FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT
Lorraine Molina, Director
213.621.4055
BANK
125 W. 4th St. Los Angeles, CA 90013
Gallery Hours: TUES. – SAT. 11am-5pm
lorraine@bank-art.com
http://www.bank-art.com
DORIT CYPIS
Foreign Exchanges: Galileo
Project Room
Foreign Exchanges: Public Dialogue
September 13 - October 25,2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 13, 6 – 8PM
Performances:
Saturday October 4, 2pm
Saturday October 25, 2pm
"Foreign Exchanges: Galileo," is an immersive installation of photography, sculpture, and performance including mirrors, chairs, and a telescope. The words "Foreign Exchanges" come from Cypis' parallel practice as a professional mediator, where parties in conflict see each other as "foreign". The mediator's role is to guide an exchange between the parties so that the conflict is engaged with rather than used as justification to deny the other, allowing for mutual recognition to develop through empathy. In this installation, the "foreign exchange" is between "Galileo" and himself, the gallery viewer and "Galileo", and between the viewer and him/herself. Foreign Exchanges: Galileo is a dynamic evocation towards recognition of difference, within us and between us.
In the main gallery, circular concave magnifying mirrors, clustered on the wall like molecules or cells, are etched with the words memory, myth, history, fantasy, dream, family and desire, each one an aspect of identity held within, interior and invisible. Cypis coined these aspects 20+ years ago in questioning interiority and subjectivity as inter-dependant with cultural, visible qualifiers of identity, race, gender, class, sexuality, etc. Along another gallery wall are photographs of a forest; unattainable yet desirable, familiar, yet foreign, hung low so as to evoke a bodily sensation in the viewer when moving across them. The dominant image in the exhibition is a photographic portrait of a man looking through a telescope, Cypis' version of "Galileo" who also happens to be a physicist. The telescope serves as a surrogate eye seeming to pierce the surface of the photograph, reaching out towards what he sees. Across from him are clusters of circular photographs and mirrors appearing like molecules, cells, or stars, representing his sight yet to others appearing as somewhat familiar yet ultimately strange. Can we ever fully see/know what another sees? Who is "Galileo" and what does he see? Historically, Galileo upset the 17th century geocentric model of the universe, pronounced a heretic by the Catholic Church, and made invisible for daring to pronounce a new way of seeing. Can we engage empathically with "Galileo", recognizing that we cannot know his difference, yet accepting his difference, and ultimately ours?
In the second gallery are circular clusters of chairs facing each other, each one different from the others. They evoke people in their differences as they invite the viewer to sit and face another, suggesting engagement. On the walls around the chairs, are the photographs TreeTree and Galileo's telescope with the engraved text, "History, a relationship between you and me." During the exhibition Cypis will offer two performances to guide the public in dialogue on identity and social relations. To encourage civic engagement, Cypis will also invite local communities, including Continuation High-schools, to engage with this work and to participate in workshops on personal and social identity adapted to each audience.
Biography
Since the early 1980's Dorit Cypis has employed strategies of photography, performance, installation, sculpture and social interaction to explore personal and social identity as shifting relationships between corporeal, social, political and psychological spaces. Cypis' exhibitions are immersive laboratories abstracting forms, positions, gestures, and meanings to shed light on the paradoxes of identity. Her public works and actions are social/political extensions, mediating aesthetic abstractions back into daily life.
Dorit Cypis' work has been presented nationally and internationally including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, International Center of Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Orange County Museum, Walker Art Center, Musee d'Art Contemporain/Montreal, Musee des Beaux Arts/Bruxelles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Cypis has taught on identity, representation and social relations at universities and colleges across the USA as well as in Canada, Holland, France and Israel. She has received numerous awards including from the National Endowment for the Arts, Japan Foundation, Bush, McKnight, Jerome, Ordway, and Durfee Foundations, City of Los Angeles Cultural Arts Department and the Fellows of Contemporary Art. She is a founding member of Mediators Beyond Borders, and is on the Advisory Board for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.
Cypis has also generated extensive cultural programming including FAR (Foundation for Art Resources), Los Angeles, 1979-1982; Kulture Klub Collaborative (KKC), Twin Cities, 1992-1999, and We-C, ZERO1 Festival and Cisco Systems, San Jose, 2008. Currently Cypis continues to develop Foreign Exchanges, integrating aesthetics, mediation and somatic arts to design models of personal and social engagement. Dorit Cypis holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a Masters of Dispute Resolution from Pepperdine University.