The AC Institute Presents 4 New Exhibitions: Toby Milman and Tirtza Even: Palestine Revisited, Linda Post: Approach, Apple: A group exhibition curated by John R. Neeson and Elizabeth Gower, and Lawrence F. Mesich: At Work

Palestine Revisited: Tirtza Even and Toby Millman each translate their experiences of personal encounters in Palestine in their collaborative exhibition, Palestine Revisited. The two projects, Once a Wall, or Ripple Remains by Tirtza Even and Access and Closure by Toby Millman each result from extensive stays in Palestine – on both sides of the borders dividing the occupied territories and Israel – during several periods spanning 1998 to 2008. These stays were translated into a body of visual and written material and include paper cutout maps, drawings, photographs, 3-D animations and video loops, as well as two individual book renderings of the same and expanded material.

The two records, in very distinct ways, aim to incorporate the images’ passage through media and through the history impacting their perception. Thus they utlizize everyday experience and history to address signs of forceful partitioning and containment beginning with the 1948 war and leading to the current construction of the wall, and most recently, the continued violent assaults in Lebanon and Gaza.

Using text that reflects on and questions the coherence and perception of the visual material, incorporating both humor and nuanced prose, the exhibition attempts to address the characteristics and consequences of the ongoing Israeli occupation on life in Palestine.

About Toby Millman: Trained as a photographer, Toby Millman also works with printmaking, audio, drawing and paper-construction to explore issues of mapping, borders, identity, and movement as they relate to geopolitics and civil society in and around Palestine. She recently completed an artist book at the Oregon College of Art and Craft titled, Access and Closure: stories from in and out of an occupied Palestine, which is in numerous collections nationwide including the Getty Research Institute, Yale University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US and internationally.

Toby Millman received a BA from Hampshire College and a MFA from the University of Michigan. She currently lives in Detroit, Michigan.

About Tirtza Even: A practicing video artist and documentary maker for the past ten years, Even has produced both linear and interactive video work representing the less overt manifestations of complex and sometimes extreme social/political dynamics in specific locations (e.g. Palestine, Turkey, Spain, the U.S. and Germany, among others). Her work has appeared at the Modern Art Museum, NY, at the Whitney Biennial, the Johannesburg Biennial, as well as in many other festivals, galleries and museums in the United States, Israel and Europe, and has been purchased for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Jewish Museum (NY), the Israel Museum (Jerusalem), among others. She has been an invited guest and featured speaker at numerous conferences and university programs, including the Whitney Museum Seminar series, the Digital Flaherty Seminar, Art Pace annual panel, ACM Multimedia, The Performance Studies International conference (PSI), The Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts conference (SLSA) and others.

Approach: Continuing her investigations into the sculptural application of time-based media, Linda Post creates a site-specific installation for the AC Institute’s Chapel space. Approach uses choreographed video to activate the long narrow room that dead-ends at an arched window. One approaches the work physically, as with sculpture. Phantom scenarios activate the simple act of walking into the space, approaching, engaging the work, and finally choosing to leave. These actions, the path available and the sound of movement in the space all become charged in the encounter.

About Linda Post: Linda Post explores the sculptural limits of time-based media with installations that address site and viewer while avoiding spectacle. She has exhibited at MOMA, PS1, and the Sculpture Center in New York and in solo exhibitions in New York, London, and Turin, Italy. Her work is included in the publication fast forward: Media Art Sammlung Goetz. She participated in the exhibitions ‘Regarding Beauty’ at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; ‘NowHere’ at the Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst, Denmark; and ‘Young & Restless’ at MOMA, NY.

Imaging the Apple: In the jargon of American jazz musicians a gig was an ‘apple’, and a gig in New York City was the “big apple.” A Jazz interpretation of a standard or popular tune (in itself as iconic as an apple) takes advantage of the listener’s familiarity with the melody to elucidate improvisation. Artists, using different media, have reflected on the mundane image or word, and finding pictorial associations with it, the matching is rational or (in the tradition of Dada and Surrealism) paradoxical.

Curated by John R. Neeson and Elizabeth Gower, Imaging the Apple features the work of 60 artists, including Yoko Ono’s celebrated Apple. The group show presents apple themed artwork, each piece no larger than 12 cubic inches, in a multimedia installation on the AC’s temporary 6th floor exhibition space.

Imaging the Apple will be accompanied by a catalogue (documenting the works and including a project essay) published by AC and distributed by Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Imaging the Apple has received a grant through the Dame Joan Sutherland Fund from the Australian American Association. The Melbourne based art materials company Chapman & Bailey have also provided generous in kind support.

At Work: My work explores the dynamic relationships between bodies, behavior and the built environment. At Work investigates the specific relationship between the interstitial spaces of institutional interiors –lobbies, waiting areas, and hallways – and the routines of the people employed to inhabit them. The piece consists of video monitors mounted in enclosures that mimic the infrastructure of spaces they inhabit. The spaces depicted in the videos are at once foreign and familiar, reminding us of many different spaces while remaining essentially unplaceable. The behaviors depicted, the repetitive and unconscious actions that occur in the ‘down time’ of a work day, are similarly familiar and alienating. The repetition of these familiar architectural tropes and physical gestures creates a zone of liminal discomfort; the normally ignorable or invisible spaces and gestures are given explicit focus. Simultaneously, the monitor enclosures reemphasize the invisibleness and mundanity of those spaces and gestures. This tension implicates the viewer, asking them to reevaluate the spaces they inhabit and the behaviors those spaces help engender.

About Lawrence F. Mesich:

Lawrence Mesich’s media work explores the political and social ramifications of intersections between bodies, the built environment, and unconscious human behavior. Most recently, he has created videos and installations that document his often eccentric relationships to institutional interiors. His work has been shown in several US cities including Chicago and New York, and his performances have occurred in public spaces throughout the US, much to the delight, outrage and bewilderment of passers-by.

Lawrence was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His fascination with and exploration of the spaces created by the city’s rapid development and abandoned industrial infrastructure continue to inform his work.