For Immediate Release: December 16, 2005
KIM LEVIN
NOTES AND ITINERARIES, 1976 - 2004
January 7 - February 4, 2006
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts will exhibit Notes and Itineraries by Kim Levin, a prominent New York art critic and curator. As a regular contributor to The Village Voice, Levin was responsible for compiling and evaluating its weekly art listings for more than twenty years. Devising a system to organize the information about hundreds of ever-changing exhibitions, Levin used available scavenged gallery promotional material to write down her lists for gallery visits and her on-site observations, coding her reactions as she progressed. Encouraged to save these documents, Levin accumulated a prodigious archive directly connected to the very subject of her weekly investigations – a multi-layered survey of the vibrant New York art scene into the twenty-first century.
With visual impact, the installation provides the opportunity for historical analysis and personal recollections. Projecting from the wall in rhythmic patterns, hundreds of notated gallery cards chronicle the years from 1995 to 2004 from which the viewer can extract spheres of inquiry – aesthetic trends, trajectories of careers, shifting power centers, and economic cycles. Patchwork grids of annotated press releases and announcements capture the energy and diversity of the times, revealing highlights and hidden surprises. Another collection of postcard announcements, not annotated, beginning as early as 1976, documents the merging of minimalism into the funhouse of the ‘80s, the rise and fall of the East Village, and the scourge of AIDS.
The exhibition is organized with John Salvest, an Arkansas artist, whose work relates to accumulation. As curator for an exhibition of Levin’s archives at Delta Axis @ Marshall Arts in Memphis in 2003, he has written: I suppose that Ms. Levin’s contribution can be conveniently examined via microfiche and the digital archives of The Village Voice.…But I prefer the spontaneous notes and impromptu drawings on scraps of dated material, evidence of an inventive and disciplined mind fully engaged with the art of a particular time in a particular place.
Kim Levin, author of Beyond Modernism: Essays on Art from the ‘70s and ‘80s (Harper Collins 1988; Tokyo Shoseki 1991), has taught at the Philadelphia College of Art, Parsons The New School for Design, Claremont Graduate School, and The School of Visual Arts. She was advisor to the 1995 Kwangju Biennial in Korea and has organized exhibitions in Denmark, Germany, Japan, Norway, Poland, and the United States. President of the International Association of Art Critics from 1996 to 2002, her awards include the Art/World Award for Distinguished Newspaper Journalism in 1986 and the SECA Fellowship for Criticism by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1993. In 2004, she was selected as a Fellow for the Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Program.
The exhibition coincides with the following New York exhibitions: The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974 - 1984 at the Grey Art Gallery and The Fales Library, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library at New York University (January 10 - April 1); and Anarchy to Affluence: Design in New York, 1974 - 1984 at Parsons The New School for Design (January 10 - April 2).
There will be a reception January 7 from 6 – 8:00. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 – 6:00. Monday by appointment. For information, contact Sarah Paulson (212) 226-3232 or sarah@feldmangallery.com.
