The Petrified River attempts to express a paradox that exists between what remains of historical realities and their associated memories, and how artists redirect ideas of monumentality through domestic scale, material, and interaction between objects and space. As our increasingly pluralistic world removes itself further away from history, these lieux de mémoire become less powerful as individual narratives. However, the language of monuments, when divorced from historical moments, becomes relevant as it reflects collective notions of both struggle and triumph.
Artists
Paolo Chiasera (IT), Aleksandra Domanović (SI), Timothy Hull (US), Iman Issa (EG), Shahryar Nashat (CH), Ruby Sky Stiler US)David Harper/Martha Kirszenbaum
Martha Kirszenbaum is an independent curator based in Paris. She worked at the Department of Media and Performance Art of the Museum of Modern Art, the department of photography of the Centre Georges Pompidou and as a research assistant at the New Museum. Independently, Kirszenbaum has organized exhibitions, projects and screenings in the United States (Austrian Cultural Forum New York, Harris Lieberman Gallery), Europe (Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, European Culture Congress in Wrocław, Galerie Crèvecoeur in Paris) and at the Marrakech Biennale. She was a curator-in-residence at the Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw and is currently guest curator at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, where she will organize two interventions. She regularly contributes to Kaleidoscope, L'Officiel and Voxpop and has led seminars on curatorial practices at the Université Paris 8 and Parsons Paris.
David Harper is the curator of the visual art program at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York and also currently works as a freelance curator and writer. Recent projects include exhibitions at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York including The Seen and the Hidden (2009) and NineteenEightyFour (2010), co-curated with Martha Kirszenbaum, and Fünf Räume (2011); he is also serving as the first Curatorial Fellow for the blog Art Fag City (2011) and serving as visiting critic and catalog essayist at Indiana University (2012). His most recent exhibitions include Pariset, Steciw & Wilson at toomer labzda and Bcc#7 at STADIUM gallery, co-curated with Karen Archey (2012).
Lukas Feichtner Galerie
Seilerstätte 19, 1010 Wienwww.feichtnergallery.com