FAX Exhibit @ UMOCA (SLC: March 2 - June 23)

Utah Museum of Contemporary Art Announces:

FAX

Opening March 2, 2012 with a First Friday celebration

Contact: Emily Brunt | emily.brunt@utahmoca.org | 801.328.4201 x 115

(Danica Farley replaces Emily on March 1. Reachable at: danica.farley@utahmoca.org)

www.utahmoca.org | 20 S West Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Tue-Thu & Sat 11 AM – 6 PM, Fri 11 AM – 9 PM

For Immediate Release:  February 24, 2012

SALT LAKE CITY, UT –  Utah Museum of Contemporary Art announces the opening of traveling exhibition FAX, Guest curated by João Ribas and co-organized by The Drawing Center and Independent Curators International.  FAX has grown and morphed since it’s opening at The Drawing Center in New York in 2009, and has travelled world-wide, amassing faxes in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. UMOCA hosts a comprehensive presentation of the exhibition, and will open with a First Friday celebration on March 2, 2012, and close June 23, 2012.

“FAX challenges our notion of where an art exhibition can wind up and what form it takes when it gets there. This presentation teleports to the ends of the earth riding on the technological whimsy of this thought-to-be obsolete mode of communication. As an artistic medium, the 500+ artists have created a material legacy that will keep fax machines transmitting for generations to come,” says Aaron Moulton, Senior Curator of Exhibitions, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.

Moulton has added the following artists to FAX: Mike Bouchet, Salotto Buono, Roisin Byrne, Keren Cytter, Sejla Kajmeric, Daniel Kingery, Forniture Pallotta, Bertrand Planes, Jared Steffensen, and Ignacio Uriarte.  Other artists will be added over the course of the exhibition and will be included in future presentations at other institutions world-wide.

FAX invites a multigenerational group of artists, as well as architects, designers, scientists and filmmakers, to re-conceive of the fax machine as a tool for thinking and drawing. Although the technology for transmitting

printed images and texts dates from the nineteenth century—a machine by Scottish mechanic Alexander Bain patented in 1843—it was the introduction of the modern fax through commercially available machines in the 1970s that turned facsimiles into a ubiquitous communications medium for international business. Artists readily exploited its immediate, graphic, and interactive character, making it an important part of the history of media art, nestled between the legacy of Fluxus and the nascent practices of new media. But with the fax machine now fast becoming a technology of the past, how do artists see the potential of the fax transmission today?

Faxes by nearly 100 artists that were sent to the initial showing of FAX at The Drawing Center form the core of the exhibition, including seminal examples of early telecommunications art. Each institution on the tour is encouraged to invite up to twenty additional artists to submit works, which will be presented at all successive venues. These works are transmitted to each participating institution’s working fax line throughout the duration of the exhibition. The active accumulation of information—received in real time, in the exhibition space—includes drawings and texts, and even the inevitable junk faxes from telemarketers and local businesses as well. All the transmitted pages are archived or displayed together with the active fax machine, which may produce new faxes from invited artists at any moment. The result—an ongoing cumulative project—is a show concerned with ideas of reproduction, obsolescence, distribution, and mediation.

Since the first showing of FAX at The Drawing Center, the exhibition has been presented in 14 galleries in Europe, Latin America and Asia, as well as North America, with over 200 artists from all over the world invited to participate by each host curator. At times, the exhibition has also been shown simultaneously, and at one point was even in three different countries: Para/Site Art Center in Hong Kong, Burnaby Art Gallery in British Columbia, and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City. Recently, FAX was exhibited at the South London Gallery in the U.K. and the Knoxville Museum in Tennessee, where the two institutions had kept in contact throughout the duration of the exhibition. Subsequently, FAX has the ability to explore the potential of simultaneous and real-time exhibitions – furthering the unlimited possibilities of developing international collaborative exchange.

ABOUT THE GUEST CURATOR

João Ribas is curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center and a widely published critic. He was previously curator at The Drawing Center in New York, and has organized over thirty exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad. Ribas is the winner of an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award (2010) and two consecutive AICA Awards for Best Exhibition (2008/2009). He has contributed essays to numerous exhibition catalogs and monographs, and has been a visiting lecturer for institutions and organizations worldwide. He was previously adjunct faculty at the School of Visual Arts, New York, and currently teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design.

EXHIBITION ITINERARY

The Drawing Center

New York, New York

April 17, 2009 – July 23, 2009

Contemporary Museum, Baltimore

Baltimore, Maryland                                     

September 12, 2009 – December 20, 2009                           

Plug in ICA

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

December 12, 2009 – February 21, 2010

Torrance Art Museum

Torrance, California

January 14, 2010 – February 20, 2010

Para/Site Art Center

Hong Kong

February 2, 2010 – April 1, 2010

Burnaby Art Gallery

Burnaby, British Columbia,

March 16, 2010 – May 23, 2010

Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil

Mexico City, Mexico

March 24, 2010 – June 20, 2010

Dowd Gallery, State University of New York,

College of Cortland

Cortland, New York

October 7, 2010 – December 10, 2010

New Galerie

Paris, France
November 6, 2010 - December 18, 2010

Apex Gallery, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

Rapid CIty, South Dakota
February 15, 2011 - April 3, 2011

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts

Cambridge, Massachusetts
March 7, 2011 - April 10, 2011

St. Paul St Gallery

Auckland, New Zealand
April 8, 2011 - April 30, 2011

Knoxville Museum of Art

Knoxville, Tennessee
August 26, 2011 - November 6, 2011

South London Gallery

London, United Kingdom

September 22, 2011 – November 27, 2011

DeVos Art Museum

Marquette, Michigan
January 13, 2012 - February 24, 2012

University of Hawaii Art Gallery

Honolulu, Hawaii

February 26, 2012 – April 15, 2012

Utah Museum of Contemporary Art

Salt Lake City, Utah

March 2, 2012 – June 23, 2012

San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery

San Francisco, California

May 4, 2012 – July 22, 2012

CREDIT LINE

FAX is a traveling exhibition curated by João Ribas, and co-organized by The Drawing Center, New York, and Independent Curators International (ICI), New York. The exhibition and the accompanying publication were made possible, in part, by members of the Drawing Room, a patron circle founded to support innovative exhibitions at The Drawing Center; and by support to ICI from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, and ICI’s Board of Trustees, as well as the ICI Access Fund.

ABOUT ICI

Independent Curators International (ICI) is a non-profit headquartered in New York that produces exhibitions, events, publications, and training opportunities for audiences around the world. Working across disciplines and historical precedents, since 1975 the organization has connected emerging and established curators, artists, and institutions, to forge international networks and bring behind-the-scenes curatorial discourse to new publics.

In the last two years, 12 ICI exhibitions have been presented by 66 venues in 20 countries profiling the work of over 350 artists worldwide; 103 curators and artists from the U.S. and abroad have contributed to ICI’s talks programs, online journal, and conferences; and 80 emerging curators from 27 countries and 14 U.S. states have participated in the Curatorial Intensives, ICI’s short-course professional training programs. Through online resources and the creation of a new Curatorial Hub in New York, ICI’s fast-growing Curator’s Network provides members with up-to-date information on jobs and other curatorial opportunities, as well as access to articles, books, and round-table discussions addressing the latest curatorial debates.

UMOCA
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (formerly Salt Lake Art Center) was recognized as Best Museum in the State of Utah for 2011.  Founded in 1931 and now located in the heart of Salt Lake City, UMOCA exhibits groundbreaking work by leading local and international artists. UMOCA is currently exhibiting 2012 Sundance Film Festival New Frontier.  Coming up in June is Play Me I’m Yours, inviting the people of Salt Lake to show off their piano skills on street corners all over Salt Lake.  Recent exhibitions include Kim Schoenstadt, winner of the 2011 Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting; Fallen Fruit of Utah, a state-wide collaboration with museums and individuals about the role of fruit in Utah’s history, led by artist collective Fallen Fruit; Lawn Gnomes Eat Your Hearts Out, a community public sculpture initiative designed to move the very best in contemporary art outside the four walls of the gallery and into places where people work, live, and play; Robert Fontenot’s The Place This Is, a conceptual exploration of the stories and histories of Utah and America through materials commonly associated with the domestic realm; and Contemporary Masters: Artist-Designed Miniature  Golf.  UMOCA rounds out its offerings with a lively mix of award-winning educational programs, film screenings, panel discussions, and events celebrating Salt Lake’s vibrant local art scene. UMOCA is located at 20 S. West Temple, just off the intersection with South Temple. Admission is free year-round. Business hours are Tuesday-Thursday: 11 am - 6 pm; Friday: 11 am - 9 pm; Saturday: 11 am - 6 pm; closed Sunday and Monday. For more information call (801) 328-4201 or visit www.utahmoca.org.

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For additional information regarding ICI, please contact Mandy Sa at mandy@curatorsintl.org or at 212.254.8200 ext. 121.

Emily Brunt

Director of Communications, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
801.328.4201 x115 | m: 801.232.7362 | emily.brunt@utahmoca.org  | www.utahmoca.org