Artists Space

Repeat Performance

May 20 – July 3, 2004

Artists: Jason Dodge, Nancy Drew, Jeff Feld, John Jurayj, Jill Miller, Tilo Schulz, Mungo Thomson

A person on roller skates and knee pads with a large, fabric umbrella held on his back.
Jeff Feld, Performance of the only part of Robert Rauschenberg's "Pelican" that I know, 2001. [A person on roller skates and knee pads with a large, fabric umbrella held on his back.]

Opening Reception
May 20, 6 - 8:30pm

Repeat Performance brings together emerging artists who have used works by other artists and architects as a starting point for their own creative process. By restaging historic performances, inscribing their own appearance into old video tapes, referencing public sculpture of the 1970s, or repainting iconic seascapes and abstractions by 19th and 20th century masters, these artists direct their attention to the operative potential gained from the temporal, spatial, and contextual distance between the first invocation of a work of art and its reappearance as an appropriated model of influence.

The individual motivations behind these acts of acquisition may differ as they serve to assert ownership over a particular artistic and critical tradition, investigate the changed climate of utopianism and intervention between the cultural landscapes of the 1960s and today, or attempt to simultaneously use and disconnect the iconicity of certain historic artistic practices. The artists' relations to their points of reference may range from the reverential to the ironic, but all attest to a continued historical awareness as well as to the power of transformative thought.

A black bumper sticker with white text on the back of a silver car reads, "The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths."
Mungo Thomson, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (12 Step), 2004. [A black bumper sticker with white text on the back of a silver car reads, "The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths."]

Johnson, Ken. "Repeat Performance." The New York Times. June 11, 2004. Print.

    Two men walking inside a large inflatable sphere being followed by a crowd of people, some who are filming them, outside in a grassy and paved area.
    Tilo Schulz, Remake Performance, Artists Space, 2004. [Two men walking inside a large inflatable sphere being followed by a crowd of people, some who are filming them, outside in a grassy and paved area.]