Just in – a video of the creation of one of Evan Roth’s propulsion painting that will be part of Intellectual Property Donor. It was created today in Wesleyan’s CFA Green. Enjoy!
From the Installation of Intellectual Property Donor
We are in the final day of installing Intellectual Property Donor and the gallery looks, well, fun! There is a faux TED Talk Stage that is fully functional, a photo of Beyoncé juxtapose someone’s hairy-faced self-portrait on the two story print of Roth’s internet cache, 3D sculptures of graffiti tags, structures made from empty spray paint cans and over 1,500 finger prints created by passing all the levels of Angry Birds. My personal favorite is shown here, “Slide to Unlock,” which is an enormous wall decal of the print Evan’s thumb makes when he slides to unlock his iPhone. (Fun activity for this work – take a photo with your phone and make it your wallpaper under your “slide to unlock.”) This show definitely brings together graffiti and technology in a smart way, but Evan’s sense of humor comes through loud and clear. He sees things I never even think about and repurposes them into something I will never be able to ignore again and makes me chuckle at the same time. This is a wonderful recipe for a great show.
Join us tomorrow for Evan’s talk at 4:30pm in the CFA Hall, followed by the opening reception in Zilkha Gallery from 5:30-7pm. (And if you are really brave, bring your PowerPoint and give us your best TED Talk!)
If you want to see more photos of the installation in progress, check out the CFA’s Facebook page. Be sure to Like us while you’re there!
Opening Reception and Talk by Evan Roth
Join us for the opening reception of Evan Roth//Intellectual Property Donor. Evan Roth will give a talk on Wednesday, February 5, at 4:30pm in the CFA Hall followed by the reception from 5:30pm to 7pm in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery.
We hope to see you there!
Evan Roth//Intellectual Property Donor
Wednesday, February 5 through Sunday, March 2, 2014
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery
Guest Curators: Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox of c2, curatorsquared
Artist Talk by Evan Roth: Wednesday, February 5, 2014 at 4:30pm in CFA Hall
Opening Reception: Wednesday, February 5, 2014 from 5:30pm to 7pm in Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery
FREE!
Evan Roth’s work occupies the irregular zone at the intersection of free culture with popular culture, where viral media meets art, and graffiti connects with technology. The powerful and surprising images, objects, and experiences in the exhibition Intellectual Property Donor suggest a new way to exist within the current environment shaped by our participation in an increasingly cyber and global world, yet grounded in our need for materiality and personal connections. Roth consistently intervenes into existing systems to subvert or transform them from the private realm to the public. His interest in graffiti and open source programming fall under the rubric of hacking. He often mentions a “handshake” moment between graffiti writers and hackers, noting the inherent potential to reach wider audiences and spread his way of thinking into genera
l popular culture by referencing the same systems and open source methodologies. Roth inventively takes his artist’s brain and reaches into the disparate worlds of computer programming and street culture, forging a new way to approach each realm. Based in Paris, he received his M.F.A. from the Parsons New School for Design; and co-founded the Graffiti Research Lab in 2005, and the Free Art and Technology Lab, an arts and free culture collective, in 2007. This exhibition is the largest one-person presentation of the artist’s pioneering, multifaceted work in the United States. Co-sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History.
About Evan Roth
Born in 1978 in Okemos, Michigan, Evan Roth earned a degree in Architecture from the University of Maryland, and an M.F.A. from the Design and Technology department at Parsons The New School for Design, where he graduated as class valedictorian. Roth worked at the Eyebeam OpenLab, an open source creative technology lab for the public domain as a Research and Development Fellow from 2005 to 2006 and was a Senior Fellow there from 2006 to 2007. Evan Roth co-founded the Graffiti Research Lab in 2005 and the Free Art and Technology Lab (FAT Lab), an arts and free culture collective, in 2007. He lives and works in Paris, France, where he relocated in 2010, attracted to the cheese and universal health care.
Roth’s work is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; it has been exhibited widely in the Americas, Europe and Asia, including the Centre Pompidou and Fondation Cartier, Paris, the Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, and the Tate, London; and his work has occupied the front page of YouTube. He has received numerous awards, including the Golden Nica from Prix Ars Electronica, Rhizome/The New Museum commissions, the Future Everything Award, the inaugural Transmediale Open Web Award, the Design Museum London’s Designs of the Year, and the prestigious Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award. This is the first major one-person presentation of the artist’s pioneering, multifaceted work in the US.