Photographs with an Audience is finally here!
Sunday, October 2nd 4 PM
Monday, October 3rd 7 PM
174 NW 23 Street
Miami, Florida 33127

Gallery Diet is pleased to present the fourth incarnation of Photographs with An Audience, a performance by artist Clifford Owens. By eliminating the boundaries between artist and viewer and engaging the audience as participants, Owens will confront viewers in a new form of performance experience. Audience members are invited into the process of creating photographs, to produce compositions that reflect the experiences – past and present-of the group. The resulting photographs, which will be featured in an upcoming solo exhibition of the artist’s work opening Gallery Diet beginning on November 17, will be presented as static objects that challenge our notion of performance documentation and the creation of photographic artwork born out of action.

Photographs with an Audience is Clifford Owens’ debut performance and exhibition in Miami. The performance has been previously shown at The University of North Carolina, The Houston Museum of Contemporary Art and On Stellar Rays in New York City.

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE:
October 2nd 4 PM
October 3rd 7 PM
Please arrive early as space is limited

Owens brings a new perspective to the history of performance art through the act of repeating canonical works within the very different context of current era, through the incorporation of the camera, his own body, and new audiences. He also restages historical live art works by other artists, creating open-ended situations that challenge the convention of art-making. He is currently working in a studio at MOMA/PS1 on Anthology a project which encompasses the work of over 20 inter-generational African American artists. The exhibition will be on view at the Museum in Fall 2011, a catalog will be published in 2012 with a text written by the exhibition curator, Christopher Lew.

Clifford Owens holds a BFA (1998) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MFA (2000) from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. He has participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Studio Museum Residency in Harlem, and is a recipient of the Louis Tiffany Comfort Award and the Lambent Fellowship for the Arts. Owens has exhibited at P.S.1/MoMa as part of Greater New York, the Queens Museum of Art, NY, List Visual Art Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, and Para-Site Art Space, Hong Kong. Publications which have included his works are Performa: New Visual Art Performance, and The Greater New York Book. His projects and exhibitions have been written about in Art in America, Art+Auction, Newsweek, New York Times, Village Voice and other publications. Clifford is represented by On Stellar Rays and will be exhibiting with Gallery Diet on November 17.

Special thanks to the de la Cruz collection where Owens will be in residence beginning in October 2011. Work created in this residency will be part of TKTK.

Some thoughts on the work from the Fall Issue of BOMB magazine…
Nick Stillman in conversation with Clifford Owens in BOMB Magazine about the Houston Contemporary Museum’s incarnation of Photographs with an Audience
Owens: … The project is about the construction of a photograph with myself and/or the audience through simple gestures…
Stillman:… I found it to be one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life. Everyone in that room was going to walk away thinking about it for a while.
Owens: … we are all responsible for each other, because we have more in common than we think… trust was established in that small room, among strangers.