The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College Presents:
Anne Collier

On View June 28 through September 21, 2014 in the CCS Bard Galleries
Opening reception: Saturday, June 28, 2014 from 1:00 – 4:00pm
Public Tours every Sunday at Noon

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY, May, 2014 – This summer The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) presents a major exhibition of the artist, Anne Collier, tracing her career from 2002 to the present. The self-titled exhibition presents several themes dominant in Collier’s practice during the past decade, including autobiography, pop psychology, the clichés and conventions of commercial photography, and the act of looking or seeing.   

The exhibition at CCS Bard includes more than forty works, and establishes Collier’s interest in photographing images that are propagated in popular culture - record-album sleeves, magazines, coffee-table books, Hollywood film stills, and pictorial calendars - set against neutral studio backdrops. Collier’s cool and detached photographic style, manifested in large-scale color prints, eliminates any unnecessary artifice between viewers and the material she finds so fascinating. 

Working in the wake of feminism, representations of women and the gaze are paramount in her practice. Collier shows how a leering sexism has long guided the advertising of photographic products as well as the culture of photography magazines. In her long-standing photographic series Woman With A Camera, Collier highlights a certain type of film heroine, who is suddenly empowered when a camera is placed in her hands. Marilyn Monroe, Faye Dunaway, Jacqueline Bisset, Cheryl Tiegs—all heavily photographed subjects—turn the camera back on the viewer in a feminist reversal of “the male gaze.”

Collier’s work can be understood as following a conceptual artistic tradition inherited from Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Douglas Huebler, as they too worked with content-laden artifacts of our media age rather than creating new objects. Her work is also influenced by artists such as Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Louise Lawler, and Laurie Simmons, who are part of the Pictures Generation and known largely for their work in appropriation of images from a media-saturated culture. Born and raised in California, Collier’s work also reflects her exposure to California culture and lifestyle.

Accompanying the exhibition is an illustrated catalogue, published by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA), with essays by Michael Darling and Chrissie Iles, the Whitney Museum of American Art Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator, and a creative essay by the novelist Kate Zambreno, noted for her writings about women and myths of modernism. As the exhibition and book attest, the broad range of Collier’s work provides a poignant commentary on the considerable influence that photography wields in society at large. Collier negotiates the personal and the universal in a fluid and sophisticated way, with an unusual depth but also a generous accessibility. For these reasons, as well as the sustained intelligence and energy of her work, she has emerged as a major voice within the field of contemporary photography.

Anne Collier (born 1970) lives and works in New York City. She received a MFA from the University of California Los Angeles, and a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts. An internationally exhibited artist, Collier’s works are held in collections around the world. Recent solo exhibitions the Modern Institute, Glasgow, Scotland; and Marc Foxx, Los Angeles, CA. She has held teaching positions at the Yale University School of Art and Parsons School of Design in New York, among others.

Anne Collier is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and curated by Michael Darling, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator. This exhibition will travel to MCA Chicago on November 22, 2014 – March 8, 2015, Aspen Art Museum on April 2 – July 15, 2015, then open at The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto in Fall of 2015.

The CCS Bard Galleries and Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College are open Thursday through Monday from 11:00a.m. to 6:00 p.m. All CCS Bard exhibitions and public programs are free and open to the public. Public tours are every Sunday at noon. Limited free seating is available on a chartered bus from New York City for the June 28 opening. Reservations are required; call +1 845-758-7598 or email [email protected]. 

About the Center for Curatorial Studies
The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) was founded in 1990 as an exhibition and research center for the study of late twentieth-century and contemporary art and culture and to explore experimental approaches to the presentation of these topics and their impact on our world. Since 1994, the Center for Curatorial Studies and its graduate program have provided one of the world’s most forward thinking teaching and learning environments for the research and practice of contemporary art and curatorship. Broadly interdisciplinary, CCS Bard encourages students, faculty and researchers to question the critical and political dimension of art, its mediation and its social significance. CCS Bard cultivates innovative thinking, radical research and new ways to challenge our understanding of the social and civic values of the visual arts. CCS Bard provides an intensive educational program alongside its public events, exhibitions, and publications, which collectively explore the critical potential of the institutions and practices of exhibition-making. It is uniquely positioned within the larger Center’s tripartite resources, which include the internationally renowned CCS Bard Library and Archives and the Hessel Museum of Art, with its rich permanent collection.

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

Support for Anne Collier is generously provided by the Margot and W. George Greig Ascendant Artist Fund. Major support is provided by Dior. Additional generous support is provided by Sandra and Jack Guthman; Anne and William J. Hokin; Cari and Michael Sacks; Charlotte Feng Ford; Ashlee and Martin Modahl; Naomi Mori Reese and Rusty Reese; Vicki and Bill Hood; Rodney Lubeznik and Susan D. Goodman; Nion McEvoy; Phillips; Melissa Weber and Jay Dandy; Anton Kern Gallery, New York; and Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles.

Exhibitions at CCS Bard are made possible with support from the Marieluise Hessel Foundation, the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Foundation, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the Board of Governors of the Center for Curatorial Studies, the CCS Bard Arts Council, and the Center’s Patrons, Supporters, and Friends.

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MEDIA CONTACTS:

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

BARD COLLEGE CONTACT:

Mark Primoff

Director of Communications

Tel: +1 845.758.7412      

Email: [email protected]                   

CCS BARD CONTACT:

Ramona Rosenberg

External Affairs Manager

Tel: +1 (845) 758-7574

Email: [email protected] 

This event was last updated on 06-03-2014

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