For his first solo
museum exhibition in the United States, artist Nick Mauss (b. 1980) presents
Transmissions, a multidisciplinary work exploring the relationship between
modernist ballet and the avant-garde visual arts in New York from the 1930s
through ’50s. Over the past decade, Mauss has pursued a hybrid mode of working
that merges the roles of curator, artist, and scholar. At the Whitney he brings
together his own works, alongside historical photographs, sculptures,
paintings, drawings, film and video from the Whitney’s holdings and those of
other public and private collections—all presented within a layered exhibition
design by Mauss that allows for the works to be seen in a new light.
Central to the
exhibition is a daily performance by four dancers made in collaboration with
Mauss as an interpretative reaction to the artworks and archival materials on
display. For Transmissions, Mauss cast dancers whose training includes ballet,
though most have continued to practice in more contemporary forms. Their
movements incorporate quotidian gestures and procedures from a dancer’s daily
practice as well as a choreographed sequence that invokes ballet as it comes
into tension with modern and contemporary techniques.
In the current vogue
for contemporary dance in museums, the legacy of ballet remains relatively
unexamined. This exhibition will consider the intersections of ballet not only
with the visual arts but also with theater, fashion, and new representations of
the body. The development of modernist ballet in New York in the decades
bookending World War II served as an artistic catalyst, filter, and vibrant,
shared vocabulary. European surrealist aesthetics and interdisciplinary
experimentation bridged artistic and social worlds. Mauss also explores the
overt and coded imaging of desire in art and dance of this time, emphasizing
pre-queer histories within an exhibition that itself forges new modes of
attention and engagement with history in the present.
This exhibition is
organized by Scott Rothkopf, Deputy Director for Programs and Nancy and Steve
Crown Family Chief Curator, and Elisabeth Sussman, Curator and Sondra Gilman
Curator of Photography, with Greta Hartenstein, senior curatorial assistant,
and Allie Tepper, curatorial project assistant.
Generous support for
Nick Mauss: Transmissions is provided by Deutsche Bank and the Performance
Committee of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
In-kind support is
provided by The Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University.
Venue name: Whitney
Museum of American Art
VENUE Address: 99
Gansevoort St New York 10014
Cross street: between
Tenth Ave and Washington St
Opening hours: Mon,
Wed, Sun 10:30am–6pm; Thu–Sat 10:30am–10pm
Transport: Subway: L
to Eighth Ave (14th St); A, C, E to 14th St (Eighth Ave)
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