Sam Durant: This Is Freedom?

(Saturday) (Saturday)

Picture: Sam Durant
Australian Aborigines Protest Over Bi-centenary Celebrations, Sydney, 1985 (200 Years of White Lies), 2009
Graphite on paper
28 1/4 x 42 3/8 inches

 

Blum & Poe is pleased to announce This Is Freedom?, an exhibition of recent work by Los Angeles based artist Sam Durant.

 

This exhibition will present a new body of Durant's light box signs and drawings. Looping back on one another, the drawings serve as personalized indexes for the light boxes by illustrating their origins in archive photographs from Aboriginal civil rights protests in Australia and African American and Native American civil rights protests in the United States. The light boxes recontextualize the handmade protest signs found in the photos into the glowing language of commercial signage, their impassioned words now super-sized and immortalized, albeit codified.

 

Durant often investigates social, historical, and political issues through sculpture, installation, photography, and drawing. He incorporates text and language that is imbued with these histories to find how the meaning is constructed and understood in society. These new signs were originally exhibited at the Sydney Biennial last year and expand on his previous signs, which drew from American civil rights demonstrations. This body highlights the parallels between US and Australian history with their shared colonial past and their oppressed Indigenous populations, and ultimately explores how historical moments can be reinstated, not only positioning one to reflect on the past, but to also to provoke a reinterpretation, and to consider the relevance in the present.

 

Sam Durant was born in Seattle, and lives and works in Los Angeles. Durant has had several one-person exhibitions, a selection of institutions include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Kunstverein Düsseldorf; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. His work has been included in such group exhibitions as the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, California (2008); Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (2008); 8 Bienal de Arte de Panamá, Panama (2008); Freedom at the Hague Sculpture Center in the Netherlands (2008); Unmonumental at the New Museum, New York (2007); the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, New York (2004); and the Venice Biennale, Italy (2002). This Is Freedom? marks Durant's eighth solo exhibition at Blum & Poe.

 

For additional information and press materials,
please contact the gallery at 310-836-2062 or info@blumandpoe.com

 

Blue & Poe

2754 S. La Cienega Boulevard

Los Angeles, California 90034

T : +1 310.836.2062

F : +1 310.836.2104

info@blumandpoe.com

www.blumandpoe.com

 

Opening hours :

Tues - Sat 10am - 6pm

Blum & Poe
S. La Cienega Boulevard
CA 90034 Los Angeles
United states
Array
http://www.blumandpoe.com/

Selection of further exhibitions in: United states

24.01.3086 - 24.03.3086
Mexican and Latino Art Museum | San Francisco | In Association With The Smithsonian Institution - Th
Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Blvd., Building D
San Francisco

Read more >>










Sam Durant: This Is Freedom? Blum & Poe Main address: Blum & Poe S. La Cienega Boulevard CA 90034 Los Angeles, United states Blum & Poe S. La Cienega Boulevard CA 90034 Los Angeles, United states

Picture: Sam Durant
Australian Aborigines Protest Over Bi-centenary Celebrations, Sydney, 1985 (200 Years of White Lies), 2009
Graphite on paper
28 1/4 x 42 3/8 inches

 

Blum & Poe is pleased to announce This Is Freedom?, an exhibition of recent work by Los Angeles based artist Sam Durant.

 

This exhibition will present a new body of Durant's light box signs and drawings. Looping back on one another, the drawings serve as personalized indexes for the light boxes by illustrating their origins in archive photographs from Aboriginal civil rights protests in Australia and African American and Native American civil rights protests in the United States. The light boxes recontextualize the handmade protest signs found in the photos into the glowing language of commercial signage, their impassioned words now super-sized and immortalized, albeit codified.

 

Durant often investigates social, historical, and political issues through sculpture, installation, photography, and drawing. He incorporates text and language that is imbued with these histories to find how the meaning is constructed and understood in society. These new signs were originally exhibited at the Sydney Biennial last year and expand on his previous signs, which drew from American civil rights demonstrations. This body highlights the parallels between US and Australian history with their shared colonial past and their oppressed Indigenous populations, and ultimately explores how historical moments can be reinstated, not only positioning one to reflect on the past, but to also to provoke a reinterpretation, and to consider the relevance in the present.

 

Sam Durant was born in Seattle, and lives and works in Los Angeles. Durant has had several one-person exhibitions, a selection of institutions include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Kunstverein Düsseldorf; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. His work has been included in such group exhibitions as the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, California (2008); Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (2008); 8 Bienal de Arte de Panamá, Panama (2008); Freedom at the Hague Sculpture Center in the Netherlands (2008); Unmonumental at the New Museum, New York (2007); the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, New York (2004); and the Venice Biennale, Italy (2002). This Is Freedom? marks Durant's eighth solo exhibition at Blum & Poe.

 

For additional information and press materials,
please contact the gallery at 310-836-2062 or info@blumandpoe.com

 

Blue & Poe

2754 S. La Cienega Boulevard

Los Angeles, California 90034

T : +1 310.836.2062

F : +1 310.836.2104

info@blumandpoe.com

www.blumandpoe.com

 

Opening hours :

Tues - Sat 10am - 6pm

Book tickets