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In
The Brown Foundation Gallery:
The Puppet Show
January 17 – April 12, 2009
The Handspring Puppet Company and William
Kentridge
Ubu and the Truth Commission, 1997
Video documentation of a play for puppets and
actors, 90 minutes
Courtesy of the artists
International in scope, The Puppet Show brings together
contemporary artworks in a variety of media that explore the
imagery of puppets. From actual puppets, to works that evoke topics associated with puppetry and others that introduce new variations to this historical and
global form of theater, The Puppet Show features works that are, in various ways,
movable and/or moving objects that perform as alter-egos for the artist or as human
surrogates—often with wicked good humor. Featured artists include Guy Ben-Ner,
Nayland Blake, Louise Bourgeois, Maurizio Cattelan, Anne Chu, Nathalie Djurberg,
Terrence Gower, The Handspring Puppet Company, Pierre Huyghe, Christian
Jankowski, Mike Kelley, William Kentridge, Cindy Loehr, Annette Messager, Paul
McCarthy, Matt Mullican, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Philippe Parreno and
Rirkrit Tiravanija, Laurie Simmons, Doug Skinner and Michael Smith, Kiki Smith, Survival
Research Laboratory, Kara Walker, and Charlie White.
“The Puppet Show” is organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. It is co-curated by Ingrid Schaffner, ICA Senior Curator, and Carin Kuoni, Director, The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
ICA thanks the following funders of The Puppet Show: Barbara B. & Theodore R. Aronson; Etant donnes: The French-American Fund for Contemporary Art; Susquehanna Foundation; The Toby Fund; The Bandier Family Foundation; Goldberg Foundation; Sotheby’s; Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation; The Chodorow Exhibition Initiative Fund; and the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, a program of The Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and administered by University of the Arts.
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In
the Zilkha Gallery:
Perspectives 164
Stephanie Syjuco: Total Fabrications
December 12, 2008 – February 22, 2009
Jungle Valley (Bedroom), 2007
C-print
In her first solo museum show, Stephanie Syjuco presents bootlegged videos, counterfeit remnants of the Berlin Wall, appropriated Houston newspapers, forged modernist furniture, and photographs made with pirated tourist snapshots. Her concept-driven work combines the materiality of digital information and technologies with craft traditions both celebrated and marginalized. With a critical eye, the San Francisco-based artist explores how we construct, perceive, and value cultural authenticity.
Today’s global capitalist economy is full of black-market fakes and falsehoods in every stage of production and consumption. Syjuco sees each of these infidelities as an opportunity for agency—her own and the viewer’s. By examining and constructing objects with fictional identities and histories, the artist reveals a larger truth: that we constantly invent narratives about ourselves and about others.
Syjuco was born in Manila, Philippines in 1974, and currently lives and works in San Francisco. She has exhibited individually at James Harris Gallery, Seattle; Haines Gallery, San Francisco; Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington; and John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco. Her work has been featured in numerous group shows including PS1, New York; the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; The New Museum, New York; SFMoMA, San Francisco; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Osage Gallery, Hong Kong; the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; and her work was included in the 2002 California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach. In 2007 she exhibited a global counterfeiting project at art spaces in Beijing, Manila, and Istanbul. Syjuco earned her MFA from Stanford University in 2005, her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 1995, and participated in the New York Studio Program (Parsons School of Design and NYU) in 1994.
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