Lifting—theft in art. April 12–May 31, 2008. Opening Reception: Friday April 11, 6–9pm

Lifting surveys theft within artistic practices. The artists in the exhibition have—or claim to have—transgressed a legal line, committing theft in the name of art.  Lifting explores the specific intentions and implications of each artist’s work, as well as common issues of authenticity, moral defensibility, and conceptual integrity.

Lifting seeks to trace a lineage from the outer edge of appropriation strategies as they transgress legal and societal boundaries. As a relatively commonplace gesture within art, the radicalism of appropriation—and the attendant moral, ethical, and political issues—may risk being overlooked. The artists in Lifting have intentionally strayed into a territory that is more overtly deviant, whereby their work incorporates materials that point to the act or evidence of theft.

Exhibition curators: Atopia Projects 

An accompanying publication will be released in July 2008, and a reduced content pdf version is currently available to download for free here.

RELATED EVENTS

Panel Discussion

Saturday, April 12, Noon (Fort Worth Contemporary Arts)
An hour-long discussion about ideas raised by the exhibition. Panel will include: Gavin Morrison & Fraser Stables (exhibition curators); Ann Messner (exhibiting artist); Jeff Ferrell (TCU Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, and author of Cultural Criminology and Tearing Down the Streets: Adventures in Urban Anarchy).

Film Screenings (all held at Fort Worth Contemporary Arts)

Thursday, April 17th, 6:30pm

Sonic Outlaws, USA 1995, 87 mins
Directed by Craig Baldwin
In 1991, the San Francisco Bay area experimental music group Negativland released a record using samples of U2’s music and the voice of radio DJ Casey Kasem. U2’s record company, Island Records, sued Negativland. Craig Baldwin’s film explores the implications of this incident and other intellectual property controversies across the contemporary art scene.

Thursday, May 1st, 6:30pm

There is a Criminal Touch to Art, Germany 1976, 30 min.
Directed by Ulay
A film documenting the live action Ulay performed in Berlin in 1976. It depicts his theft of the Carl Spitzweg painting The Poor Poet, from the Neue Nationalgalerie, and includes commentaries and reactions from the media.

The Sean Connery Golf Project, USA 2002, 17 min.
Directed by Rhys Southan and Sara Rimensnyder
Rhys Southan and Sara Rimensnyder, two aspiring film writers, managed to sneak into the Sony Film Studio lot, and steal a number of screenplays of films yet to make it to production. Southan and Rimensnyder modified a number of the scripts and re-inserted them into the fling cabinet from where they were stolen.

Untitled #29.95, USA 1999, 15 min.
Directed by RTMark/Video Aktivists
Untitled #29.95 seeks to wrestle the exclusivity of video art away from the gallery system. The video questions how the idealism of the 1960s, when video was first used by artists and activists, became a high priced commodity, corrupted by money and the gallery system. Untitled #29.95 encourages the “liberatation” of editioned art videos and for them to be distributed through the internet.

theartgalleries@tcu.edu 817 257 7643
Opening Hours: Thursday-Sunday 1-6pm
2900 W Berry St. Fort Worth, TX 76109