***To Be Rescheduled***
Director, Arcadia University Art Gallery, Glenside
“Reconsidering the Exhibition as Medium”
The re-staging of Harald Szeemann’s “Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form,” for the 2013 Venice Biennale served as a dramatic reminder of how gallery display impacts our experience of art. Originally presented at the Bern Kunsthalle in 1969, its recent reconstruction (curated by Germano Celant, in dialogue with Thomas Demand and Rem Koolhaas), foregrounded the ways in which our sensitivities to the staging of artworks has changed over time. The project also confirmed that the matrix of conditions that constitute exhibition making offer singular possibilities and restrictions that become more critical as new platforms of presentation emerge. Using examples of other re-stagings and a sampling of recent group shows, this talk will explore the evolution of the exhibition as a medium and its impact on artmaking, curatorial practice, and questions of authorship and interpretation.
Richard Torchia is director of Arcadia University Art Gallery, Glenside, where, since 1997, he has organized solo exhibitions for artists including Ai Weiwei, Dave Allen, Francis Cape, Tacita Dean, Olafur Eliasson, Amy Hauft, Pati Hill, Candida Höfer, Ray Johnson, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Donald Moffett, William Larson, and Kay Rosen, among many others. Often working in collaboration, he has organized thematic group exhibitions exploring subjects such as the childhood drawings of contemporary artists, nearly imperceptible art works, the sited gesture, and photorealist painting.
