewhere, Gordon Matta-Clark’s film Sous-Sols de Paris (Paris Underground) (1977/2005), and accompanying photomontages, explore the city’s depths. Culled from footage and stills of Matta-Clark’s visits to four underground sites (Les Halles, Notre Dame, the Paris Opera, and St. Michel), the photomontages are presented in a vertical, scroll-like format, implying the slow descent of the camera, from above-ground down to subterranean bones. Best known for his radical cuts and holes through empty buildings, Matta-Clark altered structures to juxtapose realities. Such simultaneity is a vital component of the Sous-Sols de Paris works; by making the “pastness” of things available in the present, Matta-Clark reminds us of what gets buried in the contradictions of modernity.

Traces of memory also manifest in the work of Louise Bourgeois, who engaged specific objects and material effects to trigger the subconscious. Her cell structure Peaux de Lapins, Chiffons Ferrailles à Vendre (2006) translates to “rabbit skins, scrap rags for sale,” and references the song of a street peddler recalled from the artist’s childhood. Bourgeois—whose parents operated a tapestry restoration shop where she worked during her teenage years—hoarded fabrics and linens for decades and continued to cut and stitch them into unsettling forms throughout her career. The contrast between the soft inner materials and the metal cage and chains creates a palpable sense of vulnerability, shelter, exclusion, and containment.

The symbolic potential of the objects we surround ourselves with plays out in Rachel Whiteread’s cast architectural ghostings. Whiteread’s Light I (2010) and IN-OUT II (2004) take their shape from the negative space surrounding a window and door, architectural features that act as membranes between interior and exterior. Despite the detachment of the casting process, Whiteread’s sculptural negatives project a human presence, recorded through the subtle marks of use these objects bear.

Extending this interest in personal space are Haegue Yang’s Dress Vehicle – Golden Clowning (2011) and Dress Vehicle – Square Hunter (2012). In these works, Yang combines venetian blinds and mock clothing racks into sculptural units, built to surround and screen an individual body. Set on wheels, these terrifically anxious objects become animated by performers, carefully orchestrating spatial boundaries to amplify the tensions between public and private life.

Yang’s Dress Vehicles delineate individual boundaries; David Altmejd’s The Orbit (2012) breaks them open. A confluence of glass, mirror, and shadow, the work unfolds into myriad reflections and penetrations, erupting with parts of the body in the midst of transformation. Holes are of particular interest; smashed mirrors and hollowed out heads act as thresholds, portals, and pathways, through which spaces and light flow.

Transgressions, through the lens of desire, are also present in William Villalongo’s densely layered narrative paintings, where nude figures in pastoral glades engage in flirtatious revelry. Scenes framed in dark flocked foliage create the sensation of peering into a secret domain, one from which the viewer is excluded. Desire is a tool for blurring boundaries and Villalongo uses it methodically, drawing viewers in close enough to realize what lines their vision may have crossed.

Framed by the parting leaves of Villalongo’s collages, Corey McCorkle’s Porte Belge (2009), a mystical doorway with Art Nouveau styling and an inset glass “eye,” suggests a passageway to an alchemical lair. The piece references an actual object that McCorkle encountered, and its transposition into the gallery creates both stark contrasts and a surprising alternative pathway through the exhibition. McCorkle’s Bestiaire (2007), included in the exhibition’s Video Salon, captures McCorkle’s interest in failed utopias; spaces which are loaded with transformative possibilities, but fall short.

Far from fantastical realms, Walead Beshty’s copper boxes remain endlessly tied to the present moment. FedExed from one location to another, the works record the handling and atmospheric conditions they have been subjected to during transit. Beshty exploits the instability of copper, a material that is highly susceptible to scratches, dents, and corrosion. These works are never finished; rather, they are in perpetual development. After each sculpture leaves the studio—to exhibitions, storage venues, and collections—they acquire additional visual traces of their movements. The blunt materiality of Beshty’s boxes ground MOCA Cleveland in the present moment, marking a symbolic passage from past to future.

—David Norr

INSIDE OUT AND

FROM THE

GROUND UP

Clockwise from top right: Jacqueline Humphries, Untitled, 2011, oil on canvas, 90 x 96 inches. Collection of Megan and Roy Trice, Dallas and courtesy of Greene Naftali Gallery, New York. Photo: Tim Safranek Photographics; Louise Bourgeois, Peaux de Lapins, Chiffons Ferrailles à Vendre, 2006, steel, stainless steel, marble, wood, fabric, and plexiglass, 99 x 120 x 159 inches. Courtesy of Cheim & Read and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Christopher Burke, © Louise Bourgeois Trust; William Villalongo, Zebra, 2012, acrylic, velvet flocking, and paper on wood panel, 69 x 141 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Susan Inglett Gallery, New York. Photo: Tim Safranek Photographics; Walead Beshty, 16-inch Copper (FedEx® Kraft Box ©2005 FEDEX 330504 REV 10/05 SSCC), Priority Overnight, Los Angeles-Beverly Hills, trk#848232311426, December 16-17, 2011, Standard Overnight, Beverly Hills-Cleveland, trk#800105416430, September 20-21, 2012, 2011, copper, 16 x 16 x 16 inches. Dana Eitches Collection, Los Angeles, courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Photo: Tim Safranek Photographics; Corey McCorkle, Porte Belge, 2009, concrete, wood, 96 x 33 inches. Installation view, MOCA Cleveland. Courtesy of the artist and Maccarone Gallery, New York. Photo: Tim Safranek Photographics.

Museums today are objects with sculptural intentions, subject to interpretation. Once considered vaults of knowledge, they are now understood as dynamic meeting places, where multiple social atmospheres develop and thrive. The Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland’s new building embodies this shift in purpose; a dramatic structure with highly affective material qualities, its flexible and permeable design aims to create vital connections between contemporary art and audiences.

The architecture of the new MOCA Cleveland is emphatically performative. Starting with the reflective exterior, the building’s nature and composition appear to be constantly in flux. The tilting façades create unexpected sightlines and surprising pockets of space. Like a proto-cinematic device, the mirror-black surface projects back the movements of passers-by in the shifting streetscape. The building streams its own context, enveloping the Museum in the everyday actions that surround and sustain it.

The crystalline character of the building continues inside, with planar geometry, dramatic fault lines, and moments of transparency. Ascending the monumental stair, visitors zig-zag between the soaring canted walls. Stair landings double as look-outs where viewers may peer through glass walls into classrooms, workshops, and meeting areas—spaces usually hidden to the public. Likewise, the inverse occurs for museum staff; no longer sequestered in the secret spaces behind the curtain, they are connected with the flow and intent of the entire building. Such visibility makes the Museum and its functions less ambiguous, allowing for new interactions and connections.

The inaugural exhibition, Inside Out and from the Ground Up, explores such possibilities. Emerging from a belief in the potential of embodied spatial experience, the exhibition considers the Museum as both subject and stage. Much as the building calls on viewers to engage with their bodies, the exhibition invites them to move around, look up close and from afar, and consider multiple perspectives. The works on view present the breadth of contemporary practice, from monumentally-scaled paintings and physical structures to minimal gestures and experimental film and video. Through this array of media, the artists explore how space is constructed, divided, and imagined, shaping viewers’ awareness of their own presence and surroundings.

Jacqueline Humphries’s paintings are particularly resonant with the building, as they face the intense blue of the inner skin and the shifting light from the gallery’s slanted windows. Made with ground-silver pigment and translucent paint, they are highly responsive. At moments, they appear to glow gently from within; at other times, crisp dashes of light project onto them. Ghosted gestures emerge and patches swell from underneath, never quite cohering. In this way, Humphries’ paintings are not autonomous, static objects; rather, they constantly change in relation to viewers and their environment.

With her installation Third Man Begins Digging Through Her Pockets (2012), Katharina Grosse pushes this relativity even further. By directly applying paint onto the surfaces of the Museum’s newly minted three-story atrium, her work both embodies and resists the architecture. The use of an industrial spray gun amplifies Grosse’s gestures into a haptic romp of color dominated by purple, orange, and yellow. At this scale, viewers can trace and replay Grosse’s movements as they step through the atrium and up the stairs, approaching the work from different vantage points. The title borrows from the language of stage direction, emphasizing the work’s theatrical qualities and shuffling it between action and backdrop.

Such dramatic staging is equally present in the work of Barry Underwood, known for his light installations in natural settings. Underwood’s commissioned photographs of the building bring his surreal, otherworldly vision to an architectural space in the midst of construction. At once absorbing and disorienting, this series captures transitory views of the Museum’s raw inner core.

While Grosse presses up against the Museum’s walls, and Underwood looks inside, Henrique Oliveira’s installation Carambóxido (2012) bursts through them, suggesting organic growth or parasitic invasion. The work’s outer skin is composed of stripped plywood that Oliveira scavenged from the streets of São Paolo, while the cavernous interior is lined with Cleveland’s industrial residue: rusted steel cans, rubber, tin, and scraps of tube and pipe. The undulating, swollen quality of the piece alludes to the ripe promise of an exotic paradise, while the decayed innards display the rotting result of industrial bust. Unlike past models of bricolage, in which found elements were treated as raw materials with incidental pasts, Oliveira draws on the cultural integrity of detritus to invoke histories, connotations, and moods. In this mash-up between São Paolo and Cleveland, Carambóxido retains an indelible connection to the sites and social realities of its material origins.

Oliveira imports materials that contrast with the museum environment; David Hammons brings in the social and psychological dimensions of another place with his seminal

SPONSORS

BLUE = PANTONE DS 218-5 CGREEN = PANTONE DS 304-5 C

All MOCA Cleveland exhibitions and programs are presented with major support from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture; The Cleveland Foundation; The George Gund Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; Nesnadny + Schwartz; The Ohio Arts Council; and the continuing support of our Board of Directors, Patrons, and Members.

This exhibition is funded by Leadership Circle gifts supporting inaugural year programs and exhibitions: Britton Fund, Agnes Gund, Scott Mueller, Doreen and Dick Cahoon, Becky Dunn, Harriet and Victor Goldberg, Donna and Stewart Kohl, and Toby Devan Lewis.

Special support for Henrique Oliveira’s residency provided through Creative Fusion, a Cleveland Foundation program

Additional funding from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation for the commissions by Henrique Oliveira and Barry Underwood

Organized by David Norr, Chief CuratorOctober 8, 2012—February 24, 2013

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David Altmejd(on view until December 30, 2012)

David Altmejd, The Orbit (detail), 2012, Plexiglas, mirror, chain, metal wire, thread, acrylic paint, epoxy resin, epoxy clay, acrylic gel, synthetic hair, artificial eyes, plaster, and adhesive, 73 x 252 3/4 x 66 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Andrea Rosen Gallery Inc., New York. Photo: Tim Safranek Photographics, © David Altmejd.

David Altmejd (1974, Montréal, Canada) lives and works in New York. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BFA from Université du Québec à Montréal. He has been featured in solo exhibitions at The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich; Oakville Galleries, Canada; and MAGASIN - Centre National d’Art Contemporain de Grenoble, France. In 2007 he represented Canada at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

Walead Beshty

Four Magnet, Three Color Curl (CMY: Irvine, California, January 1st 2010, Fuji Crystal Archive Super Type C, 02610), 2010, color photographic paper, 50 x 105 3/4 inches. Private collection, courtesy of the artist and Wallspace, New York.

ALSO IN THE EXHIBITION: Walead Beshty, 16-inch Copper (FedEx® Kraft Box ©2005 FEDEX 330504 REV 10/05 SSCC), Standard Overnight, Los Angeles-Cleveland, trk#800105416420, September 19-20, 2012, 2012, copper, 16 x 16 x 16 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

16-inch Copper (FedEx® Kraft Box ©2005 FEDEX 330504 REV 10/05 SSCC), Priority Overnight, Los Angeles-Beverly Hills, trk#848232311426, December 16-17, 2011, Standard Overnight, Beverly Hills-Cleveland, trk#800105416430, September 20-21, 2012, 2011, copper, 16 x 16 x 16 inches. Dana Eitches Collection, Los Angeles, courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

Six Magnet, Three Color Curl (CMY: Irvine, California, September 6th 2009, Fuji Crystal Archive Type C), 2009, color photographic paper, 108 3/4 x 50 inches. Private collection, courtesy of the artist and Wallspace, New York.

Walead Beshty (1976, London) lives and works in Los Angeles. He holds an MFA from Yale University and a BFA from Bard College. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Malmö Konsthall, Sweden.

Jeremy Blake

Jeremy Blake, Winchester, 2002, video still, digital video with animation and sound, 18:00 minutes. Courtesy Kinz + Tillou Fine Art.

ALSO IN THE EXHIBITION:Century 21, 2004, video with digital animation and sound, 12:00 minutes.

1906, 2003, video with digital animation and sound, 21:00 minutes.

All works courtesy of Kinz + Tillou Fine Art.

Jeremy Blake (1971, Fort Sill, OK – 2007, New York) holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Museum of the Moving Image, New York; and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.

Jacqueline Humphries

Jacqueline Humphries, Untitled, 2012, oil on canvas, 90 x 96 inches. Collection of Megan and Roy Trice, Dallas, and courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York.

ALSO IN THE EXHIBITION:

Untitled, 2012, oil on canvas, 38 x 40 inches.

Untitled, 2012, oil on canvas, 90 x 96 inches.Collection of Megan and Roy Trice, Dallas.

Untitled, 2011, oil on canvas, 90 x 96 inches.Collection of Megan and Roy Trice, Dallas.

All works courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York.

Jacqueline Humphries (1960, New Orleans) lives and works in New York, where she studied at Parsons School of Design. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA, and Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, Germany. She has been featured in group exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art; The Kitchen, New York; and Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.

Oliver Husain

Oliver Husain, Mount Shasta, 2008, film still, color 16mm film with sound, 8:00 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and VTape, Toronto.

Oliver Husain (1969, Frankfurt, Germany) lives and works in Toronto, Canada. He holds an MFA from The Offenbach University of Art and Design, Germany, and studied fine arts at the University of Baroda, India. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Art Gallery of York University and Susan Hobbs Gallery, both in Toronto.

Gordon Matta-Clark

Gordon Matta-Clark, Sous-Sols de Paris (Paris Underground), 1977/2005, film still, color and black and white 8mm film with sound, transferred to digital video, 25:20 minutes. Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) New York. © 2012 Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

ALSO IN THE EXHIBITION:Sous-Sols de Paris: Basilica, 1977, chromogenic print, 48 x 20 inches.

Sous-Sols de Paris: Bones and Bottles, 1977, chromogenic prints, dipytch: 46 1/2 x 21 1/4 inches each.

Sous-Sols de Paris: Les Halles, 1977, chromogenic print, 94 x 22 inches.

Sous-Sols de Paris: L’Opera, 1977, Cibachrome silver dye bleach print, 82 x 19 1/8 inches.

All works courtesy of David Zwirner and the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark.

Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978, New York) studied architecture at Cornell University. Retrospectives of his work have been held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow; and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago. The Gordon Matta-Clark Archive is held at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal.

Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread, Light I, 2010, resin, 27 1/2 x 13 3/4 x 5 3/4 inches. Collection of Laurie and Jay Mandelbaum and courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.

ALSO IN THE EXHIBITION: IN OUT-II, 2004, plasticised plaster with interior aluminum framework, 79 x 31 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches.Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.

Rachel Whiteread (1963, London, UK) lives and works in London. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and Brighton Polytechnic. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Tate Modern, London; and Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro. In 1993 she was the recipient of the Turner Prize, and in 1997 she represented Great Britain at the 47th Venice Biennale.

Haegue Yang

Dress Vehicle – Square Hunter, 2011, aluminum venetian blinds, powder-coated aluminum frame, casters, and magnets, 54 x 43 x 43 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York.

ALSO IN THE EXHIBITION: Dress Vehicle – Golden Clowning, 2011, aluminum venetian blinds, powder-coated aluminum frame, casters, and magnets, 59 1/4 x 85 x 85 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York.

The Story of a Bear-Lady in a Sand Cave, 2010/2011, audio and text, 20:38 minutes, looped. Voice: Tsukasa Yamamoto. Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York.

Unfolding Places, 2004, digital video with sound, 18:00 minutes. Voice-over: Helen Cho. Courtesy of Wien Lukatsch, Berlin and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York.

Haegue Yang (1971, Seoul, South Korea) lives and works in Berlin and Seoul. She holds a BFA from Seoul National University and studied at Meisterschülerin Städelschul, Frankfurt. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at New Museum, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Modern Art Oxford, UK. She participated in the55th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh; 27th São Paulo Biennial; and 53rd Venice Biennale, where she represented South Korea.

WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois, Peaux de Lapins, Chiffons Ferrailles à Vendre (detail), 2006, steel, stainless steel, marble, wood, fabric, and plexiglass, 99 x 120 x 159 inches. Courtesy of Cheim & Read and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Christopher Burke, © Louise Bourgeois Trust.

Louise Bourgeois (1911, Paris, France–2010, New York) studied in Paris at Académie de la Grande Chaumièr, Ecole du Louvre, and Ecole des Beaux-Arts. She moved to New York in 1938, continuing her studies at the Art Students League. Retrospectives of her work have been held at The Museum of Modern Art and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, both in New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. In 1993 she represented the United States at the 45th Venice Biennale.

Katharina Grosse(on view until June 9, 2013)

Katharina Grosse, Third Man Begins Digging Through Her Pockets, 2012, acrylic paint, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by MOCA Cleveland. Photo: Tim Safranek Photographics.

Katharina Grosse (1961, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. She studied painting at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris. She has participated in numerous international group exhibitions, including the 11th Biennale of Sydney and the 25th São Paulo Biennial.

David Hammons

David Hammons, Phat Free, 1995/1999, video still, videotape with sound transferred to DVD, 5:20 minutes. Collection of Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Digital video production by Alex Harsely. T.B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2001.

David Hammons (1943, Springfield, IL) lives and works in New York. He studied at Chouinard Art Institute and Otis Art Institute, both in Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at The Institute for Contemporary Art, P.S.1 Museum, New York; Museo Reina Maria Sofia, Madrid; and Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland. His works are held in numerous collections, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, both in New York, and Tate Modern, London.

William Villalongo

William Villalongo, Nymph #26, 2012, acrylic and velvet flocking on paper, 12 x 9 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Susan Inglett Gallery, New York.

ALSO IN THE EXHIBITION: Nymph #28, 2012, acrylic and velvet flocking on paper, 12 x 9 inches.

Nymph #30, 2012, acrylic and velvet flocking on paper, 12 x 9 inches.

Nymph #31, 2012, acrylic and velvet flocking on paper, 12 x 9 inches.

The Thirsty Laborer, 2012, acrylic, velvet flocking, and paper on wood panel, 96 x 137 5/16 inches.

Zebra, 2012, acrylic, velvet flocking, and paper on wood panel, 69 x 141 inches.

All works courtesy of the artist and Susan Inglett Gallery, New York.

William Villalongo (1975, Hollywood, FL) lives and works in Brooklyn. He holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University and a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. His work has shown in group exhibitions at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Brooklyn Museum of Art; and Ballroom Marfa, Texas.

Jennifer West

Jennifer West, Daisies Roll Up Film (16mm color and b&w film neg rolled with hard boiled eggs, oranges, lemons, avocados, pickles, green apples, milk and watermelon – a remake of a scene from Vera Chytilova’s 1966 film, Daisies – rolling off the bed performances by: Mariah Csepanyi, Finn West & Jwest, lit with black light & strobe light), 2008, color and black and white 16mm film transferred to digital video, 5:53 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Marc Foxx, Los Angeles.

ALSO IN THE EXHIBITION: Skate the Sky Film..., 2009, color 35mm film transferred to high-definition digital video, 4:57 minutes.

Neutrino, Gamma, Alpha, Quantum Dots Film..., 2011, color 16 and 35mm film transferred to high-definition digital video, 3:28 minutes.

All works courtesy of the artist and Marc Foxx, Los Angeles.

For full titles, please refer to the Video Salon Schedule on page 8.

Jennifer West (1966, Topanga Canyon, California) lives and works in Los Angeles. She holds an MFA from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena and a BA from The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at White Columns and The Drawing Center, both in New York, and Transmission Gallery, Glasgow.

Corey McCorkle

Corey McCorkle, Porte Belge, 2009, concrete and wood, 96 x 36 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Maccarone Gallery, New York.

ALSO IN THE EXHIBITION: Bestiaire, 2007, digital video, 6:00 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Maccarone Gallery, New York.

Corey McCorkle (1969, La Crosse, WI) lives and works in New York. He holds an MFA from the University of Chicago, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and studied at Pratt Institute of Architecture. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at Frac Île-de-France, Paris; Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; and Kunstverein Bonn, Germany. He was featured in the 4th Berlin Biennial of Contemporary Art.

Henrique Oliveira

Henrique Oliveira, Carambóxido, 2012, demolition wood, PVC, plywood, foam, drywall, scrap metal, and rubber, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Millan, São Paolo. Commissioned by MOCA Cleveland. Photo: Tim Safranek Photographics.

Henrique Oliveira (1973, São Paulo, Brazil) lives and works in São Paulo. He holds a MA in Visual Poetics and a BFA in Painting from University of São Paulo. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art; Rice University Art Gallery, Houston; Paço das Artes, São Paulo; and House of Latin American Culture, Brasília. In 2009 he was the recipient of an Artist Research Fellowship from the Smithsonian Institute.

Barry Underwood

Barry Underwood, Agincourt, 2012, pigment print mounted on Dibond, 36 x 36 inches. Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by MOCA Cleveland.

ALSO IN THE EXHIBITION:Oberon and Titania, 2012, pigment print mounted on Dibond, 36 x 36 inches.

Tesla, 2012, pigment print mounted on Dibond, 36 x 36 inches.

Ophelia, 2012, pigment print mounted on Dibond, 36 x 36 inches.

All works courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by MOCA Cleveland.

Barry Underwood (1963, Wilmington, DE) lives and works in Cleveland. He holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and BAs in Photography and Theatre from Indiana University Northwest. His work has been included in exhibitions at Akron Art Museum, OH; Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, MI; and Johansson Projects, Oakland, CA.

Background image: Jeremy Blake, Winchester, 2002, video still, digital video with animation and sound, 18:00 minutes. Courtesy Kinz + Tillou Fine Art.

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TRADING PLACES: TIME, LOCATION, AND THE MOVING IMAGE

Curated by David Louis Norr, Chief Curator

ON VIEW: October 8, 2012 — February 24, 2013

Mort and Rosalie Cohen Family Gallery

The ability to expand or condense time distinguishes cinema as a unique medium. Ever since Georges Méliès metamorphosed an ambulance into a hearse by way of a chance camera jam in 1896, thus creating the first “cut,” film has been uniquely suited to the accelerated flow and multitrack consciousness of the machine age. French philosopher Michel Foucault theorized the cinema as a transitory site where concrete and ephemeral spaces coexist, rupturing our traditional notion of linear time. Over the past two decades, the gradual folding of cinema’s black box into the gallery’s white cube has engendered new possibilities and frameworks for superimposing time and place. The spatialization of the moving image in contemporary art has created a situation in which duration becomes subordinate to a more ambulatory, mutable viewing experience without fixed starting and end points.

The works on video featured in Inside Out and From the Ground Up reflect this shift. They also demonstrate a range of strategies for translating the three-dimensional world into two-dimensional phantasmagorias. Fragmentation, animation, layering, documentation, and interventions into urban landscapes are among the approaches employed in the following works. Through their adoption of looping, repetition, and open-ended forms, and avoidance of conventional storytelling tropes, they transfer emphasis from an experience of moving images in time to an exploration of spatial relationships.

Both Haegue Yang’s Unfolding Places (2004) and Oliver Husain’s Mount Shasta (2008) take us on journeys that end in unexpected places. An enigmatic, adventureless “road movie,” Unfolding Places evokes the type of in-between space that Foucault referred to as a heterotopia, a “placeless place” that also exists in reality (such as a mirror).2 Utilizing the first-person address of the video diary format (itself a kind of mirror) to ruminate on the dislocating effect of travel, Unfolding Places is tangled and philosophically dense. Street lamps, sparse interiors, and shuttered storefronts suggest a delight in the banal, while an array of brightly colored origami constructions, flitting across puddles and later lacquered over with spray paint, hint at something intangible and elusive.

In Mount Shasta, black script on a white background evokes a scenic coastal drive. When the travelers are forced to pull over after encountering a blinding fog, they embark on a tour inside the Lake Shasta caverns. The scrolling plot summary suddenly cuts mid-sentence to an abstract puppet show, appearing to dramatize the text. Like the fanciful paper sculptures and dispassionate voice-over that muddle a straightforward reading of Unfolding Places, Mount Shasta’s fabricated rock growths, grainy 16mm texture,

and strangely-outfitted puppeteers produce a dreamlike atmosphere and cognitive dissonance. Both pieces are perceptual games in which the links between what we are told and what we are shown become increasingly untethered. “Arriving is not a sure process,” the narrator in Unfolding Places asserts, perhaps referring to her own restlessness. In Mount Shasta, the road offers a starting point for a cinematic trip that grows unexpectedly surreal as its scaffolding turns inside-out.

Jeremy Blake and Jennifer West both combine figurative imagery with vivid abstraction to create enthralling, multi-layered visions. Often referred to as “paintings in time,” Blake’s Winchester Trilogy (2002-2004) is loosely based on the legend of Sarah Winchester, heiress to the namesake rifle fortune. Haunted by the spirits of those killed by Winchester firearms, she sought to escape by designing a sprawling, idiosyncratic house. This history and popular mythology act as the frame for Blake’s hallucinatory investigation into madness. The suite opens with a pulsating image of the Victorian-style mansion, overlaid with computer-generated filters and effects that soften and blur out detail. Dissolving, multi-chromatic blurs meld with digitally animated Rorschach-like silhouettes of gunfighters, Art Nouveau patterns, and candy-colored backgrounds. The cumulative effect is a macabre, double-sided time flow, in which the present tense is interpenetrated by remembrance and anticipation.

Subjecting motion picture film to an assortment of treatments and abuses, Jennifer West demonstrates a tongue-in-cheek approach to the structural-materialist strain of avant-garde cinema. Although transferred to digital media for presentation, West’s works maintain the rhythm and essence of their photochemical origins. The luminescent Neutrino, Gamma, Alpha, Quantum Dots Film... (2011)* does not bear any identifiable external references; the undulating colors were generated by exposing raw film stock to subatomic particles at an MIT physics lab. The film thus renders a latent “non-place,” trading illusory depth for a reverie of beaming surface. Daisies Roll Up Film... (2008) is a rollicking interplay of haptic abstraction and barely readable “remake” footage of a scene from Daisies (1966), a Czech New Wave feature. By smearing the celluloid surface with eggs, oranges, avocados, and other foodstuffs, West created organic blotches that are visually both intriguing and frustrating. The presumably innocent act of rolling off a bed is transformed into a complex, coded psychodrama. Like Blake’s painterly animations, West’s works eschews narrative immersion, embedding multiple time frames into perpetual, looping flows.

“THE PRESENT EPOCH WILL PERHAPS BE ABOVE ALL THE EPOCH OF SPACE. WE ARE IN THE EPOCH OF SIMULTANEITY: WE ARE IN THE EPOCH OF JUXTAPOSITION, THE EPOCH OF THE NEAR AND FAR, OF THE SIDE-BY-SIDE, OF THE DISPERSED. WE ARE AT A MOMENT, I BELIEVE, WHEN OUR EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD IS LESS THAT OF A LONG LIFE DEVELOPING THROUGH TIME THAN THAT OF A NETWORK THAT CONNECTS POINTS AND INTERSECTS WITH ITS OWN SKEIN.” —MICHEL FOUCAULT1

October 6–28, 2012

David HammonsPhat Free, 1995/1999

VIDEO SALON SCHEDULE

October 30–November 18, 2012

Haegue YangUnfolding Places, 2004

November 20–December 9, 2012

Corey McCorkleBestiaire, 2007

December 11, 2012–January 6, 2013

Oliver Husain Mount Shasta, 2008

January 8–February 3, 2013

Jennifer WestLOOPED COMPILATION OF WORKS:

Neutrino, Gamma, Alpha, Quantum Dots Film (16 and 35mm film negative tangled inside darkened film tent for ten hours and exposed to: Neutron, gamma and alpha sources and quantum dots in liquid scintillator - made with the assistance of Lindley Winslow and graduate student, Raspberry, at MIT’s Neutrino Lab), 2011

Skate the Sky Film (35mm film print of clouds in the sky covered with ink, Ho-Ho’s, and Melon juice - filmstrips taped to Tate Turbine Hall ramp and skateboarded over using ollie, kick flip, pop shove-it, acid drop, melon grab, crooked grind, bunny hop, tic tacs, sex change, disco flip - skateboarding performed live for Long Weekend by Thomas Lock, Louis Henderson, Charlotte Brennan, Dion Penman, Sam Griffin, Jak Tonge, Evin Goode and Quantin Paris, clouds shot by Peter West), 2009

Daisies Roll Up Film (16mm color and b&w film neg rolled with hard boiled eggs, oranges, lemons, avocados, pickles, green apples, milk and watermelon – a remake of a scene from Vera Chytilova’s 1966 film, Daisies – rolling off the bed performances by: Mariah Csepanyi, Finn West & Jwest, lit with black light & strobe light), 2008

February 5–24, 2013

Jeremy BlakeWinchester Trilogy, 2002-2004

February 5–10: Winchester, 2002February 12–17: 1906, 2003February 19–24: Century 21, 2004

Corey McCorkle’s Bestiaire (2007) was shot on the site of a defunct zoo outside of Istanbul. An impartial, mostly static camera documents lush vegetation, gravel paths, dilapidated structures, and feral dogs roaming the perimeter. The video has a strong sense of circularity and enclosure; as viewers we are clearly on the outside looking in, a point underscored by the recurring shots of doorways, windows, and partial openings. What has happened here, we are led to ask. The title, Bestiaire (“bestiary”), a collection of moralizing tales based upon real or fabled animals, hints at an underlying allegory. The zoo, once meant to contain and control animals, now lays in ruins, returned to the untamed.

Phat Free (1995/1999) by David Hammons takes us into the streets of New York City’s Harlem, but it is similarly disquieting. For the first two minutes a harsh, clanging soundtrack resounds, with no accompanying visual. Then, the audio source is revealed: a man dressed in a baseball cap, baggy shorts, and sneakers punting a metal pail down a sidewalk at night. This simple gesture offers a wellspring of allusions, from the aphorism “kicking the bucket,” to the repurposed instruments of street musicians. What’s clear is that this is more than a game. The graininess of the video, shot at a slow shutter speed under sodium streetlights, lends the production a ghostly air. Lack of detail in the image, combined with the archetypal clothing, suggests that this is about a type of individual and type of location. Rich in ambiguity and indirection, Phat Free and Bestiaire depict places that are at once vaguely familiar and vaguely foreign. That is, places that fall in-between (just out of) our regular lines of sight (and consideration).

The artists’ films and videos discussed here utilize multiple approaches to reflect, materialize, or construct an assortment of spaces. From the single-take verisimilitude of an offhand performance, to the radiant color fields of an abstract photogram, to the intimacy of a transcontinental travelogue, together these works advance a site of otherness, a heterotopia. As Foucault writes, “The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible.”3 This is an apt description of the video salon in MOCA Cleveland’s new media gallery, a dark room set inside a white-walled museum that can transport viewers to international locales and previously unseen worlds. Both there and not there, the projected image points to what is absent, while creating the palpable sensation of spatial presence.

—Brett Kashmere

Brett Kashmere is a filmmaker, curator, and writer based in Pittsburgh. He is the founding editor and publisher of INCITE Journal of Experimental Media.

1Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 22. 2Ibid., 24. 3Ibid., 25.

*For full titles of Jennifer West’s works, please see Video Salon Schedule.

Background image: Haegue Yang, Unfolding Places, 2004, video still, digital video with sound, 18:00 minutes. Voice-over: Helen Cho. Courtesy of Wien Lukatsch, Berlin and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York.

Video Salon images from top to bottom: David Hammons, Phat Free, 1995/1999, video still, videotape with sound transferred to DVD, 5:20 minutes. Collection of Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Digital video production by Alex Harsely. T.B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2001; Haegue Yang, Unfolding Places, 2004, video still, digital video with sound, 18:00 minutes. Voice-over: Helen Cho. Courtesy of Wien Lukatsch, Berlin and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York; Corey McCorkle, Bestiaire, 2007, video still, digital video with sound, 6:00 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Maccarone Gallery, New York; Oliver Husain, Mount Shasta, 2008, film still, color 16mm film with sound, 8:00 minutes. Courtesy of the artist; Jennifer West, Skate the Sky Film..., 2009, video still, color 35mm film transferred to digital video, 4:57 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Marc Foxx, Los Angeles; Jeremy Blake, Winchester, 2002, video still, digital video with animation and sound, 18:00 minutes. Courtesy Kinz + Tillou Fine Art.

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