Angela Bulloch at Witte de With, Rotterdam (2012) (press release)
artdesigncafé | café library | Published 13 January 2012
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Angela Bulloch. Disco floor_Bootleg: 16, (2002). 16 plastic DMX-modules, sound equipment, bootleg sound track, base, DMX controller, waxed birchwood, printed aluminium panel, white glass, diffusion foil, assorted black cables, RGB-lighting system. Duration: 8:02 min. looped. Courtesy of the artist & Genevieve Pesson-Barjou, Fonds National d’Art Contemporain.
SHORT BIG DRAMA— Angela Bulloch
Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam21 January - 9 April 2012
There is more than meets the eye to Angela Bulloch’s work. Her solo exhibition SHORT BIG DRAMA at Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art plays with this red herring— the illusion of simplicity— and highlights the theatricality of Bulloch’s practice. Focusing on three types of works— namely her monumental wall paintings, colorful pixel installations and interactive drawing machines— SHORT BIG DRAMA presents a selection of existing works together with specially commissioned new pieces.
In this exhibition, contradiction takes center-stage and reveals the inherent beauty of Angela Bulloch’s complex artworks. Playing with the nature of drama, whether epic or mundane, big or short, the project adapts the form of a play to structure a sequence of commissions and a new suite of works by the artist. For Witte de With, Bulloch interprets and manipulates earlier potentially clashing installations into a seemingly harmonious whole.
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Angela Bulloch. Betaville (1994). Bench activated drawing machine, ink, metal rails and electronic motor. Machine: 315 x 340 cm, drawing: 315 x 340 cm, bench: 45 x 144 x 46 cm. Unique (AB 233). Photo: © F. Nilson. Installation view at Nach Weimar, Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar, Weimar, June 24 - July 28, 1996.
Angela Bulloch adopts an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating references from a wide array of sources, be it history, film or music. In her wall paintings, specific references to artistic, political or social groups are deconstructed and graphically assembled. Through this process of détournement, the artist questions the informational status of an artwork, as well as the possibility of narrating history. Bulloch’s drawing machines are interactive pieces, triggered or altered by the engagement of visitors. In this way, her drawing machines explore the dialectic between technology and labor, making us conscious of our place, and that of others, within the gallery space. With her Pixel works, Bulloch "programs" our experience of art by encoding specific references in the technical programming of her modular light and sound installations. Though the complexity of the workings behind these installations is invisible, a predefined experience of the work is imposed upon the viewer.
A common thread in Angela Bulloch’s artistic practice is thus the manipulation of codes and a sense of control. Whether that code is music or text-based, the artist plays with and orchestrates our perception and experience of art. She proposes that this experience can be "subliminally programmed" and her work stages that which is beyond our grasp.
Curated by Amira Gad & Nicolaus Schafhausen.
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Angela Bulloch. Gang of four blue: Print no. 11, (2004). 4 DMX, 1 black box module, 1 photographic print on transparent plastic, diffusion foil, 2 sheets of glass, frame. Print is from a series of 16 unique prints. 101,4 x 101,4 x 50,7 cm and 50,7 x 50,7 cm (AB 583). Courtesy of the artist & Collection Carlos Vallejo.
Angela Bulloch (b. 1966, Canada) is a Berlin-based sculptor, installation and sound artist. She is recognized as one of the Young British Artists and was included in the 1988 Freeze Exhibition. Bulloch was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997. Bulloch teaches at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. Recent solo exhibitions include Information, Manifesto, Rules and other leaks…, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2011); Discrete manifold whatsoever, Simon Lee Gallery, London; Redux, Esther Schipper, Berlin (both 2010); and The space that time forgot, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus & Kunstbau, Munich (2008). Recent group exhibitions include Art parcours, Art Basel 41, Münster Cathedral, Basel; A roll of the dice, Cristina Guerra, Lisbon; Drawing time, Galeries Poirels, Frac Lorraine, Metz; High ideals and crazy dreams, Galerie Vera Munro, Hamburg; and Open light in private spaces, Biennale for international Light Art, Unna (all 2010); Universal code, The Power Plant, Toronto; and Yellow and green, MMK Frankfurt, Frankfurt (both 2009).
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