Spring 2009: Dutch Artist Alon Levin to Participate in joint HVCCA/ SUNY New Paltz Collaboration
February 1 – May 1, 2009: SUNY New Paltz Artist Residency
Alon Levin | Artist Lecture: SUNY New Paltz campus, Lecture Center
RM 102, Wednesday, February 25th, 2009, 7:30-9pm
September 12, 2009 – July 26, 2010: ‘Double Dutch’ at HVCCA,
Opening Reception Sunday September 13, 4-6PM
The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art and the SUNY New Paltz Sculpture Department proudly announce a 2009 collaboration in marking the celebration of NY400.
Dutch artist Alon Levin will be hosted for his residency on the State University of New Paltz campus, within the Sculpture Department. Here he will be provided with a studio, living space and materials generously supported by grant funding from FONS, The Netherland Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, and SUNY New Paltz. While on the campus, Alon will be available to interact with students and to share his experiences as a Dutch artist. The installation produced during the residency will be featured in ‘Double Dutch’a major exhibit at HVCCA opening September 12, 2009.
‘Double Dutch’ will feature artists from The Netherlands creating installations both in the HVCCA as well as along the waterfront and in the City of Peekskill. The exhibition, marking the Quadricentennial of the settlement of the Dutch along the Hudson Valley, seeks to explore a Dutch esthetic and its influence on the region.
Alon Levin (New York/Den Haag) makes large-scale installations, often of wooden structures, that refer to the systems of thinking we tend to take for granted. Philosophical, economical, and social theories of progress and growth, organizing principles, and ideas of modernist utopias are some of the recurring themes in his work. Levin examines the images, metaphors, and symbols that represent these concepts, and explores the contradictions and failings of their systems. The work can be seen as a narration about the buildup, breakdown, and possibly the reinvention of meaning itself.
In the beginning Levin establishes parameters and a course of action; then he reacts to, examines, and eventually playfully breaks these same parameters. Levin develops modules of what appear to be color and image systems that are prevalent throughout his work. Basic forms like towers, spirals, arches, and wheels continuously reoccur; all bearing the connotations of technical progress, movement and monumentality. The installations’ overwhelming physical presence and the spatial quality establish a kind of logic that transforms the context and creates a momentary alternative reality. The structures have a material rawness that underline the transparency of the process and sketch-like nature of the installations.
1975: Born in Israel. Alon has been a resident of Amsterdam for the last 10 years.
Currently he splits his time between Amsterdam and New York.
Education:
1998-2002: Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2005-2006: Rijksakademie van Beeldene Kunsten, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Alon Levin is represented by Klemms Gallery, Berlin.