2008
2007
2006
jef bourgeau
SECRET CITY
A shortlist of Detroit artists has been selected for the Kresge Prize 2008. This is the first year for the prestigious award, on par with London's Turner Prize. Still, their names have been kept secret.
Why?
With the inauguration this year of Detroit's Kresge Prize, and the Foundation's total annual art awards reaching half a million dollars, Southeast Michigan's regional arts scene will shift beyond recognition and the Kresge Prize will now lie at the heart of Detroit's future contemporary culture, not only regionally but, in overall awareness, nationally as well.
The relationship between art and business patronage has become a global phenomenon today, having a great impact on both the art world and corporate activity. It also transforms the role of art in contemporary society. With the explosive intervention of the Kresge Foundation, the Kresge Prize will take Detroit art beyond the conventional ‘white cube’ to display artists’ images and art works through various public media sources, both here and abroad. It will naturally use this mass media as promotional tools, such as newspapers, magazines, radio and television broadcasting.
The Kresge Prize is as much about art, as it is about getting people to talk about contemporary Detroit art. Whether the public like or dislike the artists highlighted by the Kresge Prize is irrelevant. The rationale of the prize giving is to promote comment with regard to art, establishment and people's perception.
So one cannot overstate the importance of the Kresge Prize, and its potentially unappeasable search for great art in metro-Detroit. First, because the Kresge Prize is meant to be a perpetual work in progress, tracking both an evolving Midwest culture and those individual artists in that specific region. And second, because without the bright light of publicity – which demands endless renovation and attention to new faces and fresh stories – the prize’s legacy cannot begin to exist. That potential legacy that spotlights Detroit as a major art town, and targets the range of artistry that's been midwifed here by some of the world's best art schools and patrons.
If Detroit's place in the art arena will now somehow be more secure, the Kresge Prize is not only tracing the steps along the way; it is also playing no small part in getting us there.
December 20 - January 15
November 29 - January 4
sponsored by
November 15 - December 13
@
with
Clara Beckmann
Rachel Hunt
Cyrus Karimipour
Alison Wong
Stig Eklund
Mary Fortuna
Marla Karimipour
Kelly F
Vagner Whitehead
Kyohei Abe
October 18 - November 22
ANNABEL ELGAR:
Part I
Kelly Rosebrock
Tom Stoye
William Sadovsky
&
September 13 - October 11, 2008
July 5 - August 9
Christoph Dettmeier
Andrew Gilbert
Franziska Hufnagel
Florin Kompatscher
Alexej Koschkarow
Joe Neave
Max Schulze
Astrid Sourkova
supported by
the Cultural Affairs Department of the Berlin Senate
and
May 10 - June 7
including
Sherrie Bittle
Gulsen Calik
Amy Cheatle
Peter Ciccariello
Silvia Huerta Gomero
Dr Will Grant
Mark Grimm
Nurhilal Harsa
Aki Kimoto
Lisanne McTernan
Jason Murphy
Bernd Naber
Lorenzo Pace
Gila Paris
Joseph Rabie
Mike Rader
Dr Barnaby Ruhe
Danny Scheffer
Frank Shifreen
Korkut Ulug
&
ANTHONY REACH
April 26 - May 10
Art, Immigration & Identity
&
LINDA PHELPS
&
STUDIO VIEW:
a photo project by Andrew Maydoney
April 5 - April 26
REVELATIONS OF THE INVISIBLE
Whatever our collective destiny, artists working with technology may serve a unique role as contemporary mediums. Our works, individual and unique, record for posterity the experience of living in a time marked by an uncertainty of our own making. We explore, take note and occasionally guide, pushing the limits of our world and repurposing the tools of objective inquiry in the hopes of finding more subjective truths. We've met the ghost in the machine, and found it's us.
&
RACHEL HUNT
&
DIETMAR KRUMREY
Dietmar Krumrey’s creative practice is driven by a radically skeptical relationship to language. He is not simply skeptical of certain concepts, discourses, or perspectives, but of the very means whereby we articulate all of our certainties and doubts, about ourselves and about our world.
Stemming from this ambivalent fascination with language, his work deals with different aspects of communication, from the simple, personal articulation of ideas and beliefs through action and utterance, to the more complex communal communication expressed through media and technology.
Krumrey is also interested in the communication of the social, as in the ways we are conditioned by the laws, traditions and behavioral norms of state and cultural institutions. He is especially interested in the communication of power as it is exercised both symbolically and physically, from the soft power of a government's theatrical authority, information controls and economic policies, to the hard power of its policing, punishment, and legitimate violence.
In all, Krumrey’s work seeks to create a dialogue where the questions posed must be posed as objects and the answers derived must be proven not in words, but by action.
So, for one hour on Saturday night April 5th at the Museum of New Art (8 to 9pm), Krumrey will perform live for the first time ever his performance of Loud and Clear: an hour long performance piece where, dressed in a shirt, tie and expensive shoes, Dietmar Krumrey spins in circles while shouting “Attention!” into a large black megaphone as a clock ticks off the seconds in the background. It is a repetitive action that at once appears totally absurd, but if seen as a metaphor - of communication in all its dizzying ceaselessness.
March 8 - April 11
February 22 - March 22
in collaboration with Chicago's ThreeWalls
January 19 - February 22
