San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presents Stage Presence: Theatricality in Art and Media, on view July 14 through October 8, 2012, an exhibition that blurs the line between fine arts and performing arts. The exhibition presents works in a variety of media and features a series of performances that explore the influence of theater, dance, and performance in contemporary art.
Stage Presence gathers three decades of works by 40 artists including some key works from the SFMOMA media arts collection, all of which embrace theatricality in contemporary art practice. Exuberant manifestations of the “stage” emerge, such as beauty pageants; a dance troupe in post-punk London; artists dressed as a bear and a rat walking through the Swiss Alps; and a family occupying in-store Ikea model rooms. Some of the works are humorous and camp, while others are critical and subversive.
The exhibition also features site-specific contributions to the exhibition including an “Official Welcome” by Andrea Fraser, a new version of the performance which will be produced for SFMOMA at the July 13 exhibition opening reception; and Janet Cardiff’s participatory project The Telephone Call (2001), a commissioned audio and video walk through SFMOMA. Equipped with a small digital camcorder with stereo headphones, visitors can journey through the museum by aligning onscreen images with the actual physical space and listening to an extraordinary narrative collage that includes Cardiff’s voice, fragments of recorded music, and the artist’s footsteps. This will be the last opportunity before the museum’s forthcoming expansion to experience the work with the current building still providing most of the original settings. – www.sfmoma.org