After a brief hiatus following our initial wave of 2019 programming, we are excited to return with our next wave featuring five brand new films.
The first film, which features sculptor Jes Fan, is available to watch in full today. Subsequent films will premiere bi-weekly on Wednesdays through July 10 here on Art21.org as well as on YouTube.
The upcoming lineup introduces three artists to the Art21 roster: Luchita Hurtado in the Extended Play series, in addition to Jes Fan and Dan Herschlein in the New York Close Up series. Two additional new Extended Play films contain previously unreleased material featuring Zanele Muholi and Olafur Eliasson, both of whom were previously included in the latest season of Art21’s Peabody Award-winning Art in the Twenty-First Century television series.
Spring/Summer 2019 Film Guide
Jes Fan
From the New York Close Up series; Premiered May 15
A trained glass artist, sculptor Jes Fan creates elegant installation works that quietly question our most fundamental assumptions about gender, race, and identity. The artist explains how his personal experiences—moving from his native Hong Kong to the United States, growing up queer, and transitioning—have shaped his practice, and how he began incorporating contested biological materials such as estrogen, testosterone, and melanin into his sculptures. Addressing his own experience of being racialized and gendered, Fan asserts, “It’s just a disposition that you’re constantly placed in—a constant act of othering.”
Zanele Muholi
From the Extended Play series; Premiered May 29
In homes and community spaces, visual activist Zanele Muholi creates “mobile studios” to photograph members of the LGBTI community in South Africa. As a way to create work where the participants feel most comfortable, the studio spaces allow Muholi to empower those being photographed. Through the unveiling of the photographs as part of an exhibition at Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town, Muholi invites participants to further contextualize the images by inscribing personal testimonials directly onto the walls of the gallery.
Dan Herschlein
From the New York Close Up series; Premiered June 12
Working out of his parent’s garage on Long Island, Brooklyn-based artist Dan Herschlein contemplates the role of the voyeur in his work as he prepares for an exhibition at JTT Gallery in Manhattan. Inspired by horror tropes and his own suburban upbringing, Herschlein creates “Night Pictures”—a series of wall panels constructed from wood, plaster, wax, and black paint, onto which the artist sculpts ominous figures cast, in part, from his own body.
Luchita Hurtado
From the Extended Play series; Premiered June 26
While preparing for her first institutional exhibition at Serpentine Galleries in London, 98-year-old Los Angeles-based artist Luchita Hurtado reflects on the “many lives” that she has lived. Having made drawings and paintings for decades in relative obscurity, Hurtado has only recently been recognized for her wide-ranging practice. Shown at work in her Santa Monica studio and a nearby canyon park, Hurtado channels concerns with environmental degradation, as well as the experience of giving birth to her four children.
Olafur Eliasson
From the Extended Play series; Premiered July 10
From a recent exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York City, Olafur Eliasson gives insight into the natural phenomena referenced in his abstract sculptures and installations, recalling his childhood experiences of exploring the Icelandic landscape with his father. Interested in how perception is shaped through movement, Eliasson creates works that require the viewer to navigate around and through them, just as he did in Iceland. By using simple and accessible imagery such as a rainbow, Eliasson aims to reach an audience that may otherwise feel excluded by the oftentimes elitist art world.
