“I have to get on with my life”: Marni Kotak’s Found Performances from Birth to Present

“I have to get on with my life”: Marni Kotak’s Found Performances from Birth to Present

January 14, 2011 – February 11, 2011

Open reception: Friday, January 14, 7-9pm

Closing and live performance of “My Birth”:

Friday, February 11, 2011
8:00 pm

“You’re born in a bed, you dream in a bed, you make love in a bed, and you die in a bed.” – Marni Kotak, 2010

Marni Kotak will present a new performance entitled "My Birth" at the Alice Chilton Gallery, this Friday Night, February 11th at 8pm, in conjunction with the closing of her exhibition. In this live action, Kotak will undergo a public rebirthing ritual on her recently deceased grandmother's bed that the artist and her lover broke during sex. Typical of contemporary rebirthing practices, Kotak will employ cyclic breathing techniques in order to tap into and release traumatic memories stored in the deep reaches of her body consciousness. Starting from the recent past and moving deeper into her memory towards her birth, Kotak will re-experience traumatic events in her life, live in front of the audience, while simultaneously shedding layers of clothing, symbolic objects, documents and other memorabilia that relate to the distressing events, until she is ultimately bare and re-born. Leading her through this action will be her boyfriend, Jason Robert Bell, who will be present as a doctor/shaman/spiritual guide.  


Also available at the closing will be a limited-edition book with photos and written commentary about each of the artist’s performances from birth to present, and quotes by contemporary artists, curators and art writers, as well as members of the artist’s family, that speak to the concept of everyday life as art.


In her installation at Alice Chilton Gallery, I Have To Get On With My Life:  Marni Kotak’s Found Performances from Birth to Present, Kotak presents the major events in her life from birth to present within the context of a bedroom in a working class, New England town. The exhibit is installed in the style of her parents’ New England beach house utilizing household items that have been altered or imprinted with family photos, and includes photo plaques commemorating the ‘major performances’ conducted for each year of her life from 1974-2010. 

Background on Marni Kotak

Marni Kotak is a Brooklyn-based performance artist who creates interactive multimedia works in which she presents her life as art. Recent bodies of work include her MyHouse project whereby she proclaims that everything that transpires in her home in Bushwick, Brooklyn to be art; her on-going Livesystems through which she markets her everyday activities online and sells advertising on her body; and her Found Performances – or re-enactments of real life experiences – the latest of which, Sunny Blue Plymouth (2010), was just held at Fountain Art Fair in Miami, and involved a re-enactment of losing her virginity in a glittery blue Plymouth Acclaim, as well as a collaboration with international performance art group NONGRATA to destroy that same car. Other Found Performances include Hot Water Bags (2010), a re-enactment of childhood sexual exploration, at Plato’s Cave, S’mores (2009), held as part of the 10th Annual Open Art International Performance Art Festival in Beijing, China, My Grandfather’s Funeral (2009) at English Kills Gallery, and How to French Kiss (2009) at Grace Exhibition Space.

For more information, visit http://www.marnikotak.com

ALICE CHILTON GALLERY of PERFORMANCE ART DOCUMENTATION

147 Roebling Street Brooklyn, NY 11211 www.alicechiltongallery.blogspot.com

Press Contact: Gallery Director, Jill McDermid    646.78.3402

Alice Chilton Gallery at Fountain Art Fair, Miami

ALICE CHILTON GALLERY IS THRILLED TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FOUNTAIN ART FAIR, MIAMI 2505 North Miami Avenue Hours: Fri-Sat 11 am - 12 am Sun 11 am - 7 pm

Durational performances during all gallery hours:

AABIER (sisters Adina and Arielle Bier) and Kikuko Tanaka

plus Performance Art Documentation, Scores and Artifacts by performance artists from around the globe

Anonymous Boh

ANONYMOUS BOH : 

solo works and collaborations with non grata group

NOVEMBER 12 - JANUARY 9

Friday - Sunday 1:00 - 6:00 pm

Opening reception: Friday, November 12 

7:00 - 9:00 pm

The Alice Chilton Gallery is presenting an exhibition of new documentation, limited edition photographs, videos and catalogues by the Anonymous Boh of the Non Grata Group, which consists of over 40 international and anonymous members. ACG opened in 2009 with a show of works by Non Grata, and I believe it is important to keep up with this group, as they continue to expand their influence within the art world.

Their performances consist of lectures on the human condition, politics, economy and religion. They use the entire area they are performing to engage and interact with the audience. Their performances are wonderous spectacle lectures which delve deep into our psyches.  

They are also extremely diligent about their documentation, with skillful photography and videotaping, which is edited and bound into large hard cover catalogues.

Around the name NON GRATA there have been different hushes and shushes for a long time. Already from the point of view of death of conventionalization of art, it has embodied the horrible and unwanted disembodiment of human person, from which the meaninglessness of nowadays art is pouring out. For those whose world of art starts from the point where the art world ends, NONGRATA has been a liberator, the orphic gap in this seemingly unalterable course, which however betrays us it is a cure from incest. 

The main point of the ANONYMOUS BOH'S WORK is ethical - it is the image of primitivism, impersonality and experimental creativity. When working collaboratively, the  performances of the Non Grata Group take place according to the logic of avoiding codes. The presentations are physical texts, whose ways of orthography and reading are kept within limits of reactions by the group members. Aesthetical and provocative challenges are represented in places Where the Art World doesn’t work

NON GRATA is an International performance group with over 40 members, mostly from Estonia but also from Quebec, Finland, Sweden, Germany, USA, France, Chile. The main characteristics of the members are ANONYMITY in group work, ignorance of local art world and mass media. NON GRATA has performed in Asia, Europe, South and North America with street actions and long lasting ghetto marathons. 
 

http://www.nongrata.ee/news/index.htm

Sarah H. Paulson's "Foot to mouth: ONE minus one"

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15 

7:00 - 9:00 pm

 

2-hour performance  "Foot to mouth: ONE minus one" 

 

Performers:  Corey Bliss, Erin Jones, Yasamin Keshtkar, Marissa Mickelberg, Nancy H. Paulson, Susie Paulson, Emily Poole, Angela Vitacolonna, and Stephanie Waddell

 

People can enter and exit any time throughout the 2 hour piece. 

Sarah H. Paulson,"Your Point Will Change..." October 8 - November 7, 2010

Your point will change...

(recent performative drawings by Sarah H. Paulson)

October 8 - November 7, 2010

About the exhibition:

Alice Chilton Gallery will present Sarah H. Paulson's latest body of performative drawings. The exhibition will feature Paulson's Orgasm Drawings, which document the time and quality of the artist's orgasms via delicate non-linear markings. Also displayed will be works from the Doily Series in which found doilies are paired with Paulson's menstrual blood.  

An ongoing 2-hour performance will take place on Friday, October 15, 7-9pm atACG Gallery.

Bio:

Sarah H. Paulson lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her practice remains focused on The Performative. She creates drawings using her feet, or other body parts, and relies on environmental circumstances to dictate the duration of the act of mark-making. Such circumstances include the length of a song on the radio, the time it takes to reach orgasm, the movement of a dancing body on the television, or the length of time the artist can refrain from breathing, to name a few. 

Currently, she is working on the Doily Series in which she uses her blood as an autobiographical instrument. In using found doilies, she recycles the homemade decorative fabric of what others created and later abandoned. These works are a gathering of the discarded and eliminated and an homage to single moments within a cycle.

As she archives personal experience, Paulson allows the boundaries and overlaps between past and present, sexual encounters, human interaction, violence, power, and public vs. private to surface. The works serve as documents of these private, or semi-private, performances.

Paulson also collaborates with Holly Faurot on large-scale, endurance-oriented performance artworks that exist between the realms of performance art and dance. Their work has been performed internationally in galleries/venues including NYCAMS (NY Center for Art & Media Studies), NY; English Kills Art Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NY; NurtureArt, Brooklyn, NY; The Chocolate Factory Theater, Brooklyn, NY; P.I.T. (Projects In Transit), Brooklyn, NY; EXIT ART, NY; the Harold Clurman Center for New Works in Movement and Dance Theatre at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, NY; Open Art Gallery, Beijing, China, among others. 

For more information about Sarah H. Paulson's work go to www.sarahhpaulson.com.   

For more information on Faurot & Paulson's collaborative work go to www.faurotpaulson.com.

Photographs from the opening reception of He Chengyao Exhibition

Just a selection of photographs taken at the Opening Reception to the solo performance photography exhibition of He Chengyao at Alice Chilton Gallery, Willimasburg, Brooklyn.
The Gallery would like to thanks Jennifer, Myk Henry, Daniel & Kaye from the Front Room Gallery and Sebastián Hau-Walker for their help in the hanging and maintenance of the Gallery prior to the show's opening.