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People “Weekly,” the inaugural exhibition of the CUNY Graduate Center’s Amie and Tony James Gallery, is a sequence of six specially commissioned artist projects and a small "exhibition-within-the exhibition" curated by the gallery’s new director, Linda Norden. Norden describes People “Weekly” as a "group show in time."
The exhibition is designed to introduce new artwork directly into the dynamic academic arena of the Graduate Center. The artists invited to contribute to People "Weekly" vary considerably, but each artist’s project responds in some way to the exceptional location and context of this midtown, public university gallery.
Now on view:
Lucien Castaing-Taylor, “Sheep Rushes”
Nov. 15–Nov. 30, 2008
Producer: Lisa Barbash
Sound Editor: Ernst Karel
Sheep Rushes is the title anthropologist/filmmakers Lucien Castaing-Taylor and producer Lisa Barbash have given to a series of video works recorded between 2001 and 2005 in and around the Absaroka-Beartooth range of Montana. With remarkable clarity, and uncompromising attention to the aesthetics of image and sound, they depict the birthing, herding and shearing of several thousand sheep on one of the last substantial family ranches in the American West. Castaing-Taylor and Lisa Barbash spent three summers filming on the mountainous public lands used to pasture these sheep, and almost five years editing the footage. In the process, they have also produced a feature-length documentary, Sweetgrass, which will be released in 2009. At the James Gallery, Hell Roaring Creek, Into-the-Jug (Geworfen), and Turned at the Pass will be installed as continuous projections. On November 29, Castaing-Taylor and Barbash will screen all eight of the video works, offering yet another variation on document and/as narrative. The videos reveal a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are all intimately meshed. At once beautiful and unsparing, they display a relentless attention to the aesthetics of image and sound.
Lucien Castaing-Taylor teaches in the Departments of Visual & Environmental Studies and Anthropology at Harvard, where he heads up the Film Study Center and the Sensory Ethnography Lab. Lisa Barbash is Associate Curator of Visual Anthropology at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University. Previous works of theirs include In and Out of Africa (1992), a long-form video about authenticity, taste, and racial politics in the transnational African art market, which won eight international awards, and has been exhibited and the subject of
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From the top: "Sheep Rushes" by Lucien Castaing-Taylor; "For Instance" by Yunhee Min
symposia at the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institution. Ernst Karel is a musician, sound artist, and phonographer who focuses on abstract soundworlds. In his solo work, he works with analog modular synthesizers, sometimes combined with acoustic sound sources, and phonography. He is the Assistant Director of the Film Study Center, and Manager of the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University, and has also collaborated with artist Helen Mirra on various sound works.
Upcoming shows include:
Daniel Joseph Martinez, the west bank is missing, i am not dead, am i, 2008 December 11 – January 4, 2009
Thomas Torres Cordova, Everybody Loves the Sunshine, 2007; I wish you could color correct my films for the rest of my life, 2007
January 17 – January 31, 2009
Yunhee Min, For instance
February 11-February 28, 2009
Located in the former B. Altman’s department store building, the Amie and Tony James Gallery is located on the first floor of the Graduate Center (365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street).
Gallery hours are Tuesday–Friday, 12:00–8:00 pm; Saturday & Sunday, 12:00–6:00 pm. On view throughout People “Weekly” is a project designed by Barbara Kruger especially for the building’s lobby display windows. For more information about the exhibition and gallery, visit www.gc.cuny.edu/events/art_gallery.htm
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