Jeremiah Day / Michael Smith
19 Jan - 23 Feb 2008
JEREMIAH DAY / MICHAEL SMITH
Jeremiah Day:
The Fall of the Twelve Acres Museum
“In one of the first histories of Cape Cod there is a story that the Indians, when the first English ships arrived on the coast, weren’t sure at first what they were. They thought perhaps the masts were trees, and the ships were like floating islands, so they rowed over to investigate. They had boats too, dug out from tree trunks, but somehow the English ships were perhaps not recognizable to them. Architecture – the fabrication of space and form – was too far from their experience to be understood at first, to be seen. – And what did the English not see? Maybe they never saw something, and then never told us about it either, and we still don’t see it. What with all of our pictures do we not see?”
Opening on January 19th, Ellen de Bruijne Projects presents “The Fall of the Twelve Acres Museum” an exhibition of new work by Jeremiah Day. In a new slide-show installation, Day re-visits the landscape of New England through the vantage of the historic developments and recent political struggles of it’s native population – the Mashpee Wampanoag Indians. Interviews with Earl Mills - Chief Flying Eagle of the Wampanoags, stories of the recent political struggles of the tribe, and the music of a short-lived rock band from Cape Cod form the audio track, a counter-point to the drifting glimpses of landscapes presented in 6x6cm projected transparencies. The images weave the inter-relationship between local history and world history, fragmentary glimpses of sites of epic meaning, and those of more anonymous historical forces.
After an exhibition in 2005 in Dolores, and a solo-presentation with the gallery at Art Liste 2007 in Basel, this is Jeremiah Day’s first solo exhibition in the main space. Jeremiah Day was a participant at the Rijksakademie from 2003-4 after moving from Los Angeles. His work has been featured recently in the travelling exhibitions “We All Laughed At Christopher Columbus” at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam and Platform Garanti, Istanbul, and “Ground Lost”, Forumstadt Park, Graz, and Galarie Nova, Zagreb. Day will have solo exhibitions in 2008 at Project Arts Centre, Dublin and Arcade Fine Arts, London.
Michael Smith:
Ellen de Bruijne Projects presents the Michael Smith Book “Drawings: Simple, Obscure and Obtuse” 2006.
This book chronicles a lifetime of drawings by Smith and gives a keyhole view into his production and process. It is a project overflowing with manic energy and stream-of-consciousness connections including sketches, notations, diagrams, storyboards, and even childhood drawings. Most of the material has been culled from private notebooks and other sources that have never before been exhibited or published.
”The May 2004 issue of Art forum featured a rambling and witty conversation between two mutually admiring NY artists whose contributions to their respective fields are just shy of legendary among their peers: Dan Graham and Michael Smith. For Smith, the feature brought renewed attention to a unique and influential career. Like the redoubtable Graham, Smith operates across artistic boundaries. In more than 30 years of live performances, video works, commercial and cable television skits, puppet shows, exhibition installations, artist-initiated publications, and sketch-like drawings, he has anticipated the artworld’s sometimes uneasy merge with pop culture, mass entertainment, and, especially, televisual communications. Smith’s is an impressive exhibition and performance history that begins in the late 1970s, with venues as varied as Franklin Furnace, The Kitchen, Caroline’s Comedy Club, Leo Castelli Gallery, Cinemax, PBS, Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater, the Whitney, the Corcoran, the New Museum, the Pompidou Center, and ranges in recent years to sites in São Paolo, Copenhagen, Milan, London, and Berlin, among others. A quintessential art world insider, Michael Smith and his works have been widely seen but, perhaps by virtue of the works’ time-based nature, rarely deeply considered. Mike’s World: Michael Smith & Joshua White (and other collaborators) is Smith’s first museum-organized mid-career survey exhibition; it features installations at full scale and in fragments, videos, drawings, notebooks, storyboards, photographs, artists’ books and performance ephemera, all set within a unique, artist-designed immersive environment that supports and extends the other works.”
Jeremiah Day:
The Fall of the Twelve Acres Museum
“In one of the first histories of Cape Cod there is a story that the Indians, when the first English ships arrived on the coast, weren’t sure at first what they were. They thought perhaps the masts were trees, and the ships were like floating islands, so they rowed over to investigate. They had boats too, dug out from tree trunks, but somehow the English ships were perhaps not recognizable to them. Architecture – the fabrication of space and form – was too far from their experience to be understood at first, to be seen. – And what did the English not see? Maybe they never saw something, and then never told us about it either, and we still don’t see it. What with all of our pictures do we not see?”
Opening on January 19th, Ellen de Bruijne Projects presents “The Fall of the Twelve Acres Museum” an exhibition of new work by Jeremiah Day. In a new slide-show installation, Day re-visits the landscape of New England through the vantage of the historic developments and recent political struggles of it’s native population – the Mashpee Wampanoag Indians. Interviews with Earl Mills - Chief Flying Eagle of the Wampanoags, stories of the recent political struggles of the tribe, and the music of a short-lived rock band from Cape Cod form the audio track, a counter-point to the drifting glimpses of landscapes presented in 6x6cm projected transparencies. The images weave the inter-relationship between local history and world history, fragmentary glimpses of sites of epic meaning, and those of more anonymous historical forces.
After an exhibition in 2005 in Dolores, and a solo-presentation with the gallery at Art Liste 2007 in Basel, this is Jeremiah Day’s first solo exhibition in the main space. Jeremiah Day was a participant at the Rijksakademie from 2003-4 after moving from Los Angeles. His work has been featured recently in the travelling exhibitions “We All Laughed At Christopher Columbus” at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam and Platform Garanti, Istanbul, and “Ground Lost”, Forumstadt Park, Graz, and Galarie Nova, Zagreb. Day will have solo exhibitions in 2008 at Project Arts Centre, Dublin and Arcade Fine Arts, London.
Michael Smith:
Ellen de Bruijne Projects presents the Michael Smith Book “Drawings: Simple, Obscure and Obtuse” 2006.
This book chronicles a lifetime of drawings by Smith and gives a keyhole view into his production and process. It is a project overflowing with manic energy and stream-of-consciousness connections including sketches, notations, diagrams, storyboards, and even childhood drawings. Most of the material has been culled from private notebooks and other sources that have never before been exhibited or published.
”The May 2004 issue of Art forum featured a rambling and witty conversation between two mutually admiring NY artists whose contributions to their respective fields are just shy of legendary among their peers: Dan Graham and Michael Smith. For Smith, the feature brought renewed attention to a unique and influential career. Like the redoubtable Graham, Smith operates across artistic boundaries. In more than 30 years of live performances, video works, commercial and cable television skits, puppet shows, exhibition installations, artist-initiated publications, and sketch-like drawings, he has anticipated the artworld’s sometimes uneasy merge with pop culture, mass entertainment, and, especially, televisual communications. Smith’s is an impressive exhibition and performance history that begins in the late 1970s, with venues as varied as Franklin Furnace, The Kitchen, Caroline’s Comedy Club, Leo Castelli Gallery, Cinemax, PBS, Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater, the Whitney, the Corcoran, the New Museum, the Pompidou Center, and ranges in recent years to sites in São Paolo, Copenhagen, Milan, London, and Berlin, among others. A quintessential art world insider, Michael Smith and his works have been widely seen but, perhaps by virtue of the works’ time-based nature, rarely deeply considered. Mike’s World: Michael Smith & Joshua White (and other collaborators) is Smith’s first museum-organized mid-career survey exhibition; it features installations at full scale and in fragments, videos, drawings, notebooks, storyboards, photographs, artists’ books and performance ephemera, all set within a unique, artist-designed immersive environment that supports and extends the other works.”