CCS BARD

The whole is not the whole is not the whole, is an exhibition structured in three interrelated parts, each organized by first-year students of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard).

This tripartite exhibition considers how conceptions of the whole may be fictional in that they project stability and conceal contingency. The three individual exhibitions destabilize different coherent entities or experiences. Presents: shuffles and reorients viewer experiences; The Body is Present subverts ideals and complicates expectations of the body; and, States of Presence offers perspectives on different acts of staying. These processes of disassembling are a collaborative response to the Marieluise Hessel Collection.

Presents:

Presents: is an exercise in eschewing categorization in favor of more intuitive modes of display and engagement. Works from different generations and artistic positions are brought together around affective qualities and spatial proximity. The exhibition asks how intuition shapes the way we connect artworks and how it can offer a means for unexpected interpretation. Through a map, sticker, photo album, and prompts, a visitor kit further narrates and fluctuates potential relationships between the artworks and the audience.

Including artworks by John Bock | Tony Cragg | Neil Jenney | Christian Marclay | R.H. Quaytman | Analia Saban | Frances Stark | Do-Ho Suh | Rosemarie Trockel | Rhonda Zwillinger

The Body is Present: Negotiating Expectations

The Body is Present: Negotiating Expectations considers bodies in multiple forms. By making use of strategies such as exaggeration, abstraction, abject form, and humor, these works subvert ideals of strength and aesthetic purity, thereby illustrating their permeability. Navigating the exhibition becomes a means for reflecting on the many ways by which physical and emotional presence can be reached: color can be louder than scale, surface can be more immediate than form, the indeterminate can be more visible than the finite.

Including artworks by John Currin | Nicole Eisenman | Hans-Peter Feldmann | Rachel Harrison | Marilyn Minter | Ernesto Neto | Rosemarie Trockel

States of Presence

States of Presence offers perspectives on different acts of staying ―pausing, waiting, enduring― that challenge the static notion of territory. Within this exhibition, these acts are positioned as ongoing movements and processes of inscription, which never totally unfold. The works on display articulate renewed responsibility towards the land and the community, thereby producing sites of resistance to colonial forms of inhabitation and belonging.

Including artworks by Tracey Baran | Miguel Calderón | Mona Hatoum | Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson | Alfredo Jaar | Zoe Leonard | Paulo Nazareth | Mai-Thu Perret | David Wojnarowicz