Dave Allen, Larry Krone, Lucky Dragons, Rashaad Newsome, Superamas

The Project is pleased to present Stage II, a group exhibition curated by Wayne Northcross and featuring the work of Dave Allen, Larry Krone, Lucky Dragons, Rashaad Newsome and Superamas. In a variety of ways, the artists in Stage II investigate the fragmentation of performance in contemporary practice. Opening up the stage, they look at video, photomontage and installation as alternate channels for performance to envelope the audience —expressing the theatrical and choreographic gesture, sound, décor, stagecraft and storytelling.

The broken relationship between audience and performer in time and space is explored by Dave Allen, who fills the gallery with the sound of silence by playing back recordings of empty studios and concert halls in Silence Recordings, Hansa Studios, Berlin (2001). Utilizing instructions as conceptual strategies, Everything Starts on A, Everything Ends on B is a proposed score sketch for a live turntable performance and Interpretation of ‘Prélude à l’Après-Midi d’un Faune’ (1892-94) by Claude Debussy, arranged without key signature for the untrained pianist (2000) rearranges a famous classical piece for a one handed piano performance.

In Billy, Billy (2002), the Superamas use the language of film to structure their collaboration with choreographer Milli Bitterli. Her movements, based upon day-to-day actions and gestures, are spliced with relevant scenes from cult movies by directors such as Mike Leigh and Pedro Almodovar.

In Untitled (Banji Cunt) (2008), Rashaad Newsome uses the sampling and editing properties of video to experiment further with choreography and the body in his collaboration with Vogue dancer Shayne Oliver. Recording movements rehearsed by Oliver, the artist remixed various dance sequences together in the editing process. This resulted in a new choreography that the dancer was then asked to reinterpret for the camera in Untitled (2008).

In Showing (2009), Lucky Dragons present a sculptural installation that incorporates the hybridized musical instruments—consisting of rocks, wood, and electronics—used in their performances. In the absence of performers, the viewer is invited to move elements of the installation thereby disturbing a standing electrical field that generates sound.

Larry Krone’s Forever and Ever (2001) is an installation centered around a sparkly curtain of mylar fringe used as the background of a performance. Relying on further clues such as costume racks, empty bottles and other residual evidence of a musical performance, one is invited to re-construct a perception of the original act.

Dave Allen was born in Glasgow in 1968 and currently lives in Stockholm. He graduated with an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art. His work has recently been shown at the Art Metropole in Toronto and Secession in Vienna.

Larry Krone was born in 1970 in Chicago, raised in St. Louis, and he now lives and works in New York. He received his BS from New York University and attended The Art Institute of Florence. His solo and collaborative performances and installations have been seen at the Whitney Museum of American Art, P.S. 122, New York and The Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO.

Lucky Dragons is an open collaborative made up by Luke Fischbeck, Sarah Rara, and other temporary members. The group has organized performances, festivals and workshops at the 2008 Whitney Biennial, PS1, New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and the Philadelphia Institute for Contemporary Art. Lucky Dragons is based in Los Angeles, CA.

Rashaad Newsome was born in New Orleans, LA in 1979, and currently lives and works in New York. He received his BFA from Tulane University. He has screened work at Location One, DUMBO Arts Under the Bridge Festival and The Kitchen in New York

Superamas is a French and Austrian collective based in Vienna, which bridges several creative disciplines, theater, dance, film and stage design. The group has performed at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art’s Time Based Art Festival, at The Kitchen, New York, Tanzquartier, Vienna, and the On The Boards Festival, Seattle.