Grear Patterson, Forest Theater

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Grear Patterson, Forest Theater, 2014, installation view, American Academy in Rome (photo by R. Apa)

Depart Foundation and the American Academy in Rome present

GREAR PATTERSON – FOREST THEATER
curated by Peter Benson Miller
Andrew Heiskell Arts Director, American Academy in Rome
Opening: Wednesday, October 8 2014, from 6pm to 9pm
On view: until November 30, 2014
The American Academy in Rome, Via Angelo Masina 5, Rome

A precocious former member of The Still House Group, New York-based American artist and photographer Grear Patterson distills language and its visual shorthand – a nowadays dictionary of winking and frowning emoticons – and reshuffles them into ambiguous ciphers. In so doing, he pinpoints a fundamental paradox in contemporary media culture: Even as communication networks have multiplied, modes of digital expression have boiled the vernacular down to a limited repertory of staccato signs. As if to underscore this chasm, his hieroglyphs are countered by images and videos almost overflowing with nostalgia for lost innocence and childhood rituals.

In a show named for the site of many of his most significant formative experiences, he plumbs the pleasures and anxieties of adolescence. Photographs, videos, paintings, and installations evoke both personal and collective rites of passage comprising a distinctly American experience embodied by, among other things, baseball cards, treehouses and summer camp. Evoking playgrounds and pranks, his work, alternating between disclosure and reticence, explores not only the immediacy of reckless experience, violent impulses and erotic yearning, but the halting emotional lexicon insufficient to express those furtive memories and desires.

A catalogue published by NERO will accompany the exhibition.

GREAR PATTERSON

Grear Patterson (b. 1988) attended Duke University and the School of Visual Arts in New York. His work has been exhibited in several group shows across the United States, the United Kingdom and France. He was included in the 9th Shanghai Biennale in 2012, and in the Los Angeles group shows Ain’t at Frank Pictures, curated by Louis Eisner and Nick Darmstaedter (2011), and Mondofornia at 9 Dudley Ave, organized by David Quadrini, in Venice Beach (2013). His first-time solo show, Nowhere Fast, was presented at Gloria Naftali, New York, in 2012; other solo shows were presented at Ellis King, Dublin, and Bill Brady KC, Kansas City. Upcoming shows in 2015 will be held at Marlborough Gallery, New York; Depart Foundation, Los Angeles; Carl Kostyál, Stockholm.

THE AMERICAN ACADEMY IN ROME

The American Academy in Rome supports innovative artists, writers, and scholars living and working together in a dynamic international community. Founded in 1894, the Academy emerged in 1914 in its present form as a hybrid center for the arts and humanities. It remains the premier American overseas center for independent study and advanced research. A not-for-profit, privately supported institution, the Academy annually offers the Rome Prize to approximately 30 individuals, following a national competition in which independent juries select candidates across disciplines, which include Literature, Music Composition, Visual Arts, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Design, and Historic Preservation and Conservation, as well as Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern, and Modern Italian Studies. The application deadline for the 2015 Rome Prize is 1 November. The Academy community also includes a curated group of Residents, Affiliated Fellows, and Visiting Artists and Scholars. This exceptional group of artists and scholars live and work at the Academy campus located in the Janiculum, one of the highest points in the city of Rome. To learn more about the American Academy in Rome, please visit: www.aarome.org.

DEPART Foundation

Like many outposts in Europe and U.S., DEPART Foundation, since its founding in 2008, has activated cultural communities through sponsorship of young and established artists and the provision of spaces and resources conducive to the production and exhibition of art and to the presentation of educational and public programs. It serves as a catalyst for the Italian art community, strengthening the dialogue between Italy and the international art world. DEPART Foundation has supported the local art scene, presented local artists in cities as far as New York and Los Angeles and collaborated with important art institutions (among others, the Macro and MAXXI museums in Rome, the American Academy in Rome, the Serpentine Gallery in London and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles). DEPART Foundation has just opened a new 3.200-square-foot project space on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, Los Angeles to provide a platform fostering current art and the presentation of work from Europe and the United States. It will offer opportunities for international artists to show their work in the vibrant city of Los Angeles, enriching the local community.

Grear Patterson, Forest Theater, 2014, installation view, American Academy in Rome (photo by R. Apa)