Rirkrit Tiravanija: Demonstration Drawings Main Gallery September 12 – November 6, 2008 Opening Reception: Thursday, September 11, 6 – 8 pm Gallery Talk: Saturday, September 13, 5:00 pm
From September 12 to November 6, 2008, The Drawing Center will present Rirkrit Tiravanija: Demonstration Drawings in the Main Gallery. This exhibition, featuring approximately 200 works on paper, will be the first U.S. museum exhibition of the artist’s ongoing series of commissioned drawings derived from photographs of demonstrations published in the International Herald Tribune.
While public protests and mass demonstrations are often associated with the leftist politics of the 1960s, Tiravanija’s project reconsiders their relevance in today’s political climate. For the Demonstration Drawings, Tiravanija has commissioned Thai artists, many of them former students, to create a series of photorealistic pencil drawings depicting multifarious responses to power, oppression, and global capital. Tiravanija’s drawings translate photojournalist depictions of acts of political spontaneity into a medium itself characterized by immediacy—turning ephemeral images of strife and social conflict into documents of political aspiration.
By providing a perspectival view of collective actions, political protests, and popular sovereignty movements worldwide, the Demonstration Drawings confront commonly-held assumptions about globalization and the resistance to economic liberalism. This exhibition is curated by João Ribas.
ABOUT THE ARTIST Rirkrit Tiravanija (b. 1961, Buenos Aires, Argentina) was raised in Thailand and studied in Canada, Chicago, and New York. He is currently Associate Professor of Professional Practice, Faculty of the Arts, at Columbia University, New York and lives in New York, Berlin, and Thailand. Tiravanija’s work has been presented widely at museums and galleries throughout the world including solo exhibitions at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2005); Serpentine Gallery, London (2005); Secession, Vienna (2002); and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1997). He has participated in such notable group exhibitions as the Sharjah Biennial 8, United Arab Emirates (2007); 27th São Paulo Biennial, Brazil (2006); Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night, New York (2005), and the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). Tiravanija is the recipient of numerous awards including the Silpathorn Award in 2007 from the Ministry of Culture of Thailand and the Hugo Boss Prize in 2004 from the Guggenheim Museum. His work is the subject of a forthcoming solo exhibition in 2008 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Kathleen Henderson: What If I Could Draw a Bird that Could Change the World? Selections Fall 2008 Drawing Room September 12 – October 9, 2008 Opening Reception: Thursday, September 11, 6 – 8 pm Gallery Talk: Friday, September 12, 12:00 pm
From September 12 to October 9, 2008, The Drawing Center will present Kathleen Henderson: What If I Could Draw a Bird that Could Change the World? in the Drawing Room. The Selections Fall 2008 exhibition departs from past Selections shows by featuring the work of a singular Viewing Program artist.
Henderson works in the studio with the radio on, the sounds of talking pundits and news reports filtering through her onto the page. While not a direct representation of the stories she hears, Henderson’s work ruminates on issues that infiltrate our lives and inform our respective viewpoints. Using her chosen medium of oil stick on paper, Henderson creates a sparse, tense, and energetic line to make drawings that are at turns comic, perverse, poignant, and brutal. She presents ambiguous scenarios where seemingly innocent interactions between people hold implications of violence, or where brutality lurks behind a potentially playful situation. By offering up disquieting representations of patterns of human behavior, Henderson’s work asks us to consider our own complicity in, and capacity for, violence as well as benevolence. This exhibition is curated by Nina Katchadourian, Viewing Program Curator.
ABOUT THE ARTIST Kathleen Henderson (b. 1963, Boston, MA) lives and works in Canyon, CA. She received her B.F.A. from Boston University in 1985 and attended the M.F.A. Program at Queens College in 1986. Henderson’s work has been included in group exhibitions in California, Massachusetts, and New York, as well as solo exhibitions at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (2007), Ashby Stage, Berkeley, CA (2005), and Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2002). She is a recipient of an award from the National Endowment for the Arts for Works on Paper.
