Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Grand Arts Presents: Ecstatic Resistance

A show that look excellent and has an interesting twist:


Grand Arts is pleased to present “Ecstatic Resistance” a group show curated by Emily Roysdon on view from November 13, 2009 – January 16, 2010. The exhibition and correspondent events of Ecstatic Resistance include several commissioned works by Sharon Hayes (NY), My Barbarian (LA), Jeanine Oleson (NY), A.L. Steiner (NY), and will host performances and symposia by Matthew Lutz-Kinoy (Amsterdam), Dean Spade (Seattle) and Craig Willse (NY) and Ian White (London). Also included in the exhibition are seminal works by Yael Bartana (Tel Aviv), Ulrike Ottinger (Berlin) and Adrian Piper (Berlin).
As a curator, writer and artist, Emily Roysdon has spent the last decade formulating a vocabulary for how to discuss impossible positions arising in contemporary art practice. Through collectivity and performance, pursuing moments of ecstasy can result in non-linear positionalities and radical forms of self-actualization. As an unfolding exhibition at Grand Arts, Ecstatic Resistance seeks to locate this conceptual current within contemporary, everyday life. Identifying herself in this milieu, Roysdon has organized a platform to share the work of her contemporaries side by side, visually and verbally.
Collectively the artists in Ecstatic Resistance forge ways forward as envisioned in their works and the context built through the exhibition and accompanying events. Ecstatic Resistance embraces confrontational activism and pleasure–two ideas that need not be at odds. Strategies employed in the show are many and diverse: humor, activist gestures, queer history, absurdism and improvisation. Ecstatic Resistance provides a space and time for artworks to extend the scope of “what is possible” and what can be done.
And the twist:
In addition to the Ecstatic Resistance exhibition at Grand Arts, a sister show of the same title will occur at X Initiative in New York showing from November 21, 2009 – February 6, 2010. More information about this show at: www.x-initiative.org and www.ecstaticresistance.org
PEI loves this idea of creating a sister exhibition in New York, or anywhere outside of your cities limits.

For more information on this project and Grand Arts visit our website and blog: www.grandarts.com

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