Join us on Thursday, January 12th at 7 pm for the first New York screening of "Little Deaths" at A.I.R. Gallery. "Little Deaths" by Shanti Grumbine and Julia Oldham is a collaborative video project created during a residency at Opossum House in Eugene, Oregon.
About "Little Deaths"
"Little Deaths" is a short series of performative video vignettes in which artists Shanti Grumbine and Julia Oldham repeatedly attack, maim and murder each other in good humor. Referencing cinematic tropes from sources ranging from Twin Peaks to Charlie Chaplin's slapstick comedies, the two women explore Freud's ideas about the Death Drive and the Repetition Compulsion where traumatic events become ritualized and repeated in hopes of finding relief in the peaceful inorganic state before birth. The title "Little Deaths" also borrows from the French term "petite morte" meaning "orgasm" as a way of highlighting the accumulation of our daily losses and expenditures of life force. Together, Grumbine and Oldham reframe and exorcise the cultural representations of death that are subconsciously internalized in the body, using humor, repetition, and ritual.
About Opossum House:
Named for the opossums who peer into the studio windows at night, Opossum House is a place for art, science, and experiments of all kinds. The Opossum House studio, lodge, and screening parlor is in Eugene, Oregon. We host yearly artist residents and seasonal art and music events. Founded by Julia Oldham (video artist) and Eric Corwin (physicist) on December 1, 2012.
About the Artists:
Julia Oldham's work has been screened/exhibited at Art in General in New York, NY; MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, NY; the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; the San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA; PPOW in New York, NY; The Drawing Center in New York, NY; The Bronx Museum of Art in the Bronx, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, IL; Espaço3 in Lisbon, Portugal; the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA; the Dia Foundation at the Hispanic Society in New York, NY; the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC; and Nunnery Gallery in London, UK; and she was included in the 2016 Portland Biennial curated by Michelle Grabner. Her work has been supported by Artadia, the Fund for Art and Dialogue, New York, NY; Artist in the Marketplace at the Bronx Museum of Art, Bronx, NY; Art in General, New York, NY; the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in New York, NY; Outpost Artist Resources in Ridgewood, NY; Artists in Residence in the Everglades, Miami, FL; Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, Clermont, KY; the Oregon Arts Commission in Portland, OR; and the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, Chicago, IL. Julia Oldham also works in collaboration with New York-based artist Chad Stayrook. Together they are known as Really Large Numbers. She has a solo show opening on January 13 at ThisFridayor NextFriday in DUMBO, Brooklyn and a two person show opening on January 15 at the Art Gym in Oregon.
Shanti Grumbine is a Brooklyn-based visual artist. She has been an artist in residence at the Millay Colony, Ucross, Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center, Saltonstall Foundation, Wave Hill Winter Workspace Residency, Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Residency, Artist in the Marketplace (AIM), Women’s Studio Workshop and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art. Fellowships and grants include the Santo Foundation Individual Artist Grant, A.I.R Gallery Fellowship, and the LABA Fellowship at the 14th Street Y. Select exhibition venues include The Bronx Museum, CCA Sante Fe, A.I.R. Gallery, Magnan-Metz Gallery, Planthouse Gallery, and IPCNY. For the year of 2017, she is an artist in residence at the RAIR Fellowship Program in Roswell, New Mexico. Her work is currently included in the group show “Disarming Geometries” at the Dorsky Gallery, LIC, opening January 15, and will be on view at Smack Mellon for her solo show, “Zeroing”, opening March 11 as well as in the group show “History of the Present” at Concordia College, Bronxville, NY opening March 16. Shanti received an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.