MetaModern
ORGANIZERS AND DATES
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois
January 30 – March 29, 2015
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona
May 23 – August 30, 2015
Orlando Museum of Art, Florida
September 26-December 6, 2015
The DeVos Art Museum, Northern Michigan University, Marquette, Michigan
January 20 – March 27, 2016
Palm Springs Art Museum, California
October 8, 2016 – February 19, 2017
DESCRIPTION
Preservationists have noted that the most vulnerable time for architecture is fifty years after construction: the structure is out of fashion, but not yet historic. It looms as outdated, not yet notable or nostalgic. The architecture of the 1950s has just passed through this danger zone, and, along with the furniture and furnishings of that era, is prized, collectible, and the basis for a body of work by artists who, too young to have experienced this design when it was new, largely know of the period through film and family photos. The ideals embodied in the modern movement and its defining clean, manufactured forms, often in materials new at that time, are rich territory for artists to plumb. The work of these artists, most of whom were born in the 1960s, is distinct from the large body of work by artists and designers who adapt modern or quasi-modernist forms as a visual vocabulary or as a style. These artists, whose work constitutes this exhibition, adopt the actual vocabulary of the modern movement to explore issues that question the content of style, past versus present, and the meanings of the new and its relationship to history.
Exhibition design by Rice+Lipka Architects
ARTISTS
Conrad Bakker, United States; Constantin Boym; United States, Kendell Carter, United States; Jordi Colomer, Spain; Elmgreen & Dragset, Sweden; Fernanda Fragateiro, Portugal; Terence Gower, Canada; Brian Jungen, Canada; Olga Kourmoundouros, United States; Josiah McElheny, United States; Jill Magid, United States; Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, United States; Dorit Margreiter, Austria; Edgar Orlaineta, Mexico; Gabriel Sierra, Colombia; Simon Starling, United Kingdom; Clarissa Tossin, United States/Brazil; Barbara Visser, the Netherlands; James Welling, United States
