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This Thursday at iMOCA

[image, Kalup Linzy, video still from KK Queens Survey, 2005, Digital video. Courtesy of the Artist and Taxter & Spengemann, New York.]

Press Release:

Is You Is or Is You Ain't

Is You Is or Is You Ain't helps us understand ourselves through what we aren't when the collection of seven video works, ranging from satirical to heartbreaking, opens at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art on April 17th from 5 until 8 pm. Visuals available upon request.

The new exhibition draws its title from the Louis Jordan song Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby. One of its verses reflects the themes of the videos: "A man is a creature/that has always been strange/Just when you're sure of one/You find that he's gone and made a change."

In this vein, the funny, poignant Mustache2 by the Indianapolis based film collective AnC follows a cabinet salesman who barely maintains a façade of optimism while advising a protégé to find his own way. With Dead White Men, Zoë Charlton assumes the poses of famous nudes in art to question her role in art and society as an African-American woman. Transvestites talk about relationships, sex and art world habits in Kalup Linzy's KKQueens Survey. In Oh, Juliette, Karen Yasinsky uses line–drawing animation to capture the fraught emotional space between a man and a woman.

Other works explore danger—of the streets as well as the sensual. Winter in America by Hank Willis Thomas in collaboration with Kambui Olujimi, reenacts the true story of a sidewalk robbery and murder with toy figures. Simone Montemurno transforms the threatening into the sensuous by gliding through a pool with a homemade shark fin on her head in Fin. Laura Parnes' untitled work suggests how we've lost touch with our primal survival instinct by juxtaposing images of a blissful family overlooking a peaceful landscape with footage of wildlife stampeding from danger.

Curators for Is You Is or Is You Ain't are Kristen Anchor and Jed Dodds of Creative Alliance at the Patterson in Baltimore and Christopher West of iMOCA. After its Indianapolis run, the exhibition will open in Baltimore in September and in New York at a time and date to be determined. Special thanks to all of the artists for their participation, Mari Spirito, Jack Shainman Gallery and Taxter & Spengemann.

iMOCA is free to the public and open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. every Thursday through Saturday and is located in the Emelie Building at 340 North Senate Avenue.



April 17th, 5 - 8 p.m.
Exhibit Opening

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