| Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert are pleased to present the exhibition Ocularpation: Wall Street by Zefrey Throwell, from January 6-February 11, 2012, featuring photographs, paintings, video, and sculpture. The exhibition centers around a large-scale continuous video projection of Ocularpation: Wall Street, created on August 1, 2011, in which 50 performers directed by Zefrey Throwell, gathered outdoors on Wall Street, stripped down to nothing, and began working in a call for transparency that caught fire and spread across the globe. |  |
“…50 performers directed by Zefrey Throwell, gathered outdoors on Wall Street, stripped down to nothing, and began working in a call for transparency that caught fire and spread across the globe.”
Zefrey Throwell, Dog Walker, 2012. Acrylic on linen, 72 x 48 in.Image courtesy of Klemens Gasser and Tanja Grunert, Inc.
Exposed Occupation: Zefrey Throwell at Gasser & Grunert
Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert are pleased to present the exhibition Ocularpation: Wall Street by Zefrey Throwell, from January 6-February 11, 2012, featuring photographs, paintings, video, and sculpture. The exhibition centers around a large-scale continuous video projection of Ocularpation: Wall Street, created on August 1, 2011, in which 50 performers directed by Zefrey Throwell, gathered outdoors on Wall Street, stripped down to nothing, and began working in a call for transparency that caught fire and spread across the globe. The experience and documentation of Ocularpation informs the varied works in the exhibition. A series of paintings, using signature Wall Street blue trader jackets sewn together as the canvas, are collaged with photographs of the performances and oil paint. Fifty sculptures of everyday objects, relating to specific Wall Street professions (i.e. broom—janitorial, handcuffs—police, piggybank— banker, etc.), have been coated with a thin veneer of gold enamel, thereby transforming them into precious artworks. Zefrey, who used nudity so powerfully as a symbol of exposure and transparency in the Ocularpation performance and the recent strip poker game I’ll Raise you One… at Art in General, uses gold in this new body of work in reference to the current American financial dream, sold as a glittering jewel, but in fact is a fantasy whose value is speculation.
Ocularpation: Wall Street continues Zefrey Throwell’s extensive body of investigative and interactive projects focused on the connecting points and underpinnings of social discourse. Projects shown at the MoMA, Whitney Museum, Performa, and Venice Biennials, as well as major media coverage of Ocularpation (including The New York Times, BBC, CNN, NBC and more) have provided the artist with a platform to ignite public discussion and an international call to action. The artist states, the inspiration for the Ocularpation performance and exhibition was personal: “When my mother lost all her savings and was forced to come out of retirement from the market crash of 2008, I knew we had to refocus attention on Wall Street, its actions, secrecy, and real repercussions on people’s lives.”
