Jessica Murray Projects : Previous Exhibition : Hard Times

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Jessica Murray Projects is pleased to announce "Hard Times" curated by Tim Houlihan. This program of new work includes video by Harrell Fletcher, Diane Nerwen, Lisa Oppenheim, Mark Shepard, Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, and Lynn Sullivan, as well as contemporary furniture by Bart Bettencourt and Colleen Smiley.

Opening reception: Friday, June 20, from 6-8 PM
Exhibition Dates: June 21 - July 27, 2003
Gallery hours: Friday-Sunday, 12-6 PM, or by appointment.

Hard Times, a 15-minute video program, combines short works by six artists who make videos like historians make history-they warp the complex and complicated nature of experience in order to construct a compelling narrative. Using techniques common to writers of history, these artists also distort time by compressing or expanding events for effect, or perhaps even deleting information entirely. Struggling to bring cohesion and meaning to an episode or development that may have taken weeks, years, or centuries to unfold, they create a brief story which ultimately presents it's own unique message. The results are variously comic, tragic and sometimes disturbing.

Karina Aguilera Skvirsky's single channel video projection, Margaret, 2002, explores contradictory representations of women of color within the public spectacle of sports, and in our collective memory of history. Focusing on Margaret Okayo's victorious run in the 2001 New York City Marathon, this video work excerpts and manipulates live TV news coverage of her run. Skvirsky juxtaposes these images of the contemporary athlete from Kenya with a female voice reading 17th century travelogues from the European "discovery" of New York. Functioning as both narrative and internal monologue, the audience is unsure as to whether they are listening to Okayo or a narrator describing her physical forging of new territory.

In Veronica's Veil (2002) Lynn Sullivan uses a simple white sheet of paper and a sophisticated computer editing system to create the illusion that image and sound can simply be eliminated by obscuring the camera. When the viewer's eye loses contact with Sullivan's cityscape, sight and sound disappear. As the paper and camera vie for the viewer's attention, a disconcerting sense that one is missing part of her story creeps in and upsets the work's initial tranquility. Sullivan's work has been included at Exit Art and Smack Mellon.

Mark Shepard's video compresses and re-orders a narrative originally played out over a year's time into a minute-long romance. First observed as billboard advertisements outside Mr. Shepard's studio, the artist links together various scenes of seduction to form a short story of sexual tension and comic relief. Shepard's work has been exhibited in the US, in New York, Boston and Florida, as well as internationally in Germany, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Romania. He has received support from the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Harrell Fletcher's video, The Sound We Make Together: Remix (2003) represents a single space as it absorbs and facilitates the activity of fourteen separate groups including a yoga class, a second grade class, rock musicians, political activists, a church choir and a dog walk. Unified by editing, his assemblage of vertical slices gives the space a remarkable solidity and consistency despite the variety of activities represented. Set against a disharmonious and cacophonous soundtrack, the video explores the challenge and beauty of living together. Fletcher's work is included in the collections of the New Museum of Contemporary Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He has featured at DiverseWorks (Houston), Real Art Ways (Hartford) and The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco) and is a recipient of a grant from Creative Capital.

In The Thief of Baghdad (2003), Diane Nerwen continues her practice of appropriating arresting imagery from film and mixing it with politically charged dialogue. For this program, Nerwen presents a stunning re-reading of this film's Technicolor fantasy. Condensing the beauty and exoticism of the mystical capital of Baghdad, she slips in a newly realized paradigm of domination. As in much of her work, Nerwen explores the allure of place, film's ability to reflect and create desire, as well as the conceit that the video's images and soundtrack are part of same narrative. Nerwen's work has been exhibited widely in International and American venues including the 2003 53rd Berlin International Film Festival; the 10th New York Video Festival, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT; The Knitting Factory, New York; and the Guggenheim Museum, New York.

In Lisa Oppenheim's, Hall (2002) the artist attempts to move forward along a seemingly endless hall. With these uneven images the broken sound of interrupted monologues permeates the work. While exploring this formal exercise the artist also draws on a childhood experience of being stalked by an elderly couple. The final result is a haunting exploration of selective memory. Oppenheim's work has been included at Ocularis and Art In General.

Also included in "Hard Times" are furniture designs by Bart Bettencourt and Colleen Smiley. Bettencourt creates cylindrical ottoman pedestals in walnut veneer on which a number of artist's and designers will "top" his bases with fabric upholstered imagery. For this exhibition, Bettencourt has selected Colleen Smiley who uses recycled materials to create handmade minimal color explorations. These functional artworks will serve as seating.

The curator, Tim Houlihan, is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at St. Francis College in Brooklyn. He is a US labor historian and curated "EyeStalk," an exhibition of video at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, in 2002.

For more information, please contact Jessica Murray at info@jessicamurrayprojects.com or 718.384.9606.

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