Event: Free Play (September 30–December 13, 2016, New York)
September 30–December 13, 2016
Opening: Thursday, September 29, 6–8pm
Curated by Melissa E. Feldman
Full line-up:
Cory Arcangel, Ryan Gander, Jeanne van Heeswijk and Rolf Engelen, Pedro Reyes, David Shrigley, Yoko Ono, Ruth Catlow, Mary Flanagan, Futurefarmers, Allan McCollum and Matt Mullican, Paul Noble, Erik Svedäng, Jason Rohrer, Patrick Bernier and Olive Martin
The New School
The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center
Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery
2 West 13th Street
New York
"
Free Play features work by artists who use games to expose social and philosophical issues.The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons School of Design at The New School presents Free Play, an exhibition exploring the work of artists who borrow from play and games to expose social, philosophical, and cultural issues. From playground antics to mathematical strategy, the artists in Free Play mine the significance of games, reinventing them to create experiences that often involve the viewer and reflect on the nature of participation in art and art exhibitions. The exhibition features an arcade of objects, including a version of Guitar Hero by Cory Arcangel, hopscotch by Mary Flanagan, and for the more mystically inclined, a divining game by Allan McCollum and Matt Mullican. Other artists featured in Free Play are Yoko Ono, Ryan Gander, Patrick Bernier and Olive Martin, Ruth Catlow, Futurefarmers, Jeanne van Heeswijk and Rolf Engelen, Paul Noble, Pedro Reyes, Jason Rohrer, David Shrigley, and Erik Svedäng. Feldman noted that strategies tied to game playing have historically attracted avant-garde artists, most famously the chess master Marcel Duchamp. His every artistic move had his chess partner in mind: the viewer. Games were also intrinsic to the work of war-addled Surrealists and Dadaists, the inventors of the exquisite corpse and automatic drawing, in their quest to upend the bourgeois pretensions of art and free the artistic imagination. In the 1960s and 1970s, the countercultural and anti-war Fluxus group and the New Games Foundation questioned capitalism and corporate culture by staging massive non-competitive games in city parks.Free Play is an exhibition curated by Melissa E. Feldman and organized by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York. Free Play was made possible, in part, by grants from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, and with the generous support from ICI's International Forum and Board of Trustees." (The New School)LINK:
FREE PLAY