Be Andr: "Uncurated"

By Maria Nicolacopoulou

Opening: Sunday, November 9, 6 - 8pm

Exhibition dates: November 9, 2014 - January 11, 2015

A Special Preview of the exhibition will take place on Saturday, November 8, from 11am-6pm, as part of The New Yorker's 9th Annual Passport to the Arts, in partnership with Paddle 8 and Creative Time.

"Art practice that seeks a place from which to speak and be heard almost inevitably means dissenting from the prevailing institutionalized language." - Jean Fisher, 1996

With issues of authorship prevalent within the contemporary discourse and the proliferation of curatorial studies degrees flooding the educational component of an industry unable to absorb its constituents, action is called upon to confront this phenomenon. While process-based practices and horizontal formats are dominating contemporary art developments - from artist collectives to institutional programming - borders are collapsing between disciplines, genres and functions, and collaboration is becoming the norm. Can there really be autonomy and identifiable boundaries between roles in artistic practice? How can the cultivation of curatorial power and the star-curator culture continue to remain sustainable within the consistency of its own subversive environment? In order to meet and examine that premise, any intended curatorial authority here is automatically reconsidered. The question then arises, how can I question the role of the curator and curate a show at the same time? Can I un-curate?

To assist this predicament, and to further challenge the power relations of art production, Be Andr's site-specific installation becomes a collaborator in this process by stepping deeper into the issues of authenticity and creative invention. While the format of the gallery's white cube represents the art institution in its entirety, its white canvas aesthetic allows for its incorporation in the work as an element. By borrowing quotes from Boris Groys and other common proverbs, and incorporating the gallery as a reconfigured installation element, Uncurated is a long-term collaborative effort that attempts to transgress and question notions of authority, hierarchy and roles in contemporary practice. - M.N.

Be Andr (1978, Oslo, Norway) lives and works in London, UK. Andr studied Fine Art at The Florence Academy of Art and earned his B.F.A from the Slade School of Fine Art, University of London. He has exhibited internationally most recently with exhibitions at CCA Andratx Art Centre, Spain; Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel; Post Box Gallery, London; and Sexauer, Berlin. Later this year, his work will be featured at La Posta Foundation in Valencia, Spain. In 2014, Andr curated Antony Gormley's exhibition Another Time at Mardalsfossen Art Project, Norway and edited the accompanying catalogue. Uncurated marks his first solo exhibition in the United States.

Maria Nicolacopoulou is an independent curator investigating contemporary collaborative methodologies of an institutional, interdisciplinary and transnational context. Apart from organizing projects and interventions, she has also worked with institutions like Tate Modern, Creative Time and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has presented papers in international conferences, such as the Staedelijk Museum's Collecting Geographies conference, published interviews with artists and curators, and written for catalogues and journals like Third Text. Nicolacopoulou holds a BA in Philosophy and Art History from CUNY, an MRes in Humanities & Cultural Studies from the London Consortium and, following a year with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' Curatorial department of Visual Arts, a further MA in Museum Studies from New York University.