| The 2008 Altoids Award features work by four emerging artists whose practices are disparate; consequently, the exhibition explores difference in contemporary art, rather than distilling its trends. Artists Ei Arakawa, Lauren Kelley, Michael Patterson-Carver, and Michael Stickrod were selected as the award recipients based on their individual practices. The work therefore has certain qualities in common without discernable through lines: all of it is arresting and unusual, but addresses different ideas via dissimilar approaches. |  |
Jarrett Gregory, Curatorial Assistant
The Altoids Award Exhibition is on view at the New Museum, New York from June 25-October 12.
Michael Stickrod, Stills from Vacation Money, Saundra Stickrod, 2003. Digital video, scanned Polaroids, and scanned oil paintings, sound, color; 10 min.The 2008 Altoids Award features work by four emerging artists whose practices are disparate; consequently, the exhibition explores difference in contemporary art, rather than distilling its trends. Artists Ei Arakawa, Lauren Kelley, Michael Patterson-Carver, and Michael Stickrod were selected as the award recipients based on their individual practices. The work therefore has certain qualities in common without discernable through lines: all of it is arresting and unusual, but addresses different ideas via dissimilar approaches.
The Altoids Award is organized around a unique selection process that calls upon 10 mid-career artists to nominate up to five emerging artists. This method acknowledges the role that artists, not curators, have in the development and support of fellow artists’ careers. The 46 nominees were reviewed by a jury comprised of Paul McCarthy, Cindy Sherman, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, artists all well known for their groundbreaking work and for their commitment to encouraging new talent. They selected Arakawa, Kelley, Patterson-Carver, and Stickrod as the winners of the first Altoids Award, thereby granting them each $25,000 and a place in the exhibition.
Ei Arakawa works with numerous participants, combining dance, improvised actions, and art objects to create performances that reevaluate the way we define art production. “Market,” Arakawa’s term for this new genre, is composed of three central elements: people, provisional structures, and on-site publications. Arakawa’s presence in the exhibition is continually in-progress through collaborations between writers and dancers, public rehearsals, and performances in which texts and objects contribute to an on-going installation.
Lauren Kelley works with stop-motion animation to explore stereotypes of femininity and race, broadcasting her videos through Houston’s public access television network to reach a diverse audience. Using her voice to speak for a cast of black dolls, Kelley breathes life into the plastic characters while poignantly and humorously addressing issues such as womanhood and social expectations. The outcome is an insightful theater of the absurd, informed by PBS and Saturday morning cartoons.
Since his exposure to civil rights protesting as a child, Michael Patterson-Carver has been committed to political activism. His color drawings of contemporary and historical picketing are slightly naïve and strangely obsessive. Depicting a wide range of demonstrations including animal rights, AIDS, the war in Iraq, prohibition, immigrant legalization, and the women’s vote, his drawings illustrate a small history of dissent that is simultaneously comical, ironic, and humanizing.
Inspired by the Free Cinema movement, Michael Stickrod creates documentary-esque films using his family members as his subject matter. Stickrod layers footage of his relatives with homemade soundtracks, found audio, and photographed and scanned objects to make videos that assemble an unsettling portrait of middle America. The films are both voyeuristic and sincere, stylistically oscillating between anthropological research and confessional home videos.
The exhibition will assemble work by each artist, juxtaposing their varied techniques and approaches and allowing viewers to speculate on the state of American art today. The artists are interested in new forms of storytelling, and in their individual styles they explore the ways in which people come together to form groups based on identity, collaboration, family ties, or politics. Marking the first award in a biennial prize that has a long future ahead of it, the 2008 Altoids Award offers these artists a truly life-altering opportunity: their first museum exposure and the funds to focus on their practice.
