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This is Not a Love Song

— Interfaces between visual arts and pop music

21 May — 13 October 2013

This is Not a Love Song

This Is Not a Love Song is an exhibition that sets out to trace the genealogy of the relations between pop music and video-creation from the 1960s to today, with the emphasis on those moments in which there was feedback between the two manifestations as they explored the field of experiment, utopia and political incorrectness.

Since the 1960s, various generations of avant-garde artists have integrated into their production processes elements that are related with the attitudes and imaginaries of pop music. Artists of the calibre of Andy Warhol, Vito Acconci, Dan Graham, Nam June Paik, Joseph Beuys, John Baldessari, Rodney Graham, Tony Oursler, Christian Marclay, Mike Kelley, Douglas Gordon, Jeremy Deller o Damien Hirst, and many more, down to today, have approached this genre in some of their most outstanding works, sometimes even collaborating with different rock bands or recording their own albums. Similarly, leading musicians such as John Lennon, David Bowie, Pete Townshend, Syd Barret, Brian Eno, Alan Vega, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson and members of essential bands of the last two decades, like Sonic Youth, REM, Blur, or Franz Ferdinand all trained at art school before becoming professional musicians.

From this approach and bearing in mind that the origins of video-art run almost parallel to those of pop music, the project is divided into two sections:

1- Pop and video-creation. Shared genealogies

This section includes more than 30 significant works in the history of video art and experimental film from the 1960s to 2013 that are formally and conceptually related to the iconographies of pop and rock, with works by Andy Warhol, Nam June Paik, Yayoi Kusama. Dan Graham, Tony Oursler, Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Christian Marclay, Douglas Gordon, Candice Breitz, Jeremy Deller, Mark Leckey, Jon Mikel Euba, Largen & Bread and others.

2- Music for your eyes. Visual arts and the aesthetics of the videoclip

This section is a journey through the history of the musical videoclip to review the careers of the most important authors of the last 40 years and their connections with contemporary visual arts and cinema and includes a programme of music videos by artists like Andy Warhol, Tony Oursler, Judith Barry, Robert Longo, Joan Morey, Damien Hirst, Ana Laura Aláez, Carles Congost, Pipilotti Rist, Dara Birnbaum, Joseph Beuys, Adel Abidin, Hugo Alonso, Charles Atlas, Marc Bijl, Olaf Breuning, Charley Case, Cheryl Donegan, Jorge Galindo i Santiago Sierra, Jesús Hernández , Bjørn Melhus, César Pesquera, John Sanborn, Kit Fitzgerald (Antarctica), etc.

List of Exhibited works

Ronald Nameth / Andy Warhol’s 'Exploding Plastic Inevitable', 1967
Andy Warhol 'Screen Tests', 1964-66
Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut, 'Beatles Electroniques', 1969
Yayoi Kusama 'Self Oblteration (dir. Jud Yalkut)', 1967
Yayoi Kusama 'Love in Festival', 1968
Eric Siegel 'Tomorrow Never knows', 1968
Dan Graham, Tony Oursler & Laurent P. Berger 'Don’t Trust Anyone over Thirty: The Storyboard', 2004
Adel Abidin 'Three Love songs', 2010
Dan Graham 'Rock My Religion', 1982-84
Vito Acconci 'Theme Song', 1973
John Baldessari 'Baldessari Sings LeWitt', 1972
Tony Oursler 'Sound Digressions in Seven Colors', 2006
Jean Mikel Euba 'One per Minute. Seven Minutes in Istanbul', 2005
José Iges 'Dylan in Between', 2001
Largen & Bread C'rash!!!', 2008
Largen & Bread 'This Is not a Love Song', 2013
Douglas Gordon 'Bootleg (Bigmouth)', 1996
Cristian Marclay 'Guitar Drag', 2000
Tony Cokes & Scott Pagano '5%', 2001
Tony Cokes 'Ad Vice', 1998
Candice Breitz 'Babel Series', 1997-2004
Jeremy Deller 'The Faireys Band Acid Brass', 2005 – 'History of the World', 1997-200
Mark Leckey 'Fiorucci Made me Hardcore', 1999
Charlie Case 'Friday, June 18,' 1999, 'City of London', 1999
James Clar 'Dance Therapy', 2011
Adrian Piper 'Funk Lessons', 1983
Assume Vivid Astro Focus ' Walking on thin Ice', 2003
John Di Stefano 'The Epistemology of Disco', 1990
Charles Atlas 'Hail the New Puritan', 1985

Exhibition itineraries

25 NOVEMBER 2015 to 7 FEBRUARY 2016: Pera Museum, Istanbul
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