Plans for next Generational Triennial

03/05/2012

PRESS RELEASE

The New Museum announces Lauren Cornell and artist Ryan Trecartin to curate 2015 Generational Triennial.

New York, NY…As the 2012 New Museum Triennial “The Ungovernables” concludes, plans for the next Generational Triennial are already underway. Today, Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director, announced that Lauren Cornell and artist Ryan Trecartin will curate the New Museum’s third Generational Triennial in 2015. Cornell, who has been Executive Director of Rhizome for seven years and Adjunct Curator at the New Museum, will step down from her post at Rhizome in July to take on this new challenge. A search for the next Executive Director of Rhizome, an affiliate organization in residence at the New Museum, has begun.

The Generational Triennial is a signature initiative of the New Museum. It is the only recurring international exhibition in the country devoted to emerging artists from around the world, providing an important platform for a new generation of artists who are shaping the current discourse of contemporary art and the future of culture. The first edition in 2009, “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus,” featured fifty artists, from twenty-five countries, born after 1976. The second Triennial “The Ungovernables,” which recently closed, featured a global roster of thirty-four artists, artist groups, and temporary collectives from more than twenty-three countries—totaling over fifty participants—many of whom have never before exhibited in the US.

“I can think of no better team to organize the next Triennial—an exhibition that is now awaited with great anticipation and high expectations,” said Lisa Phillips. “Cornell and Trecartin came into their own in this millennium and are deeply in touch with how the world is changing and how artists of their generation are responding.”

Cornell was part of the curatorial team for the first Triennial, “Younger Than Jesus,” which featured an ambitious multi-channel installation by Trecartin. In 2010, she curated “Free,” a major exhibition for the New Museum about how the internet has fundamentally changed our landscape of information and our notion of public space. “Free” also featured an original work by Trecartin, riverthe.net (2010), developed together with Tumblr founder David Karp through Rhizome’s Seven on Seven conference that same year.

“After seven wonderful years at Rhizome, I am excited to embrace this ambitious curatorial project and work closely with Ryan Trecartin to give artists an opportunity to show and to develop major new works,” said Cornell.

Trecartin writes, directs, and produces movies that explore themes of identity, consumerism, and post-millennial technology. His cinematic and sculptural practice—developed through a close synergy with his primary collaborator, Lizzie Fitch—anticipates and challenges today’s defining technologies and social developments. Since he emerged in the mid-2000s, his distinct voice in contemporary art has influenced a broad, intergenerational range of cultural practitioners. Born in Texas and raised in Ohio, Trecartin has lived and worked in Providence, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Miami, and Los Angeles. Any Ever is his non-sequential, seven-part body of work completed in 2011. It has been exhibited at ARC/Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2011), MoMA P.S.1, New York (2011), the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2011), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2010), and The Power Plant, Toronto (2010). Trecartin has participated in numerous international biennials in addition to the New Museum Triennial (2009), including the Singapore Biennial (2011), Gwangju Biennial (2010), Liverpool Biennial (2010), and the Whitney Biennial (2006). The 2015 Triennial will be his first curatorial project.

Over the past seven years, Cornell has built Rhizome into a robust organization, doubling its size and producing dynamic programs, including the signature conference, Seven on Seven, which pairs artists with top technologists to develop new works. She expanded and redesigned Rhizome’s rich, participatory website and its art base, which holds a collection of over 2,500 works of digital art. She is recognized as a leading authority on art and the internet, and has lectured and written extensively about it. She has also organized dozens of public programs at the New Museum through New Silent, a monthly series which includes screenings, performances, and conversations around critical themes in art. Cornell has organized several exhibitions, all of which have focused on emerging artists and included premieres of ambitious commissioned work by Aleksandra Domanovi?, Alexandre Singh, and Takeshi Murata, and collaborations with collectives including W.A.G.E. and DIS Magazine, among others.

While organizing the 2015 Triennial, Cornell will continue to develop digital projects and commissions for the New Museum, and organize select public programs in her ongoing role as Adjunct Curator a at the New Museum. She will also serve as a Core Faculty Member at Bard Center for Curatorial Studies.