Stan Vanderbeek | the Culture Intercom
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ! ! MEDIA CONTACT Connie McAllister ALWAYS FRESH Communications and Marketing Manager ALWAYS FREE Tel 713 284 8255 [email protected] The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is pleased to present the first museum survey of the work of media art pioneer Stan VanDerBeek (1927-1984). Stan VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom May 14 – July 10, 2011 Opening Reception Friday, May 13, 2011 6-7PM: Member Preview 7-9PM: Public Reception Stan VanDerBeek, Breathdeath (still), 1963. Courtesy the Estate of Stan VanDerBeek HOUSTON, TX (May 9, 2011)—The Contemporary ! Arts Museum Houston and the MIT List Visual Arts Center present the first museum survey of the work of media art pioneer Stan VanDerBeek (1927-1984). Surveying the artist’s remarkable body of work in collage, experimental film, performance, participatory, and computer-generated art over several decades, Stan VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom highlights the artist’s pivotal contributions to today’s media-based artistic practices. The exhibition features dozens of early paintings and collages, an exhaustive selection of his pioneering animations and films, re-creations of immersive projection and “expanded cinema” environments, documentation of site-specific and telecommunications projects, and material related to his performance and durational work. Describing himself as a “technological fruit picker,” VanDerBeek consistently turned to new technological means to expand the social and emotive potential of emergent technology and media. Emerging from the progressivist and intermedia tradition of Black Mountain College, VanDerBeek created technologically hybrid and participatory artworks through the 1960s and ’70s. His early drawings and collages, heavily influenced by Dada and the expressionism of the Beat Generation, already hinted at the artist’s interest in the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston Tel 713 284 8250 5216 Montrose Boulevard Fax 713 284 8275 CAMH Houston, Texas 77006-6547 www.camh.org ! FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE transformation of perception and knowledge in an Beginning with a selection of early abstract paintings, electronic age and the relationship between art, watercolors, and photographs the exhibition features a technology, and the human condition. rotating three-hour program of more than a dozen of VanDerBeek’s renowned animations, along with over VanDerBeek’s animations and short films, beginning forty of the existing collages from his films. The artist’s in the late 1950s, made him a central figure in series of computer-generated films, Poemfields (1966- American underground film. Combining stop-motion 1971), exploring early computer graphics and image- animation drawn from collages of magazine processing systems, are included as four multiple screen illustrations and advertisements with filmed sequences projections, along with Variations V (1965/66), and found footage, films such as Achoo Mr. VanDerBeek’s multi-media collaboration with Merce Kerrooshchev (1960) and Breathdeath (1963) fused Cunningham, John Cage, David Tudor, and Nam June avant-garde cinematic techniques with social critique Paik. The exhibition also re-creates two of VanDerBeek’s and Cold War politics. significant works: Movie Mural (1968), a multimedia installation comprised of several slide and video VanDerBeek’s interest shifted to “expanded cinema” projections, and a version of the large fax murals created and immersive and multimedia work in the mid- at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies and the 1960s. His Movie-Drome (1963-1965), an audiovisual Walker Art Center in the early 1970s. Immersive, laboratory and theater built in Stony Point, New York, participatory, and media-based projects such as Violence was conceived as an environment to present multiple Sonata (1970) and Cine-Dreams (1972) will be featured film projections. These so-called “movie-murals” were through rare footage, original drawings and texts, and part of the artist’s research into developing new visual extensive documentation. languages that could be used as tools for world communication. Stan VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom is organized by Bill Arning, Director, Contemporary Arts Museum Always at the forefront of new information, Houston; and João Ribas, Curator, MIT List Visual Arts communication, and visualization technologies, Center. VanDerBeek readily embraced computer graphics, image-processing systems, and various new technological forms through the late 1960s and early ABOUT THE ARTIST ‘70s. At Bell Labs, working with the first moving-image Stan VanDerBeek was born in New York, NY, 1927 and programming language, he produced Poemfields died in Baltimore, MD, in 1984. VanDerBeek studied at (1966-1971), a series of computer-generated films. As a Cooper Union and Black Mountain College, receiving research fellow at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual honorary doctorate degrees from Black Mountain Studies (CAVS) and artist-in-residence at Boston’s College (1957) and Cooper Union, New York (1972). The public television station WGBH, he began to develop artist’s film work has been presented in numerous film new forms of interdisciplinary work and integrated festivals since 1967, including the Lincoln Center Film forms of visual information that now stand as Festival, the London Film Festival, the Washington significant experiments in early new media art. For International Film Festival, and the New York Panels for the Walls of the World (1970), developed International Film Festival. He was the recipient of and conceived at CAVS in 1969, VanDerBeek many grant awards including several from the National experimented with transmitting art over telephone Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the using a Xerox machine called a "Telecopier." A mosaic- Ford Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and an like mural of images would be composed in “real time,” American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker award. sent from his studio at MIT to any location in the VanDerBeek collaborated with numerous organizations world that had access to a telephone line and a similar serving as a residency artist and researcher. These machine, and then reordered on site. included television stations, universities, foundations, scientific laboratories, and government agencies among Working with WGBH television, VanDerBeek them: Bell Labs, CBS-TV, Boston’s public television produced Violence Sonata (1970), a mix of live studio station WGBH, MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual television transmission and pre-recorded video work Studies, National Aeronautics Space Administration that questioned violence and race relations in America. (NASA), and the United States Information Agency VanDerBeek went on to conceive several complex (USIA). VanDerBeek taught at Columbia University cinematic and performance events at planetariums and (1963-65), State University of New York (SUNY) Stony museums before his untimely death in 1984. Brook (1967-72), and University of South Florida (1972- 75). From 1975 until his death in 1984, he was a CAMH 02 5/9/2011 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Professor of Art at the University of Maryland, Houston unless otherwise noted. For complete Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD. listings and current information, please check www.camh.org. Vanderbeek’s work was included in the pioneering exhibitions Cybernetic Serendipity, Institute of Artist’s Talk: Sara VanDerBeek* Contemporary Art, (ICA) London, U.K., Smithsonian Tuesday, May 10, 7-8PM Institute, Washington, DC (1968-69); The Projected *Special location: Freed Auditorium, Glassell School of Image, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA Art, 5101 Montrose Blvd, Houston (1968); and Software, The Jewish Museum, New York, Sara VanDerBeek is the daughter of the late Stan NY (1970). His work was also included in the 1983 VanDerBeek and an artist in her own right. Her semi- Whitney Biennial exhibition, Whitney Museum of abstract photographs often depict three-dimensional American Art, New York, NY. In addition, still-life assemblages—incorporating objects, found VanDerBeek’s work has been shown at the Stedelijk images, and even her own pictures—that she creates in Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Walker Art her studio and then photographs. Her work has been Center, Minneapolis, MN; Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, shown in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Switzerland; Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and SculptureCenter Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna in New York. In 2010, VanDerBeek had a one-person Austria; the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; and the show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Sara Museum of Modern Art, NY, among many others. His VanDerBeek: To Think of Time. This lecture is work can also be found in the collections of the cosponsored by the Core Program at the Glassell School Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Centre Pompidou, of Art, CAMH, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Paris, France; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; The Pennsylvania State University, State College, Lecture: João Ribas* PA; and The Arts Council of Great Britain, London, Wednesday, May 11 7-8PM UK. *Special location: Freed Auditorium, Glassell School of Art, 5101 Montrose Blvd, Houston Stan VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom has been João Ribas, Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center and co- organized by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston curator of Stan VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom, will and the MIT List Visual Arts Center. discuss the exhibition. This lecture is cosponsored by the Core Program at the Glassell