Marit Folstad Blow Up #1, 1999 Video; TRT: 13 min. 29 sec. Courtesy of the artist.

From January 30 - April 13, 2002, the AXA Gallery will present an exhibition of contemporary art investigating the nature of malleable and inflatable materials. Thin Skin: The Fickle Nature of Bubbles, Spheres, and Inflatable Structures comprises recent works of art that explore both the nature of the human body as a permeable sensor in constant osmotic exchange, and a new awareness of cyber- and “in-between” spaces that are neither real nor completely virtual, and situations neither in nor beyond our control.

Thin Skin is a traveling exhibition organized and circulated by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, a non-profit organization dedicated to contemporary art. The exhibition was co-curated by Barbara Clausen and Carin Kuoni, ICI’s Director of Exhibitions. The illustrated catalogue published by ICI features essays by the co-curators and is distributed by D.A.P. The exhibition was funded, in part, by Gerrit L. Lansing and Suydam R. Lansing; the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V., Stuttgart; the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cultural & Scientific Relations Division, and the Consulate General of Israel in New York. The AXA Gallery is sponsored by AXA Financial and its subsidiary The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. Additional assistance has been provided by AXA Art Insurance Corporation.

Lee Boroson (Untitled), 2001 Nylon, blower, webbing, hardware, velcro, air. Photo: George Hirose

Thin Skin features a selection of humorous and seductive works in different media, including sculpture, photography, room-size installations, and video projections. In some instances viewers are encouraged to interact with these thin-skinned works of art by stretching, peeling, or popping them. As viewers move through the gallery they may experience a sense of spatial ambiguity and find themselves manipulating or being manipulated by the multitude of bubbles, spheres, and malleable structures.

Selected Works in the Exhibition

Viewers will enter the gallery through a site-specific sculpture by Lee Boroson, an air-filled nylon “gate” to the exhibition, constructed of cloud-like shapes supported by soft fabric columns.

In a tragicomic piece by Pipilotti Rist, immense soap bubbles rise up only to collapse a few moments later under their own weight.

The concept of life-instilling breath is taken up in Sutee Kunavichayanont’s rubber bodies: visitors are encouraged to use their own breath to blow up the rubbery shapes until these resemble human beings. Standing long after the visitor has left, these inflatable figures provoke an almost eerie sense of temporality.

Dorothee Golz Hollow World III, 1999 (in the foreground) Plastic, metal, fiberglass, and electric blower.

The unstable nature of bubbles and inflatable structures can be experienced physically in an installation of gauze-like fabrics by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto. Ann Lislegaard’s vision of warped space involves a video projection of her own studio, spatially distorted and re-composed. Several other artists, such as Olafur Eliasson, have created installation situations that play with properties of air and other gases, and the liquid skins or films containing them.

Historical works anchor the exhibition. A photo series documents James Lee Byars’s historic performance Untitled (Up/What?), 1968, in which he let a hot-air balloon surge above 53rd Street in Manhattan, visually connecting ground and air through a mile-long golden thread attached to the balloon. A similarly all-encompassing perspective is provided by Charles and Ray Eames’s film The Powers of Ten, 1968. A couple is seen picnicking on the shores of Lake Michigan. As the camera moves away we see them at ever greater distance, until, eventually, they’ve become a dot on the planet earth. As the camera pulls back even further, the planet itself has turned into a bubble in a galaxy within other galaxies. Piero Manzoni’s Artist’s Breath, 1960, is just that, captured in a frail rubber balloon. And, of course, Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds, 1966, are included here as well, hovering in midair, inviting the viewer to manipulate them.

Departing from recent exhibitions of inflatables, such as “Balloon Art” (Tokyo, 1998), “Bubbles” (Brussels, 1999), “Air en Forme” (Lausanne, Switzerland, 2000), and “airairshow” (Monaco, 2000), Thin Skin goes beyond the balloon and explores the condition that has led to the widespread resurgence of a material that first became popularized in architectural and design settings in the 1960s.

Curators

Andy Warhol Silver Clouds, 1966 Metalized polyester film filled with helium and air. Courtesy the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA

Barbara Clausen is an independent curator from Vienna and a graduate of the Curatorial Training Program at the DeAppel Stichting in Amsterdam. In recent years she has worked at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York (on exhibitions of the work of Robert Irwin, Thomas Schütte, Jorge Pardo, Rodney Graham, and others) and has curated several film and video screenings on Lawrence Weiner's filmic work.

Carin Kuoni is Director of Exhibitions at ICI and was formerly the director of the Swiss Institute, a non-profit cultural institution in New York. Kuoni was the editor of Energy Plan for the Western Man: Joseph Beuys in America and has curated and co-curated many exhibitions, including Common Houses: Siah Armajani and Hannes Brunner, Time Wise, and Chocolate!

Independent Curators International

ICI’s mission is to enhance the understanding and appreciation of contempoary art through traveling exhibitions and other activities that will reach a diverse national and international audience. Collaborating with a wide range of eminent curators, ICI develops its program of innovative traveling exhibitions and substantial catalogues to introduce and document sometimes challenging new work in all mediums by younger, as well as more established artists from the United States and abroad.

Since its founding in 1975, ICI has created almost 90 exhibitions that collectively have included the work of more than 2,000 artists. ICI exhibitions have been presented by over 400 museums, university art galleries, art centers, and alternative spaces in the United States and abroad. Each year, ICI exhibitions are on view in 30 to 40 cities throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe.

AXA Gallery presents works from all fields of the visual arts, with a special emphasis placed on exhibitions that would not otherwise have a presence in the city. The AXA Gallery is located in the atrium lobby of Equitable Tower, 787 Seventh Avenue at 51st Street, in New York City. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 11am - 6pm, and Saturday, noon to 5pm. The Gallery is closed on Sundays. Admission is free.