NAME
Adel Abdessemed
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents Adel Abdessemed's first solo New York exhibition. Bringing together video and sculptural work, Abdessemed condenses dramatic gestures through the union of oppositional forces: individuality and the body politic, desire and death, and the sacred and the profane. Adel Abdessemed: Dead or Alive is on view in the second floor Kunsthalle gallery from October 21, 2007 through January 21, 2008. Whether working with knives that have been turned in on themselves to create a field of fleurs du mal, oversized drill bits carved from black marble, a model of the luxury cruise liner Queen Mary created out of the recycled refuse of corporate culture or the front portion of an airplane folded like soft pastry, Abdessemed invokes the specter of destruction even as he celebrates its transformative energy. The boats and planes that appear in his work are both benign instruments of post-colonial global communion and empty vessels waiting to be filled with deadly meaning.

Dead or Alive

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center Long Island City, NY, USA

21 October 2007 – 21 January 2008

Dead or Alive

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center Long Island City, NY, USA

21 October 2007 – 21 January 2008

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents Adel Abdessemed's first solo New York exhibition. Bringing together video and sculptural work, Abdessemed condenses dramatic gestures through the union of oppositional forces: individuality and the body politic, desire and death, and the sacred and the profane. Adel Abdessemed: Dead or Alive is on view in the second floor Kunsthalle gallery from October 21, 2007 through January 21, 2008. Whether working with knives that have been turned in on themselves to create a field of fleurs du mal, oversized drill bits carved from black marble, a model of the luxury cruise liner Queen Mary created out of the recycled refuse of corporate culture or the front portion of an airplane folded like soft pastry, Abdessemed invokes the specter of destruction even as he celebrates its transformative energy. The boats and planes that appear in his work are both benign instruments of post-colonial global communion and empty vessels waiting to be filled with deadly meaning.