Swarm
3 December 2005–18 March 2006
Sarah Sze, Unravel (detail), 2005. Mixed media. 161 x 115 x 100 inches. Collection of John A. Smith and Vicky Hughes, London, England.
Opening Reception and Annual Holiday Party
Friday, 2 December 2005
5:00–9:00 p.m.
A bus from NYC will be available. For information call 215.568.1111.
Artist Talk with Fred Tomaselli
Friday, 3 February 2006
6:00 p.m.
Swarm artist Fred Tomaselli will present a slide lecture and discuss the development and influences of his work. Tomaselli is widely acclaimed for his intricate and richly layered works that bring together painting with thousands of natural and artificial elements encased in resin. His works in Swarm offer an organic accumulation of tiny chaotic details into a dizzyingly beautiful logic.
Lecture with Guest Curators, Abbott Miller and Ellen Lupton
Friday, 3 March 2006
6:00 p.m.
Miller and Lupton will convene a discussion of "swarming" as it reflects contemporary views of nature, politics, and social life that favor unplanned and decentralized modes of organization. They will be joined by Deborah Gordon, Professor of Biological Sciences, Stanford University and Eugene Thacker, Assistant Professor at the School of Literature, Culture & Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology.
Exhibition Catalog
96 page, full-color, illustrated catalog
with contributions by Marion Boulton Stroud, Abbott Miller, Ellen Lupton, and William Smith. Available through the Museum Shop.
Jason Salavon, Shoes, Domestic Production, 1960-1998 (fountain) (detail), 2001. Digital C-print mounted to Plxiglas, 48x48 inches, Edition of 6 with 2 APs. Courtesy of the artist and Projectile, New York. | |
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About the Exhibition
Swarm brings together works that express swarming as a social effect generated by masses of objects, images, data, or organisms. The fascination with swarming reflects a contemporary view of nature, politics, and social life–one that favors unplanned and decentralized modes of organization. The exhibition combines emerging and historically significant artists, revealing a series of unlikely and previously unimagined relationships between artists who have not been connected before. These artists include Ronan + Erwan Bouroullec, Mark Bradford, Fernando + Humberto Campana, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Peter Kogler, Julie Mehretu, Paul Pfeiffer, C.E.B. Reas, Matthew Ritchie, Michal Rovner, Jason Salavon, Shahzia Sikander, Sarah Sze, Fred Tomaselli, Siebren Versteeg, and Yukinori Yanagi.
Swarm theory is an idea animating contemporary art, science, design, digital media, and social theory. "Swarm logic" is seen in works that use vast numbers of small parts to create systems whose final behavior or effect cannot be wholly predicted. Artists working with computers and new media construct rules that draw together data and generate behaviors that evolve over time. Sculptors and painters create structures and patterns based on the interrelationships and inherent properties of individual elements. Swarm connects the social life of bees, birds, crowds, and cities to contemporary aesthetics, as seen in the fascination of artists and designers with how simple, discrete units accumulate into complex systems.
Julie Mehretu, Immanence (detail), 2003. Ink and acrylic on canvas. 72 x 96 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Projectile, New York.
About the Curators
Abbott Miller is a designer, editor, and art director. He is a partner in the New York office of the international design firm Pentagram, where his clients include the Guggenheim Museum, Harley-Davidson, The Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, and Knoll. He is editor and art director of the visual and performing arts magazine 2wice, and Creative Director of Steuben Glass. He has designed numerous books, magazines, and exhibitions, and is co-author with Ellen Lupton of Design Writing Research (1996) and The Bathroom, the Kitchen, and the Aesthetics of Waste (1992). He teaches design at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore.
Ellen Lupton is a writer, curator, and graphic designer. She is director of the MFA program in graphic design at MICA in Baltimore. She also is curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City, where she has organized numerous exhibitions–each accompanied by a major publication–including the National Design Triennial series (2000 and 2003), Skin: Surface, Substance + Design (2002), Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age (1999), Mixing Messages (1996), and Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office (1993).
About the Catalog
The Swarm publication is modeled on a field guide, particularly in its binding, rounded edges, and journal-like format. Within its 96 pages, full-color reproductions of the artworks featured in Swarm alternate with beautifully rendered information graphics. The cover of the publication features the graphic signature for Swarm made of letters that coalesce from minute circles. The visual and tactile qualities of the publication situate swarming as something both visceral and analytical, futuristic but also ancient and primal. The catalog includes an introduction by Marion Boulton Stroud, Founder and Artistic Director of the FWM, as well as an essay by guest curators Abbott Miller and Ellen Lupton, and contributions by William Smith. Woven into the gallery of artists' images are scientific diagrams and visualizations of swarms occurring in the human and animal worlds–from army ants and honey bees to traffic and suburban sprawl.
The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) is the only museum of its kind, offering internationally renowned artists the resources to create new work in experimental materials. Artists come from all media-including sculpture, installation, video, painting, ceramics, and architecture-and use FWM's facilities and technical expertise to create works of art that they could not create on their own. Research, construction, and fabrication occur on-site in studios that are open to the public, providing visitors with the opportunity to see works of art from conception to completion. FWM's permanent collections include not only complete works of art, but also material research, samples, prototypes, and photography and video of artists making and speaking about their work. Access to the creative process provides visitors with a point of entry into understanding challenging works of contemporary art. FWM offers an unparalleled experience to the most significant artists of our time, students, and the general public.
FWM Exhibitions and Programs Admission: $3 for Adults, Children under 12 and FWM Members for Free. Group tours available by appointment.
Hours: Mon.–Fri. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sat.–Sun., 12 noon to 4 p.m.
The programs of The Fabric Workshop and Museum are supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts; The Judith Rothschild Foundation; Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency; National Endowment for the Arts; Miller-Plummer Foundation; LLWW Foundation; U. S. Institute of Museum and Library Services; Nimoy Foundation; The Arcadia Foundation; Claneil Foundation; Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro; Independence Foundation; The Philadelphia Cultural Fund; E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation; Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation; Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation; The Henry Luce Foundation matching gifts program; The Barra Foundation; LEF Foundation; Louis N. Cassett Foundation; Quaker Chemical Foundation; and the Board of Directors and members of The Fabric Workshop and Museum.
For more information, please contact Jeffrey Bussman, Assistant to the Directors, at 215-561-8888 ext. 229
jeff@fabricworkshopandmuseum.org.
For general information, call 215-561-8888.
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