Open Walls
Curated By Matthew Higgs
Exhibition Description
“Open Walls” is an exhibition of new work by six emerging artists based in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and London. The artists are Tariq Alvi (London and Rotterdam), Robin Graubard (New York), Colter Jacobsen (San Francisco), Christopher Russell (Los Angeles), Pam Servatius (Los Angeles), and Alexandre Singh (New York). Taking the gallery’s existing architecture as its starting point – White Columns’ main space consists of six distinct walls, which are interrupted by five separate entrances and exits – “Open Walls” will consist of six autonomous, and completely unrelated installations. With each artist’s work occupying one of the gallery’s six wall spaces, “Open Walls” might be thought of as a response to White Columns’ ongoing “White Room” series (1983 – present) which presents an artist’s work in a singular, isolated context. “Open Walls” instead seeks to foreground six distinct projects within the framework of a shared, cooperative environment. “Open Walls” might be thought of as an “anti-group show” – in so much as no consideration has been given to the relationships between the six artists, or the work that they might display. Considering that many group exhibitions are often held together by the most tenuous of organizing principles, “Open Walls” instead attempts to foreground difference, privilege diversity, and ultimately, resist homogeny.
Tariq Alvi is an artist based in London and Rotterdam. He was the 2005 Capp Street Project artist-in-residence at the CCA Wattis Institute in San Francisco, where he had a solo exhibition in April 2005. In 2001 he had a solo show at London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery. His work is represented by Cabinet Gallery, London.
Robin Graubard is an artist based in New York. Her photographs were included in “Indigestible Correctness I & II,” curated by Rita Ackermann and Lizzi Bougatsos in 2004 at Participant Inc., New York. More recently her work was a part of the exhibition and book CBGB and OMFUG : Thirty Years from the Home of Underground Rock. Robin has a concurrent exhibition on view at Momenta, Brooklyn.
Colter Jacobsen is an artist and musician based in San Francisco. Jacobsen’s works have been shown at Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, and in 2004, he curated “Pink Steam” an exhibition-cum-homage to the writers Kevin Killian and Dodie Bellamy held at the Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial Branch Library, San Francisco.
Christopher Russell is an artist and maverick publisher based in Los Angeles. His work has recently been exhibited in Los Angeles and Chicago. He is the publisher of Bedwetter and a host of other informal, often collaborative, publications that subvert conventional editorial and design logic.
Pam Servatius is an artist and filmmaker based Los Angeles. She recently graduated from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, where she studied alongside the legendary filmmaker George Kuchar.
Alexandre Singh is a British artist currently based in New York. A recent graduate from the School of Visual Arts, New York, his work was recently included in exhibitions at P.S.1 MoMA, New York, and Capsule, New York.
Exhibition Invitation
