PRESS RELEASE February 25, 1977


DOUGLAS DAVIS

Questions New York Moscow New York
Seven Thoughts
Keeping Time

March 6-March 26, 1977

33 East 74 Street, New York City Mon-Sat/10-5:30 212-249-4050

Three new series of works by Douglas Davis will be exhibited at the Ronald Feldman Gallery from March 6 to March 26. Each is concerned with ideas and images employed as content and transmitted through time and space. These works are all realized through a variety of mediums, including photography, videotape, performance, printmaking, the global satellite, and social/political systems. But in each case, the media are subservient to the messages they transmit. The works (which are more fully described below) include an unprecedented collaboration between American and Russian artists, the first personal use of the global satellite by an individual artist, and experimental printmaking.

Questions New York Moscow New York Moscow is a year long collaboration between Douglas Davis and Alexander Melamid and Vitaly Komar -- two Russian artists now living in Moscow who exhibited at the Feldman Gallery last year. The newly-completed piece consists of five photographs, four of them spliced montages of the artists in their respective countries. The fifth concerns the taking of the third photograph at Art Park last July 4th and includes statements by Davis and Komar/Melamid. The artists were photographed simultaneously on four separate occasions in 1976, on dates significant to the United States and the Soviet Union: January 1, May 1, July 4, and November 7. They were photographed standing against a wall on which a black line was painted. The artists each held a canvas posing identical questions -- Davis's in Russian and Komar/Melamid's in English. Each of the four questions pertains to the meaning of the line itself, which at once unites and separates them.

As art historian Irving Sandler comments in a catalogue essay accompanying the New York Moscow exhibition, "The line of reasoning in Questions is aesthetic, implying that beyond its line as form lies content....As artists, Davis, Komar & Melamid have drawn a line at which creative ideas touch and cross, as a potential alternative to divisive party lines."

This piece will be exhibited concurrently at four other institutions in the United States. The participating exhibitors are the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Des Moines Art Center, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Washington Project for the Arts. The Department of Slavic Languages and Literature and the Student Association of George Washington University will be sponsoring a lecture at Marvin Theater, March 10th, to mark the official opening of the piece at which Douglas Davis and critic Marianne Tighe, will discuss the work.

Seven Thoughts is a documentary installation of a performance held in the empty Houston Astrodome -- without an audience -- on December 29, 1976 sponsored by the Contemporary arts Museum in Houston.

The core of the work is a message from the artist that was transmsitted to the global radio satellite. This performance marked the first attempt by an individual to use the global satellite in a personal way. The message could only be heard if the receiving stations throughout the world (notified in advance of the transmission by cable) would permit it to be received. The artist's statement is intended only for the single ear and mind -- a secret message from the artist to the world's private mind. The installation consists of objects, text, and photogoraphs. A videotape of the actual performance will be available for viewing upon request.

Keeping Time is a series of six prints with text by Arturo Schwarz published in 1976 in an edition of 25. Each print measures 30 x 22 inches. One of the objects in printing this series was to work on the presses and on the prints themselves by hand with immediacy and intimacy. A variety of printing techniques were used -- lithography, photoengraving, half-tone plates, etched and engraved plates, and a large rubber stamp. In addition, Davis utilized his own hand prints, foot prints, and ear prints. Each print was stamped by a time clock, sometimes many times, as each significant proces of the print was completed.

Although many of the images originated in the artist's videotapes and performances, they are by no means intended to document work done in another medium. Instead, they exist as independent images presented through innovative printmaking techniques. In certain cases, the prints resolve gestures appearing in previous work, completing rather than suggesting them.