December 1, 2009 - February 14, 2010
The Reach of Realism
at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami
Altman Siegel Gallery is please to announce The Reach of Realism at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, featuring gallery artists Matt Keegan, Sara VanDerBeek and Emily Wardill.
The Reach of Realism brings together an international group of artists exploring the artistic traditions of Realism in an age of digital manipulation and staged reality. The artists in the exhibition use various strategies to address the increasing fusion between daily life and popular media. From 19th century painters who depicted everyday life during the industrial revolution, to the 1980s "pictures generation" of artists who criticized the media's growing influence on society, artists have used realism as a political strategy. Today, it is widely understood that while images are effective means of communicating ideas, they have lost their impact in communicating truths because of increased manipulation and outright fabrication. The exhibition's artists convey the desire for authenticity in images while distrusting the ability of images to communicate an objective reality. By choosing to obstruct straightforward depictions and instead reveal poetic truths, these artists question whether the images they produce and the realities they portray can be meaningful. In creating semblances of reality, they are more interested in the inclusion of a detail or moment in a work that contains the potential for realism and not realism itself.
Artists include Uta Barth, Olaf Breuning, Tom Burr, Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkacova, Talia Chetrit, Phil Collins, Thomas Demand, Alex Hubbard. Matt Keegan, Ragnar Kjartansson, Elad Lassry, Lars Laumann, Adam McEwen, Wilhelm Sasnal, Xaviera Simmons, Martin Soto Climent, Wolfgang Tillmans, Sara VanDerBeek, Emily Wardill, Gillian Wearing, Judi Werthein, and Artur Zmijewski. The Reach of Realism is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami and curated by MOCA Associate Curator Ruba Katrib.
See also -
artist page: Matt Keegan
artist page: Sara VanDerBeek
artist page: Emily Wardill
