FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JANINE ANTONI
IMBED
MARCH 6 – APRIL 17, 1999
Luhring Augustine is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by Janine Antoni from March 6 through April 17, 1999. This will be the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery. The installation, entitled “Imbed” will be comprised of two photographic works and two sculptures. This show was inspired by two simultaneous desires: the need to be held and the need to hold.
Antoni placed two 600 lb. limestone boulders on top of one another with a steel pole acting as a central axle. A second pole was then placed into the top rock, parellel to the ground; line in a mill, Antoni pushed the pole in a circle for 5 to 6 hours a day. Antoni explains: “I was interested in a relationship where two forms resisted and gave into each other at an equal rate. With great effort I created this kind of relationship.” The two objects involved in Antoni’s exhibition are ---- and Cradle. Antoni began ---- in the summer of 1996 at which time she participated in a residency at the only active Shaker Community, Sabbath Day Lake in Maine. The piece was finished this past summer when she was a teacher at the Skowhegan School of Art. To complete ----, Antoni placed two 600 lbs. limestone boulders on top of one another connected by a rod, acting as a central axis. A pole was then placed into the top rock, parallel to the ground, which Antoni pushed in a circle for 5 – 6 hours a day. This act facilitated a relationship as the two boulders carved into one another.
“Imbed’s” second sculptural element is Cradle. This steel sculpture, weighing approximately one ton, is made from a used rusty twelve-foot construction tractor bucket the artist found. This original form was then cut in half. One half to be maintained as the mother and the remaining part was then melted down into eight subsequent casts: an agricultural loader bucket, an excavator bucket, a snow shovel, a garden shovel, a fireplace shovel, a serving spoon, a soup spoon and a baby spoon.
The two photographic images: Coddle and ---- reveal Antoni’s adept use of various visual languages. She explores the issue of desire and the impossibility of its fulfillment in both photographs by using the iconic image of mother and child in Coddle and the more intensely visceral graphic result of ----.
A photograph blown up larger than life, ----, is an image of a tongue thrusting toward an eye as the eye retracts as either an effort to protect itself or in a gesture if ecstasy. The image enacts the desire to taste another’s vision.
Widely respected museums around the world have requested Ms. Antoni’s works for their exhibitions and permanent collections. Several include: Boijmans Van Beunigen Museum, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Malmo Museum, Sweden; Israel Museum; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Milwaukee Museum of Art. In 1996 Janine Antoni exhibited her installation Slumber in the inaugural Hugo Boss exhibition at the SoHo Guggenheim. Most recently her video installation Swoon was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Janine Antoni has been the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award as well as the John D. and Catherine T. McCarther Fellowship.
A monograph of the artist’s work, published by Cantz will be forthcoming.
For further information, please contact Michele Maccarone at 212 206 9100.
