Current Exhibition - Urban Image-Jitters I (City) and II (Body)
NOW OPEN—through November 15, 2020. We are happy to announce the reopening of our program:
Dennis Oppenheim, Craigie Horsfield, Yoko Ono, Sylvie Bonnot, Mary Sue
The Merchant House reopens its 2020 program with the changing group show Urban Image-Jitters I (City) and II (Body). This installment takes its cue from Dennis Oppenheim’s famous project drawing Virus (1989) and Craigie Horsfield’s “billboard in downtown Manhattan days after 9/11” and related pieces. Together with the provocative art of Yoko Ono, Sylvie Bonnot, and Mary Sue featured in parallel, these works deconstruct the ruptures and impact of cities in a biocultural crisis.
A 1992 article in The New York Times quoted Dennis Oppenheim: “Virus was conceived as part of a larger body of work that used common, lighthearted images on ‘deadly structures.’ Virus was supposed to have the characteristic of a biological model, but instead of using the usual round sphere, I used Mickey and Donald. The message was one of giving people image-jitters, of using common light figures in a heavier context.” The article highlighted Disney’s demand to destroy Oppenheim’s sculpture (then installed in a California office complex) on copyright grounds. In the years preceding, the poignant Virus was shown all over the world. Like all germinal art, and more than ever now, such works draw energy—with irreverence or poise—from particular incidents of life but speak to looming social issues.
Elucidating the present and imagining the future, Oppenheim’s Virus as well as the other works on view powerfully capture the timeless spirit of art. In foregrounding time, they connect to the work of Craigie Horsfield in TMH’s show paused by Covid-19. The new installation offers a chance to revisit Horsfield’s affective prints steeped in his fascinating conception of “slow time.” As Horsfield once said: “The situations in these works may appear familiar at first glance, and yet each unfolds into an intimate epic as our senses open us to recognition, to stories of our own lives, and to our own responsibility.” Urban Image-Jitters I (City) and II (Body)—proposed by Marsha Plotnitsky, Founding Artistic Director of TMH, for 2020—highlights the physical experience of art and will develop in several interdisciplinary installments with TMH’s artists.