|
|
CONTINUUM: SEPTEMBER 2016
THE FOLLOWING RITUALS, IF ANY, WILL TAKE PLACE THROUGHOUT THE DAY:
Lecture, concert, performance, screening etc...
THE CONTINUUM ON SEPTEMBER 19, 2016 IS SUSTAINED BY THE FOLLOWING ACTIVITIES AND PARTICIPANTS: Rick Lowe
Untitled
Rick Lowe, presentation followed by a discussion
Rick Lowe’s most known work of art, Project Row Houses (PRH) departs significantly from his original training as a painter. In the early 1990s, seeing the social, economic, and cultural needs of his community unanswered, he and a group of fellow artists organized to purchase and restore twenty-two “shotgun houses” from the 1930s, lining more than a city block of Houston's predominantly African-American Third Ward. “Since its founding in 1993, PRH has served as a vital anchor for what had been a fast-eroding neighborhood, providing arts education programs for youth, exhibition spaces and studio residencies for emerging and established artists, a residential mentorship program for young mothers, an organic gardening program, and an incubator for historically appropriate designs for low-income housing on land surrounding the original row houses.” So writes the MacArthur Foundation, the most prestigious creative grant in the US, which honored Lowe in 2014.
In summing up his complex work, Lowe often makes use of the term "social sculpture," introduced by the German artist Joseph Beuys. Lowe has in turn inspired a generation of artists to explore more socially engaged forms of art making in communities. Based on the transformative experience of Project Row Houses, he has been invited to help envision and guide other redevelopment initiatives, including the Watts House Project in Los Angeles, a post-Katrina rebuilding effort in New Orleans, and, most recently, a vibrant community market in a densely populated, immigrant neighborhood in North Dallas.
In response to the invitation to participate in documenta 14, which takes place in Athens as well as its founding city of Kassel for the upcoming edition culminating in 2017, Rick Lowe is developing a project that builds on his experience and manifests in both cities, albeit differently. Thoughtful relationship-building remains the core of his practice. Visiting Athens, he has already met with and listened to leaders of diverse organizations operating across the fields of arts and culture, business and higher learning, as well as support networks for immigrant and refugee groups. This presentation is occasioned by the first gathering of these emerging partners and extended to the broader public of Athens.
Rick Lowe attended Columbus College and studied Visual Arts at Texas Southern University in Houston. His work has been exhibited at national (US) and international venues including Houston's Contemporary Arts Museum and Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, and the Venice Architecture Biennale. He has been recognized with numerous honors: in 2013, President Barack Obama appointed him to the National Council on the Arts; in 2014, he became a MacArthur Foundation Fellow; and in 2015, he received the University of Houston President's Medallion. He is currently the artist-in-residence at the Nasher Sculpture Center and a Mel King Community Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
7:00–8:30 pm, Prevelakis Hall, ASFA
Jani Christou’s “Epicycle,” the composer’s 1968 score for a “continuum,” provides the experimental framework for the working sessions between artists, curators, and the team of documenta 14, leading to the formation of the exhibition and programs in Athens and Kassel. Students and faculty members are invited to engage in this ongoing process at the Prevelakis Hall of the Athens School of Fine Arts at Ethnikon Metsovion Polytechnion (National Technical University of Athens). The epicycle has begun on March 28, 2016. As a guest of the Athens School of Fine Arts, documenta 14 continues activities at Polytechnion and invites you to experience and share the elaboration of the exhibition in the semi-public dimension of a studio space.
|
