A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial

media release

1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street New York NY 10036 T 212 857 0045 F 212 857 0090 www.icp.or

May 17, 2013 - September 22, 2013

A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial, a global survey of contemporary photography and video, will be on view at the International Center of Photography (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street) from May 17 to September 22, 2013. Filling ICP’s entire gallery space as well as its exterior windows, the exhibition will feature 28 emerging and established artists from 14 countries whose works speak to and illuminate the new visual and social territory in which image making operates today. Artists include Nayland Blake, A.K. Burns, Thomas Hirschhorn, Elliott Hundley, Gideon Mendel, Wangechi Mutu, Sohei Nishino, Lisa Oppenheim, and Nica Ross. A complete list is below.

Starting from the premise that most photography is now produced, processed, and distributed in digital form, A Different Kind of Order explores the sometimes unanticipated consequences of this shift as revealed in the work of a wide range of international artists. For the younger artists in the Triennial, the digital revolution is something that happened during their childhood, and dealing with its ramifications has occupied most of their creative lives. For artists of this generation (such as Sam Falls, Andrea Longacre-White, and Oliver Laric), mixing the new idioms of digital imagemaking with the existing visual language of painting, sculpture, and collage is almost second nature. Other Triennial artists, wary of the advent of “screen culture,” emphasize the handmade qualities of their work, yet even they recognize that their efforts are situated within the space of a fully digitized, networked world.

“The ICP Triennial, the only recurring exhibition in the U.S. to focus on international contemporary photography and video, provides an unparalleled opportunity for visitors to encounter new works by established artists and to discover emerging artists,” said Mark Robbins, Executive Director of ICP. “A Different Kind of Order reflects our present moment of a new kind of order shaped by social, political, and technological changes.”

The exhibition sketches the contours of the new visual and social territory in which photography finds itself today. A number of key themes serve as guidelines that link the works in the exhibition:

• Artist as aggregator identifies one of the main aesthetic offshoots of the digital image environment: the present-day descendants of the “image scavengers” of the 1980s who are now busy plundering and reorganizing found, online photographs into highly personal, web-based archives.

• The resurgence of collage is evident in works that combine photographic fragments, digital images, paint, three-dimensional objects, and audio and video material to blast open and reconfigure the space of the photograph in unprecedented ways.

• At a time when all manner of power structures are being called into question, mapping has become a renewed subject of artistic inquiry—part of a wider fascination with the power of ordering systems that has emerged in response to the dematerialized disorder of the Internet’s environment.

• The Internet’s dissolution of geographic distance has spurred the development of new forms of community, allowing artists to explore new forms of connection, collaboration, and multiple authorship that do not depend on physical proximity.

• In cooperation with ICP Associate Librarian Matthew Carson, the exhibition will also include an installation of approximately 100 recent photo books, which testifies to the extraordinary boom in selfpublished and small-press photo books now occurring around the world.

A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial was organized by ICP curators Kristen Lubben, Christopher Phillips, Carol Squiers, and Joanna Lehan. See below for curator biographies.

EXHIBITION ARTISTS

Roy Arden b. 1957, Vancouver; lives and works in Vancouver 

Huma Bhabha b. 1962, Karachi, Pakistan; lives and works in Poughkeepsie, New York

Nayland Blake b. 1960, New York City; lives and works in New York City

A.K. Burns b. 1975, Capitola, California; lives and works in New York City

Aleksandra Domanovic b. 1981, Novi Sad, former Yugoslavia; lives and works in Berlin

Nir Evron b. 1974, Herzliya, Israel; lives and works in Tel Aviv

Sam Falls b. 1984, San Diego; lives and works in Los Angeles

Lucas Foglia b. 1983, New York City; lives and works in San Francisco

Jim Goldberg b. 1953, New Haven; lives and works in San Francisco

Mishka Henner b. 1976, Brussels; lives and works in Manchester, England

Thomas Hirschhorn b. 1957, Bern, Switzerland; lives and works in Paris

Elliott Hundley b. 1975, Greensboro, North Carolina; lives and works in Los Angeles

Oliver Laric b. 1981, Innsbruck, Austria; lives and works in Berlin

Andrea Longacre-White b. 1980, Radnor, Pennsylvania; lives and works in Los Angeles

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer b. 1967, Mexico City; lives and works in Montreal

Gideon Mendel b. 1959, Johannesburg; lives and works in London

Luis Molina-Pantin b. 1969, Geneva, Switzerland; lives and works in Caracas, Venezuela

Rabih Mroué b. 1967, Beirut; lives and works in Beirut

Wangechi Mutu b. 1972, Nairobi, Kenya; lives and works in New York City

Sohei Nishino b. 1982, Hyogo, Japan; lives and works in Tokyo

Lisa Oppenheim b. 1975, New York City; lives and works in New York City and Berlin

Trevor Paglen b. 1974, Camp Springs, Maryland; lives and works in New York City

Walid Raad b. 1967, Beirut; lives and works in New York City

Nica Ross b. 1983, Tempe, Arizona; lives and works in New York City

Michael Schmelling b. 1973, Pittsburgh; lives and works in New York City

Hito Steyerl b. 1966, Munich; lives and works in Berlin

Mikhael Subotzky / Patrick Waterhouse b. 1981, Cape Town, South Africa; lives and works in Johannesburg

/ b. 1981 Bath, England; lives and works in Italy, England, and South Africa

Shimpei Takeda b. 1982, Sukagawa, Fukushima, Japan; lives and works in New York City

(more)

1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street New York NY 10036 T 212 857 0045 F 212 857 0090 www.icp.org