About
the Exhibition
Opening reception: Wednesday, December 9, 6 - 9 pm
White Box is pleased to present the most comprehensive survey
to date of early to recent media works by the seminal pioneer
of Intermedia art, Hans Breder. This exhibition features the full
breadth of Breder’s body of work, including never-before-seen
early video works and sculpture along with new photography and
video installations displayed on both levels of White Box’s
two-floor exhibition space.
On December 16 at 7pm, Herman Rapaport will moderate a panel
discussion with Donald Kuspit and Bonnie Marranca. Closing the
exhibition on January 17 at 7pm will be a special lecture/event
“Corpus Speaking,” performed in collaboration with
Hans Breder, Herman Rapaport and Elliott Sharp. The exhibition
will travel to the Ostwall Museum, Dortmund, Germany in 2011,
with future exhibition venues to be announced. A unique limited
edition, featuring an interchangeable folio of images and texts
designed to accompany the exhibition, will be signed by the artist
and launched as a special performance.
The title of the show references the Lacanian term of “inmixing,”
described by Herman Rapaport as the “extradimensionality
that is made possible by introducing a lack, break, knot, or fold
that is the mark of the subject: its signifier.” According
to Rapaport, “this corresponds to how Hans Breder would
develop his idea of Intermedia: as an inmixing of different or
“other” media whereby one actually embeds sounds,
images, performances by means of complex interpositions.”
Born in Herford, Germany in 1935, Hans Breder moved to Hamburg
in 1959 to study at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste.
Two years later, he received the prestigious Studienstiftung des
deutschen Volkes. In 1964, Breder arrived in New York City where
his constructivist-aligned work quickly garnered critical praise
and in 1967 he had his first solo show at the Richard Feigen Gallery.
Soon after, the University of Iowa invited him to teach in the
School of Art and Art History. In 1966, Breder moved to Iowa City,
Iowa, and in 1968 he established the nation's first MFA program
in Intermedia Arts. Breder founded the Intermedia Program as an
arena in which he and his students could explore, in theory and
in practice, the liminal spaces between the arts: art, music,
film, dance, theater, poetry. In the second and third decade of
the Intermedia Program, Breder extended his collaborative reach
to the liberal arts: comparative literature, anthropology, psychology,
communication studies. Also key to his notion of Intermedia was
the recognition that to develop the experimental arts in an entirely
rural environment, an active visiting artists program was necessary.
One of Breder’s first visiting artists was Robert Wilson,
who developed “Deafman Glance” in Iowa City in 1970,
and his students included Ana Mendieta and Charles Ray. From 1969
– 2000, visiting artists and critics included Hans Haacke,
Allan Kaprow, Willoughby Sharp, Elaine Summers, Vito Acconci,
Nam June Paik, Dennis Oppenheim, Carolee Schneemann, Karen Finley,
Ben Vautier, George Kuchar, Yvonne Rainer, Trinh Minh-ha, Donald
Kuspit, Roselee Goldberg, John Hanhardt, Barbara London, amongst
numerous others.
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