Bard Press Releases

The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College Presents:
Anti-Establishment

Group Exhibition Featuring:
Wynne Greenwood, Trajal Harrell, H.E.N.S. (Arlen Austin & Jason Boughton), Jacqueline Humphries, Brennan Gerard & Ryan Kelly, Chelsea Knight, Pam Lins, Scott Lyall, Tere O’Connor, and more

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY, May 10, 2012 – The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) announces Anti-Establishment, a group exhibition curated by Johanna Burton, CCS Bard Graduate Program Director, featuring the work of Wynne Greenwood, Trajal Harrell, H.E.N.S. (Arlen Austin & Jason Boughton), Jacqueline Humphries, Brennan Gerard & Ryan Kelly, Chelsea Knight, Pam Lins, Scott Lyall, Tere O’Connor, Mai-Thu Perret, Sarah Pierce, Elisabeth Subrin, and YES! Association. Anti-Establishment, which will be on view through December 21, 2012 in the CCS Bard Galleries, is one of the featured exhibitions taking place during the Center’s 20^th anniversary year. An opening reception will take place on June 23, 2012 from 1:00 – 5:00pm.

The works in Anti-Establishment investigate artistic practices that, in various ways, radically utilize and recommit to the notion of "the institution", while demanding new functions and effects of them. Institutions are very often discussed via shorthand, conflated with the “establishment”—monolithic, static, and hierarchical societal systems against which avant-garde and countercultural productions can be seen. Yet, this exhibition sets the two apart, arguing for institutions as more limber sites, perpetually de- and re-constructed by those that create, inhabit, and dismantle them.

During the 1960s and 1970s, a generation of artists emerged with a self-described critical task: to engage with and reveal the power structures and ideological imperatives implicit in any given cultural situation in the belief that doing so could create viable alternatives for living and art-making alike. Since then, this model for art has only become more prevalent — and yet both its purpose and effect today are often argued to have become radically altered, even neutered. As early as the mid-1990s, art historian Isabelle Graw wrote of this development that the critique of art, its institutions, and its social contexts has become little more than “subversion for hire.” Today’s concept of artistic critique of the institution is seen more and more as the stuff of style and the status quo within the museum and gallery system.

But what models of art making are still be available to artists today wishing to generate alternatives and oppositions to conditions as they are? And how might such models function, if they buck against or retool recognized features of “institutional critique”? Anti-Establishment aims to highlight potential answers to these questions with artists who do not seek to move beyond or outside institutions so much as to integrate themselves deftly into these spheres, imagining new organizational frameworks. More specifically, these artists enter institutions — defined not only as social entities, but also as artistic practices, even those that began as alternative practices — not only to underline or reveal those sites’ underlying structures and biases, but also to suggest how the notion of the institution itself might now be a vessel to be considered anew. While these artists do not adhere to utopian impulses of previous eras, they nevertheless envision novel collective relationships and emergent models of engaged citizenship, where power is not dispensed with but instead re-routed to other ends.

Live Events:

June 23, 2012, 2:00 – 5:00pm

Performances by Brennan Gerard & Ryan Kelly, Chelsea Knight (with Elise Rassmussen), Sarah Pierce, and YES! Association

Location: CCS Bard Galleries

June 23, 2012, 7:00 – 9:00pm

Performances by Trajal Harrell and Tere O’Connor

Location: The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts

September/ October 2012 (final dates TBA)

Performances by Trajal Harrell and Sarah Pierce

Location: CCS Bard Galleries

October 2012 (final dates TBA)

Conversation with Trajal Harrell, Brennan Gerard & Ryan Kelly, and Tere O’Connor

Location: The Kitchen, NYC

About the Center for Curatorial Studies
The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) is an exhibition, education, and research center dedicated to the study of art and curatorial practices from the 1960s to the present day.

In addition to the CCS Bard Galleries and Hessel Museum of Art, the Center houses the Marieluise Hessel Collection, as well as an extensive library and curatorial archives that are accessible to the public. The Center’s two-year M.A. program in curatorial studies is specifically designed to deepen students’ understanding of the intellectual and practical tasks of curating contemporary art. Exhibitions are presented year-round in the CCS Bard Galleries and Hessel Museum of Art, providing students with the opportunity to work with world-renowned artists and curators. The exhibition program and the Hessel Collection also serve as the basis for a wide range of public programs and activities exploring art and its role in contemporary society.

The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College opened its doors in 1992. Celebrating its 20^th Anniversary in 2012, CCS Bard presents a series of exhibitions by students, as well as a roster of international artists, working in a range of practices.

General information on the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College can be found on its newly re-launched website at: www.bard.edu/ccs.

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MEDIA CONTACTS:

For further information, images or to arrange interviews, please contact:

Elizabeth Reina-Longoria or Deirdre Maher

Blue Medium

Tel: +1 (212) 675-1800

E: [email protected] or

[email protected]

BARD COLLEGE CONTACT:

Mark Primoff

Director of Communications