April 18-October 5, 2008, the CAC presents a new, site-specific work, Re:Place, by New York sculptor Tony Feher, made especially for the atrium of the building. The new work will remain on view for three months. Like much of Feher's art, the CAC project has been created using found materials, and it was developed in the form of a direct artistic response to the spaces, shapes, colors and materials of the building's entrance.
To create Re:Place, Feher acquired three dozen 2-liter bottles of Orange Crush and Sunkist orange-flavored soda, and had them positioned at midpoint along the atrium's main cross-beams on three levels. Although each beam holds only one bottle, the cumulative effect of the quantity of bottles across a large spatial volume is of a dappling of the color orange, which at various points during the day catches and/or reflects natural light.
Tony Feher (b. 1956), one of the most respected American sculptors of his generation, began showing regularly at galleries in New York and Los Angeles during the early 1990s. In recent years, he has had solo projects at, among others, the Hammer Museum at UCLA, Aspen Art Museum, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and one-person exhibitions at South Texas Art Museum in Corpus Christi, Texas, and Bard College Museum in Annandale-on-Hudson. He just recently held his first solo exhibition at Pace Wildenstein Gallery in New York.
Feher's characteristic use of extremely humble materials, such as empty bottles, wire coat hangers, packing tape, and plastic bags, have made him one of the leading members of a group of mostly New York-based group of artists who have turned their backs on the highly materialistic art-making practices of the 1980s and 1990s. In contrast to the abundance of sculpture made using expensive foundries and art fabricators, Feher's approach is heavily arrangement on arrangement, framing and context for its visual and conceptual impact.
Tony Feher grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas and currently lives and works in New York City.
On View July 12 - November 4, 2008
VESTIGES: THINK TANKS
Floodlines, A lightwork installation by Debra Howell, Krista Jurisich, Jan Gilbert and text by Michele White.
VESTIGES: THINK TANKS, in the St. Joseph Street side windows of the Contemporary Arts Center, features FLOOD LINES lightwork installation with photos by Debra Howell, Krista Jurisich and Jan Gilbert and text by Michele White. These large-scale photos generously are sponsored by Ridgway's.
This project is another in a series of works produced by the New Orleans-based arts collaborative The VESTIGES Project while in residence at the CAC.
Additionally this collective is a founding partner of the large neighborhood-based HOME, New Orleans' arts network. Its performance and installation-based collaborations, including the recent and ongoing WHISPERING BONES project, continue to crop up in churches, cemeteries, and gutted houses around town and to infuse the energy of art and audience as a neighborhood recovery tool.
