*** Artists Are Essential Workers/ Art Is An Essential Service will be installed at The Fireplace Project from September 25–27, 2020. 851 Springs Fireplace Road, East Hampton ***
Warren Neidich’s new text based sculptural installation recently installed at Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, New York, entitled, Artists Are Essential Workers/ Art Is An Essential Service is a poetic enunciation and reaction to and resulting from the imminent catastrophe of the spirit in our moment of the Covid epidemic. Neidich’s first act was that of transporting a 76 inch by 126 inch solar powered electronic highway bulletin board, used by municipalities for messaging passerby’s, from the highway to the Guild Hall Parking Lot where its size and context produces an uncanny presence. As such the source of Neidich’s announcement is obscure. Is this message something ordained by the powers in control or the result of another voice outside its dominion? By installing his work in the museum parking lot Neidich continues a trend he inaugurated in in his now famous Drive-By-Art exhibition of annexing formerly unused spaces for cultural provocation. His provocative message Artists Are Essential Workers, Art Is An Essential Service is a shout out to the artist community and museum culture at large, whose importance is always precarious but whose very existence has been put in jeopardy during the pandemic. Neidich is reaffirming the importance of cultural production in this moment of nihilism. Neidich’s piece is about asking a question: Can we imagine the healed human body without the healed human Spirit? Is it enough?
Christina Strassfield, Museum Director/Chief Curator noted “Guild Hall was delighted to be the first stop on the tour of this important piece which brings attention to the important role Art and Artists play in our society. The Sculpture helped inaugurate our John Drew Backyard Theater’s opening weekend. It will next be viewed at the Leiber Museum and we hope that it can travel to several other locations on the East End and perhaps return to Guild Hall for a final viewing.”
“Warren Neidich conceived of Drive-by Art earlier this summer which offered Artists the opportunity to showcase their work in an environment that helped alleviate some of the major Pandemic isolation we were all feeling.”
-
Warren Neidich
Warren Neidich uses written texts and neon-light sculptures to create cross-pollinating conceptual works that reflect upon situations at the border zones of art, science, and social justice. His performative and sculptural work Pizzagate Neon (2018), recently on display at the Venice Biennale 2019, analyzed, through a large hanging neon light sculpture, fake news and the post-truth society. Selected exhibitions include the Whitney Museum of American Art, PS1 MOMA, White Columns, Walker Art Center MIT List Visual Art Center, (Cambridge), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Museum of American Art (Washington D.C., US), Museum Ludwig (Köln, Germany), Haus Der Kunst (Munich), Zentrum für Kunst and Media (Karlsruhe, Germany), ICA London, Palais Tokyo (Paris, France), Villa Arson (Nice, France) and Kunsthaus Zürich. He has been a visiting lecturer in the Departments of Art at Brown University, GSD Harvard University, Columbia University, Princeton University, University of California, Los Angeles, the Sorbonne in Paris, France; and the University of Oxford and Cambridge University in the UK. His work has been the subject of over 150 magazine and newspaper articles, including The New York Times, Time Magazine, Artforum, Art in America, Kunstforum International, The Art Newspaper, Smithsonian Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, Hyperallergic, Artnet, GQ, Forbes, Vogue IT, Monopol, Performance Art Journal, , Time Out, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, and Frieze.
To learn more visit https://www.warrenneidich.com/