UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

CHARLES LEDRAY: workworkworkworkwork
July 16 – Oct. 17, 2010

This summer, the Institute of Contemporary Art opens an exhibition of the extraordinary art of New York-based artist Charles LeDray. Remarkable for their unexpected scale and fine detail, his sculptures can stop us in our tracks for the sense of wonder they elicit and the deeper human stories they suggest. The artist stitches together complete, tiny men’s suits, shirts, and other clothing. Cuffs, collars, hems, and buttons are all made by the artist. He throws thousands of ceramic pots, each barely the size of a finger. Objects carved from bone—a door, a bench, a model of the solar system—are each rendered with breathtaking precision. Accompanied by a full-color publication, this exhibition includes approximately 50 sculptures and installations, from early works to a new installation never before on view. Organized by ICA Associate Curator Randi Hopkins, CHARLES LEDRAY: workworkworkworkwork runs from July 16 to Oct. 17, 2010.  After its debut at the ICA, the exhibition travels to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (Nov. 18, 2010—Feb. 13, 2011) and to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (June-Sept. 2011). 

July 3, 2010 – Aug. 14, 2011

New York-based painter Francesca DiMattio is creating the fourth installation of the ICA’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall. DiMattio’s dizzying, perspective-defying paintings combine imagery from a wide range of architectural, decorative, and art historical sources, weaving together tiled floors, construction cranes, and even disco balls. To construct these compositions, she combines underlying grid patterns, lending a sense of logic to her seemingly chaotic assemblages. For the ICA, DiMattio is creating a new, site-specific work that transforms the Art Wall with five large-scale canvases.

 

 

Sept. 22, 2010 – Jan. 17, 2011*

From large-scale photographs of the Peruvian Amazon to experimental film to installations inspired by 17th-century frescoes, the artists selected for the 2010 Foster Prize offer a wide-ranging view of art being created in the Boston area today. Showcasing and celebrating work in our own community has been an integral aspect of the ICA’s exhibition program since the prize’s inception in 1999. This year, the biennial award show takes a new, expanded format, featuring work by nine artists: Robert de Saint Phalle, Eirik Johnson, Fred Liang, Rebecca Meyers, Matthew Rich, Daniela Rivera, Evelyn Rydz, Amie Siegel, and Steve Tourlentes. The exhibition, including sculpture, installation, film, video, painting, drawing, and photography, culminates in the selection of the Foster Prize recipient in Dec. 2010.

Mark Bradford
Nov. 19, 2010 – March 13, 2011

Mark Bradford is best known for his collage-layered paintings that poetically express the energy and poetry of life in the city, particularly Los Angeles where the artist lives and works. A recipient of a 2009 MacArthur Foundation Award (known as the "genius grant"), Bradford uses found materials—peeling movie posters, homemade flyers, salvaged plywood, even the endpapers used to perm black hair—to create his vibrant, textured compositions. Pop culture, identity politics, the history of collage, mapping, and abstract painting, are just a few of his influences. The first survey exhibition of the artist’s work, Mark Bradford includes painting, sculpture, installation, and video from 1997 to 2010, and several new works. Mark Bradford is a touring exhibition organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University.

 

Feb. 2 – July 4, 2011 
Gabriel Kuri is among a loose collection of brilliant young artists from Mexico to gain international attention in recent years. As in the recent Damian Ortega show at the ICA, this is Kuri's first solo museum exhibition in Boston. Kuri makes “witty, materially economical conceptual art with a political bite" (The New York Times). Using familiar materials such as receipts, newspaper or plastic bags, Kuri focuses our attention to contemporary consumer culture and the way money mediates almost all our human relationships and daily transactions. Approximately 30 sculptures and 15 collages will be on view, including Untitled (Superama)—a series of three, nine-foot tall tapestries intricately hand-woven in Mexico to resemble Wal-mart receipts. Accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue, Gabriel Kuri: Nobody needs to know the price of your Saab is organized by the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, and is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the U.S.

 

The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl
April 15 – Sept. 5, 2011
The Record is the first museum exhibition to explore the culture of vinyl records within the history of contemporary art. Bringing together artists from around the world who have worked with records as their subject or medium, this groundbreaking exhibition examines the record's transformative power, from the 1960s to the present. Through sound work, sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, photography, video and performance, The Record combines contemporary art with outsider art, audio with visual, fine art with popular culture, and established artists with those who will be exhibiting in a U.S. museum for the first time. The exhibition is organized by Trevor Schoonmaker, the Nasher Museum's curator of contemporary art.

Roni Horn aka Roni Horn
Through June 13, 2010

Featuring work from the 1970s to the present, Roni Horn aka Roni Horn is the most significant survey of the artist to date. Using a variety of materials such as 24-carat gold, glass, and pure pigment, Horn’s startlingly beautiful work focuses our attention on how things remain what they are and yet are never exactly the same from moment to moment. Over 50 works spanning three decades of the artist’s career are included—from sculptures, photographs, and collage/drawings to artist books, and an audio work played in

the ICA’s Founders’ Gallery overlooking Boston Harbor. Roni Horn aka Roni Horn is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in association with Tate Modern, London. 

ICA Collection: In the Making
Through July 18, 2010
In the Making is the fourth installation of the ICA Collection which debuted in 2006 with the opening of the waterfront museum. The new exhibition marks the progressive development of the collection’s scope and depth with a focus on artistic approaches to process and medium.  Rooms of photography, sculpture and

painting offer insights into the decisions artists made to create transformative works of art. In the Making introduces recent acquisitions by Nan Goldin, Roe Ethridge, and Tara Donovan, major works by Philip-Lorca

diCorcia, Gerard Byrne, and Cindy Sherman, and, for the first time, a gallery devoted to three decades of work by a single artist: the powerful paintings of Marlene Dumas. 

 

Dr. Lakra
Through Sept. 6, 2010
The ICA presents the first U.S. solo exhibition of Dr. Lakra, a Mexico-based artist and world-renowned tattooist. In Lakra’s work, images of pin-up girls, wrestlers and Mexican businessmen are covered with provocative and macabre drawings – creating a surreal mix of life, death, and desire. Using instruments such as ballpoint pens and tattoo needles, Lakra reworks the surface of found objects and vintage printed materials with a diverse range of patterns and symbols—including Chicano, Maori, Asian and Mexican “Day of the Dead” imagery. Playful, naughty, and often intentionally vulgar, his work crosses cultures, challenges social norms and explores individual and collective identity. The exhibition features approximately 60 works, including a new, large-scale mural created for the ICA. Dr. Lakra’s work has been featured in exhibitions at the Tate Modern, London (2005), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2007), among others.

Image captions (from top to bottom): Charles LeDray, Come Together, 1995-96, Collection: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Francesca DiMattio, Vulture (detail), 2006, Oil on canvas, 83 x 120 inches, (210.8 x 304.8 cm), Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York; Fred Liang, Over-Soul (detail), 2008, wall installation at Sun Shine Museum of Contemporary Art, Beijing, China.

 

About the ICA
An influential forum for multi-disciplinary arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art has been at the leading edge of art in Boston for more than 70 years. Like its iconic building on Boston's waterfront, the ICA offers new ways of engaging with the world around us. Its exhibitions and programs provide access to contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas.  The ICA, located at 100 Northern Avenue, is open Tuesday and Wednesday, 10 am - 5 pm; Thursday and Friday, 10 am - 9 pm; and Saturday and Sunday, 10 am - 5 pm.  Admission is $15 adults, $13 seniors and $10 students, and free for members and children 17 and under. ICA Free Admission for Youth is sponsored by State Street Foundation. Free admission on Target Free Thursday Nights, 5 - 9 pm. Free admission for families at ICA Play Dates (2 adults + children 12 and under) on last Saturday of the month. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our Web site at www.icaboston.org.

 

 

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