"THE FUTURE OF COMFORT: International Artists Search for Place in a Virtual World "
2001-03-09 until 2001-05-20
Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art
Cleveland, OH, USA United States of America

The Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art brings together eight international rising stars, straight from recent successes at the Carnegie International, The Whitney Biennial and Sculpture Projects in Munster, as well as critically acclaimed shows at The Tate Gallery in London, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Comfort: Reclaiming Place in a Virtual World will showcase engaging works by a new generation of artists never seen before in Cleveland including Franz Ackermann, Peter Land, Sarah Morris, Gabriel Orozco, Jorge Pardo, Tobias Rehberger, Gregor Schneider and Andrea Zittel. The exhibition will explore how these artists use art-making to reclaim the subjectivity and intimacy that has been lost at the hands of globalism and technological advances.

As art critic Johnathan Crary explains, One of the crucial paradoxes of ‘globalization’ is this: the greater the technological capacity for connection, for speed, for exchange and circulation of information, the more fragmented and compartmentalized the world becomes. Today, virtual access to all corners of the globe is at our fingertips. Despite obvious merits, such as broader access to information, this growth also distances and even isolates us from the physical world.

As the world becomes more expansive, our relationship to our immediate environment becomes more tenuous (more) and, at the same time, more vital adds Center curator Kristin Chambers So it is particularly timely and intriguing to examine how eight seemingly disparate artists, working in a variety of different media, each deal with the notion of carving personal space and creating a more manageable daily existence.

The question becomes how to reclaim subjective experience and intimacy in the face of the often impersonal, increasingly remote terrain of the modern world. In Comfort: Reclaiming Place in a Virtual World a generation of young artists from around the world offers a range of possibilities. Franz Ackermann (Germany), Peter Land (Denmark), Sarah Morris (England and USA), Gabriel Orozco (Mexico and USA), Jorge Pardo (USA), Tobias Rehberger (Germany), Gregor Schneider (Germany) and Andrea Zittel (USA) cover a wide spectrum of approaches, ranging from examinations of the universal to the personal, offering both conceptual and practical solutions to making sense of a rapidly changing world. These artists demonstrate that reality is becoming less and less tangible and more an imaginary space created and controlled by individuals.

Comfort: Reclaiming Place in a Virtual World will be accompanied by a full-color scholarly catalogue designed by award-winning designer Laurie Haycock Makela, former Director of Design at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and current head of the 2D design department at Cranbrook Academy of Art. The book will be printed by internationally renowned art publishers, Cantz, in Germany and will be distributed by D.A.P. (Distributed Art Publishers). The 80-page catalogue will feature 35 color plates with additional duotones and half-tone images, essays by Center curator Kristin Chambers and architectural historian Michael Sorkin, and personal definitions of comfort by each featured artist.

IMAGE:
Peter Land
The Staircase, 1998
Coutesy of Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of Ohio

Other Important Exhibitions in Cleveland