deCordova
sculpture park + museum
The 2010 DeCordova Biennial
January 23 - April 25, 2010
The 2010 DeCordova Biennial featuring the work of seventeen New England artists. This exhibition will take over the majority of the Museum, offering visitors a unique opportunity to look at the work of artists from across the region of New England. The 2010 DeCordova Biennial is a survey exhibition, focused on emphasizing the quality and variety of work rather than any single or overarching theme. The exhibition showcases artists who range from the emerging to the internationally acclaimed. Highlighting artists from across New England, the exhibition displays a range of approaches to different media, including innovative performance pieces, video installations, sculpture, painting, and photography.
For the past twenty years, DeCordova has supported the local New England arts community through The DeCordova Annual Exhibitions. The 2010 Biennial is a revised presentation of this ongoing series. The Museum has revitalized this program by broadening its curatorial voice to include an advisory board of esteemed arts professionals from New England and by shifting to a two-year cycle. The 2010 Biennial Advisory Board includes Mark Bessire, Director, Portland Museum of Art, George Fifield, Director, Boston CyberArts Festival, and Jennifer Gross, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Yale University Art Gallery.
“With The 2010 DeCordova Biennial, DeCordova continues to express its commitment to regional artists, but has dramatically sharpened its focus with an emphasis on quality. The 2010 Biennial offers more variety and a much larger spectrum of artists” said Director Dennis Kois. “DeCordova is excited to collaborate with other esteemed professionals such as Mark Bessire, George Fifield, and Jennifer Gross. In broadening our curatorial voice, DeCordova will provide the public with more diverse perspectives on contemporary art from other established members in the field, allowing our visitors to better engage with the discourse of contemporary art.”
The 2010 Biennial exhibition sketches out the topography of the current landscape to highlight the most pressing themes in art-making today. It undertakes momentary ‘core samples’ by dipping into often overlooked yet vital historical figures that have impacted the region. Featuring fusions of art and science, the exhibition explores both internal and external terrains. Some artists investigate the relationship between art and “outer space,” while others remain focused on terra firma and the subjective, analyzing motifs of the body, critiquing excess and the relationship between the grotesque and the glamorous. In response to their anxieties about the contemporary world, artists return to utopian themes and ways of thinking. Others juxtapose modern-day concerns with both the past and the future as they map and chart personal, epistemic, and national histories.
“The goal of the 2010 Biennial is to provide a snapshot of the broad range of art practices that are currently happening in New England, while being mindful of the traditions that feed those very practices” said Assistant Curator Dina Deitsch. “Therefore, this exhibition includes both new and older work, emerging and more established artists, to better reflect the complexities and intricacies of this region’s rich artistic landscape.”
The 2010 Biennial also hopes to collaborate with alternative exhibition spaces throughout New England to create multiple-site installations that link this Massachusetts-based exhibition with artistic hubs in Connecticut, Maine and Rhode Island, as well as sites in downtown Boston.
The following seventeen New England artists will be featured in The 2010 DeCordova Biennial:
Greta Bank, ME; Ross Cisneros, NH; Georgie Friedman, MA; Paul Laffoley, MA; Phil Lique, CT; Xander Marro, RI; Christopher Mir, CT; Liz Nofziger, MA; Oscar Palacio, MA; Otto Piene, MA; William Pope.L, ME; Randy Regier, ME; Ward Shelley, CT; Laurel Sparks, MA; Mark Tribe, RI; August Ventimiglia, MA; Karin Weiner, ME.
Organized by Assistant Curator Dina Deitsch, this exhibition will be accompanied by an exhibition catalogue. The 2010 DeCordova Biennial has been funded by the Deborah A. Hawkins Charitable Trust.
DeCordova Sculpture Park + Museum
51 Sandy Pond Rd
Lincoln, MA 01773
