The FLAG Art Foundation Announces Summer Exhibition Watch Your Step

NEW YORK, June 4, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The FLAG Art Foundation, an exhibition space for contemporary art, today announced its summer exhibition: Watch Your Step, a group exhibition of floor works on view June 7 through August 24, 2012.

Watch Your Step surveys a series of floor sculptures by 21 artists in a diverse range of media including found objects, handmade materials, and traditional mediums such as bronze, steel, and marble. The exhibition recalibrates the viewer's perspective, moving it from eye-to ground-level and, in some instances, forcing the viewer to literally watch one's step upon encountering the works. The featured works address themes such as repetition, the relationship between the part and the whole, the human form, and nature.

The evolution of the relationship among a sculpture, the floor, and a viewer plays an important role within this conversation. Constantin Brancusi redefined this paradigm in the early twentieth century with his treatment of the pedestal. Breaking from Renaissance tradition of using the pedestal to elevate and isolate sculpture, Brancusi instead incorporated hand-carved bases into his works, highlighting the point of connection between our reality - the ground - and the ideality of art. Carl Andre drew inspiration from Brancusi and made the horizontal plane his primary focus with an array of materials directly flat on the ground in different formats in his Minimalist sculptures. This seminal shift redefined how sculpture is perceived and displayed today.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Julianne Swartz and Patricia Cronin utilize the floor as a surface to express poignant manifestations of love and mortality. Gonzalez-Torres' Untitled (Corner of Baci), composed of a pile of Italian chocolate "kisses," and Swartz's Flood, an unsuspecting cherry wood box that plays a chorus of voices saying "I love you" when opened, invite viewers to slow down and activate their senses. Cronin's bronze sculpture Memorial to a Marriage depicts the artist and her partner lying in bed embracing.

Polly Apfelbaum and Lynda Benglis challenge traditional relationships to the ground and blur the distinction between painting and sculpture. Apfelbaum's flower work Rihanna, named after the pop star, is a toxic fluorescent yellow that captures the contradiction between toughness and unbridled beauty. Benglis' Untitled recalls the painterly and gestural Abstract Expressionist artists with colorful vicious pours of polyurethane on the floor.

Richard Serra and Corban Walker highlight the presence and absence of the ground in the presentation of their works. Serra's Even Level – a six-foot, half-ton sculpture, with two pieces of hot rolled steel in a tilted T-formation – rests precariously against the gallery wall and is only anchored to the floor by the small edge. Walker references his height in relation to the average male height with a series of stainless steel cables strewn across facing walls; viewers over four feet must walk underneath it to pass through the corridor. Though the installation does not have any contact with the floor, it increases awareness of one's height in relation to the horizontal plane and the architecture.

Richard Long, Michael Phelan, and Wolfgang Laib incorporate organic materials while Mona Hatoum, Tara Donovan, and the Ladd brothers combine found objects. The floor becomes the nexus between the earth and the developed world.

Featured artists:

Grimanesa Amoros
Polly Apfelbaum
Lynda Benglis
Patricia Cronin
Tara Donovan
Tom Friedman
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Mona Hatoum
Steven and William Ladd
Wolfgang Laib
Richard Long
Joe Mangrum
Michael Phelan
Richard Serra
Kiki Smith
Matthew Stone
Julianne Swartz
Venske & Spanle
Corban Walker

About The FLAG Art Foundation

The FLAG Art Foundation is an exhibition space for contemporary art. The exhibition program includes three to five professionally-curated shows each year which feature established and emerging international artists. FLAG provides a unique educational environment in which visitors can view, contemplate, and engage in active dialogue with the artworks. Curators select and borrow from a variety of sources to include a wide range of work in each exhibition. FLAG is also a resource that facilitates loans of contemporary artworks to museums around the world. An extensive database of available works is maintained and made available to curators via [email protected].  

During the summer, FLAG is open to the public in June, every Wednesday through Saturday, 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, and in July and August every Tuesday through Friday, 11:00 am to 5:00 pm.

Contact:
The FLAG Art Foundation
545 West 25th Street New York, NY 10001
www.flagartfoundation.org

SOURCE FLAG Art Foundation