Corey McCorkle, Installation view, 2010
Artpace San Antonio is known for really making art happen. A space where artists can work in-residence, show in exhibitions, and visitors can participate in education programs, Artpace has a goal to provide artists with the means to create art that truly brings something new to the table, art that, as evidenced from past shows, often ends up in some of the most renowned venues in the world.
On July 15th, Artpace opened its 10.2 International Artist-in-Residence projects displaying new works by Monika Sowsnowska, Corey McCorkle, and Jamal Cyrus. The show is curated by Patrick Charpenal, a collector, art historian and curator from Mexico City. Each artist hails from a different location and work with varied subject matter, but all are known for pushing the boundaries of art in space.
Sowsnowska, winner of the Baloise prize in Basel, is based in Warsaw, Poland and is known for her distorted architectural pieces often based on commonplace structures riddles with irony or error. Her pieces evoke a new thought process and perspective in the viewer. For the 10.2 international show, her piece entitled emergency exit, is based off of emergency stairwells on the side of San Antonio buildings. Not different from the spirals of those in America, Sosnowska sheds light on their rickety scaffold-like structures for something meant to be a trusted mode of escape.
McCorkle’s works, although varying in location and medium, all involve spatial take-over with an embracement in area and public infrastructure. For the show, the New York artist presented a multi-faceted, two-floor piece. The first part the work is a film of the back of the Robert. E. Lee Hotel sign in San Antonio and an aerial view of San Antonio’s rooftops, air conditioning systems, and circuit breakers. Inside the gallery, McCorkle extracts the air conditioning system of the room once hidden in the walls and brings it to the forefront. The unit travels through the exhibition and ends on the second floor in the artist’s workspace.
Cryus is a member of Otebenga Jones & Associates and works with this collective on the complexities of African Diaspora, utilizing oral, visual and textual histories to redisplay and hopefully bring about new thoughts on radical social justice movements from the sixties and seventies. Cyrus’s contribution to 10.2 international is entitled Phonic Substance and includes four parts: a large scale drawing, a bronze conch shell atop a pyramidal base, a bass drum bombarded with microphones capturing every, minute sound, and an empty platform. Each piece’s subject vary from UFO sightings to the Teotihuacan pyramid of the sun.
The 10.2 international show at Artpace will be on view through September 12, 2010.
Jamal Cyrus, Phonic Substance Installation, 2010
Monika Sowsnowska, Emergency Exit Installation, 2010
