Alex Da Corte & Ericka Beckman - Gespräch & Ausstellungseröffnung
Mittwoch, 05. Juli 2017 - 18:00 Uhr
secession
Ericka Beckman: "Game Mechanics"
July 6 – September 3, 2017
Opening: July 5, 2017, 7 p.m.
Artist Talk: July 5, 2017, 6 p.m.
Alex Da Corte in conversation with Kim Nguyen (curator of CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco)
An event of the Friends of the Secession (in English)
The US-American artist with Venezuelan roots Alex Da Corte creates works – large-scale installations, videos and paintings – with an immersive effect that visitors to his exhibitions can hardly escape from. They radiate the sensual qualities of his worlds and a subversive humour that always contains resonances of something melancholy or wistful. Da Corte works with everyday items and mass-produced objects that he finds at flea markets, in dollar shops, thrift and home improvement stores. He transforms their original functions and meanings when, for example, he re-explores their formal potential and presents them alongside works by artists who are friends or whom he admires, or uses them as sculptural objects or props in his videos and installations so they can unfold new symbolic power.
Alex Da Corte, born in 1980 in Camden (New Jersey, USA), lives and works in Philadelphia.
The film and video works of US American artist Ericka Beckman focuses on games and sport competitions and their rules as well as featuring the playing field as an allegory for the development and maintenance of socio-cultural norms.
Beckman, who is recognised today as an important representative of the so-called picture generation, studied in the 1970s at the famous Californian Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts) in John Baldessari?s Post Studio class. The New York No Wave scene with their cross-over mediums was a further important influence on her as was the work of Jean Piaget, the cognitive development psychologist. She has frequently cooperated with artists of her own generation such as Mike Kelley, Matt Mullican, Tony Oursler or James Welling.
Ericka Beckman, born in 1951 in Hempstead (New York, USA), lives and works in New York City.