MUSEUM AS HUB, Jeanine Oleson, Yalla and More Set for The New Museum's 2014-15 Exhibitions

The New Museum has announced its 2014-15 exhibitions and projects. Details below!

ON VIEW JANUARY 22-APRIL 6, 2014

Museum as Hub: Report on the Construction of a Spaceship Module
Fifth Floor
Curated by Tranzit; organized by Lauren Cornell
Tranzit, an international organization, will transform the Fifth Floor gallery of the New Museum into the simulated interior of a spaceship. The vessel will visually recall the iconic Czech science-fiction film Ikarie XB-1 (1963), which melded postwar utopianism with Soviet utilitarianism. On view in and around the spacecraft will be fifty-plus artworks, mainly video, but also sculpture, print, and installation, by artists hailing from cities around Eastern Europe. The exhibition offers an allegory of "anthropological science fiction," whereby the exhibition space becomes an estranged and exciting universe that dramatizes the cross-cultural translation involved in the presentation of art. Much like the Museum as Hub (the New Museum's international partnership), Tranzit organizations collaborate to produce art historical research, exhibitions, and new commissions.

ON VIEW FEBRUARY 12-APRIL 20, 2014

Pawe? Althamer
Second, Third, & Fourth Floors
Curated by Massimiliano Gioni & Gary Carrion-Murayari
The New Museum will present the first US museum exhibition of the work of Pawe? Althamer (b. 1967). Since the early 1990s, Althamer has established a unique artistic practice featuring an expanded approach to sculptural representation and consistently experimental models of social collaboration. Draftsmen's Congress, originally presented at the 7th Berlin Biennial (2012), will anchor the Fourth Floor gallery. Over the course of the exhibition, the blank white gallery will be transformed through the gradual accumulation of drawings and paintings by Museum visitors and invited community organizations. The exhibition will also feature a number of Althamer's iconic sculptures and performative videos realized alone or in cooperation with a number of community groups that he has worked with over the past two decades. The artist's most recent body of work, the Venetians, a haunting group of sculptures created for the 55th Venice Biennale, will be included. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with contributions by Boris Groys, NYU Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, Joanna Mytkowska, Director of the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, and artist Artur ?mijewski, in addition to an interview with the artist.

Laure Prouvost
Lobby Gallery
Curated by Margot Norton
This exhibition will be the first US solo museum presentation of the work of artist Laure Prouvost (b. 1978). Prouvost will present a new, immersive multi-channel video installation for the Lobby Gallery. In her films and installations, Prouvost unhinges commonplace and expected connections between language, image, and perception. In works such as Wantee (2013), which garnered her a Turner Prize nomination, Prouvost steps away from traditional linear narratives and opens up a space for the viewer to engage provocatively with surreal aspects of meaning.

ON VIEW APRIL 23-JUNE 25, 2014

Jeanine Oleson
Fifth Floor
Curated by Johanna Burton
Through an exhibition, performances, and public events, Jeanine Oleson will explore the affective role of voice through a mix of humor, rancor, and joy. The artist will develop a new experimental opera around neoliberal conditions of globalization as empire, an installation concerning fandom and ecstatic spectatorship, and public programs about engaged audiences and active participation in lived experience.

ON VIEW MAY 7-JUNE 22, 2014

Ragnar Kjartansson
Fourth Floor
Curated by Massimiliano Gioni & Margot Norton
Born into a family of actors and theater professionals, Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976) creates works that draw from a varied history of stage traditions, film, music, and literature. His durational performances and video installations explore the boundary between reality and fiction and ideas of myth, cultural history, and identity. This exhibition will be the artist's first New York museum presentation. At the New Museum, Kjartansson will produce a newly orchestrated performance and video piece entitled Take Me Here by the Dishwasher-Memorial for a Marriage, in which ten guitarists continuously play a live soundtrack for the duration of the exhibition.

Roberto Cuoghi
Third Floor
Curated by Massimiliano Gioni & Margot Norton
Through an array of unconventional media, Roberto Cuoghi's projects explore ideas of metamorphosis and hybridity. Approaching his work with a combination of obsession, passion, and devotion, Cuoghi (b. 1973) embarked on a two-year study of Assyrian language and rituals. For his first major New York exhibition, Cuoghi will present a selection of his recent work including an ambitious sound piece in the form of an imagined ancient Assyrian lament from 612 BC, performed on a collection of handmade instruments carefully researched, built, and played by the artist himself.

Camille Henrot
Second Floor
Curated by Massimiliano Gioni & Gary Carrion-Murayari
In her work, Camille Henrot (b. 1978) analyzes systems of visual information and typologies of cultural production from a wide array of historical moments. Her works combine anthropological research with a staggering range of cultural fragments reflective of the current digital age. This solo show at the New Museum will include, among other past works, three recent videos including Grosse Fatigue (2013), presented at the 55th Venice Biennale, which garnered her the prestigious Silver Lion Award. The exhibition will also include a number of her ikebana flower sculptures inspired by philosophy and literature, as well as various works on paper.

ON VIEW JULY 16-SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

Yalla
Second, Third, & Fourth Floors
Curated by Massimiliano Gioni with Gary Carrion-Murayari, Margot Norton, & Natalie Bell
This exhibition will be one of the most comprehensive presentations of contemporary art from and about the Arab world in the US to date, and will feature groundbreaking work by emerging, established, and under-recognized artists. Rather than presenting a portrait of the region in broad strokes, this exhibition will highlight and elucidate the complex social, political, and cultural forces that have resulted in distinct artistic communities and dialogues throughout the region and beyond.

ON VIEW OCTOBER 2014-JANUARY 2015

Chris Ofili
Second, Third, & Fourth Floors
Curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Gary Carrion-Murayari, & Margot Norton
In October 2014, the New Museum will present the first major solo museum exhibition in the United States of the work of artist Chris Ofili (b. 1968). Occupying the Museum's three main galleries, the exhibition will span the artist's influential career, encompassing his work in painting, drawing, and sculpture. Over the past two decades, Ofili has become identified with vibrant, meticulously executed, elaborate artworks that meld figuration, abstraction, and decoration. His hybrid juxtapositions of high and low and of the sacred and the profane simultaneously celebrate and call into question the power of images and their ability to address fundamental questions of representation. Through a series of unexpected connections between his bodies of work, Ofili's exhibition at the New Museum will reflect the vast breadth of his practice.