Michael Queenland
15 Sep - 22 Dec 2012
© Michael Queenland
Rudy’s Ramp of Remainders (detail), 2012
Plasticized balloon, Kix cereal, newspapers
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist
Rudy’s Ramp of Remainders (detail), 2012
Plasticized balloon, Kix cereal, newspapers
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist
MICHAEL QUEENLAND
Rudy’s Ramp of Remainders
15 September - 22 December 2012
Rudy’s Ramp of Remainders is a new sculptural installation by conceptual artist Michael Queenland. Rudy’s Ramp of Remainders was inspired by Rudis Resterampe—which roughly translates to “Rudy’s Pile of Leftovers”—a German discount store filled with surplus scraps of textile and discarded cultural items that Queenland discovered during his 2009 fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin. Queenland’s installation transforms various materials into “ramps”—loosely grouped remainders and offcuts of objects. These “ramps” reveal how commonplace material and cultural items are reshaped and redefined through Queenland’s artistic intervention.
Organized by SMMoA's newly appointed curator-at-large Jeffrey Uslip, Rudy’s Ramp of Remainders takes the form of a surplus environment where Queenland’s sculptural assemblages serve as cultural inventory. Layers of newspapers, folded open and vertically stacked, cover the floor of the exhibition space and serve as the ground on which the new sculptural forms are installed. Plasticized balloons, found objects, industrial bread racks, metal pipes, and perishable goods—that exemplify Queenland’s signature visual vocabulary—are arranged on top of the newspaper. Rudy’s Ramp of Remainders continues Queenland's examination of cultural, communal, and biographical forms that are at once dislocated from their original context and repositioned in the collective imaginary. A printed interview between Queenland and Uslip will accompany the exhibition.
Major support for this exhibition has been provided by Marlborough Chelsea, New York, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional funding has been provided by the City of Santa Monica and the Santa Monica Arts Commission; Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; Dean V. Ambrose; Abby Sher; Peter A. Gelles and Eve Steele Gelles; Pasadena Art Alliance; and Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation.
About the artist:
Michael Queenland was born in 1970 and lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut. He earned Bachelor’s of Arts and Master’s of Fine Arts degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles. Queenland’s work has been shown in such distinguished venues as The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, Portland; Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; and Massachusetts College of Art, Boston. His work is included in the permanent collection of The Studio Museum in Harlem. Queenland is an assistant professor of sculpture at Yale University Graduate School of Art.
About the curator:
Jeffrey Uslip (b. 1977) is a New York-based independent curator, who has organized exhibitions for PS1/MOMA, New York, Artists Space, New York, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, California State University, Los Angeles, and LAXART, Los Angeles. He is an online contributor to Art Forum, has lectured at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and is currently a doctoral candidate at The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Rudy’s Ramp of Remainders
15 September - 22 December 2012
Rudy’s Ramp of Remainders is a new sculptural installation by conceptual artist Michael Queenland. Rudy’s Ramp of Remainders was inspired by Rudis Resterampe—which roughly translates to “Rudy’s Pile of Leftovers”—a German discount store filled with surplus scraps of textile and discarded cultural items that Queenland discovered during his 2009 fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin. Queenland’s installation transforms various materials into “ramps”—loosely grouped remainders and offcuts of objects. These “ramps” reveal how commonplace material and cultural items are reshaped and redefined through Queenland’s artistic intervention.
Organized by SMMoA's newly appointed curator-at-large Jeffrey Uslip, Rudy’s Ramp of Remainders takes the form of a surplus environment where Queenland’s sculptural assemblages serve as cultural inventory. Layers of newspapers, folded open and vertically stacked, cover the floor of the exhibition space and serve as the ground on which the new sculptural forms are installed. Plasticized balloons, found objects, industrial bread racks, metal pipes, and perishable goods—that exemplify Queenland’s signature visual vocabulary—are arranged on top of the newspaper. Rudy’s Ramp of Remainders continues Queenland's examination of cultural, communal, and biographical forms that are at once dislocated from their original context and repositioned in the collective imaginary. A printed interview between Queenland and Uslip will accompany the exhibition.
Major support for this exhibition has been provided by Marlborough Chelsea, New York, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional funding has been provided by the City of Santa Monica and the Santa Monica Arts Commission; Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; Dean V. Ambrose; Abby Sher; Peter A. Gelles and Eve Steele Gelles; Pasadena Art Alliance; and Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation.
About the artist:
Michael Queenland was born in 1970 and lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut. He earned Bachelor’s of Arts and Master’s of Fine Arts degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles. Queenland’s work has been shown in such distinguished venues as The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, Portland; Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; and Massachusetts College of Art, Boston. His work is included in the permanent collection of The Studio Museum in Harlem. Queenland is an assistant professor of sculpture at Yale University Graduate School of Art.
About the curator:
Jeffrey Uslip (b. 1977) is a New York-based independent curator, who has organized exhibitions for PS1/MOMA, New York, Artists Space, New York, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, California State University, Los Angeles, and LAXART, Los Angeles. He is an online contributor to Art Forum, has lectured at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and is currently a doctoral candidate at The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.