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sept 7 2011
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
EXHIBITION:
LISA KIRK | If You See Something...
DATES: September 7 — October 16, 2011
RECEPTION: Wednesday, September 7: 6-8pm
BRUNCH & ARTIST TALK (Co-sponsored by Harvestworks): Saturday, September 10: 11:30am-2pm Electronic Arts Festival Governor’s Island, Nolan Park, Building 10B
Lisa Kirk’s “If You See Something…,” is the second chapter to her site-specific video installation “Backyard Adversaries” 2011, (on view at Governor’s Island through September 25th*) which depicts four children improvising a game of war, eerily evocative of Abu Ghraib. Inspired by the elements of chance in the recorded video, Kirk later created an accompanied sound-scape with four others narrating their impressions the scenes from the safety of a recording studio, in the end the piece is generated in a random, ever changing format. In both of these projects, Kirk employs her signature approach to her installations by turning rooms on their heads, transforming them into a showcase of artifice.
“The shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality;”[1],
A perfect parable for the process that Kirk’s current work reveals by using the backdrop of the media to critique the "visceral" and the "political" as vacant. Her sculptures represent a ghost of the narrarator and the camera,--conveyors of the news. Throughout the gallery are immaculately crafted wood objects that impart memories of giant playroom toys. “Sound Baffles” features a new group of Urban Decay paint ball paintings made with burned make up that double as silencing sound panels ubiquitous in bunker-like recording studios. These installations distinguish a confluence of the iconography unearthed from “Backyard Adversaries”, a phantom echo of the disturbing reality from the original score.
Both of these works elucidate Kirk’s longstanding fascination with the things that we cannot, or refuse to see, often simulated or shadowed by propriety when presented to the curious public.
[1] “Allegory of the Cave”, The Republic, Plato.