apexart
291 Church Street, 212-431-5270
Tribeca / Downtown
November 7 - December 22, 2007
Reception: Wednesday, November 7, 6 - 8 PM
Web Site
Curated by Sarah Lookofsky and Lillian Fellmann
Artists: Leyla Cárdenas, Jens Haaning, John Hawke, Albert Heta, Søren Holm Hvilsby and Pernille Skov, Lasse Lau, Dan Perjovschi, Recetas Urbanas, Katrin Sigurdardottir, Michael Smith and Joshua White, Lars Vilks
What does it mean to occupy a piece of land today? As real estate prices have skyrocketed, it is increasingly difficult to sustain a space. The artworks in Land Grab explicitly concern the claiming and naming of a piece of land. The artists in the exhibition relate to a long history of artistic practices where the site of placement is intrinsic to the piece itself. However, in opposition—or precisely as a response to—much work of the 1960s and ‘70s, these pieces do not consider unused or abandoned territories as a “blank slate” where the artwork can properly come into its own. Moreover, no work in the show involves an actual real estate acquisition. Instead, every piece acknowledges that no relationship to land is apolitical, thereby paying specific attention to socioeconomic, historical and political contexts that are always bound up with the specificities of topography.