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ARTCAT



goldiechiari

Spencer Brownstone Gallery (39 Wooster)
39 Wooster Street, 212-334-3455
Soho
May 9 - June 3, 2006
Reception: Saturday, May 13, 6 - 8 PM
Web Site


goldiechiari operate as ‘ironic activists’ – since 1997 subsuming their individual creative identities and promising an artistic philosophy of ‘100% No Genius’. In a diverse range of projects employing performance, installation, video, and photography, they have turned their attentions toward the staples of the western art tradition, overturning mythologies surrounding our consumption and representation of the body and nature.

With their recent ‘Welcome’ projects, goldichiari take the conventions of looking at art in a gallery as a starting point for a play on communication and confusion, openness and exclusion. For ‘Welcome #1’, 2005, visitors to the exhibition were thwarted by a chair jammed against the door, a menacing low frequency rumbling suggesting the drama of what lay behind. The piece succinctly underlined the element of projection involved in our experience of art. For the exhibition at Spencer Brownstone Gallery, viewers will be invited to engage with an imposing minimalist structure resembling a barrier or wall. With a simple change of perspective, the mute recalcitrance of this object will be confounded with a wry salutation.

While acknowledging their feminist antecedents, goldichiari prefer the tactic of play over that of direct provocation. Citing Donna Haraway (“vision is always a question of the power to see and perhaps of the violence implicit in our visualization practices”), the artists reject any claims toward single interpretations of their projects, preferring instead to engender confusion, contradiction and humor.

goldiechiari are Sara Goldschmied and Elonora Chiari. Based in Rome, Italy, their recent projects have been seen at Gagosian Gallery, Berlin; Viafarini, Milan; and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin. This year, their solo exhibition ‘Enjoy’, at Elaine Levy Project in Brussels, was accompanied by the publication of a book, and in 2005, they completed a major public art project for the Fondazione Andriano Olivetti, Rome.

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