Endurance
November 14 - December 17, 1995
Endurance is an international survey exhibition that traces the work of twentieth-century visual and performance artists whose individual and collective works test the physical, mental, and spiritual endurance of the body. The works included derive from performance, body art action, and conceptual art pieces from the 1960s to the present. Endurance presents work that is often difficult to categorize and comprehend in a historical context. In doing so, Endurance is a visual elaboration on the dynamic and dramatic transformation in the contemporary arts from the 1960s to the present.
The exhibition includes work by 38 artists consisting of photographic documentation from key works that exemplify acts of endurance. The photographs are presented as large format mural prints lending the images a scale which corresponds to the body.
Endurance is defined as the extreme form of presence, an emphatic statement of existence, real time, and the physical limitations of the body and the will. Within these performances/actions there is an intention beyond the physical to reach the spiritual. The acts which encompass Endurance are rituals of the modern world; a way for the artist to prove a point with themselves and society; or, as an act of defiance where the artist becomes his/her own victim. Endurance is an action that mediates between triumph and defeat. In Endurance, art is a form of acting in which meaning changes from the visual to the physical then ultimately to the photograph, which is the final art/object.
Events & Programming
Exhibition reception
Tuesday, November 17
7:00 p.m.