press release
STUDIO10
56 Bogart Street Brooklyn NY 11206
Opening Reception: January 2, 7– 9 P.M.
Exhibition Dates: January 2 – February 1, 2015
For Immediate Release:
Patrick Killoran: Exeunt Angels
STUDIO 10 is pleased to present Patrick Killoran’s Exeunt Angels, an exhibition featuring two ongoing projects produced over the past decade and a new sculpture. The exhibition’s title, Exeunt Angels, is taken from the stage directions in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and refers to the end of transcendence in contractual law. The most direct allusion is to Killoran’s Shadow Inventory, a series of sculptures which consists of portfolios containing a bill of sale that fold out into rubber cut outs of the seller’s shadow. The artist has been purchasing shadows for seven years. The process of purchase has been broken down into a series of steps. First, the seller is paid for his/her shadow, under the condition that he/she signs a contract transferring ownership to Killoran. Prices for the final sale are based on negotiations between artist and seller. Once these formalities are completed, Killoran photographs the seller’s shadow. He then designs a rubber portfolio to file the contract. The portfolio incorporates the image of the shadow reproducing it in silhouette at its original length. Killoran links supernatural imagery with the act of commodity exchange. The transition between the symbolic and the material can be found in a range of literary texts in the Faustian tradition, as well as in Marx’s rich descriptive language of the spectral. These works deploy the transcendent to explain the economic forces at play in their times, as a means to uncover the coercive relationships implicit in an emergent and unregulated capitalism. Killoran draws on this same language and juxtaposes it to the contemporary realities of late capitalism.
In Rebound, begun a decade ago, the artist engages in a different kind of contract by initiating the continuous circulation of his library. The piece is an extended reflection on the question of property and on the structures for the transmission of knowledge. Once the artist finishes reading a book, he rebounds with a cover that includes a logo and message on the front, and a roster for its future reader’s name and general location on the back. Taking a book indicates a commitment to read it, signing one’s name indicates the fulfillment of that commitment, together with compliance with the promise of not storing it. Killoran proposes a decidedly non-transcendent exchange of cultural currency that bypasses institutions and grounds itself in the individual commitment to a restrained action. The piece was exhibited in The Part In The Story, curated by Heman Chong and Samuel
 Saelemakers, at the Witte de With in Rotterdam.
The most recent work in the show, [sic] 1, refers to one of the most notorious decisions of the US Supreme Court in recent years, Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, which overturned a long standing precedent that allowed the government to regulate corporate spending on campaigns. The court struck down sections the Bipartisan Reform Act, which barred corporations and unions from paying for media that mentioned any candidate in periods immediately preceding elections. This case redefined corporations by giving them the rights of individual citizens, seeing them as associations of citizens. Killoran’s work lifts the text directly from the Court’s Opinion. The text, reproduced in reverse and applied to the gallery wall, is only legible through a mirror. The unmediated text remains unreadable except when viewed in the reflection. The law appears stable because it is underwritten by the state and often associated with the divine. When seen as a product of human debate and struggle reveals its inconstant and contradictory nature. The angels may well be gone but their antics remain. Thus in Exeunt Angels, Killoran explores the mystifying dynamics and the formal limitations of the contractual agreements that govern society at large.
After moving to New York in 1996, Killoran’s first major project Observation Deck (Queens) was featured in the 1997 re-opening of PS1 where the work would remain installed for nearly a decade. His installation Immergence was presented at Las Cienegas Projects in Los Angeles in 2009 and since 2010 has been installed at Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. In 2014, he had solo exhibitions a Samuel Freeman Gallery in Los Angeles and at The Bindery Projects in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Other solo projects include the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut; IKON in Birmingham, UK; Sculpture Center in New York City. Killoran has been included in numerous international exhibitions, including Everyday, the 1998 Biennial of Sydney, Australia; Wanås 2000 at the Wanås Foundation in Sweden; All About Laughter at the Mori Museum in Tokyo, Japan; It is what it is. Or is it? at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Grants received include Rema Hort Mann Foundation, Penny McCall Foundation and Pick Laudati Fund at Northwestern University. In 2014-15 he will be the Artist-in-Residence at the RDP Innovation Arts Residency Program, Skolkovo Institute in Moscow, RU and UT Austin. Killoran has taught at CalArts, Northwestern University, and is currently a Visiting Critic at Yale University’s School of Art, Sculpture. For more information and images, please contact Annelie McGavin at (718) 852-4396.
STUDIO10 is located at 56 Bogart Street(Morgan Avenue stop on the L train) in Bushwick.
Gallery hours: Thursday through Sunday 1 - 6 pm or by appointment
Contact: studio10bogart@gmail.com (718) 852-4396 www.studio10bogart.com