The Kitchen announces first session of The Kitchen L.A.B.,A new inter-disciplinary discussion series,Wednesday, September 19Featuring Shannon Jackson, Elad Lassry, Tere O’Connor and Lynne Tillman
New York, NY, September 17, 2012—On Wednesday, September 19, The Kitchen inauguratesThe Kitchen L.A.B., a new program devoted to presenting, discussing, and developinginterdisciplinary works revolving around themes of common interest to artists in different fields—and, more specifically, considering the meaning and uses of specific words in contemporary art.This season’s theme, presence, will be discussed by four of the most prominent voices in the artstoday: Shannon Jackson, Elad Lassry, Tere O’Connor and Lynne Tillman.
Moderated by The Kitchen’s executive director and chief curator Tim Griffin, the event will startat 7:00 P.M. at The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street). Admission is free and open to the public.Seating is first-come, first-served.
Throughout its 40-year history, The Kitchen has been committed to a spirit of innovation acrossdisciplines and, in this regard, hosts an incredibly diverse audience. And yet this audience today isalso surprisingly atomized.
To wit, art communities see art, dance communities see dance, music communities see music, and so on. Such disjuncture pervades the contemporary cultural field even while there is an increasinginterest among artists in interdisciplinarity. Thus, the same words often carry very differentmeanings for artists in different fields, and the same maneuvers signify in different ways.
The Kitchen L.A.B. invites artists to unpack such vocabularies by responding to them both inconversation and artworks, creating hybrid events that will underline not only points ofcommonality among disciplines but also, as important, real differences.
The series begins against the backdrop of Elad Lassry’s Untitled (Presence), for which hecollaborates with dancers from the New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater in TheKitchen theater space, aiming to consider changing relationships between performance,photographic reproduction, and perception.
Elad Lassry’s work was recently featured in ILLUMInations, at the International Pavilion at the54th Venice Biennale, and in a solo exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway. He will have asolo exhibition at Fondazione Galleria Civica, Trento, Italy, this year as well. His solo exhibitionshave also been held at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Kunsthalle Zurich,Switzerland; the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis; and Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland.
