NEW YORK, N.Y.- Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert present the exhibition Ocularpation: Wall Street by Zefrey Throwell, from January 6-February 11, 2012, featuring photographs, paintings, video, and sculpture. The exhibition centers around a large-scale continuous video projection of Ocularpation: Wall Street, created on August 1, 2011, in which 50 performers directed by Zefrey Throwell, gathered outdoors on Wall Street, stripped down to nothing, and began working in a call for transparency that caught fire and spread across the globe.
The experience and documentation of Ocularpation informs the varied works in the exhibition. A series of acrylic paintings, using signature Wall Street blue trader jackets sewn together as the canvas, are collaged with photographs of the performances. Fifty sculptures of everyday objects, relating to the Wall Street professions (i.e. broom—janitorial, handcuffs—police, piggybank— banker, etc.), have been coated with a thin veneer of gold enamel, thereby transforming them into precious artworks. Zefrey, who used nudity so powerfully as a symbol of exposure and transparency in the Ocularpation performance and the recent strip poker game I’ll Raise you One… at Art in General, uses gold in this body of work in reference to the current American financial dream, sold as a glittering jewel, but in fact is a fantasy whose value is speculation.
“Zefrey’s unencumbered enthusiasm for his practice activates the opportunity for serendipity and intention to collide with astonishing results. Such is the case with “Ocularpation: Wall Street”. He was there, he saw it coming, he made us look,’ said Rajendra Roy, Chief curator of film, Museum of Modern Art, who screened Ocularpation and a range of Zefrey’s previous projects. This exhibition continues Zefrey Throwell’s extensive body of investigative and interactive projects focused on the connecting points and underpinnings of social discourse. Additional projects by Zefrey at the Whitney Museum, Performa, and Venice Biennials, as well as major media coverage of Ocularpation (including The New York Times, BBC, CNN, NBC and more) have provided the artist with a platform to ignite public discussion and an international call to action. The artist states, the inspiration for the Ocularpation performance and exhibition was personal: “When my mother lost all her savings and was forced to come out of retirement from the market crash of 2008, I knew we had to refocus attention on Wall Street, its actions, secrecy, and real repercussions on people’s lives.”
Zefrey Throwell
Zefrey Throwell is an artist living and working in New York City. Zefrey Throwell is a member of three collectives: THROWHITE, Red76 and Cameracartell. In addition he co-directs a gallery called Engineer’s Office Gallery in the heart of Rockefeller Center, www.engineersofficegallery.com. Throwell works with Klemens Gasser and Tanja Grunert, Inc. and is a regular contributing member to Art International Radio.
The artist was included in the 2007, 2009 and 2011 Venice Biennales, has had recent shows at the Museum of Modern Art (2011), Performa 11 (2011), Art in General (2011), the Whitney Museum of American Art (2010), Queens Museum of Art (2010), the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2009), Studio Museum in New York (2009) and projects at Werkstatt der Kulturen in Berlin (2010).
