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January 12 to March 29, 2008
In the Plus Gallery
Dead Center / Marginal Notes: Dan Devine / Eugenio Dittborn curated by John Neff | Dead Center/Marginal Notes info
Dan Devine
Untitled, 1987
concrete and machine parts
13 ¼ x 8 ½ x 8 inches
Eugenio Dittborn
The 22nd History of the Human Face (Trueque) Airmail Painting No. 123, 1998
Paint, stitching and photosilkscreen on 2 sections of cotton duck fabric
82 ½ x 110 ¼ inches
Dead Center / Marginal Notes: Dan Devine / Eugenio Dittborn is the first in a yearlong series of exhibitions for Western Exhibitions' Plus Gallery curated by John Neff. Each show in the program will present one work each by two artists or a lone work by a single maker. All of the works exhibited will deal – directly or indirectly – with the relationships of centers to margins (culturally, geographically, politically and within works themselves as a formal concern). The first show will partner a 1987 concrete-and-steel sculpture by New York State based Dan Devine with an Airmail Painting by the Chilean artist Eugenio Dittborn.
The Devine piece consists of a compact concrete block open on one side to reveal the outline of an auto engine part enclosed within; Dittborn’s work is an ultra-light collage painting sent to the exhibition site from South America via airmail. The juxtaposition of these works engenders a number of provocative contrasts between, for example: contraction and expansion, heaviness and lightness, stasis and movement. This list opens onto a number of subtler oppositions and inversions, some of which are explored in curator John Neff’s brief exhibition essay.
Dan Devine’s most recent solo exhibition, “Inside Out Nascar”, a follow-up to his widely discussed “Inside Out Car” of 1998, was held at Brooklyn’s Pierogi gallery in 2006. In 2003, a retrospective of Devine’s work was mounted at Hofstra Museum in Hampstead, New York. The artist’s work has been discussed and reviewed in Art in America and the New York Times, among other publications. Devine lives in Ghent, New York, where he recently presented the “living, self-sustaining” installation Sheep Farm.
Eugenio Dittborn has an extensive and illustrious exhibition history. He work has been shown internationally since that the 1970s at venues as diverse as Documenta IX, the Centre Georges Pompidou, P.S. 1 and the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Dittborn’s Airmail Paintings are held in major museum collections worldwide. The artist is represented by Alexander and Bonin gallery, New York. Dittborn is based in Santiago, Chile.
Dead Center / Marginal Notes series curator John Neff lives and works in Chicago. His artwork is represented by Western Exhibitions, where he will be presenting a solo exhibition in May of 2008. Neff's past curatorial projects have included “Hysterical Pastoral” at the Ukrainian Museum of Modern Art and “Cold Conceptualism” at Suitable Gallery, both in Chicago. His writings have recently been published in BAT Journal #5 and in the exhibition catalog Vincent Como: In Praise of Darkness.
ALL IMAGES © WESTERN EXHIBITIONS & EACH INDIVIDUAL ARTIST