Screening of short films and the New York Premiere of Casey Jane Ellison Personal Trimmer Internal Promo and Q&A with Casey Jane Ellison

Co-presented by Art+Culture Projects and Red Bull Studios New York, curated by William J Simmons

Artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson is acclaimed for the pioneering use of new technologies through which she deals with issues such as identity in a time of consumerism, privacy in a era of surveillance, interfacing of humans and machines, and the relationship between real and virtual worlds. Her extensive career focuses on the changing relationship between the body and technology which led to her innovative work with artificial intelligence, biological computing, and DNA manipulation including bio printed body parts. Hershman Leeson’s work more recently focuses on the ethical context surrounding genetics. As a film director she wrote, directed and produced Strange Culture, Conceiving Ada and Teknolust, all starring Tilda Swinton, which screened in the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival; her ground-breaking 2011 documentary !Women Art Revolution has been screened at major museums internationally. The Digital Art Museum in Berlin and Siggraph recognized her work with the d.velop digital art award (ddaa) for Lifetime Achievement. In 2015, ZKM Center for Art and Media organized Leeson’s solo retrospective Civic Radar with an accompanying catalogue, Civic Radar, distributed by D.A.P., edited by Peter Weibel and published by Hatje Cantz. Her work is in the collection of NY MOMA, SF MOMA, The Tate Modern and numerous private collections.

A one-woman cult of personality, the LA/New York-based artist/satirist Casey Jane Ellison has achieved notoriety as a deadpan guide to media consumption, from reality TV to art. Ellison debuted in 2013 as a vacuous fashion tipster in her reality TV webseries “What the F*shion?” for VFiles, and a misanthropic host of a gender-binary-fixated-all-female talk show “Touching the Art,” now on Ovation. Always in dark lipstick and a goth-industrial fashion sense, Ellison undermines “sex sells” with selfhood, and PR with eyerolls– an art school cynic drolly cramming herself into a square hole. Ellison founded the roaming animation and video exhibition Aboveground Animation in 2008, a platform for off-kilter experimentation by artists like Barry Doupé and Cody Critcheloe. She began experimenting with stand-up comedy after graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago arts with a degree in film, video, and animation in 2009. In 2012, Aboveground Animation had an online exhibition at the New Museum, and Ellison’s animation “It’s So Important to Seem Wonderful”– a CGI animation of herself doing standup– appeared on MoCA TV. As a writer, she has contributed to publications and outlets such as Vice Magazine, Gawker, Dazed and GQ. Ellison’s practices were shown in tandem at the 2015 New Museum Triennial, where she exhibited “It’s So Important to Seem Wonderful,” as well as held live tapings of “Touching the Art.” Panelists like Kembra Pfahler, K8 Hardy, Lauren Cornell, and Juliana Huxtable were interrogated on subjects ranging from career tips, terrorism, and criticism.

Amy Sillman is an artist working primarily in painting, drawing and animation. She has had an active exhibition record over the past two decades, and her work is included in numerous public and private collections,  including MoMA, the Whitney Museum, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Boston Museum of Fine Art, LACMA and The Tate in London. A recipient of many awards and fellowships, she had a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001, a fellowship at The Radcliffe Institute in 2010, and was a Resident at the American Academy in Rome in 2014. Recent solo exhibitions includeStuff Change which just closed at Sikkema Jenkins, NY, a major mid-career survey show at the ICA Boston in 2013 and the Hessel Museum at Bard College in 2014, entitled one lump or two, and in 2008 a show entitled Third Person Singular at The Tang Museum in Saratoga Springs, NY.  Sillman’s bibliography includes catalogues for the retrospective, the exhibition at the Tang, and a monograph on her drawings, “Amy Sillman: Works on Paper,”  published in 2006 by Gregory R. Miller, NY.  From 2005 to 2013, Sillman served as the co-Chair of the Painting Department at Bard College’s MFA Program in Annandale, NY. She is currently a Professor at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt, Germany.

Amalia Ulman (1989) is an airport based artist with an office in Downtown Los Angeles. Born in Argentina but raised in Spain, she studied Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins in London. Her works are primarily voiced in the first person, often blurring the distinction between the artist and object of study. In a multidisciplinary manner, she explores the relationship between consumerism and identity, class imitation and social deception, altruism and empathy. Selected artworks include the trilogy of video essays Buyer, Walker, Rover (2013), The Future Ahead (2014) and Annals of Private History (2015, Frieze Projects); and performances such as Excellences & Perfections archived by Rhizome the New Museum (New York) and exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery, Tate Modern and Arcadia_Missa (London). Some of her latest solo exhibitions are Stock Images of War @ James Fuentes (New York) and International House of Cozy, MAMA, Rotterdam.

She recently released her latest work Privilege at the 9th Berlin Biennale. 

Rachel Mason is an artist from Los Angeles. Mason has recorded 12 albums,has toured, exhibited sculpture, video and performance at the Whitney Museum, Queens Museum, LACMA, Detroit Museum of Contemporary Art, School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Henry Gallery in Seattle, James Gallery at CUNY, University Art Museum in Buffalo, Sculpture Center, Hessel Museum of Art at Bard and Occidental College, Kunsthalle Zurich, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, The New Museum, Park Avenue Armory, Art in General, La Mama, Galapagos, Dixon Place, and Empac Center for Performance in Troy among other venues. Reviews include New York Times, Village Voice, Los Angeles Times, Flash Art, Art in America, Art News, and Artforum. Her rock opera feature film, The Lives of Hamilton Fish. has toured festivals and museums internationally was released digitally in 2016.

William J. Simmons is an adjunct lecturer in art history at the City College of New York. He is currently working toward a PhD at the Graduate Center, CUNY. His recent work includes the essay for painter Billy Sullivan’s monograph Still, Looking, as well as “Appearing Differently,” an interview with David J. Getsy published in the recent scholarly volume Pink Labor on Golden Streets: Queer Art Practices.