Steve McQueen, courtesy Marian Goodman, New York/Paris, and Thomas Dane Gallery, London

Steve McQueen, still from "Running Thunder" (2007). 16 mm film, 11 min.

March 2009 Field Guide

Paris: The Jazz Century

Interview: Second Trienal Poli/Graficá de San Juan

New York, Paris and Stockholm: Survey of Surveys

London: Focus on Forsythe

Washingon, DC: Guido van der Werve

North Adams, MA: These Days: Elegies for Modern Times

Nuremberg, Germany: Katinka Bock

Ghent, Belgium: Dara Birnbaum

Helen Mirra George Brecht Lygia Clark Adrian Piper Roman Signer Shomei Tomatsu Buckminster Fuller Pinta 09 Confidently Sets Sail

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Although the title of this ambitious survey evokes gunslinging cowboys rolling into town, the line originates from the New Testament: "who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead" — although "quick" in the original denotes being "alive." No matter. The irrepressible Buckminster Fuller would seize on that misinterpretation in 1947, positing the "quick realities" of Einstein’s theory of relativity and its idea of continuous motion against the "dead superstitions" of classical physics. Curator Peter Eeley follows Bucky’s lead, focusing on novel interpretations of time and space as defined by postwar ’60s and ’70s research-oriented art. Work by such artists as George Brecht and Lygia Clark seeks to stretch beyond silly constraints like the here and now; Brecht himself imagined an art "dissolving into other dimensions" and his immaterial, instruction-based works often did. Some 40 international artists, scientists, and musicians — Helen Mirra, Roman Signer, Adrian Piper, Shomei Tomatsu, and the Institute for Figuring among them — contribute 80 works that expand our understanding of object and event, and the catalogue will feature texts by nature and science writers extraordinaire John McPhee and Oliver Sacks, among others. "The Quick and the Dead" may not offer pure science, but it does promise some fiercely cosmological activity of its own.

walkerart.org

"The Quick and the Dead" originally appeared in the April 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' April 2009 Table of Contents.