The Current Pulse of the World

Emergency Room at PS1/MOMA - ER NYC :: February 8 - March 19, 2007 :: Opening Reception: February 11, 2007 12-6pm :: Raphaele Shirley, Lee Wells, and Paul Middendorf exhibit new collaborative works and installations.

Everyday there are topics which seem ignored or under represented by the media, such as the war, genocide, global warming and more. It is important to keep finding clues and links which would reveal new evidences on the reality we are living in. It is important to seek and redefine what constitutes the news as it seems to the mainstream media is fairly myopic (using censorship through omission) about what is really going on around us. The emergency room group will be replicating the idea of a set format, as the news media have which will be the base structure, image, the pictorial context of expression. Working to generate an iconic image, logo and memorable framework, the images will be disfigured or added to on a daily basis, creating a log, a trail, of emergency events. Fragments of paper, written notes, video, and performance will unfold a picture for the public. The transient and fast paced environment coupled with the premise of the installation is a great opportunity to experience a new form of artistic expression, experimenting and focusing intensely on the moment and the current pulse of the world.

Raphaele, Lee, and Paul are artists who are specializing in political critique, public interventions and collaborations. The triangle created between these artists will generate a dialogue, a smoke signal path, and a critical exchange related to what constitutes the news and how this can be expressed within this context. Varying in mediums used, alternating freely between live video, internet, performance, painting, photography and installation according the needs of the moment we will document everyday, each day at PS1. Using the fabric of the city as our palette of expression and source of news, bringing back to Emergency Room fragments of urgency and emergency. Emergency Room is a constantly evolving collaborative exhibition conceived and led by artist Thierry Geoffroy, a.k.a. Colonel.

Emergency Room is motivated by a desire to learn what other artists think about current affairs from varied international perspectives under strict time constraints. By providing a physical space in which artists can display works made in reaction to current events, Emergency Room takes the pulse of the artistic community today. On each day of the exhibition, artists will install new work in response to the events of the last 24 hours, an arrangement that recalls daily news cycles. The artworks stay on view until the next morning when they are moved to an adjacent archive space and replaced by new work.

Participating Artists: Jaishri Abichandani, Kamrooz Aram, Victor Ash, John Avelluto, Toby Barnes, Bill Beirne, Niels Bonde, Steven Day, Mike Estabrook, Frank Franzen, Charley Friedman, Nancy Friedmann, Deborah Grant, Jean de Piepape, Jens Haaning, Sophie Hjerl, Vandana Jain, Amy Kao, Lasse Lau, Shaun Leonardo, Peter Lind, Caroline Lund & Thorbjørn Reuter Christiansen, Al Masson, Marc Mer, Paul Middendorf, Mac Premo, Lisi Raskin, Susanne Schuricht, Raphaele Shirley, Lisa Strömbeck, Henrick Vibskov, Lee Wells.

Biographies

Paul Middendorf is living and working in Portland, Oregon as an artist and curator. In 2000 Paul received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and began launching his career as a painter. Currently Paul works as Director and Founder of Gallery Homeland. He has shown nationally and internationally, and most recently produced and performed in Scratching the Surface in Portland Or, Lifeboat-Miami for Art Basel’s International Art Fair, Lifeboat-Hamptons for The Scope Art Fair, and was co-curator for Waterways, an Istanbul Biennale project. Paul is still an active artists and curator working across the globe. www.manifestartistry.com

Raphaele Shirley lives and works in NYC. She specializes in collaborative projects and Public Art installations and events. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in interventionist projects such as ³Waterways² and ³Two Continents and Beyond² in the Venice (2005) and Istanbul Biennales (2005) and has shown recently in the Art Basel Video Lounge curated by Michael Rush. She has co-created several experimental projects including PAM Perpetual Art Machine and The New York International Fringe Festival. She works in diverse mediums ranging from sculpture to photography, video and sound.

Lee Wells is an artist, exhibition organizer and consultant currently living and working New York. He has been exhibited internationally for over 10 years, including the 51st La Biennale Di Venezia, Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinatti, Museo d’arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto and most recently included in the Art Basel Miami Beach Video Lounge curated by Michael Rush. He is a co-founder and director of IFAC-arts, in addition to co-founding, [PAM] the Perpetual Art Machine. www.perpetualartmachine.com, Cinema-Scope director for Scope Art Fairs and site editor for www.rhizome.org at the New Museum of Contemporary Art.