vidich-winter-2015-release

Press Contact: Jonathan Durham
jdurham@henrystreet.org
212.598.0400 x202
www.abronsartscenter.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 22, 2014
ARTURO VIDICH
TEMPORARY LANDSCAPES: BODY ISLAND & 142241
Curated by Alexandra Rosenberg
On view January 7 – 18, 2015 // Tues-Sat 10am-6pm,
Sun 12 – 6pm
Opening reception: January 7, 2015 6-9pm
FREE
Abrons Arts Center Gallery
466 Grand Street
New York, NY 10002
(212) 598-0400
www.abronsartscenter.org
F or J/M train to Delancey/Essex
F train to East Broadway
Temporary Landscapes is an exhibition of films, relics, and materials from two performances created by
interdisciplinary artist Arturo Vidich. Both performances were created specifically for Abrons Arts Center
– Body Island (2011) and 142241 (2013) [pronounced “one four two, two four one”]. In seamlessly
married live performance and film, Vidich explores both space and its inhabitants: whether human,
animal, or machine. The resulting films are exhibited alongside objects, relics, and materials from the two
performances.
Vidich’s genre bending performances are described as “Fierce, physical, and smart,” by The New Yorker,
“Vidich has a dream-like imagination, a lack of inhibition, and an ability to catch audiences off-guard.”
The first of the two works, Body Island (performed March 24, 2011 at Abrons Arts Center Playhouse), is
inspired by a vision of the performer’s body as a landscape and a site of refuge. One performer and ten
rats interacted in a closed structure as it flooded; meanwhile, spectators reclined on the structure while
the live performance occurred beneath them. Three camera feeds of the action were live-edited and
projected onto a screen suspended over the structure. In Temporary Landscapes, this film is exhibited as
a video installation, alongside relics from the performance, including swaths of the photo-canvas tile prints
that lined the interior, and jars of charcoal powder, which Vidich applied to the white rats as their
“costumes” on camera.
142241 (performed November 14-16, 2013 at Abrons Arts Center Underground Theater), deploys
movement scores, songs and scenes to confuse the linear perception of time. In a set evoking a retrofuture underwater lab crossed with a prehistoric cave, Vidich creates an electro-acoustic seascape of
noise and dancing shadows. Video documentation of the performance is played in reverse, catching the
slippery artifacts of an unraveling memory, and a series of spills magically unspilling. This world
premiere of the film component of 142241 will be exhibited alongside several of the performance’s
steel-framed sound and light machines, which respond to movement and sound.
Arturo Vidich creates interdisciplinary performances, installations and films. Vidich’s performance work
has been presented in New York City by The Chocolate Factory, New Museum, Museum of Arts and
Design, New York Live Arts, The Invisible Dog Arts Center, Abrons Art Center, EXIT Art, NADA Art Fair,
Independent Art Fair, Brucennial 2010/2011, Danspace Project, Movement Research, AUNTS, and
others; by Wesleyan University’s Zilka Gallery; as part of The Dublin Fringe Festival; and in Los Angeles,
CA at AT1 Projects; and in Moscow at ZIL Cultural Center. Recent work includes Break In Reverse
(2014), 142241 (2013), The Daedalus Effect and other dilemmas (2013), Road Trap (2012), an
improvisational score with Yvonne Meier as part of Dancer Crush (2011), Body Island (2011), Shitopia
(2011), and A New Theory of Biology (2009). Vidich is currently working on YOU ARE IT, a transmedia
experiment, which is a project of Creative Capital. He has been an artist-in-residence at NYLA, MAD,
Movement Research, The Chocolate Factory, and Chashama. Vidich is a Creative Capital 2013
Performing Arts grant recipient and a 2013 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Choreography. In
2007, he was awarded the International Artist Residency by Dublin City Council, Ireland. After founding
Culture Push, a non-profit arts organization, he initiated a collaborative open-source residency, called
Genesis Project New York, for artists who work or want to work with or through the body. Vidich has
collaborated on performances with Yvonne Meier, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Aki Sasamoto, Deborah Hay,
and Daria Faïn, among others. In 2010, Vidich received a “Bessie” Award for his collaboration on Yvonne
Meier’s Stolen. Vidich has a degree in Dance from Wesleyan University, and has a graduate degree from
NYU Tisch’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. He also achieved a dog training certificate, and
pilot’s license.
MORE INFORMATION:
Arturo Vidich website: www.arturovidich.com
Abrons Arts Center website: http://www.abronsartscenter.org/galleries/arturo-vidich-2015.html
Photo by Ian Douglas