MTV, MoMA Unveil Innovative Video-Art Series ART BREAKS

MTV, MoMA PS1 and Creative Time today unveiled a second round of the innovative video-art series ART BREAKS. Featuring five thirty-second videos by a variety of bold young artists, this latest installment of the series, which launched earlier this year, will debut on MTV, MTV.com, MTV's Facebook page, and on a dedicated Tumblr page on Thursday, November 15, and will continue regularly through April 2013.

The videos-by artists Semâ Bekirovic, Cody Critcheloe, Andrew Kuo, Divya Mehra, and Guido van der Werve-have been commissioned and curated by Creative Time and MoMA PS1. Ranging from the antic to the enigmatic, and all infused with a note of humor, they will appear on-air during the course of MTV's regular programming, introducing the network's global audience of more than 600 million viewers to unexpected and thought-provoking experimental video art.

The 2012 Art Breaks series builds on MTV's legacy of introducing its audience to vanguard video art, including early work by Doug Aitken, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Spike Joze, Richard Prince, and Kenny Scharf, in addition to Andy Warhol's 15 Minutes. The first round of 2012 Art Breaks videos were by Mads Lynnerup, Tala Maani, Rashaad Newsome, Jani Ruscica in collaboration with Sini Pelkki, and Mickalene Thomas.

For additional information regarding Art Breaks and to view the videos, visit artbreaks.mtv.com.

ART BREAKS ARTISTS
The five artists represented in round two of Art Breaks represent a diversity of styles and subjects.

Semâ Bekirovic (b. 1977 Amsterdam) explores the tension between determination and chance in videos, photographs, and installations. Her Art Breaks video, Untitled (between my head and the sky), shows a large knife flying above Earth, sometimes vertiginously, mixing humor with an underlying sense of dread about where the knife may land.

Bekirovic's work has been exhibited widely throughout the Netherlands and internationally in both solo and group exhibitions at such venues as Hayward Gallery, London; 21 Rozendaal, Enschede, Netherlands; and Flachlandfest, Berlin. She lives and works in Amsterdam.

Cody Critcheloe (b.1981, Lewisport, Kentucky) bridges the worlds of visual art and music through performance and video, and as the front man of the band SSION. His animated videos and stage presentations bring satire and a DIY aesthetic to issues including gender, sexuality, power, loneliness, and revenge. His Art Breaks project, a digital, psychedelic video titled SOMETIMES I THINK ABOUT YOU EVERYDAY, is a story of meeting a long-lost lover.

Critcheloe's art has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Peres Projects, Los Angeles; Grand Arts, Kansas City; and the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago. SSION's new album, "Bent," was released in September 2012. He lives and works in Kansas City, Missouri, and Brooklyn, New York.

Andrew Kuo (b. 1977, Queens, NY) presents data on musical events and personal experiences through meticulously drawn diagrams that take on the appearance of humorous and vibrant abstractions. His Art Breaks video is titled Now and Later, and was inspired by Through the Night Softly, a work by performance artist Chris Burden that aired on a local Los Angeles television station in 1973.

Kuo's music-related graphics appear regularly in The New York Times, and his work has been presented in solo exhibitions at both Taxter and Spengemann and Artists Space, New York, and at Franklin Art Work, Minneapolis. Recent group exhibitions include shows at the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ; and Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA. Kuo lives and works in New York City.

Divya Mehra (b. 1981, Winnipeg, Canada) incorporates comedic elements into her multi-medium work, which addresses issues of cultural identity, displacement, and appropriation. For Art Breaks, she has made a video entitled On Tragedy (Did you hear the one about the Indian?), an imaginative re-creation of Richard Prince's 1985 Art Breaks video.

Mehra's work has been included in a number of exhibitions and screenings across the US and overseas, most notably at The Queens Museum of Art and The Guild Art Gallery, in New York; the Beijing 798 Biennale; Plug In ICA in Winnipeg, Canada; and Gallery OED in Cochin, India. She currently lives and works in Winnepeg, Manitoba.

Guido van der Werve (b. 1977, Netherlands), creates videos in which he pairs his own piano performances with romantic landscapes, addressing topics that may include physical endurance, the immensity of the natural world, the indelible links between history and geography, melancholy, and the solitary. His Art Breaks video is Concert for Piano and the Exact Volume of Tears Cried on Earth at any Given Moment (or 211.5 liters per second). In it, he performs on a piano situated next to a pond, and is quickly drenched as a nearby pipe gushes water to a height of 80 meters-at a volume that matches that of the tears cried across the world every second.

In 2003, van der Werve's work received the René Coelho Award from the Netherlands Media Institute. Recent exhibitions include solo presentations at the Hayward Gallery, London; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; de Hallen Haarlem, Netherlands; and Kunsthalle Basel, as well as a presentation of his latest film, Nummer twaalf, at PS1. He lives and works in Finland and the Netherlands.

ABOUT CREATIVE TIME
Since 1974, Creative Time has been the leading presenter of innovative art in the public realm. The New York-based nonprofit has worked with thousands of artists to produce more than 335 groundbreaking projects that have ignited the public's imagination, explored ideas that shape society, and engaged millions of people around the globe.

In addition to its distinguished history of presenting public art in New York, Creative Time has recently begun to organize national and global projects, making it the only public arts organization with programs that have reached from New York to New Orleans, Haiti to Hanoi, and Dubai to Denver. For additional information, visit www.creativetime.org.

ABOUT MTV
MTV is the world's premier youth entertainment brand. With a global reach of more than a half-billion households, MTV is the cultural home of the millennial generation, music fans and artists, and a pioneer in creating innovative programming for young people. MTV reflects and creates pop culture with its Emmy®, Grammy® and Peabody® award-winning content built around compelling storytelling, music discovery and activism across TV, online and mobile. MTV's sibling networks MTV2 and mtvU each deliver unparalleled customized content for young males, music fans and college students, and its online hub MTV.com is a leading destination for music, news and pop culture. MTV is a unit of Viacom Inc. (NASDAQ: VIA, VIAB), one of the world's leading creators of programming and content across all media platforms. For more information, go to www.mtvpress.com.

ABOUT MoMA PS1
MoMA PS1 is one of the largest and oldest organizations in the United States solely devoted to contemporary art. Established in 1976 by Alanna Heiss, MoMA PS1 originated from The Institute for Art and Urban Resources, a not-for-profit organization founded five years prior with the mission of turning abandoned, underutilized buildings in New York City into artist studios and exhibition spaces. P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, as it then was known, became an affiliate of The Museum of Modern Art in 2000. For additional information, visit momaps1.org.

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