PAUL SIETSEMA
At the hour of tea
September 13–October 25, 2014
502 West 22nd Street
New York
At the hour of tea 2013 16mm film (color, silent) 17 minutes
Matthew Marks is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Paul Sietsema in his galleries at 522 and 502 West 22nd Street. Sietsema’s works address the production, consumption, and proliferation of cultural objects and the systems in which these objects circulate. The exhibition includes a group of new paintings and drawings, as well as Sietsema’s two most recent films.
On view at 502 West 22nd Street, the 16-millimeter film At the hour of tea is being shown in New York for the first time. The central work in Sietsema’s recent traveling survey exhibition, the film presents five sequences that explore configurations of found objects — including an envelope, a typewriter, coins, an inbox, Roman glassware — each following a structure that concludes with an image of a composed tableau. These sequences and objects offer historical analogues for modern processes of consumption, production, and communication: collecting, arranging, and recording. Throughout the sequences a text is revealed piece by piece, gradually describing a historical painting in modernist terms.
Paul Sietsema (b. 1968) lives and works in Los Angeles. His work has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, the Kunsthalle Basel, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Monographs on Sietsema’s work have been published by the Kunsthalle Basel, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum.
A publication about Sietsema’s films from the past twelve years was just published by Mousse Publishing in Milan. An artist’s book focusing on the film At the hour of tea was recently published by Rite Editions in San Francisco and Sternberg Press in Berlin.
Paul Sietsema will be on view at 522 and 502 West 22nd Street from September 13 to October 25, 2014, Tuesday through Saturday, from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
