Performing for Cyclops, an Exhibition of Contemporary Video Art, Opens at The Pitch Project July 12, 2014 from 5­9PM. The Pitch Project (706 S. 5th St., Milwaukee, WI 53204, USA), is proud to present Performing for Cyclops, a group exhibition of contemporary video art. Five internationally exhibited artists, Jonathan Gitelson, William Lamson, Julie Lequin, Mary Mattingly, and Kambui Olujimi, will be featured in the show. Work ranges in scale from room size projection to intimate encounters with personal­sized screens. Many of the works center on the artist performing for the camera using humor and ingenuity to explore narratives from the commonplace routine to playful and absurd rituals. The performances in this exhibition blur the line between the fictional and personal, inviting perspectives on the how the human force contends with courageousness, woe, and error in real time. In both of her videos, Lequin constructs personas and language to investigate her art practice. Gitelson’s wry work documents/performs his last cigarette accompanied by an original banjo score by Nils d’ Aularie. Lamson’s videos push at machismo while shooting at balloons or hunting sneakers hanging from Brooklyn electrical wires. Mattingly’s sculptural boulders of excess stimulate thoughts about consumer culture and mobility in the global economy. Kambui Olujimi’s 2014 film “Not Now Nor Then” will be featured in The Pitch Project Media Gallery. His film inspired from the missing Malaysian Flight MH 370 asks “If our perceptions of total connectivity are wrong and the world is not in fact flat, then I ask you, what is on the other side?” Performing for Cyclops will run July 12 ­ October 12, 2014. Media contact [email protected] ABOUT THE ARTISTS Jonathan Gitelson [Born 1975] currently resides in Brattleboro, Vermont. Jonathan earned a BA in literature and photography from Marlboro College and a MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago. Jonathan’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe and is in the permanent collection of numerous institutions that include The Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Milwaukee Art Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art New York, and The Albert and Victoria Museum in London. He is the recipient of the College Art Association’s Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Fellowship, The Puffin Foundation Fellowship, The Netherlands­America Foundation Grant, and the City of Chicago Community Arts Assistance Program. As an artist, Jonathan works in a variety of mediums that include photography, artist books, video, installation, web­based projects, works on paper, and public art. Recent commissions have included a ten by forty­five foot permanent installation for the Chicago Transit Authority, a three­month public art installation at the Inkijk Gallery in Amsterdam, and a twenty foot map tracking the teaching influence of the members of the Society fo Photographic Education. His film “The Quitter” was last screened at Format 13: International Photography Festival in Derby UK. William Lamson [Born 1977] is an interdisciplinary artist whose diverse practice involves working with elemental forces to create durational performative actions. Set in landscapes as varied as New York’s East River and Chile’s Atacama Desert, his projects reveal the invisible systems and forces at play within these sites. In all of his projects, Lamson’s work represents a performative gesture, a collaboration with forces outside of his control to explore systems of knowledge and belief. Lamson’s work has been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, including the Brooklyn Musuem, The Moscow Biennial, P.S.1. MOMA, Kunsthalle Erfurt, the Musuem of Contemporary Art, Denver, and Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles. In addition he has produced site specific installations for the Indianapolis Musuem of Art, the Center For Land Use Interpretation, and Storm King Art Center. His work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Musuem of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and a number of private collections. He has been awarded grants from the Shifting Foundation, the Experimental Television Center, and most recently he is 2014 Guggenheim Fellow. His work has appeared in ArtForum, Frieze, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, Harpers, and the Village Voice. William Lamson was born Arlington, Virginia and lives in Brooklyn, New York. He earned his MFA from Bard College, and he teaches in the Parsons MFA photography program. He is represented by Anita Beckers Gallery in Frankfurt, and Pierogi in Brooklyn. Julie Lequin [Born 1979] is a French­Canadian artist. She received a BFA from Concordia University (Montreal, PQ) and an MFA from Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, CA). Her work is multidisciplinary; it includes video art, performance, sculpture, watercolor, writing, props and costumes, as well as written lists, voiceovers and notes for scripts. Julie’s first book and DVD project was published in 2007 by 2nd Cannons Publications, an internationally distributed, limited edition book publisher based in Los Angeles. She recently exhibited at Clark (Montreal), YYZ Artists’ Outlet (Toronto, Ontario), Crisp­Ellert Art Museum (St­Augustine, Floride), Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (Salt Lake City, Utah) and at the Festival International du Cinéma Francophone en Acadie (Moncton, Nouveau­Brunswick). She was recently included in the Younger Than Jesus Artist Directory published by Phaidon and the New Museum and in publications such as Art Papers, C Magazine and Etc­revue de l’art actuel. Julie is the 2011 recipient of the Joseph S. Stauffer Award, an honor given by the Canada Council for the Arts. She was also awarded fellowships from the Canada Council for the Arts and from the California Community Foundation. She was an artist in residency at Yaddo, Art Omi, Macdowell Colony, Quebec’s studio in Mexico City, Cow House Studios and Les Recollets in Paris. In her freetime, Julie bikes around town with Julien, teaches part­time, goes fishing and cooks. She lives and works in Montreal. Mary Mattingly [Born 1978] is an artist based in New York. Her work has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, the Seoul Art Center, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the New York Public Library, deCordova Museum and Sclupture Park, and the Palais de Tokyo. She participated in smARTpower: an initiative between the U.S. Department of State and the Bronx Museum of the Arts as artist­ambassador to the Philippines. She has been awarded grants and fellowships from the James L. Knight Foundation, Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, Yale University School of Art, the Harpo Foundation, NYFA, the Jerome Foundation, and the Art Matters Foundation. Her work has been featured in Aperture Magazine, Art in America, Artforum, Art+Auction, Sculpture Magazine, China Business News, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Financial Times, Le Monde Magazine, Metropolis Magazine, New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Brooklyn Rail, the Village Voice, and on BBC News, MSNBC, Fox News, News 12, NPR, WNBC, New York 1, and on Art21's New York Close Up series. Mattingly recently launched a three­part project, beginning with the Flock House Project: three spherical living­systems incorporating rainwater collection that cycled water through edible gardens, solar panels, and enclosed living spaces. These spheres were choreographed through New York City’s five boroughs. Currently, Triple Island(part two) is being exhibited at Pier 42 in Lower Manhattan. WetLand (part three) will launch from the Delaware River in Philadelphia in the Fall of 2014. Mattingly also founded the Waterpod Project, a barge­based public space containing an autonomous habitat. Working with multiple collaborators, from artists to businesses and city agencies, the Waterpod docked at piers in each of the five boroughs. Over 200,000 people visited the Waterpod in 2009. Kambui Olujimi [Born 1976] was born and raised in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. In Spring 2013, Kambui Olujimi received his MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts. Olujimi is a graduate of Parson's School of Design and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Olujimi is an artist who works within the realm of ideas rather than within an exclusive medium. Although he has directed a great deal of work in film, his is truly a multi­media practice. He crafts potent social commentary from delicate wisps of myth and whimsy mixed with real­world narrative. Olujimi has an interest in, “transforming the mundane into legend, the absurd into custom, and the creation of icons.” In his works, the violence and destruction of identity—the grief and subsequent anesthetization of grief—become poignant symbols of the contemporary condition. Lyrical and elliptical rather than ideological, Olujimi’s art transcends the political sphere, affirming its own autonomy. His work has been exhibited widely nationally and internationally at institutions such as the Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, Madrid; Art in General, New York; the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.; the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Finland; and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. His work is in collections such as that of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Orange County Museum of Art. Kambui’s work has been reviewed by The New York Times, ArtSlant, and Modern Painters, among others. In 2012, the exhibition monograph Wayward North was published by Art in General. ABOUT THE PITCH PROJECT The Pitch Project is a home for contemporary art practices in Milwaukee’s Historic Walker’s Point neighborhood. The Pitch Project is not only a gallery for bringing contemporary global practices and exhibitions to Milwaukee, but provides studios for 23 local artists who are active on a national and international level.