Javier Peres and Terence Koh are pleased to present SACK OF BONES, a group exhibition curated by Ellen Langan and Blair Taylor. Please join us for the opening on Monday, March 24th from 6 - 9pm at ASS (Asia Song Society): 45 Canal Street between Orchard and Ludlow.

SACK OF BONES
March 24th - May 2nd, 2008
Please email victoria@peresprojects.com or call 212 962 6717 for viewing appointments

Featuring work by:

Anthony Burdin
Dan Colen
Tara Delong
Mark Flood
Bill Hayden
Neil Jenney
Bruce LaBruce
Daniel McDonald
Andrew Rogers
Arsen Roje
Agathe Snow
William C. Taylor
Donald Urquhart
Banks Violette

Toted around, thrown in the corner, recovered as relic or disposed of
as useless, a sack of bones is unavoidably deformed. It is an
apparently dead object subject to the intentions of its creator, or
its purveyor, or its consumer, or maybe just its times.

The group exhibition "Sack of Bones" comes from a viewing of Paul
Rachman's 2006 film, American Hardcore, in which Mark Flood appears as
an interviewee on the topic of 1980's punk rock. The tone of the film
is reverent, to be sure, but more than an ode, the voices in the film
present conflicting parts pride, humor, fraternity, anger, bitterness,
nostalgia, and what are often doleful mechanisms for dealing with the
here-and-now. That Flood was both part of Hardcore as it existed
musically (in 1980 his band, Culturcide, put out their first 7-inch:
"Another Miracle/Consider Museums as Concentration Camps") and has
been practicing visual art for over 30 years poses an interesting
question: how, if at all, can art be hardcore? By embodying
adolescent punk obsession? By miraculous use of irony? By a simple
withdrawal from popular territory?

Consider, for example, the tangled 'attitude problem' precipitated by Reagan-era
punk; there is the myth of a pure strain of FUCK YOU, there is the
myth of the majority's snide perception of its counter-movements, and
then, somewhere in the overlap, there is the problematic dilution of
any rebellion's once-potent beginnings (causing cycles of backlash and
resurgence pretty much ever after). In the art world this tangle is
further convoluted by the relishing of trade and an inherent
affluence, elitism and circuitous pandering that can compromise
anyone's well-intentioned we/they stirrings.

The exhibition as a whole may appear deadpan, satirical or pathetic –
in any case each of the constituent works turns its back on
complacency, and, in doing so, becomes material evidence of resistance
(kicking from within the sack). In other words, with all that is
stacked against the mutinous artist and the mutinous viewer, hope
could lie in objecthood itself.