Six Rising Artists in Six Resonant Multimedia Projects, on View Inside and Out at the Wexner

COLUMBUS, OH.- Six Solos, featuring six independent exhibitions of the work of six rising international artists, will be on view inside and outside the Wexner Center November 9, 2010–February 13, 2011. The artists—working in a wide range of media, among them LED lights, stainless steel, flagging tape, plywood, paint, video, film, and fiberglass—are Erwin Redl , Megan Geckler, Tobias Putrih/MOS, Gustavo Godoy, Katy Moran, and Joel Morrison. The work of each artist will occupy its own space. Organized by the Wexner Center, Six Solos opens in conjunction with the center’s 21st anniversary celebrations. 

Notes Wexner Center Director Sherri Geldin, “The Wexner Center has a long history of supporting the production of new, often experimental work by younger artists looking for opportunities to push their practice in new directions. Each of the selected artists is on the cusp of greater renown, and we are particularly pleased to open this show on the occasion of the 21st anniversary of the Wexner Center, which might well connote a modicum of institutional maturity—but never creative complacency.”

 Notes chief curator Christopher Bedford, “For many of these artists, this will be the first solo presentation in a U.S. museum, and it’s telling that most have used this occasion as incentive to broaden their scope of address and expand their already ambitious repertoire of forms and ideas. We are very proud to be able to support such work in a wide variety of media, some representing new hybrids altogether.” 

An overview of the six artists and their projects: 

Erwin Redl — outside on the Wexner Center’s “grid” 
For his site-specific project, Austrian-born artist Erwin Redl has created a time-based installation on the Wexner Center’s exterior grid using approximately 100 multicolored LED light sticks in the top three rows of the structure, animating Peter Eisenman’s signature architectural feature as never before. Entitled FETCH, the installation draws on a range of precedents, including Eadweard Muybridge’s experiments with rapid action photography and the work of California Light and Space artists. The work will be on view at night. Some of Redl’s other installations have been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria; Kunsthalle Krems, Krems, Austria; and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, New York. Redl currently lives and works in Bowling Green, Ohio. 

Megan Geckler — lower lobby/café 
Los Angeles-based artist Megan Geckler has created one of what she calls “site specific architectural installations,” interlacing strips of vibrantly colored flagging tape throughout the Wexner Center’s lobbies. The installation hovers above visitors and surrounds them in the café and lobby areas. Among her many exhibitions and installations have been a sculptural work at LAX Airport in 2010 and Every step you take, every move you make (2010) at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.

Tobias Putrih/MOS — in the galleries 
Working in collaboration, Tobias Putrih/MOS—who create “quasi-functional constructions that mix formal sophistication with practicability” (Art in America)—has designed and constructed a cinematic environment (titled Majestic) made of aluminum and steel that serves as a programmatic vessel for a video series conceived by Wexner Center film and video curators. Visitors can walk into and around the cinema, absorbing it as a sculpture, and can also sit within the structure to enjoy the programming. The video program wil l change every few weeks and wil l feature, in order: Jun Nguyen-Hatshushiba’s Happy New Year: Memorial Project Vietnam II (November 9–27); Abbas Kiarostrami’s Shirin (November 29–December 26); Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreig’s Je Veux Voir (December 28–January 23); and seven episodes from Leslie Thornton’s Peggy and Fred in Hell (January 24–February 13). Putrih’s work was on view at the 2007 Venice Biennale and at Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt, and he is included in the 2010 São Paulo Biennale. Born in Slovenia, Putrih lives and works in Boston. 

Gustavo Godoy — in the galleries 
Los Angeles-based, Mexican-American artist Gustavo Godoy is known for creating unconventional gallery experiences featuring room-sized mixed-media installations. The site-responsive installation for the Wexner Center galleries engulfs the entirety of a trapezoidal space with a dramatic plywood construction that visitors can move through and around. The work is illuminated from within by fluorescent bulbs, an effect that is amplified by a glossy white vinyl floor treatment. This work, called Fast-formal Object: Flayed White, is part of Godoy’s ongoing series that is as much concerned with aesthetics as with possible functionality. Visitors are invited to climb on the sculpture, one person at a time, at their own risk.Godoy’s work has been included in exhibitions in the U.S., France, and Mexico. 

Katy Moran — in the galleries 
Featuring more than 30 works created between 2006 and 2010, this exhibition is British painter Katy Moran’s first solo museum presentation in the United States and provides a comprehensive survey of her development to date. Moran’s intimately scaled, deeply felt paintings exist along the fault lines of representation and abstraction. Her earlier paintings often transcribe a single found image into paint using the loose, brushy style that has become her signature. Paintings from 2008 onwards, by contrast, tend to be works of imagination or memory, sometimes incorporating collage elements that add a new depth to her sensual, dynamic paintings. This exhibition and accompanying publication, featuring an essay by the curator, will look at Moran’s compelling trajectory during the four-year period under consideration, contextualizing her paintings relative to important peers worldwide and drawing attention to her most salient predecessors, specifically the English painter Francis Bacon, with whom she shares many important affinities. Moran’s work has been shown in New York, Italy, and the UK (including at the Tate Britain). She currently lives and works in London. 

Joel Morrison — in the galleries 
Seattle-born artist Joel Morrison is a sculptor who works primarily in stainless steel and fiberglass, often on a very large scale. The centerpiece of this exhibition is his gigantic Victor (rat trap), a stainless steel work depicting an air-filled latex glove caught in a rat trap, and Romeo (a gaping maw with bullets for teeth), as well as a major new fiberglass sculpture. Together, the works offer a selective survey of the material vocabularies Morrison has explored in recent years. In 2006, Morrison was a featured artist in the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, and his work has been on view across the U.S.

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