Andrew Allison, Chris Beauregard, Kim Beck, Eli Blasko, Seth Clark, Lenka Clayton, Ron Copeland, Sean Derry, Steve Gurysh, Rafael Abreu-Canedo, Kate Hansen, Jane Haskell, Eli Kessler, Paula Garrick Klein, Ryan Lammie, Anna Mikolay, Alexi Morrissey, Rich Pell, Blaine Siegel, Sisters of the Lattice, Gemma Smith, Ivette Spradlin, Barbara Weissberger
08/15/2014 - 11/02/2014 Pittsburgh Center for the Arts/Pittsburgh Filmmakers
Growing in scope, concept and dimension, expanding to involve exhibits at 7 of the most prominent art institutions in the area, the 2014 Pittsburgh Biennial has again taken on a new form. The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ contributions to this greater collaboration is a survey. This survey addresses the energy and current state of culture contemporarily shaping our city. Showcasing 23 artists located in the Pittsburgh region whose work resonates with the dynamic range of approaches, forms, and concepts being navigated currently throughout the Art world, this exhibit exposes us to the complex and challenging discourses occurring both locally and on a global scale.
Simply stated, this exhibit brings together artists from different back rounds, presenting individualized ways of making, thinking and experience. The artist’s overt commonality is of location, passion and an aptitude to express their perspective through media. As such the survey format allows the viewer to sit, ponder, question, and to be introduced to new ideas in the juxtaposition of one artist’s work to another’s. It is within this format that find both connection and disentanglement with my preconditioned view of the environment that I exist in.
The artist presented here have been selected for their ability to show us: absurdity, beauty, joy, horror, timelessness, intuition, sadness, fear, perseverance, tragedy, mindfulness, observation, compulsion, banality, community, malaise, allusion, esotericism, meditation, calmness, self imposed rules, expediency, projection, innocence, empathy, and probably an abundance of other insights that I have yet to recognized. This exhibit is composed of these things because our life is composed of these things. It has been an honor to be involved with the process of having these works come to be and to work as a helper to progress what they serve to illuminate within us all.
Adam Welch
2011 Pittsburgh Biennial
Thea Augustina Eck, Jesse McLean, Elizabeth Mooney, Erika Osborne, Adam Shreckhise, William Earl Kofmehl lll, Paul LeRoy Gehres, Jennifer Gooch, Joshua Space, Jacob Ciocci, Chris Kardambikis, Luke Loeffler, Dennis Maher, Natalie Settles, Mark Franchino, Ben Hernstrom
06/10/2011 - 10/23/2011 Pittsburgh Center for the Arts/Pittsburgh Filmmakers
As one component of the collaboration with three other institutions, I have selected a spectrum of artists with a focus on installation as an exhibition approach. Even though the artworks were selected as a survey, threads of commonality can be seen throughout the exhibit from material usage, plays on personal mythologies, themes of reconstitution, mood of color and contrast to, and most predominately, reciprocity of the pieces and the architecture.
The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts exhibition space undeniably holds a split character. With both its initial purpose as a residence and as a “white box” gallery space, it felt appropriate to construct an exhibit around artists who principally create with a direct relation to the space that their work occupies. Furthermore, with the expansion of the 2011 Pittsburgh Biennial to involve both locally based artists and artists who have left Pittsburgh to work elsewhere, it prompted me to organize an exhibit that reflects on what “regional” means as a context for viewing art.
In a time where large group exhibits, biennials, triennials, and art fairs have internationally become the prominent vehicles of how we come to see and place a value on the art of our time, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish what holds primacy. Is it the works themselves, where the artists are located or the venue, which they are shown in? It may always be a bit of a back and forth. It cannot be denied how the viewer’s schema is inflected in one way or another by an institution’s presence, being either a physical or social one. But with respect to the work being the rudimentary component to why an exhibit comes to exist, I favor the work.
Adam Welch
2011 Pittsburgh Biennial Co-curators and their collaborating institutions:
Eric Shiner, Director and The Milton Fine Curator of Art, The Andy Warhol Museum
Dan Byers, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, Carnegie Museum of Art
Astria Suparak, Curator and Director, The Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University
Adam Welch, Curator, Pittsburgh Filmmakers/Pittsburgh Center for the Arts
Major support for the Pittsburgh Biennial at Pittsburgh Filmmakers and Pittsburgh Center for the Arts is provided by the Hillman Foundation, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, the Pittsburgh Foundation and Kreider Printing. General operating support for Pittsburgh Filmmakers and Pittsburgh Center for the Arts is provided by The Heinz Endowments, RK Mellon and Allegheny Regional Asset District. Pittsburgh Filmmakers and Pittsburgh Center for the Arts receives state arts funding support from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Generous Support provided by:
Hillman Foundation
The Heinz Endowments
The Pittsburgh Foundation
Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation
Kreider Printing
The 2011 Pittsburgh Biennial was presented in collaboration with:
The Andy Warhol Museum
Carnegie Museum of Art
Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University
Special Thanks to:
Brett Yasko
Irisaurus Gardens
Palmer Products Inc.
Artist & Craftman Supply:
And
Rick Armstrong, Al Bolkobac, Dan Byers, Dan Byrnes, Rachael Cooper, Margaret Cox, Margaret Di Guilio, Laura Domencic, Christina Donahoe, Kelly Englert, Charlie Humphrey, Dorinda Hughes, Ellen James, Kitty Julian, Gary Kaboly, Laura Jean Kahl, Richard Kelly, Jasdeep Khaira, Ryan Latusick, Betsy Magley, Claire Marcus, Jennifer Melvin, Sarah Minnaert, Carol O’Sullivan, Derek Parker, Renee Pekor, Samantha Reed, Katie Reilly, Jen Riddle, Gern Roberts, Maureen Rolla, Vanessa Rosenberger, Joy Sato, Brooke Schooles, Eric Shiner, Eric Sloss, Tom Sokolowski, Ben Sonenblum, Chris Smalley, Lucy Stewart, Astria Suparak, Sue Tolmer, Emily Walley, Elise Walton, Lynn Zelevansky, and all the individuals who assisted the Biennial artists.
New Work, New Problems
Hope Armstrong - Rafael Abreu-Canedo - Brian Brown - Cara Erskine - Cory Escoto - Brett Freund - Hanna Fuhrmann - Riley Harmon
04/25 - 07/01/2012 Pittsburgh Fimmakers
This exhibit brings together a group of artists whose visual languages are variously tempered or liberated by the mash-up culture in which we live; a culture that at times anoints absolutes and 'correctness' even as it evaluates the innumerable outcomes, solutions and potentials derived from personal, cultural, historical, and scientific sources. New Work, New Problems features pieces diverse in material, procedure, and conceptual structure whose cumulative narratives continue established traditions while pressing forward with re-contextualization, allusion to, and simulation of contemporary ideas and perceptions.
Adam Welch
Have A Nice Day
Noah Addis - Lewis Colburn - Don Edler - Jordan Griska - Mami Kato - Maggie Mills - Tim Portlock - Alison Stigora - Jennifer Williams - Kimberly Witham - Bohyun Yoon
10/04 - 11/11/2011 Pittsburgh Filmmakers
“Have a nice day” is a valediction, typically associated with commerce, which, resides in our American ethos dialectically or as having contradictory connotations. When spoken, it is perceived as either lacking sincerity or is simply heard as a sociologically appropriate expression, a succinct, empathic assertion. As a phrase it falls into some cultural rubric—a status quo of pleasantries, passive-aggressive behavior, irony and so on. But as a signifier of a social construct, it becomes an informant, revealing how we build common phrases and language, which when left to open interpretation and authorship become phrases that might mean nothing at all or might have connections to thoughts that have matured over a lifetime.
The mix of works, as wide ranging in concepts as they are in medium and treatments, are composed by individuals who have little to no connection to one another then their proximity and their successful acceptance to a fellowship. I find this signifier—“have a nice day”—as analogous to the back and forth laid out within the subtle continuity between these works. There is the continuity of what is superficial—all of what is presented here is presented, as art, the objects and images here are undeniably objects and images that are expressions—similarly to a phrase, which is understandable, relatable and presents finality to a discussion. But what’s more is the relationship of intent, premise and articulation, which substantively underlies the superficial to reveal connections of fracture, humor, despondence, comfort, distortion, loss, and hope. All of these works present a structure that holds no direct connection to a singular assertion but holds a point of reference within a succession of transactions.
Maybe it will always be that art and the viewing of art is by nature transactional. The works presented establish different perspectives of our contemporary environment to reveal the familiar with mixed directives. They give you a phrasing or point of departure, which can’t be easily understood as good, bad, indifferent but assumed, at least, as an imperative of engagement with the world around us.
Adam Welch