ANNOTATIONS

Exhibition View

 Kara Walker and Jenny Holzer

ANNOTATIONS focuses on the dynamic situation within artists’ works where there is re-use, overlay and homage paid to prior’s works.  For Kara Walker, Bank’s Army Leaving Simmsport from Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), utilizes the 19th century Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War and in her own titling, “annotates” the images with her own.  Shellburne Thurber’s 9 Wellington Street: Long view of livingroom takes Ralph Horne’s home-as-work as its subject matter and balances it perfectly with the ever so patient and ‘just-so’ quality of light that Thurber is famous for.  Jenny Holzer’s Lustmord, Erlauf, Arno, Blue, uses found, compiled and Holzer’s own texts to create a specifically juxtaposed set of phrases that is as much ‘text as structure’, as it is an announcement or compendium.  Putting these three works together not only engages the diversity of media available (from traditional newspaper’s offset lithography to the more current signmaker’s silkscreen, to the image base available in photography and to the loud announcement of a digital LED sign) but also presents an opportunity to see the various ways of collaboration, whether anonymous or not, recognized or not and supported or not.