(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)October 18, 2016

MAHWAH, N.J. – Cloud Cover, a Ramapo Curatorial Prize exhibition curated by Los Angeles curator Lee Foley, opens on Wednesday, November 9, in the Kresge and Pascal Galleries of the Berrie Center for Performing and Visual Arts. There will be an opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. with a curator’s talk at 6 p.m. The exhibition continues through December 14.

Cloud Cover addresses common metaphors used in relation to new technology.  This multi-media exhibition features a group of international artists, including several leading figures in contemporary art today. Exhibiting artists are:  Liam Gillick, George Inness, Dwyer Kilcollin, Marina Pinsky, and Rachel Rose.

According to curator Lee Foley, “Cloud Cover traces the history of a common metaphor often used to make new technology enticing and easier to grasp; the screen is described as a ‘window onto the world.’ Artists deconstruct this metaphor through painting, photography, video, and sculpture, opening up our view.”

Description of works on view:

LIAM GILLICK (b. 1964) lives and works in New York.

Since the 1990s, Liam Gillick has been making objects and writing texts that test the limits and potentialities of sites designed to promote collectivity and discourse. His ongoing series of “discussion islands” and platforms utilize aluminum frameworks to reference film and television production, as well as Minimalism, Modernist architecture, and design. In Discussion Island Double Exit Rig (1997), a horizontally suspended aluminum framework equipped with light bulbs designates a separate but undetermined space within the more permanent architecture of the gallery. When a person stands below the individual-sized frame, they are illuminated by the lighting apparatus, but isolated within this space. This piece made in 1997 illustrates the nature of our interactions on the internet today; we can project flattering images of ourselves outward, but in other ways we remain isolated by screens and the infrastructure of the web.

GEORGE INNESS (b. 1825 in Newburgh, New York, d. 1984 at Bridge of Allan, Scotland)

The expectation that screens and photographs should serve as windows onto the world can be traced through the history of perspectival painting. In 1879, American landscape painter George Inness confronted criticism asserting that landscape painting should “pierce the wall and create its own horizon, far away.” To its supposed detriment, Inness’ painting seemed to “detach itself from the wall and advance to meet those who enter.”  Although Inness was dedicated to representing nature through painted landscapes, he was primarily concerned with the physiology of vision and how memory forms conventional ways of seeing. Here, a small painting entitled, Edge of the Woods (c. 1850-1890), depicts a twilight scene in which the foreground is shrouded in darkness, destabilizing the viewer’s  imagined firm footing.

DWYER KILCOLLIN (b. 1983) lives and work in Los Angeles.

Confronting the historical assumption that leads us to see screens as windows, Dwyer Kilcollin studies digital processes that make scenes appear before our eyes. In a series of works she refers to as Tableaux, Kilcollin makes computer generated renderings of still life arrangements and casts them using a unique, almost analog 3D printing process. The vaguely rectangular sculptures resemble paintings, but they have the texture of sedimentary rock or drip towers made of sand. The final product is far removed from any original source, and the works take on characteristics of their own as sculptures. The Tableaux serve as melting monuments to the sovereign subject looking out upon the landscape, and the idea that what we see with our eyes is truth.

MARINA PINSKY (b. 1986) lives and works in Brussels.

In Marina Pinsky’s recent photographic works, the window is at once a material surface and a historical artifact. Like the aperture of the camera, the window presents a particular view of the world, one that may by useful now and then, but should not determine totalizing paradigms of vision. However, the artist also grapples with photography’s inseparable associations with windows. For this series, Pinsky photographed window views in Brussels, taking pictures of the changing sky with different types of cameras. The overlay of digital and analogue imagery in subtle composites slows down the act of looking. These out-of-order time-lapses iterate that the photographic images hear only traces and resemblances of past events.

RACHEL ROSE (b. 1986) lives and works in New York.

In her practice, Rachel Rose obliquely responds to our networked existence, investigating unstable boundaries between nature and culture, exposure and enclosure, life and death, the work evokes a vertiginous feeling of disconnection from one’s surroundings. A Minute Ago (2014), contrasts YouTube footage of a freak hailstorm on a beach in Siberia with a tour of Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut. The window and screen are at once forms of protection and indications of one’s vulnerability. The piece suggests that glass provides only a semblance of safety and openess today, when screens and windows no longer delimit the reach of media networks.

PUBLICATION

The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication designed by Sean Yendrys, featuring essays by Lee Foley, João Ribas, Liam Gillik, Dwyer Kilcollin, Marina Pinsky and Rachel Rose.

This project at Ramapo is funded in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts. The Kresge Gallery is located in the Berrie Center for Performing and Visual Arts on the Ramapo College campus. Gallery hours are Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 1 to 5 p.m. and Wednesday from 1 to 7 p.m.

Photo credit: Video still from Rachel Rose, A Minute Ago, (2016). Installation on loan from the Marieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Image courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias Gallery, London, England.

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About Ramapo College

Ramapo College of New Jersey is the state’s premier public liberal arts college and is committed to academic excellence through interdisciplinary and experiential learning, and international and intercultural understanding. The comprehensive college is situated among the beautiful Ramapo Mountains, is within commuting distance to New York City, was named one of the 50 Most Beautiful College Campuses in America by CondeNast Traveler, and boasts the best on-campus housing in New Jersey per Niche.com. Established in 1969, Ramapo College offers bachelor’s degrees in the arts, business, data science, humanities, social sciences and the sciences, as well as in professional studies, which include business, education, nursing and social work. In addition, the College offers courses leading to teacher certification at the elementary and secondary levels, and offers graduate programs leading to master’s degrees in Accounting, Applied Mathematics, Business Administration, Contemporary Instructional Design, Computer Science, Creative Music Technology, Data Science, Educational Leadership, Nursing, Social Work and Special Education, as well as a Doctor of Nursing Practice.

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