FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Erin Lauderman, 612.625.9685, elauderm@umn.edu

Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art

February 8 May 10, 2015

Mella Jaarsma, I Eat You Eat Me, 2002. Photo documenting performance. Courtesy of the artist.

MINNEAPOLIS The Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota presents Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art (February 8, 2015 - May 10, 2015). The exhibition surveys the artist-orchestrated meal and explores the varied meanings that can be sparked by the everyday action of sharing of food and drink with others. By taking a simple act of hospitality, such as offering a sweet bite to visitors in ones home and presenting that act in a museum, the experience is heightened or intensified. Forcing visitors to rethink their actions and engage with each other and the art in different ways, allows them to change the very content of the art. They become active creators instead of simply viewers.

The exhibition examines this practice for the first time with the work of more than thirty artists who have turned the shared meal into a workspace for artistic ideas. It showcases their shared meals and ideas and the social, economic, and political values that surround the act of eating together. These artist-orchestrated meals can offer a radical form of hospitality that punctures everyday experience, using the meal as a means to shift perceptions and trigger encounters that arent always possible in a fast-moving and segmented society.

From the birth of this tradition in the 1930s, Feast examines the history of the artistorchestrated meal, assessing its roots in early-twentieth century European avant-garde art, its development over the past decades within Western art, and its current global ubiquity. The exhibition will introduce new artists and contextualize their work in relation to other influential artists, from the Italian Futurists and Gordon Matta-Clark to Marina Abramovi? and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Feast addresses the radical hospitality embodied by these artists and the social, commercial, and political structures that surround the experience of eating together.

Join the feast and discover first hand the ways in which artists are using shared experiences with food and drink to exchange ideas and encourage conversation. As part of the exhibition, WAM presents participatory projects, meals, and salons. Highlights include The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art, by Tom Marioni, and a series of one-on one meals with artist Lee Mingwei, held after hours within his sculptural installation at the museum.

Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art is organized by the Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago. The exhibition is curated by Stephanie Smith, formerly Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Smart Museum of Art, now Chief Curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Feast is made possible by an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award. Generous major support has also been provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Chicago Community Trust, Helen Zell, the Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, the Richard and Mary L. Gray Foundation, the University of Chicagos Arts Council, and Janis Kanter and Tom McCormick.