ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY.- CCS Bard presents I’ve Got Something in My Eye in the Hessel Museum of Art, a new project by Rotterdam-based artist team Bik Van der Pol. The exhibition brings together more than 80 works by 40 artists in the Marieluise Hessel Collection, selections from the collection of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, works by Bik Van der Pol, and ephemera from the CCS Bard curatorial archive. The circulation of knowledge and re-use of existing and left-over spaces, forms, and situations are important strategic tools in Bik Van Der Pol’s work. Much of their work may also be described as context-sensitive and constructively critical: that is, they examine a particular context and question the functions of art, including those of art institutions.
Bik Van der Pol have chosen to include works from the Van Abbemuseum collection in order to invite visitors to consider both the parallels and divergences between the two collections, as well as between the two institutions that house and interpret them. The Van Abbemuseum (www.vanabbemuseum.nl/engels), located in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, is one of the leading museums for modern and contemporary art in Europe. Since opening in 1936, the Van Abbemuseum has built an extensive, internationally renowned collection of more than 2,700 works of art, including works by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, Joseph Beuys, Lawrence Weiner, Douglas Gordon, Marina Abramovic, and Paul McCarthy.
The opening of the exhibition will also mark the completion of Lisi Raskin’s project, Mobile Observation (Transmitting and Receiving) Station, as well as the reopening of Christian Philipp Müller’s Hudson Valley Tastemakers, an earth sculpture on the grounds of Bard College originally installed in 2003.
Mobile Observation (Transmitting and Receiving) Station was commissioned by CCS Bard as part of its first artist-in-residence program. On April 14, 2008, Raskin departed CCS Bard in a converted cargo van for a month-long journey across the American west to visit sites of nuclear testing and development. From this mobile observation station, art works and ephemera were mailed back to headquarters at the Center for Curatorial Studies, where they have been processed and displayed by CCS Bard graduate students in a post office/receiving station constructed specifically for the project located in the Center’s Audrey and Sydney Irmas Atrium.
Hudson Valley Tastemakers is a permanent installation on the Bard College campus that examines the specific tastes of foods resulting from the changing nature, soil, and climate of the Hudson Valley. Comprised of six ramp-planters that are filled with soil from Putnam, Dutchess, Columbia, Greene, Ulster, and Orange Counties, the project contains both planned and spontaneous vegetation. The length of each planter is determined by the proportionate farmland still available in the county. This summer CCS Bard will reinvigorate the project with new plantings, including Calendula Zeolights, Amaranth Burgundy, and Pepper Chile Pasilla Bajio.
