Charles Clough
February 5–March 5, 2011
“O MY GOODNESS!
– A Painting / It’s Facsimile Portrait / A Book / A Movie”
GALLERY TALK: Tuesday, March 1, 6.30pm.
Charles Clough and Matthew Higgs in conversation.
White Columns is proud to present a solo exhibition by Charles Clough, his first solo exhibition in New York in nearly a decade.
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Writing about the project Clough has said:
“O My Goodness is one painting, a series of painted, photographic, inkjet print “portraits” of the painting, a book and a movie—a singularity of great multiplicity.
O My Goodness punctuates my “photographic epic of a painter as a film or a ghost” (Pepfog) which I formulated in 1976 as my life’s work.
O My Goodness synthesizes various techniques that I have utilized throughout the course of my work. It was created by painting twenty pictures alternated with “un-painting” sessions of grinding and polishing the painting. Each state of the painting and 3,749 cropped details were photographed during the realization of the painting. All of these images have been sequenced into a flip book-like animation. The book reproduces the full frame of each state of the painting with a text edited from my studio notes written through the course of producing O My Goodness.
The presentation at White Columns offers my critique of the art world economy:
1. The movie is a free download available at www.clufff.com
2. The book is offered at a consumer price point.
3. The “portrait” of the painting is offered at a collector price point.
4. The original artwork is priceless insofar as it is offered to an association of museums that will circulate and display it.”
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Clough’s exhibition comprises the original painting, a time-lapse video work that shows details from the painting’s evolution, a series of three life-size ink-jet versions (‘portraits’) of the painting (augmented with painted additions by Clough), a further series of amended prints relating to the work, a complete presentation of Clough’s artist’s book ‘O MY Goodness!’, a group of recent and older works on paper, and a ‘T-Shirt’ painting housed in a wooden cabinet that contains discs recording Clough’s photographic journal for 2002.
Exploring issues of authorship, authenticity, and appropriation ‘O My Goodness!’ is consistent with Clough’s ongoing questioning of art’s status and value. Through a self-reflexive process of visual cannibalization Charles Clough has – for more than four decades – created a labyrinthine body of work informed as much by humor as it is by a critical examination of the role of the artist and status of the work of art.
This is Clough’s first solo exhibition in New York in nearly a decade. Clough’s work was recently included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition “The Pictures Generation.” (2010.)
Charles Clough (b. 1951, Buffalo, NY). A co-founder, in 1974, with Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo, of Buffalo’s legendary artist-run space Hallwalls, Charles Clough has shown his work extensively since the early 1970s, including solo shows at the Newport Art Museum (2003), Von Lintel Gallery, NY (2002), the Brooklyn Museum (1994), American Fine Arts Co. (1990), and the Jack Tilton Gallery (1985) among others. His work is included in more than forty public collections including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the Brooklyn Museum; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. He has published more than 75 individual artist’s books, the latest of which ‘O My Goodness!’ is published on the occasion of his White Columns exhibition.)
For more information about Charles Clough please visit his website:
