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SITE SANTA FE PRESENTS ORIT
RAFF: DYNAMIC EQUILIBRIUM A SATELLITE EXHIBITION AT 516 MAGNÍFICO
ARTSPACE IN ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO
November 22 – December 21, 2002
Albuquerque, New Mexico - SITE Santa Fe presents ORIT RAFF: Dynamic
Equilibrium, a special satellite exhibition to be held at 516 Magnífico
Artspace in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The exhibition, representing SITE Santa
Fe's second programming foray into Albuquerque, will include photographs and
DVD installations. There will be a free public opening reception to preview
the exhibition on Friday, November 22, 2002, 6-8 pm. The reception
will be preceded by a gallery talk with the artist at 5:30 pm.
Israeli-born artist Orit Raff creates photographs, installations, and video
works that suggest intimacy and the private self. The spareness of Raff's
imagery links her work aesthetically with minimalism, but her references to
common everyday life and objects also reflect Pop-art sensibilities. For example,
the WHITE series, which was created while Raff was at the School of
Visual Arts, was made primarily in the private areas of the home. Raff turned
neutral objects such as a toilet bowl, bathroom drain, a bed, a bar of soap,
and a mirror into cool meditations on hygienic whiteness. For her installation
Mobius Strip, images of indentations left on carpet and other sites
suggested the floor plan of a recently vacated apartment.
Raff's Dynamic Equilibrium installation, a version of which
was previously shown at The International Studio Program's Open Studios, "conjures
the moment when the domestic becomes unfamiliar, uncanny in its ability to
flip from comfort to cold, from manageable to impinging." The installation
includes selections from two recent and related bodies of work. The "freezer
series" consists of large, up-close photographs of the interiors of Raff's
antiquated, frost-plagued freezer. Although taken inside the home, these stark,
uncomfortable images bring to mind the tragic icy landscapes of Northern Romantic
painter Caspar David Friedrich. Another series of variously titled video projects
uses a steam room, a Jacuzzi, and a swimming pool filter as settings to depict
water in states of movement. The intimate representation of these public spaces,
which captures the organic movement of the precipitation, evokes strangely
meditative associations with bodily functions. Taken as a whole, Dynamic
Equilibrium examines the slippery balance between the domestic and the
alien, the comfortable and the discomforting, the familiar and the menacing.
Orit Raff was born in 1970 in Jerusalem, Israel. She attended Bezalel Academy
for Arts and Design in Jerusalem and received a B.F.A. in 1996 from the School
of Visual Arts in New York. She participated in the Independent Study Program
of the Whitney Museum of American Art between 1998 and 1999, and recently
took part in the International Studio Program in New York. She has received
several awards and honors including the American Israel Cultural Foundation
Fellowship in 1998. She has exhibited internationally in group exhibitions
including those at Lisson Gallery, London, and Sean Kelly Gallery, New York,
as well as solo shows including The Museum of Israeli Art at Ramat Gan in
1998.
SITE Santa Fe is located at 1606 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Exhibition
hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 pm; Friday, 10:00 am
-7:00 pm. Admission is $5.00 for adults and $2.50 for students and seniors;
members are free. Free admission is offered on Fridays, made possible by a
grant from The Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston. Free guided tours are offered
on Fridays at 6:00 pm and Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00 pm. Tours in Spanish
are by appointment. SITE Santa Fe gift certificates are available. Call 505.989.1199
for more information. This announcement is partially funded by the City of
Santa Fe Arts Commission and the 1% Lodgers' Tax.
Contact: Press Office
Tel: 505.989.1199
Fax:505.989.1188
email: press@sitesantafe.org
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 1999
C-Print
40 x 50 inches
Courtesy of the artist and
Julie Saul Gallery, New York
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