Collectivity - 1. state of being together; a state or situation in which people or things are together or work together to form a whole. (Encarta Dictionary)

The Shore Institute of the Contemporary Arts (SICA) is proud to bring to the Jersey shore three groups of artists for this exhibition, COLLECTIVITY. This show will feature three “collectives” – TODT, Fease and Industrial Ranch. A collective is a group of artists whose art is the product of a collaborative creative process. The exhibition will run from September 15, 2004 through October 10, 2004. A reception will be held on Friday, September 17th from 5:30 – 9:00pm. The Shore Institute of the Contemporary Arts is located at 20 Third Avenue, in Long Branch, NJ.

TODT is the oldest collective in the United States and will present their installation “Exurbia”. The four artists who comprise TODT have worked collaboratively since 1978. TODT has created installations at the 1993 Venice Biennale, the 1985 Whitney Biennial Exhibition, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, P.P.O.W. Gallery, Galerie am Pariser Platz in Berlin, the Indianapolis Museum of Art and many other institutions and galleries. In September 2001, TODT debuted the first exhibition of EXURBIA at Sideshow Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. As TODT explains, “EXURBIA is a construct culled and ordered from the conceptual frameworks of a vast consumer culture. It refers to our own nature exchanging with all of NATURE as an allusion to cultures, historical durability and nature's geographical domestication. TODT confronts the viewer with the ubiquitous economy of "product and its technique" - the territorial invasion of desire versus the veiled resistance of ecological struggle. EXURBIA is the primordial narrative of the pastoral preserve complete with fresh waterfalls and the detrital plurality of plastics. It is an installation based on reification and fragmentation of ecological space and the sprawling logic of everyone's Eden.”

Fease is a group of emerging artists from Jersey City, NJ that produce installations often imbued with found objects and video projection overlays. For instance, their installation, “Rummage through the Wreckage”, is a large installation composed of found objects where the wall is the floor, the walls ripped mattresses, and the ceiling a floating carcass of a mattress. This is punctuated by a video projection of a cloaked figure ripping through bedding, vainly searching through the layers of cover and stuffing for the kernel of all that transpires in a bed; comfort, sleep, rest, dreams, and eventually death.

Industrial Ranch hails from northern Staten Island, NY, where they operate a 5,000 square foot multifunctional gallery/studio. They are exporting one of their multimedia installations to SICA via The Big Art Show in Asbury Park, NJ. This installation includes interactive computers, sculptural objects, slide projections, photography and video art. Through these medias they are exploring the Middle East and the United States’ involvement.

This exhibition and reception is open to the public. The gallery is open on Wednesday through Sunday. For more information call 732-263-1121.



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Frank Pallone Jr. Congress of the United States

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