DECENTER: An Exhibition on the Centenary of the 1913 Armory Show

February 17th – April 7th, 2013
Henry Street Settlement’s Abrons Arts Center 466 Grand Street, New York, NY www.decenterarmory.com
Curated by Andrianna Campbell and Daniel S. Palmer

Artists: Cory Arcangel, Tony Cokes, Douglas Coupland, David Kennedy Cutler, N. Dash, Michael Delucia, Jessica Eaton, Franklin Evans, Amy Feldman, Andrea Geyer, David Gilbert, Ethan Greenbaum, Gregor Hildebrandt, Butt Johnson, John Houck, Barbara Kasten, Andrew Kuo, Liz Magic Laser, Douglas Melini, Ulrike Mohr, Brenna Murphy, John Newman, Gabriel Orozco, Rafaël Rozendaal, Seher Shah, Travess Smalley, Sara VanDerBeek

DECENTER exhibition celebrates the legacy of the Cubist paintings and sculptures in the historic 1913 Armory Show by featuring a group of 27 emerging and internationally recognized contemporary artists, who explore the changes in perception precipitated by our digital age and who closely parallel the Cubist vernacular of fragmentation, nonlinearity, simultaneity, and decenteredness. The show exhibits a group of artworks in the gallery, and also features digital works displayed at www.decenterarmory.com.

The exhibition commences on the 100th anniversary of the Armory Show, Sunday, February 17th, with a 1913 Armory Show Centennial Event, which will feature panel discussions about the 1913 exhibition, as well as the theme of perception and art in the digital age, followed by an opening reception. The Abrons Arts Center gallery, which was established in 1963 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Armory Show, is located at 466 Grand Street, New York, NY.

At the 1913 Armory Show, the Association of American Painters and Sculptors showcased the “New Spirit” of modern art. A backlash of scathing criticism showed how baffled the general American public was by the seeds of abstraction in the Cubist artworks, which quickly became a shorthand expression for the structural changes brought about by modernity. They not only redefined artistic practice, but also altered our understanding of the process through which we perceive the world. On its 100th anniversary, we will celebrate the Armory Show by posing the question: What is the legacy of Cubism in the hundred years since the Armory Show’s radical display of modern art, and especially, how has this become relevant today?

Accordingly, this exhibition celebrates the centenary of the groundbreaking Armory Show by assembling ?artworks that analyze the digital revolution and the ways it has affected our perception of the world. Artists as varied as Sara VanDerBeek, Gabriel Orozco, Liz Magic Laser, and Abrons AIRspace residency program alumna Amy Feldman evoke the formal innovations of the historic avant-garde but differ through an embrace or flirtation with digital mediation. Artists today like Andrew Kuo, Tony Cokes, and Cory Arcangel are inspired by the inter-cultural circulation of images, ideas, and data in a worldwide network. While Pablo Picasso and fellow Cubists combined archaic Western forms and appropriated exotica to shatter inherited modes of representation, today ubiquitous computing and the digital image explosion create an intersection of the physical and the virtual, and in doing so, have decentered the locus of artistic praxis.

Although the far-reaching historical significance of the Armory Show was examined through a partial re-creation on its fiftieth anniversary in 1963 (sponsored by Henry Street Settlement, at which point they created our venue – the Abrons Arts Center), even then, scholars acknowledged that the exhibition’s social import could not be replicated simply by re-staging the show. In order to honor that “New Spirit,” and the collaborative process through which the 27 members of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors organized this radical exhibit, our 2013 show will display a group of artworks in the gallery, and also feature a corresponding online component of digital works. This web-based portion of the show will grow as artists invite others to contribute in a process that highlights the diversity and expansiveness of the 1913 show’s legacy as it relates to our world today.

1913 Armory Show Centennial Event Date: 4-6 PM Sunday, February 17, 2013 Followed by opening reception of:Decenter: An Exhibition on the Centenary of the 1913 Armory Show
Opening Reception sponsored by Hudson Whiskey with generous support from Van Brunt Free and open to the public Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street, New York, NY

Panel Discussion: The Legacy of the 1913 Armory Show:
Charles Haven Duncan (Collection Specialist, Archives of American Art)
Franklin Evans (Artist, New York)
Andrea Geyer (Artist, New York)
Marilyn Satin Kushner (Curator and Head, Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections, New-York Historical Society; Co-curator of The Armory Show at 100)
Mary Murray (Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute)

Panel Discussion: Perception and Art in the Digital Age:
Introduced by: Israel Rosenfield (City University of New York) Ethan Greenbaum, Barbara Kasten, Andrew Kuo, Travess Smalley, Sara VanDerBeek Moderated by: Brian Droitcour.

Categories

• EXHIBITIONS

Tags

• Amy Feldman
• Andrea Geyer
• Andrew Kuo
• Barbara Kasten
• Brenna Murphy
• Butt Johnson
• Cory Arcangel
• David Gilbert
• David Kennedy Cutler
• Douglas Coupland
• Douglas Melini
• Ethan Greenbaum
• Franklin Evans
• Gabriel Orozco
• Gregor Hildebrandt
• Jessica Eaton
• John Houck
• John Newman
• Liz Magic Laser
• Michael Delucia
• N. Dash
• Rafaël Rozendaal
• Sara VanDerBeek
• Seher Shah
• Tony Cokes
• Travess Smalley
• Ulrike Mohr