R. LUKE DUBOIS — NOW

JANUARY

Fashionably Late for the Relationship, 2007-08, Video still

Increasingly in the field of contemporary art, ascribing genre to works of art is difficult if not wholly futile. With the dismemberment of the Western traditions of painting and sculpture beginning in the late 19th century and being catalyzed by the global social upheavals of the 20th century, art of the 21st century has been freed of the constraints of type, constraints imposed by historical precedent and expectation. The museum (and its curators), however, as repository of tradition, is all-too-often incapable of looking past genre in its Enlightenment need to classify and codify. This is the only reasoning I can think of to explain why an artist like R. Luke DuBois has yet to receive the attention from the museum community that he and his work so richly deserve.

DuBois is the epitome of the 21st century artist—he is composer, computer programmer, filmmaker, installation artist, simultaneously. He shifts from one medium to another as effortlessly as we shift our attention among the screens that populate, inform, and control our visual experience.

R. Luke DuBois—Now is the first museum survey of this genre-defying artist. Over the last decade, New York-based DuBois has produced a prodigious body of work ranging from musical composition and collaborative performance, to large-scale public installations, film, and generative computer works. Typically classed as a “new media” artist, this survey of his work will demonstrate that DuBois operates at the intersections of the visual, the performative, and the time-based mirroring of our collective 21st century experience in a world dominated by the hypertext of globalized information.

The mining and metamorphosing of data into art as well as investigations of temporality, two dominant themes explored by DuBois, are represented by, among others, Hindsight is Always 20/20 (2008, commissioned by the Democratic National Convention), A More Perfect Union (2008-2011), Fashionably Late for the Relationship (2007-2008), and Academy (2006) all of which have received

Members Only Preview

THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Museum of Art Loggia

Join fellow Members and be the first to see the special exhibition. Light bites and cash bar. Open to all Members at all levels. RSVP: 941.360.7332 or email: memberRSVP@ringling.org national and international critical attention. DuBois’ wide-ranging interest in popular culture forms the basis for works such as the video pieces (Pop) Icon: Britney (2010), Play (2006), and the sound work Billboard (2006). R. Luke DuBois—Now will also feature the premiere of a new video work created by the artist while in residence at The Ringling and will focus on the historical links between the Ringling legacy and the greatest example of collective performance experience: the circus.

R. Luke DuBois—Now will introduce our audiences to an artistic practice that is truly at the vanguard of contemporary art. As part of the Art of Our Time initiative, the exhibition will serve as a platform for the cross-disciplinary experiences you have come to expect and that are a vital component of DuBois’ oeuvre with collaborative gallery performances, a dance performance in the Historic Asolo Theater, and a two-day conversation among curators and artists who program across disciplines. As Luke is fond of saying, “genre creates ghetto.” R. Luke DuBois—Now will provide an opportunity to learn new ways to process the world around us freed from the constraints of traditional categories.