JOHN BALDESSARI, RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA

JohnBaldessari’s new screenprint, produced by Gemini G.E.L. and publishedby Brain Multiples, repeats a directive he has used throughout hiscareer: “Learn to Dream.” These words are placed across horizontal bandsof yellow, black, cyan, and light blue, and rendered in the typeface’Churchward Montezuma 96 Extra Bold’ designed by New Zealand typographerJoseph Churchward. Baldessari has come back to this phrase multipletimes in different formats: most recently on a billboard in New Zealandfor ARTSPACE, and on T-shirts for the Trespass Parade in downtown LosAngeles. In contrast to the common characterization of dreaming assomething that happens unconsciously, or when we lose focus(daydreaming), Baldessari encourages us to actively dream, todeliberately engage with the creative, the irrational, and the hopeful.

RirkritTiravanija has produced a series of unique enamel paintings composed oftext upon monochrome grounds – red, yellow, white, and orange. With awry sense of humor, he selects phrases that point to a society understress: “All You Need is Dynamite,” “Police the Police” and “Up Againstthe Wall Motherfucker.” Tiravanija presents this challenging content in aseemingly straightforward manner, forcing us to consider the complexrelationship between substance and form, message and medium.

JohnBaldessari was one of the founders of the conceptual art movement inCalifornia in the 1960’s. His art has been featured in more than 200solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe and in over 750 groupexhibitions. A major retrospective of his work, Pure Beauty,opened at the Tate Modern in October 2009 and traveled to theMetropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Museu d’Art Contemporani inBarcelona and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Baldessari wasawarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2009 VeniceBiennale. His most recent exhibition at 1301PE, John Baldessari: Not Prints: Posters 1966-2010,was the first comprehensive exhibition of his artist-designedexhibition posters. The first volume of his Catalogue Raisonné wasreleased in May 2012 from Yale University Press.

RirkritTiravanija was born in 1961 in Buenos Aires. For over twenty years, hehas focused on the social ties connecting audience, artwork and artist,blurring the boundary between art and life. He is on the faculty of theSchool of Visual Arts at Columbia University, and is a founding memberof The Land Foundation, an educational-ecological project in Chiang Mai,Thailand. He is the winner of the 2010 Absolut Art Award and the 2004Hugo Boss Prize awarded by the Guggenheim Museum. Notable exhibitionsinclude On Air at the Centre Pompidou (2012), Less Oil More Courage atthe Kunsthalle Fridericianum (2009), and retrospectives at theKunsthalle Bielefeld (2010), Serpentine Gallery (2005), and MuseumBoijmans Van Beuningen (2004). He recently presented Soup / No Soup atLa Triennale 2012 in Paris, for which he transformed the main nave ofGrand Palais into a communal banquet featuring a meal of Tom Ka soup.