Photo courtesy Igor Josifov and Toomey-Tourell Gallery
Reflections on Originality Igor Josifov & Michael Ryan Noble
Thursday, October 23 6:00 pm
Reservations: reflectionsonoriginality.eventbrite.com On Thursday, October 23 at 6:00 P.M., the artists Igor Josifov and Michael Ryan Noble will give a performance lecture entitled Reflections on Originality, in which they will explore the roles of the audience and curators in responding to the originality of performance art works.
Looking at art as a fundamental aspect of humanity, Igor Josifov?s and Michael Ryan Noble?s project Reflections on Originality investigates ideas of authenticity in art and questions how the language of art is at once original and derivative. Throughout the residency they will be recreating and copying their previous performance works "Manumission", "Emit" and "Flooded" as well as exploring the idea of copying as a part of their fellow Watermill residents? new work. Concluding their Watermill residency, the artists will present their research through performance as well as exhibition of photos and drawings, and will address such concepts as artistic integrity, inspiration, creative vision, intellectual property, appreciation and interpretation.
Additional Open Studios (rehearsals on a drop-by basis; there will be no formal presentation or reception for the two dates below)
Thursday, October 16, 2008: (Manumission 2-6pm) and Emit (7-8pm) Saturday, October 18, 2008: Flooded (8-9pm)
Igor Josifov is a Macedonian performance artist who attended the School of Applied Arts in Skopje, Macedonia and started his secondary education and career in San Francisco, California. In his performances, the body is a medium that translates his personal and cultural experience into a broader context.
Josifov's work is based on psychoanalytic perception and the cultural and moral realties of contemporary living. The subject of his work deals with identity, death, loss, and social commentary. He uses concept as the first and most crucial part of the process and then uses the medium and its symbolic function to support the concept as an element. After years of experience with all mediums he decided that the most important and primary medium is his body it is a common form that communicates his own experience and reflects the viewer's own ideas of self. The liberation of the body in his work has a metaphoric meaning for the freedom of people in the contemporary world.
Michael Ryan Noble has created artworks with, and for, small and exclusive groups of people. He deconstructs the barriers between artist and viewer through interactive performances, sculptures that integrate mirrors, and collaborative photography projects. In valuing art as an essential presence in the lives of all people, Noble promotes the idea that art is at once a common and vital reflection of society as well as a profoundly personal and subjective practice. His vision is in moving society towards a realization of artists as a culturally engaged and appreciative community.
