Tony Labat & Ignacio Gonzalez-Lang
05 - 25 May 2007
TONY LABAT & IGNACIO GONZALEZ-LANG
Harris Lieberman is pleased to present a two-person exhibition of work by Tony Labat and Ignacio Gonzalez-Lang. Though separated by a generation, Labat and Gonzalez-Lang share an interest in the exploration of cultural identity and the use of humor to investigate the social and political experience in America.
Tony Labat’s witty and caustic interventions utilize a variety of media including video, sculpture, performance, and photography. This exhibition will present a diverse group of works that span his thirty-year career. In these works, Labat assumes the role of provocateur, using the body (either his own or those of others) as a stage for exploration and political commentary.
Ignacio Gonzalez-Lang will present "Weird but True," an ongoing archive of bizarre but real stories from tabloid newspapers such as the New York Post. He pairs these anecdotes with related images to impart a visual identity to the found text. The archive also serves as a point of departure for a series of sculptures and actions that will be included in the exhibition. While incredibly poignant and sometimes political, this body of work documents marginal histories that in accumulated form produce an insightful look at human nature.
Tony Labat was born in Cuba in 1951. He has exhibited at MoCA in Los Angeles as well as MoMA in New York and SFMOMA in San Francisco. Most recently he was the subject of a retrospective at New Langton Arts in San Francisco and was included in the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville, Spain, curated by Okwui Enwezor. He is the Chairman of the New Genres Department at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Ignacio Gonzalez-Lang was born in 1975 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He received his MFA from Columbia University in 2003. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Art in General, New York and Fundacion Joan Miro, Barcelona. In 2005, Lang was included in the Day Labor exhibition at PS1 in New York, 33 1⁄2 at the ICA in London, and in the IX Baltic Triennial in Vilnius. He lives and works in New York.
Harris Lieberman is pleased to present a two-person exhibition of work by Tony Labat and Ignacio Gonzalez-Lang. Though separated by a generation, Labat and Gonzalez-Lang share an interest in the exploration of cultural identity and the use of humor to investigate the social and political experience in America.
Tony Labat’s witty and caustic interventions utilize a variety of media including video, sculpture, performance, and photography. This exhibition will present a diverse group of works that span his thirty-year career. In these works, Labat assumes the role of provocateur, using the body (either his own or those of others) as a stage for exploration and political commentary.
Ignacio Gonzalez-Lang will present "Weird but True," an ongoing archive of bizarre but real stories from tabloid newspapers such as the New York Post. He pairs these anecdotes with related images to impart a visual identity to the found text. The archive also serves as a point of departure for a series of sculptures and actions that will be included in the exhibition. While incredibly poignant and sometimes political, this body of work documents marginal histories that in accumulated form produce an insightful look at human nature.
Tony Labat was born in Cuba in 1951. He has exhibited at MoCA in Los Angeles as well as MoMA in New York and SFMOMA in San Francisco. Most recently he was the subject of a retrospective at New Langton Arts in San Francisco and was included in the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville, Spain, curated by Okwui Enwezor. He is the Chairman of the New Genres Department at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Ignacio Gonzalez-Lang was born in 1975 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He received his MFA from Columbia University in 2003. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Art in General, New York and Fundacion Joan Miro, Barcelona. In 2005, Lang was included in the Day Labor exhibition at PS1 in New York, 33 1⁄2 at the ICA in London, and in the IX Baltic Triennial in Vilnius. He lives and works in New York.