Contact: Emily Brunt | [email protected] | 801.328.4201 x 115
(Danica Farley starting March 1, reachable at: [email protected])
www.utahmoca.org | 20 S West Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Tue-Thu & Sat 11 AM – 6 PM, Fri 11 AM – 9 PM
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art Announces:
FAX
Opening March 2, 2012 with a First Friday celebration
For Immediate Release:
February 23, 2012
SALT LAKE CITY, UT – Utah Museum of Contemporary Art announces the opening of traveling exhibition FAX,
Guest curated by João Ribas and co-organized by The Drawing Center and Independent Curators International.
FAX has grown and morphed since it’s opening at The Drawing Center in New York in 2009, and has travelled
world-wide, amassing faxes in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. UMOCA hosts a comprehensive presentation of
the exhibition, and will open with a First Friday celebration on March 2, 2012, and close June 23, 2012.
“FAX challenges our notion of where an art exhibition can wind up and what form it takes when it gets there.
This presentation teleports to the ends of the earth riding on the technological whimsy of this thought-to-be
obsolete mode of communication. As an artistic medium, the 500+ artists have created a material legacy that
will keep fax machines transmitting for generations to come,” says Aaron
Moulton, Senior Curator of Exhibitions, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.
Moulton has added the following artists to FAX: Mike Bouchet, Salotto
Buono, Roisin Byrne, Keren Cytter, Sejla Kajmeric, Daniel Kingery, Forniture
Pallotta, Bertrand Planes, Jared Steffensen, and Ignacio Uriarte. Other
artists will be added over the course of the exhibition and will be included
in future presentations at other institutions world-wide.
FAX invites a multigenerational group of artists, as well as architects,
designers, scientists and filmmakers, to re-conceive of the fax machine as a
tool for thinking and drawing. Although the technology for transmitting
printed images and texts dates from the nineteenth century—a machine by
Scottish mechanic Alexander Bain patented in 1843—it was the
introduction of the modern fax through commercially available machines in
the 1970s that turned facsimiles into a ubiquitous communications medium
Matt Sheridan Smith, Untitled (contrast test)
for international business. Artists readily exploited its immediate, graphic,
(detail), 2008
and interactive character, making it an important part of the history of
media art, nestled between the legacy of Fluxus and the nascent practices
of new media. But with the fax machine now fast becoming a technology of the past, how do artists see the
potential of the fax transmission today?
Faxes by nearly 100 artists that were sent to the initial showing of FAX at The Drawing Center form the core of
the exhibition, including seminal examples of early telecommunications art. Each institution on the tour is
encouraged to invite up to twenty additional artists to submit works, which will be presented at all successive
venues. These works are transmitted to each participating institution’s working fax line throughout the duration
of the exhibition. The active accumulation of information—received in real time, in the exhibition space—
includes drawings and texts, and even the inevitable junk faxes from telemarketers and local businesses as well.
All the transmitted pages are archived or displayed together with the active fax machine, which may produce
new faxes from invited artists at any moment. The result—an ongoing cumulative project—is a show concerned
with ideas of reproduction, obsolescence, distribution, and mediation.
Since the first showing of FAX at The Drawing Center, the exhibition has been presented in 14 galleries in
Europe, Latin America and Asia, as well as North America, with over 200 artists from all over the world invited to
participate by each host curator. At times, the exhibition has also been shown simultaneously, and at one point
was even in three different countries: Para/Site Art Center in Hong Kong, Burnaby Art Gallery in British
Columbia, and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City. Recently, FAX was exhibited at the South London
Gallery in the U.K. and the Knoxville Museum in Tennessee, where the two institutions had kept in contact
throughout the duration of the exhibition. Subsequently, FAX has the ability to explore the potential of
simultaneous and real-time exhibitions – furthering the unlimited possibilities of developing international
collaborative exchange.
ABOUT THE GUEST CURATOR
João Ribas is curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center and a widely published critic. He was previously curator at
The Drawing Center in New York, and has organized over thirty exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad. Ribas is the
winner of an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award (2010) and two consecutive AICA Awards for Best Exhibition
(2008/2009). He has contributed essays to numerous exhibition catalogs and monographs, and has been a
visiting lecturer for institutions and organizations worldwide. He was previously adjunct faculty at the School of
Visual Arts, New York, and currently teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design.
EXHIBITION ITINERARY
The Drawing Center
New York, New York
April 17, 2009 – July 23, 2009
Contemporary Museum, Baltimore
Baltimore, Maryland
September 12, 2009 – December 20, 2009
Plug in ICA
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
December 12, 2009 – February 21, 2010
Torrance Art Museum
Torrance, California
January 14, 2010 – February 20, 2010
Para/Site Art Center
Hong Kong
February 2, 2010 – April 1, 2010
Burnaby Art Gallery
Burnaby, British Columbia,
March 16, 2010 – May 23, 2010
Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil
Mexico City, Mexico
March 24, 2010 – June 20, 2010
Dowd Gallery, State University of New York,
College of Cortland
Cortland, New York
October 7, 2010 – December 10, 2010
New Galerie
Paris, France
November 6, 2010 - December 18, 2010
Apex Gallery, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
Rapid CIty, South Dakota
February 15, 2011 - April 3, 2011
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
March 7, 2011 - April 10, 2011
St. Paul St Gallery
Auckland, New Zealand
April 8, 2011 - April 30, 2011
Knoxville Museum of Art
Knoxville, Tennessee
August 26, 2011 - November 6, 2011
South London Gallery
London, United Kingdom
September 22, 2011 – November 27, 2011
DeVos Art Museum
Marquette, Michigan
January 13, 2012 - February 24, 2012
University of Hawaii Art Gallery
Honolulu, Hawaii
February 26, 2012 – April 15, 2012
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
Salt Lake City, Utah
March 2, 2012 – June 23, 2012
San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery
San Francisco, California
May 4, 2012 – July 22, 2012
CREDIT LINE
FAX is a traveling exhibition curated by João Ribas, and co-organized by The Drawing Center, New
York, and Independent Curators International (ICI), New York. The exhibition and the accompanying
publication were made possible, in part, by members of the Drawing Room, a patron circle founded to
support innovative exhibitions at The Drawing Center; and by support to ICI from the Andy Warhol
Foundation for the Arts, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation,
and ICI’s Board of Trustees, as well as the ICI Access Fund.
ABOUT ICI
Independent Curators International (ICI) is a non-profit headquartered in New York that produces exhibitions,
events, publications, and training opportunities for audiences around the world. Working across disciplines and
historical precedents, since 1975 the organization has connected emerging and established curators, artists, and
institutions, to forge international networks and bring behind-the-scenes curatorial discourse to new publics.
In the last two years, 12 ICI exhibitions have been presented by 66 venues in 20 countries profiling the work of
over 350 artists worldwide; 103 curators and artists from the U.S. and abroad have contributed to ICI’s talks
programs, online journal, and conferences; and 80 emerging curators from 27 countries and 14 U.S. states have
participated in the Curatorial Intensives, ICI’s short-course professional training programs. Through online
resources and the creation of a new Curatorial Hub in New York, ICI’s fast-growing Curator’s Network provides
members with up-to-date information on jobs and other curatorial opportunities, as well as access to articles,
books, and round-table discussions addressing the latest curatorial debates.
UMOCA
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (formerly Salt Lake Art Center) was recognized as Best Museum in the State
of Utah for 2011. Founded in 1931 and now located in the heart of Salt Lake City, UMOCA exhibits
groundbreaking work by leading local and international artists. UMOCA is currently exhibiting 2012 Sundance
Film Festival New Frontier. Coming up in June is Play Me I’m Yours, inviting the people of Salt Lake to show off
their piano skills on street corners all over Salt Lake. Recent exhibitions include Kim Schoenstadt, winner of the
2011 Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting; Fallen Fruit of Utah, a state-wide collaboration with
museums and individuals about the role of fruit in Utah’s history, led by artist collective Fallen Fruit; Lawn
Gnomes Eat Your Hearts Out, a community public sculpture initiative designed to move the very best in
contemporary art outside the four walls of the gallery and into places where people work, live, and play; Robert
Fontenot’s The Place This Is, a conceptual exploration of the stories and histories of Utah and America through
materials commonly associated with the domestic realm; and Contemporary Masters: Artist-Designed Miniature
Golf. UMOCA rounds out its offerings with a lively mix of award-winning educational programs, film screenings,
panel discussions, and events celebrating Salt Lake’s vibrant local art scene. UMOCA is located at 20 S. West
Temple, just off the intersection with South Temple. Admission is free year-round. Business hours are TuesdayThursday: 11 am - 6 pm; Friday: 11 am - 9 pm; Saturday: 11 am - 6 pm; closed Sunday and Monday. For more
information call (801) 328-4201 or visit www.utahmoca.org.
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For additional information regarding ICI, please contact Mandy Sa at [email protected] or at
212.254.8200 ext. 121.