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Indepth Arts News:
"Fallout: A New Site-specific Installation by Chuck Nanney"
2003-11-07 until 2003-12-18
Anderson Gallery, Drake University
Des Moines, IO,
USA United States of America
This exhibition and performance mark a new turn in the development of an artist who is famous for works that skillfully combine political and emotional content.
Nanney, 45, pushes forward the tradition of such "fly-weight" minimalists as Carl Andre, Richard Tuttle and Tony Feher. His usual method is to deploy non-traditional and "throwaway" materials - pushpins, cocktail swords and construction paper are favorites - to tackle such difficult subjects as the bodily effects of his own HIV infection and the vacuousness and political apathy that surround much of American life. Nanney's preference for provisional materials and his "prettified" treatment of them work in sharp counterpoint to the weighty subjects he addresses.
For his new Anderson Gallery show, however, Nanney veers in a new direction. "FALLOUT" presents no "throwaway" materials and instead is a total transformation of the Anderson Gallery into a dimly-lit bubblegum pink space. The installation is a meditation on what the artist calls "a fallout of the great American consumer dream." Nanney adds: "The pink gallery is like bubblegum and at the same time it's the color of Pepto-Bismol to coat the ulceric stomach lining of an ailing nation."
During the opening night (on Fri., Nov, 7, 6 p.m.), Nanney will give a half hour live performance - an electronic musical excursion with a sci-fi subtext titled "Red Mutant Eyes." Together with a recent performance in New York City's conTEMPORARY, "Red Mutant Eyes" is Nanney's first musical performance ever.
"FALLOUT" marks Nanney's first solo exhibition in an American public space. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, Purple, the Village Voice, Tema Celeste and Beaux Arts. The artist has had more than 60 solo and group shows, including exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, and was recently the recipient of The Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, a highly competitive award given internationally to exceptional artists whose work merits the support of the foundation.
IMAGE
Chuck Nanney
L Orbit
R Orbit Zirconium,
2001
Courtesy of Debs & Co., New York
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