February 25 - May 24, 2015
Curators: Lauren Cornell
Ryan Trecartin
New Museum
New York, NY, US
Artists
Nadim Abbas, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, niv Acosta, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Sophia Al-Maria, Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Ed Atkins, Olga Balema, Frank Benson, Sascha Braunig, Antoine Catala, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, José León Cerrillo, Onejoon CHE, Tania Pérez Córdova, Verena Dengler, DIS, Aleksandra Domanović, Casey Jane Ellison, Exterritory, Geumhyung Jeong, Ane Graff, Guan Xiao, Shadi Habib Allah, Eloise Hawser, Lena Henke, Lisa Holzer, Juliana Huxtable, Renaud Jerez, K-HOLE, Shreyas Karle, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Josh Kline, Eva Koťátková, Donna Kukama, Firenze Lai, Oliver Laric, Li Liao, Rachel Lord, Basim Magdy, Nicholas Mangan, Ashland Mines, Shelly Nadashi, Eduardo Navarro, Steve Roggenbuck, Avery K. Singer, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Martine Syms, Lisa Tan, Luke Willis Thompson, Peter Wächtler
We are surrounded by a culture replete with impressions of life, be they visual, written, or construed through data. We move through streams of chatter, swipe past pictures of other people’s lives, and frame our own experiences as, all the while, our digital trails are subtly captured, tracked, and stored. This is a culture in which the radical multimedia environments envisioned by pioneering artists like Nam June Paik and Stan VanDerBeek are being lived out every day, albeit with much more complexity and compromise. With these transformations in mind, “Surround Audience” explores how artists are currently depicting subjectivity, unpacking complex systems of power, and claiming sites of artistic agency.
While issues around social media provide a point of departure for the exhibition, it is not the platforms themselves that are the exhibition’s primary focus, but rather the ways their associated effects intersect with life. Among the many narratives and ideas emerging from the works, there are three recurring lines of inquiry: First, how representations of the body and persona have evolved in an image-laden culture in which surveillance is widely dispersed and editorializing one’s life in public is the norm; second, if it might be possible to opt out of or reframe the pressures of increasingly corporatized and invasive spaces; and third, how artists are striving to embed their works in the world around them through incursions into media and activism.
The exhibition encompasses a variety of artistic practices, including sound, dance, comedy, poetry, installation, sculpture, painting, video, and one online talk show. If there is any aesthetic link between these diverse works it is in their energetic mutability of form. Together, these works speak to a newfound elasticity in our understanding of what mediums constitute contemporary art. Here, paintings evolve out of 3-D models, digital images erupt into sculpture, and sound becomes action. This is a group of works that attests to how form is continuously converted across word, image, and medium.
Reviews
Scott, Sue. "2015 Triennial: Surround Audience." Brooklyn Rail. May 6, 2015. Web.link / pdf
Traps, Yevgeniya. "A Diaspora at the New Museum." Forward. May 2, 2015. Web.
link / pdf
Duke, Laurie. "Review: Surround Audience." curating moving images. April 20, 2015. Web.
link / pdf
Healey, Dale Megan. "The Intimate Art of Active Reading." Hyperallergic. April 9, 2015. Web.
link / pdf
Cotter, Holland. "Review: Triennial Casts a Wary Eye on the Future." The New York Times. Feb 26, 2015. Print and web.
link / pdf
Wolin, Joseph R. "2015 Triennial: Surround Audience." TimeOut New York. Feb 26, 2015, p.30. Print and web.
link / pdf
Burns, Charlotte. "New Museum's Triennial: wired for the future." The Guardian. Feb 25, 2015.
link / pdf