Michael Ashkin, Untitled (where each new sunrise …), installation view, Secession 2009, photo: Wolfgang Thaler
In the Secession’s Galerie space, American artist Michael Ashkin is showing a video work and a series of sculptures made of recycled cardboard representing proliferating settlements, designs for public squares, and prison architectures. His model-like topographies are characterized by the many ways in which they combine the realism of documentary inventorizing with a formal idiom of subjectivity and internalization. They pursue an approach already present in his early photographs of post-industrial landscapes shown, among others, at DOCUMENTA11 (Kassel, 2002).
Michael Ashkin, Untitled (where each new sunrise …), installation view, Secession 2009, photo: Wolfgang Thaler
At the Secession, in the large-scale work Untitled (where each new sunrise promises only the continuation of yesterday), ... (2009) tailored to fill the Galerie space, Ashkin explores the logic of urban spatial organization between social ideals, structural necessities, and uncontrollable contingencies. The sculptural installation consists of a sprawling, seemingly random accumulation of simple houses, huts, and sheds. Rather than revealing a sense of town planning, the way the detailed architectural miniatures are arranged looks unintentional, temporary, and characterized by an absence of community. As such, it refers to the explosive expansion of urban spaces and to the related dynamics of appropriating terrain and participatory architecture.
 Michael Ashkin, Plaza (No. 1), 2009 |
 Michael Ashkin, Plaza (No. 2), 2009 |
Like Ashkin’s other sculptures, Untitled (where each new sunrise promises only the continuation of yesterday), ... is based on abstractions from aerial photos and finished buildings, possessing no specific identity in space-time. The distancing from reality inherent in any model is amplified by the monochrome material and the predefined perspectives of the plan and elevation views. The viewer’s gaze is lost in the remoteness of the horizon.
Michael Ashkin, Here, 2009
This presentation of the sculpture as a site for thinking about space has a counterpart in the video work Here (2009). In terms both concrete and metaphorical, it deals with the desert as a habitat, a threat, but also as a spiritual experience. By creating an interplay between the poetic, rhythmic text spoken by a voice-off and the visual representation of an empty interior, it becomes a space for projections in a double sense.
Michael Ashkin (*1955 in Morristown/New Jersey) lives and works in Ithaca/New York.
Artist talk
In the Meantime
November 20, 2009, 3 p.m.
Studio Building of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Lehárgasse 8, 1060 Wien, ground floor South, Department Art and Photography Matthias Herrmann.
A cooperation between the Secession and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Catalogue
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MICHAEL ASHKIN 52 pages, dimension: 23 x 31 cm, 35 color illustrations Texts: Anthony Graves, Elke Krasny, German/English Secession 2009, ISBN 978-3-902592-27-9 ___________________ available in the shop |
Solo shows (selection)
2009 Secession, Wien; SculptureCenter, Long Island City, New York, In Practice Projects, curated by Sarina Basta; 2005 Andrea Rosen Gallery, Gallery 2, New York; 2002 Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York; Galerie Otto Schweins, Köln; Emily Tsingou Gallery, London.
Group shows (selection)
2009 Utopics, 11th Swiss Sculpture Exhibition, Biel, directed by Simon Lamunière; Twin Twin III, Artists’ Edition, Big and Small/Casual Space, Long Island City; Market Forces, Galerie Erna Hécey, Bruxelles, curated by Peter Scott; 2008 Market Forces, Carriage Trade, New York, curated by Peter Scott; 2007 Critical Art, Tsinghua University, Beijing, curated by Louis Grachos, travels to Hang Zhou Museum of Art; Grow Your Own, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, curated by Peter Coffin and Anthony Huberman; 2006 Weak Foundations, Momenta Art, Brooklyn, curated by Michael Ashkin and Eric Heist; Dark Places, Santa Monica Museum of Art, curated by Joshua Decter; 2005 Trade, White Columns, New York, curated by Matthew Higgs, 2004 Think Small, Illinois State Museum Chicago Gallery, curated by Robert Sill, traveling to Illinois State Museum Springfield, Illinois State Museum Lockport; 2003 The Power of Wings, The Duke University Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina; 2002 Watery, Domestic, Renaissance Society, Chicago, Illinois, curated by Hamza Walker; View Finder, Arnolfini, Bristol, curated by Stephen Hepworth; DOCUMENTA11, Kassel, curated by Okwui Enwezor; 2001 Lateral Thinking, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, La Jolla, California.
The Secession is supported by:
Erste Bank – Partner of the Secession
Wien Kultur
Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur
Friends of the Secession
Cooperation-, Media partners, Non-cash benefit:
Der Standard
Ö1 Club
Silver Server
hs art service austria GmbH
Trumer Privatbrauerei
VIENNA ART WEEK 2009
| MARC CAMILLE CHAIMOWICZ MONA VĂTĂMANU & FLORIN TUDOR | EXHIBITION PROGRAM 2009 |
For further information and photographic material please contact:
Pia Leydolt
Secession, Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Tel: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34
presse@secession.at