10 September 2009 - 29 November 2009

Videos and photos capture 14 artists exploring the unknown, challenging their fears and recording their jaw-dropping performances in Abington Art Center’s newest exhibition, “Endurance: Daring Feats of Risk, Survival and Perseverance.” 

The exhibition presents extreme works of art from the newest generation of artists-turned-action-heroes. Illustrating the different and innovative formats art can be presented in, the complex imagery and narrative style of the works in “Endurance” prompt unique interpretations for each viewer. 

The artists featured in “Endurance” filmed intense moments to explore current issues while also celebrating their subject’s physical capabilities. The themes of endurance, risk, survival and perseverance are conveyed through the physical challenges overcome to capture the content as well as to produce the end product. 

“Such perseverance tests, as captured and performed for film by these artists, are testaments to everyday challenges,” says the show’s curator Sue Spaid. “All artists view art-making as a survival game—a dare to bare their soul in public and a risk to air potential failures.” 

Works on display in “Endurance” include: 

Janet Biggs’ Vanishing Point (2009), which juxtaposes her footage of motorcyclist Leslie Porter setting world records at 234 mph speeds against the voices of the Harlem Addicts Rehabilitation Center’s Gospel Choir singing lyrics by Biggs with music by Grammy-award winner Barney McAll. Biggs filmed the motorcyclist while strapped into a custom-built chair suspended from the back of a hemi-engine truck traveling at speeds of over 100 mph. 

A photography collection from Nikki S. Lee that demonstrates the variance in visual perceptions among different cultures. Lee traveled to eight cities across the globe where she hired street artists to sketch her on translucent paper and then photographed the sketches, stacked in piles of three, to highlight the differences in the images. 

Additional enticing works by Phyllis Baldino, Johanna Billing, Patty Chang, Caryl Davis, Emily Jacir, ManosBuckius Cooperative, Renzo Martens, Laurel Nakadate, John Pilson, Alysse Stepanian & Philip Mantione, and Type A. 

The gallery exhibition coincides with a similarly themed outdoor exhibition in the Sculpture Park, “Endurance: Visualizing Time,” also curated by Spaid, which includes six new sculpture works on the lawn and in the woodlands of Abington Art Center’s 27-acre campus.


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