Kalup Linzy from elculture.gr on Vimeo.

Kalup Linzy: performance at Cantina Social

Kalup Linzy ... opening

Kalup Linzy

Opening: Saturday, September 26 , 2009, 8-10 pm

Duration: September 26 - October 24 2009

Opening hours: Tuesday through Friday 12-8 pm and Saturday 12-5 pm

The Breeder is delighted to present the American artist Kalup Linzy (Florida 1977) in his first solo exhibition in Athens. Linzy’s project for The Breeder consists of drawings and two new videos, Conversations wit de Churen VII: Lil’ Myron’s Trade and Come Put In On Me.

Kalup Linzy mediates the politics of gender and race through videos, which he writes, designs and performs. Keenly aware of the role of the media in shaping societal perceptions, behaviorsand fashions, Linzy taps the television genres of soap opera and situation comedy to create turgid mini-dramas that showcase his politicized portrayals. His personae, most of which he

plays himself, are conflations of his upbringing in the African-American culture of the Southern United States (family and church ties, dialect, humor, music), as well as his experiences in the contemporary art world.

Along with his African-American perspective, queerness is the most obvious aspect of Linzy’s work. In contrast to the female impersonation and drag performance that Greek audiences are familiar with, such as that of Lakis Lazopoulos, which is geared towards entertaining straight audiences by satirizing the types they know, Linzy uses parody to undermine the established authority of gender and sexuality and to question naturalized systems. Wearing rudimentary drag, often consisting only of a blatantly ill-fitting wig framing his unshaven face, he seamlessly transitions from male to female, or else dubs his own Southern-Black voice over those of male and female performers of other races. In both cases he succeeds in upending the values and norms of whiteness and heterosexuality.

With his drawings, Linzy takes his place as a successor to the “Harlem Renaissance” movement of the 1920s-30s, which was a flowering of African-American social thought expressed through the visual arts and music. His stylized, graphic black-and-white song-anddance images are direct heirs to the jitterbug, R&B, jazz, ragtime and music hall themes used by artists like Archibald John Motley Jr. (1891-1981) and William H. Johnson (1901-1970). Linzy’s historicized imagery also follows the (grimmer) tradition of the vintage techniques and folk tales and the racist “darkie” popular references appropriated by younger African-American artists Kara Walker (1969) and Michael Ray Charles (1967), respectively. 

Equally at home on YouTube (his website includes a MySpace link) as in a gallery setting, the content and low-tech look of Linzy’s videos do away with any vestigial discrepancies between high art and pop culture. That most of their action takes place via telephone conversations is simply another reflection of contemporary life, which seems to be lived more and more

vicariously and distanced, instead of in face-to-face encounters. Beyond their obvious campy hyperbole, Linzy’s scenarios balance parody with a tender yet pointed commentary on the vicissitudes of life, love and career in today’s world.

Andrea Gilbert

Art Critic

Kalup Linzy was born in 1977 in Stuckey, Florida and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He has had solo exhibitions in The Moore Space, Miami, FL(2008); Taxter & Spengemann, New York, NY(2005, 2006, 2007); and P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY(2006). Most recently Linzy's work was included in Prospect.1 New Orleans Biennial curated

by Dan Cameron and in group shows at Glasgow International: Festival of Contemporary Visual Art, Glasgow, Scotland; Arcadia University Art Gallery, Glenside, PA; The Hydra School Project, Hydra, Greece; and The Hayward Gallery, London, UK. He has also been included in group exhibitions at Zacheta National Museum, Warsaw, Poland; Studio Museum, Harlem, NY; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The El Salvador Biennial; Moscow Biennial, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia, among others. He has performed and screened work at venues including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival; British Film Institute, London, and Beursschouwburg, Brussels, Belgium. In 2009, the Studio Museum in Harlem honored Linzy with Kalup Linzy: If it Don't Fit, the first museum survey of the artist's work.

At home he is a Tourist....Opening

At Home He Is A Tourist

Opening: Wednesday, September 9^th , 2009, 5:30 – 9:30 pm

Duration: September 2^nd  - September 20^th  2009

 

Opening hours:

Wednesday–Sunday:5:30–9:30pm

The Breeder presents the group show – ‘At Home He Is A Tourist’, installed in the gallery’s playroom.

The exhibition features an array of small pieces by an internationally and stylistically diverse group of artists who invite the viewer on a whimsical journey through a picture-postcard art-land that errs toward the monochromatic and melancholic. Each work promises a miniature world of contemplation, seen as if through a window. As birds, bats and fantastical creatures flit amidst urbane cartoons and city scenes, figurative is placed beside abstract, concrete against emotive and myth alongside reality. Denying the works of original context, the show strips the viewer of his “period eye”, so that he becomes a tourist in the gallery.

 Artists in the show:

Markus Amm, Athanasios Argianas, Marc Bijl, Lizzi Bougatsos, Martin Boyce, Matt Connors, Kate Davis, Iris van Dongen, Nan Goldin, Vassilis H, Dionisis Kavallieratos, Stylianos Kontomaris, Jim Lambie, Bjarne Melgaard , Alan Michael, Irini Miga, Tracey Moffatt, Ilias Papailiakis, Clare Rojas, Daniel Sinsel, Yannis Skourletis, Socrates Socratous, Christiana Soulou, Gert & Uwe Tobias, Scott Treleaven, Jannis Varelas, Vangelis Vlahos, Clare Woods

selected by Nadia Gerazouni

Lizzi Bougatsos opening Tuesday June 16 2009

all photographs Katrina D photography

Installation time: Lizzi Bougatsos

all photographs Katrina D photography

Lizzi Bougatsos

The Breeder announces its participation in remap 2 with the inauguration of playroom, an autonomous project space housed in the second floor of the gallery, with the first European solo exhibition of Greek-American artist Lizzi Bougatsos. Lizzi was born in Queens, New York and her practice incorporates sculpture, collage, installation, writing and performance. Since 2000, she has been a founding member and lead singer for the punk-rock band Gang Gang Dance.

At her solo exhibition at the playroom Lizzi Bougatsos will be presenting among other works the continuation of the series of works "street sign", a large scale sculpture, along with collages that incorporate disparate objects in imagery related to the recent history of western civilization and established in the consciousness of the consumer. A Donald Duck portrait is attached to the half of a shoe adorned with feathers, Mickey Mouse is using a dildo, while the young and beautiful models of the old fashioned advertisements, that we see in the window fronts of pharmacies until today, are bearing braces in their perfect white teeth. Bougatsos does not hesitate to experiment and to express almost instinctively her position against the symbols of the western society, interfering with them dramatically, just as Duchamp did when he drew a moustache on Mona Lisa's face.

Lizzi Bougatsos has presented her work in a solo exhibition at James Fuentes LLC, New York (2007), in two person shows with Kim Gordon at Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York (2005) and with Jess Holzworth at American Fine Arts, Co., New York (2000).  In 2008 she participated among others in the exhibition The Station, curated by Shamim Momim and Nate Lowman in Miami, in the exhibition with works from the Astrup Fearnley Collection in the Astrup Fearnely Museet for Moderne Kunst,  Oslo, in "Jekyll Island" at Honor Fraser gallery, Los Angeles as well as in the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of America Art, New York. In 2007 she was included in the exhibition In/Out of Me, curated by Klaus Biesenbach, MACRO - Museo d'arte Contemporanea di Roma, Milano and Kunste Werke, Berlin as well as in the exhibition The Perfect Man, curated by Rita Ackermann, White Columns, New York.   

Dust: video series by Katerina Kana

View Saturday, 2 May 2009, from 8.30pm to 10.30pm

DUST ONE – mini DV 5 minutes (Kana 2005) Black & white

Music by Konstruct.

‘Dust my ass’ is the first of the dust videos. Six people wearing animal masks so we can’t see

their faces, meet up on Lycabetus hill in a secret spot hidden away in the trees, to perform a

strange ritual. A nocturnal thriller adventure that turns into a joke.

DUST TWO – mini DV 12 minutes (Kana 2006) Black & white

Music by Konstruct. Voice V. Delendas.

‘In dust we trust’ a stormy night, a group of orthodox priests, a journey through dark

pathways, self - eroticism, pain and pleasure, a story that reveales in the end the unity of

mystic experience and sensuality.

DUST THREE– mini DV 15 minutes (Kana 2007) Black & white

Music by Konstruct.

‘Dust the past’ is a story about the awakening of memory. Our heroes appear from the old

ruins dressed in greek tokas. They begin to walk like hypnotised by a music only they can hear

in direction of the sacred rock of the Acropolis. The provocative message ‘Dust the past’ is

about the suppression of the discontinuity of our existence.

DUST FOUR– mini DV 13 minutes (Kana 2008) Black & white

Music by Konstruct.

‘Eat my dust’ The ‘Dust Supper’ takes place on a roof- top of a building in the center of

Athens. The urban landscape disappeared in the darkness of the night. We see only the

thirteen characters sitted along side a table, consuming a super that consists of body parts

made of candies and sweets.