The Mediated Gesture
March 3 through May 27, 2006

The term 'gesture' typically brings to mind the expansive constructs of Abstract Expressionism. However, with the rise of conceptualism in contemporary art, the notion of gesture becomes more filtered. The artists shown in The Mediated Gesture adopt a position of distanced causation. As opposed to the Abstract Expressionist's mark of existence, they use gesture as an interposing reference. The term gesture in relation to these artists suggests mediation, and the absence of romanticism.

Bruce Nauman pushes and pulls his body in Studies For Holograms, but this aggressive manipulation is devoid of personal message. Most often, Nauman's work causes a strong reaction in the viewer, which could be seen as the "true" gesture the artist intended. In his cross-hatch series, Jasper Johns uses the encaustic medium to arrest the gestures. Each stroke, and successive stroke, points to the meaning of gesture instead of a gesture's meaning. The extended arm in Periscope I swirls through the question of what comes first: the gesture, or its reason for being? Just as Johns mixes and matches the name of a color with its application, the visual elements in his work often serve as surrogates for the artist's world, and not its reflection. Robert Morris and Richard Tuttle do not make specific gestures. With his sliced-felt works, Morris arrives at gesture by exploiting the entropy of the unstructured material. In his wire works, as the wire is wrapped around nails on a wall, Richard Tuttle allows the gesture to take its own form- it interacts with the light and surface of its surroundings.

Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Longo are the most literal of the group, as they both tend to reference outside contexts. Rauschenberg's constructs often rely on found material for the selection of a gesture rather than the making of one. In the Jammers series, he has restrained himself to the extreme, by keeping the material devoid of the signs of prior use so typical of his other work. Longo's contorted figures are displayed in high contrast, which distances the subjects from their urban origin- with its fashions, scenes and sounds. By presenting exaggerated archetypal forms of motion, Longo frames out the emotional context of the figures, leaving the gesture detached from its inspiration.

This exhibition has been organized in conjunction with the Leo Castelli Gallery, and will be on view in both spaces.