Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven

A group exhibition looking at changing relationships with time when unleashed from connections to material culture, media, and music.

Curated by James Voorhies

Columbus College of Art & Design, OH
January 27–March 12, 2011

Bennington College, Bennington, VT
April 5–29, 2011

Guy Ben-Ner, Joachim Brohm, Gerard Byrne, Malcolm Cochran, Peter Dayton, Ben Kinsley, Lara Kohl, Jeremy Kost, Mark Leckey, Mary Lum, Dennis McNulty, Timothy Nazzaro, Johannes Nyholm, Pipilotti Rist, Cassandra Troyan, Jeffrey Vallance, Alejandro Vidal

Made possible with funding and staff of Columbus College of Art & Design with grants from Greater Columbus Arts Council, Ohio Arts Council and Sociedad Estatal de Acción Cultural, plus funding from Bennington College; realized within my responsibilities as Director of Exhibitions at Columbus College of Art & Design

What ever happened to postmodernism? We never really got a handle on it. It hung around from the early 1960s until the late 1990s in an elusive, nebulous, shape-shifting form. It teased and taunted us, appearing occasionally to take a position that would help us comprehend the architecture, art, music, television, video or film of any given moment during those years. Its combination of intellectual cachet, intrigue and down-and-dirty dealings with popular culture made it a catchall phrase for everything. Postmodernism, however, had none of the tidy habits of its eminent forebear Modernism. No slotting of ideas and disciplines into easy categories. This precarious condition contributed to its uncertain and unceremonious dissolution, which feels fitting for a thing so abstract, so difficult to know yet so pervasive.

Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven arise from postmodernism fallout. It explored our relationship with time embodied in continual cultural transformations, whether always “making it new,” recycling the past or awash in social media and online content. These inquires were made in relation to discourses on Modernism, postmodernism and the moment at that time referred to as “super-hybridity,” where infinite sources aggregated into one super gigantic whole. In this rapid circulation of images and ideas, where everything became always accessible, relationships with material culture, real-time experiences and spatial environments had changed. But into what?

Taking its title from the 1984 album of the same name by the British pop band Love and Rockets, Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven sought to generate ideas about contemporary life in the wake of postmodernism and, of course, the remaining detritus of modernist dreams. What happens when something so prevalent gives way not necessarily to another movement but to a technology that flattens and relativizes all levels of culture? Ahhh, the Internet.

Do we remember what it means to yearn for something?

Book

Documentation Columbus College of  Art & Design

Documentation Bennington College

Mark Leckey, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, 1999, DVD with sound, 15 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York.

Pipilotti Rist, I’m a Victim Of This Song, 1995, video (still). Courtesy the artist, Electronic Arts Intermix and Hauser & Wirth.

Guy Ben-Nur, I'd give it to you but I borrowed it, 2007, single channel video with color and sound, 12 minutes. Courtesy of POSTMASTERS GALLERY, New York.

Cassandra Troyan, The Aftermath, 2011, photographic documentation, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist; photography by Ed Luna.

Gerard Byrne, Images or Shadows of Divine Things, 2005–ongoing, selenium-toned silver gelatin print and vinyl text, 10 photographs 8 x 10 inches each. Courtesy of the artist and Green On Red Gallery, Dublin.

Dennis McNulty, The Crash, with FACETIME, 2011, suspended ceiling elements, tiles and ratchet straps; dimensions variable; and poster, 33 x 40 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Green On Red Gallery, Dublin; commissioned by Bureau for Open Culture.

Joachim Brohm, North and High, from the series Ohio, 1983–1984, c-print, 20 x 24 inches. Courtesy of Galerie Michael Wiesehöfer, Cologne.

Lara Kohl, Once Upon a Time, Yesterday, 2005, chest freezer, ice sculpture of Sleeping Beauty’s castle and songs written by the artist and recorded by Hide the Knives, 41 x 33 x 22 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

Johannes Nyholm, Andreas Nilsson, Bo Melin, The Knife: Heartbeats, 2002, digital video, 3:55 minutes. Courtesy of the artists.

Peter Dayton, Stella #22 “Lost World,” 2008 (detail), 96 x 36 inches, oil, acrylic, resin and paper decal on birch plywood. Courtesy of the artist and James Salomon.

Columbus College of Art & Design, OH
January 27–March 12, 2011

Mark Leckey, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, 1999, DVD with sound, 15 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York.

Gerard Byrne, Images or Shadows of Divine Things, 2005–ongoing, selenium-toned silver gelatin print and vinyl text, 10 photographs 8 x 10 inches each. Pipilotti Rist, I’m a Victim Of This Song, 1995, video (still). Lara Kohl, Once Upon a Time, Yesterday, 2005, chest freezer, ice sculpture of Sleeping Beauty’s castle and songs written by the artist and recorded by Hide the Knives, 41 x 33 x 22 inches. Peter Dayton, Noland #12 “Draggin’ Wagon,” 2008, oil, acrylic, resin and paper decal on birch plywood, 96 x 36 inches.

Gerard Byrne, Images or Shadows of Divine Things, 2005–ongoing, selenium-toned silver gelatin print and vinyl text, 10 photographs 8 x 10 inches each.

Peter Dayton, Noland #12 “Draggin’ Wagon,” 2008, oil, acrylic, resin and paper decal on birch plywood, 96 x 36 inches. Courtesy of Haro Keledjian. Malcolm Cochran, History Lessons, 2011, poplar, steel, stainless steel, whitewash, 8 x 6 x 10 feet. Courtesy of the artist; commissioned by Bureau for Open Culture.

Malcolm Cochran, History Lessons, 2011, poplar, steel, stainless steel, whitewash, 8 x 6 x 10 feet. Peter Dayton, Stella #22 “Lost World,” 2008 and Barnett Newman #1, “Onement One,” 2006, both 96 x 36 inches, oil, acrylic, resin and paper decal on birch plywood. Courtesy of the artist and James Salomon.

Dayton, Stella #22 “Lost World,” 2008, 96 x 36 inches, oil, acrylic, resin and paper decal on birch plywood.

Malcolm Cochran, History Lessons, 2011, poplar, steel, stainless steel, whitewash, 8 x 6 x 10 feet. Peter Dayton, Barnett Newman #1, “Onement One,” 2006, 96 x 36 inches, oil, acrylic, resin and paper decal on birch plywood. Guy Ben-Nur, I'd give it to you but I borrowed it, 2007, single channel video with color and sound, 12 minutes.

Guy Ben-Nur, I'd give it to you but I borrowed it, 2007, single channel video with color and sound, 12 minutes. Jeffrey Vallance, Juliet’s Balcony, Verona, 2006, mixed media, 24.5 x 8.5 x 8.25 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.

Jeffrey Vallance, Juliet’s Balcony, Verona, 2006, mixed media, 24.5 x 8.5 x 8.25 inches.

Jeffrey Vallance, Juliet’s Balcony, Verona, 2006, mixed media, 24.5 x 8.5 x 8.25 inches. Joachim Brohm, the Ohio series, 1983–1984, c-print, 20 x 24 inches.

Joachim Brohm, the Ohio series, 1983–1984, c-print, 20 x 24 inches. Dennis McNulty, The Crash, with FACETIME, 2011, suspended ceiling elements, tiles and ratchet straps; dimensions variable; and poster, 33 x 40 inches.

Dennis McNulty, FACETIME, 2011, color laser printed poster. Courtesy of the artist.

Joachim Brohm, the Ohio series, 1983–1984, c-print, 20 x 24 inches. Cassandra Troyan, The Aftermath, 2011, photographic documentation, dimensions variable.

Mark Leckey, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, 1999, DVD with sound, 15 minutes. Bureau for Open Culture, He Loved Big Brother, 2011, paperback copies of George Orwell’s 1984.

Bureau for Open Culture, He Loved Big Brother, 2011, paperback copies of George Orwell’s 1984.

Seven Dreams, afterparty with a fog of new wave, industrial, pop, screwed jams and a laser light show; live performances by Anna Ranger, DJ Scott Neimet, DJ Seabat and DJ Self Help. Skylab, Columbus, Ohio, January 27, 2011.