José Carlos Teixeira | Sarah FitzSimons, screening and discussion

Friday Feb 15th, 2013

Free and open to the public
6:30pm
Location: Residency Unlimited
360 Court Street (green door),
Brooklyn, NY 11231 :
directions here

An evening during which José Carlos Teixeira (Portugal) and Sarah FitzSimons (USA) present their artistic practice. This event is organized by Arte Institute and hosted by RU within the framework of their partnership

José Carlos Teixeira’s research-based work consists of video-essays, installations and photography. His interdisciplinary practice is shaped by 3 main axes : art and politics, art and community, art and technology. Notions of identity, otherness, language, boundary, exile and displacement, are recurrent themes of interest. Through strategies of documentation, performance and collaboration, Teixeira addresses specific issues related to locational identity, global diaspora, the limits (or overlapping) of personal and social territories, and the definition of physical and psychological space. His approach is discursive and contextual, and operates as a permanent inquiry.Teixeira focuses on participation, incorporating multiple voices into the audiovisual projects. The relationship with, and the representation of Otherness (both in its external and internal dimensions) occupy a central role in his aesthetic and ethic materializations.

Sarah FitzSimons is a visual artist whose project-based work typically involves a sculpture, installed outdoors or indoors, which interacts with and derives meaning from its surroundings. She interprets and reframes this process through photography, video, and storytelling, sometimes representing the images, video loops, and text as separate pieces. Much of the work seeks to connect our constructed culture and daily lives with the wider patterns of nature. A core question that drives her research is: how can an object affect the space around it? Over the past decade and into the foreseeable future, her practice continues to explore the physical presence and power of mountains, rivers, deserts, and oceans, and their counterparts, just as massive, in the individual human psyche and collective unconscious.

About the artists:
José Carlos Teixeira (b. 1977 Portugal) holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio from the University of California Los Angeles. His work has been shown internationally among others at: Hammer Museum, LACE (Los Angeles), Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena), Art Interactive (Boston), Museum of the City of New York (NY), Le Grand Halle de La Villete (Paris), Württembergischer Kunstverein (Stuttgart), Rosalux, Berlinerpool (Berlin), National Center for Contemporary Arts (Moscow), M. K. Ciurlionis National Museum (Kaunas), Hélio Oiticica Art Center (Rio de Janeiro), São Paulo Cultural Center (S. Paulo), Museu da Cidade, Fundação EDP, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, and Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa (Lisbon). He is the recipient of grants and awards, including the Fulbright/Carmona e Costa Foundation Grant, Gulbenkian Foundation Artistic Grant, UCLA Fellowship, Samuel Booth Award, Fuso Festival’s Jury Prize 2011, and the 2005 EDP New Artists’ Prize nomination. Teixeira was Assistant Professor at ESAD.cr (Portugal), and he currently is Adjunct Faculty at UW-Madison. In 2008-09, he was a fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, in Stuttgart, and in 2013 he will be in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, and MacDowell Colony. www.josecarlosteixeira.com

Sarah FitzSimons (b. 1977 USA) holds an MFA in Sculpture from the University of California Los Angeles, and has exhibited her work internationally and in cities across the United States. Recent exhibitions and commissioned works include International Forest Art Path (Darmstadt, Germany); Ponto e Coordinada (Monsaraz, Portugal); The Hairy Blob (Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago IL); Compendium (Chazen Museum of Art, Madison WI); Any Questions? (Vadehavsfestival, Mando Denmark); Between Document and Fiction (Porto, Portugal); and Internal Compasses (Spaces Gallery, Cleveland OH). FitzSimons has received grants and fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, University of California Los Angeles, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Vermont Studio Center, I-Park Residency, and the MacDowell Colony, among other institutions. She currently teaches as Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

About Arte Institute:
Founded in April 2011, Arte Institute is an independent non-for profit organization, based in New York. It dynamizes the production and showcasing of international contemporary artists and art projects, with a focus on Portuguese contemporary art, through the organization of events in Europe, North and South America, in a dynamic Atlantic triangle.

www.arteinstitute.org