Judi Werthein
Do You Have Time?
June 26 to December 31, 2011
Do You Have Time?, a fascinating film commissioned by The Aldrich and made by artist Judi Werthein, gives unemployed New Yorker David Kleinman a platform to put forward what he perceives to be the untold truths behind official American history. Do You Have Time? will be on view in the Museum’s screening room from June 26 to December 31, 2011.
The film, created by the Brooklyn-based Argentinean-born Werthein in one single shot lasting two hours, presents a vision of American’s history that is not legitimized by any academic degrees, but which resonates with the views of many well-informed laymen and women. Kleinman is very convincing in his arguments and painstakingly lists important facts that have been excluded and omitted from common knowledge, leading us to doubt the truthfulness of our established American history. Ultimately, this film asks the paramount question: “Is there an official and complete history of a country?”
Do You Have Time? is projected onto a painting by Tomas Espina, an Argentinean artist whom Werthein invited to participate in the piece by commissioning a painting to be used as a screen. Espina mainly paints with gunpowder on canvas, resulting in imagery based on the destruction of the support material.
Curator Mónica Ramírez-Montagut explains, “Do You Have Time? recounts history from Kleinmans’s memory and thus is a circular and non-linear notion. In Kleinman’s retelling of history, which he calls ‘going on like a mad man,’ characters and stories appear not chronologically, but in the particular way he remembers them. Could each of our versions of history be just as valid? Most of us affected by historical issues are not specialists either. Yet Kleinman’s version makes us understand that history is a tricky matter and that it is possible to incorporate an infinite myriad of possibilities, revisions, and contributions.”
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum will celebrate the opening of Judi Werthein: Do You Have Time? along with five other Collaborations exhibitions at a reception where guests are invited to meet the artists, on Sunday, June 26, 2011, from 3 to 5 pm ($7 adults; $4 seniors; FREE for members, pre-K-12 teachers, and children 18 and under). FREE onsite parking is available, as is round-trip transportation from the Metro North Katonah Train Station to the Museum for the June 26 afternoon reception only. Also on view: Chelpa Ferro: Visual Sound; Kate Eric: One Plus One Minus One; MTAA: All the Holidays All at Once; Type A: Barrier and Trigger; and Jessica Stockholder: Hollow Places Court in Ash-Tree Wood.
The Aldrich is supported, in part, by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism and the National Endowment for the Arts. Art Works. The official media sponsors of exhibition openings are Ridgefield Magazine and WSHU Public Radio.
The Artist: Judi Werthein lives and works in Buenos Aires and Brooklyn. Werthein has had solo exhibitions at Art in General, New York (2007); the Chianti Foundation, Marfa, Texas (2003); and the Bronx Museum (2002). Her work has been exhibited by MUSAC (Leon, Spain); Lent Space, LMCC (New York); Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal ; Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo (Seville, Spain); Sala de arte publico Siquieiros (Mexico City); MOCA (Miami); Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (Madrid); Centrum Beeldende Kunst (Rotterdam); De Appel (Amsterdam); and Tate Modern (London) among many others. She has also participated in the 41 Salón Nacional de Artistas (Cali); Manifesta 7 (Bolzano); Biennial for Contemporary Art Gothenburg (Sweden); Bucharest Biennale; Plot 09, Creative Time (New York); InSite_05 (San Diego/Tijuana); and the 7th Biennial of Havana. In 2011 she will participate in the Lyon Biennial and work on a commission for the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the University of Oslo. She is currently co-director of El Centro de Investigaciones Artisticas in Buenos Aires. Judi Werthein is represented by Figge von Rosen Galerie, Cologne.
Top of page:Judi Werthein, Do You Have Time? (partial installation view at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield), 2010
Courtesy of the artist and Figge Von Rosen Galerie, Cologne
Projected on Tomas Espina, BUM XXVI, 2011, Courtesy of Ignacio Liprandi Arte Contemporaneo
Commissioned by The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Photo: Chad Kleitsch
