Overview
Marian Goodman Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of two new works by award-winning British artist and film maker Steve MᶜQueen. Giardini, a visually sumptuous film of 30 minutes, is composed of two projections set side-by-side, which steadily gather a series of evocative vignettes. As the title suggests, the film is set in the famous exhibitions grounds in Venice – as T.J. Demos writes in his essay in Giardini Notebook, “the location of the ageing national pavilions. These otherwise well known monuments are shown here in an unexpected light, during the interim between biennales, in the down-time and during the nights, in the shadows of spectacle.”
Steve MᶜQueen: Giardini, 2008 and Static, 2009
January 19 - March 6, 2010
Opening Reception: Tuesday, January 19, 6 -8 pm
Marian Goodman Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of two new works by award-winning British artist and film maker Steve MᶜQueen, which will open to the public on Tuesday, January 19th and will run through Saturday, March 6th.
On view in the North Gallery will be Giardini, 2009, a major work first shown at the 53rd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, 2009, when MᶜQueen represented the UK. This will be the first U.S. presentation of the work and its New York premiere. A second new work, Static, 2009, made especially for this exhibition, will be on view in the North Gallery viewing room.
Giardini, a visually sumptuous film of 30 minutes, is composed of two projections set side-by-side, which steadily gather a series of evocative vignettes. As the title suggests, the film is set in the famous exhibitions grounds in Venice – as T.J. Demos writes in his essay in Giardini Notebook, “the location of the ageing national pavilions. These otherwise well known monuments are shown here in an unexpected light, during the interim between biennales, in the down-time and during the nights, in the shadows of spectacle.”
Demos continues, "Like MᶜQueens’ past films such as ‘Carib’s Leap/ Western Deep’, 2002 and ‘Gravesend’, 2007, ‘Giardini’ denies clear links between representation and significance, between form and content – not to exclude reference but instead to allow the image potential meanings to crystallise, its facets reflecting numerous paths of fabulation. Indeed, the film’s suspension of its images in a field of multiple possibilities defines its power: to release life from belonging to any certain code, clear narrative, or restrictive regiment…. . ‘Giardini’ constructs a fictional world and does so with great care… In [it] beauty arises in the imagination of life beyond and outside the conventional orders of art and politics… The revelation in ‘Giardini’ concerns… the experience of a film that generates the space of contingency so powerfully in its experiential register, wherein the possibility of survival outside of conventional orders may transform from the virtual dimension of the image into realisation elsewhere.”
Steve MᶜQueen was recipient of the Turner Prize in 1999 and an OBE in 2002. He attended Chelsea School of Art, London (1989-90); Goldsmith College, London (1990-93); and Tisch School of the Arts, NYU (1993-94). Born in London in 1969, he currently lives in Amsterdam and London.
Upcoming projects include a film to be directed by MᶜQueen based on the life of Fela Kuti, the African musician and activist who died in 1997, and a solo survey exhibition in the U.S. and Europe slated for 2012-2013.
Steve MᶜQueen’s work has been included in numerous solo exhibitions hosted by worldwide institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Prada Foundation, Milan; ARC/Musee d’art moderne de la ville de Paris; Art Angel, London; Fundacio Serralves, Porto; Fundacio Tapies, Barcelona, Milan, Tate Britain; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Vienna Kunsthalle, Vienna, and many others.
Selected group shows include The Quick and the Dead, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2009 ; The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image; The Hirshhorn Museum and Scupture Garden, DC, 2008; 52nd International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2007 ; Faces in the Crowd, Whitechapel London, 2004; Utopia Station, the Venice Biennale, 2003; Documenta II, Kassel, Germany, 2002; and Moving Pictures, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2002, among many others.
In 2008-2009 MᶜQueen’s first feature film, Hunger (2008) was released, a widely celebrated and highly acclaimed film based on the dramatic final weeks of the life of Bobby Sands, leader of the 1981 IRA hunger strike who died in Belfast’s HM Maze prison. The film has garnered over 50 international awards, including the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, 2008 and most recently, The New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best First Feature, 2009. It has won numerous other accolades, notably, The Golden Hitchcock Award, Le Festival du Film Britannique de Dinard, 2008; the Diesel Discovery Award, Toronto International Film Festival, 2008 and the Toronto Film Critics Association Award, 2009; Gucci Group Award for Artist in Film, Venice Film Festival, 2008; Sydney Film Prize, Sydney Film Festival, 2008; and the International Film Critic’s Prize, Cannes Film Festival, 2008.
Giardini was commissioned by the British Council for the British Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale and produced with funding from Outset Contemporary Art Fund and the Art Fund Charity, London as well as a private collection. Marian Goodman Gallery would like to thank the British Council for their generous loan of the equipment for Giardini.
For further information, please contact Leslie Nolen at: 212 977 7160.
