HOPPER SPACES
A site-specific installation inspired by the house, its history, or by Edward Hopper himself.
The Edward Hopper House in Nyack, New York, is the birthplace of the artist Edward Hopper (1882-1967) and is rife with historic significance and inspiring views. The house was built in 1858 by his maternal grandfather and served as Hopper's primary residence until he was 28 years old. Although he no longer lived in the house after 1910, it remained the family home and his sister, Marion, lived in the house until her death in 1965. After Hopper’s death the house fell into disrepair, but was saved from demolition and restored by members of the local community. Since 1971, the Edward Hopper House been a non-profit museum and art center hosting exhibitions of contemporary art as well as early work by Edward Hopper. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The house has long been a source of inspiration for artists and art lovers. It is from this house that Hopper first took in the Hudson River that was so important to him; it is in this house that he had his first “studio” and created his earliest artworks; it is in this house that he first saw the strong rays of sunlight that are so common in his paintings. Hopper later taught art classes to children in the parlor of the house. As Hopper’s iconic imagery has become recognizable throughout the world, anyone who steps into the House--which has not been structurally changed since Hopper’s time--can envision the world as Hopper's experienced it from these very rooms.
Artists who have spent time here have inevitably been moved by the history of the house and its former inhabitant. In 2011, Kristina Burns, who rents a studio in one of the former bedrooms, created Hopper Happens, a series of Hopper-inspired performances, events, and projections that took place throughout Nyack over the summer. In 2013, artist Tony Oursler, who, like Hopper, grew up in Nyack, created a series of installations specifically for Edward Hopper House that were drawn from his own personal response to Hopper’s work.
We invite artists to visit the house and likewise get inspired. We are seeking proposals for installations that respond to the architecture or history of the Edward Hopper House, or Edward Hopper and his work. Please contact Carole Perry, Artistic Director and Curator, for more information or to visit the space: [email protected].
See past Hopper Spaces installations below.
The house has long been a source of inspiration for artists and art lovers. It is from this house that Hopper first took in the Hudson River that was so important to him; it is in this house that he had his first “studio” and created his earliest artworks; it is in this house that he first saw the strong rays of sunlight that are so common in his paintings. Hopper later taught art classes to children in the parlor of the house. As Hopper’s iconic imagery has become recognizable throughout the world, anyone who steps into the House--which has not been structurally changed since Hopper’s time--can envision the world as Hopper's experienced it from these very rooms.
Artists who have spent time here have inevitably been moved by the history of the house and its former inhabitant. In 2011, Kristina Burns, who rents a studio in one of the former bedrooms, created Hopper Happens, a series of Hopper-inspired performances, events, and projections that took place throughout Nyack over the summer. In 2013, artist Tony Oursler, who, like Hopper, grew up in Nyack, created a series of installations specifically for Edward Hopper House that were drawn from his own personal response to Hopper’s work.
We invite artists to visit the house and likewise get inspired. We are seeking proposals for installations that respond to the architecture or history of the Edward Hopper House, or Edward Hopper and his work. Please contact Carole Perry, Artistic Director and Curator, for more information or to visit the space: [email protected].
See past Hopper Spaces installations below.
Past Hopper Spaces installation include the following exhibitions:
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John F. Simon, Jr.: The Ever Present SunJune 20 - August 16, 2015
For the exhibition The Ever Present Sun, John F. Simon, Jr. (b. 1963) takes advantage of technology to create dynamic visual experiences rooted in art historical tradition. Unlike many artists who use digital processes and equipment to make their work, Simon writes his own computer software, a process he finds to be as “personal as a painterly gesture on canvas.” Simon has also created a new site-specific sculptural work for this show that is inspired by Edward Hopper's paintings of urban exteriors. Simon’s software creates imagery on the fly that constantly evolves, sometimes with surprising results, and never repeats. His software is based on simple rules, activated and displayed on a screen, and create more images than anyone can ever see in their lifetime. HIs larger prints and sculpture use digital processing, 3D modeling, a pen plotter, a laser cutter, a CNC router, and various other pieces of digital fabrication equipment that he has in his studio, to translate his hand gestures in various materials, through the digital and back to the hand. At the forefront of new media internationally since the 1990s, John F. Simon, Jr.'s work has been widely exhibited and is found in prominent museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and most recently acquired by the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. RELATED EVENT: First Friday, August 7 @ 7 pm, Artist Talk |
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Joanne Howard: Dream HouseAugust 24-October 19, 2014
For the Dream House, Joanne Howard began by thinking about the space that was left vacant after Hopper’s departure at the age of 84. Thus, the work manifests as an exploration of negative space in the form of portraits, architecture, and drawings. Howard, a long time resident of Nyack, has spent 20 years walking by and through the Hopper house. When invited to create an installation for the space, she decided to embrace the house itself rather than troll the publicly saturated and familiar imagery of Hopper’s paintings and drawings. Howard admits that she has never been in love with Hopper’s famous works, yet the house itself and the domestic interior of the space in which a young person came into aesthetic being was intriguing. Howard has most recently been working with slip cast faces that have a lot to do with hollowness and vacated space. She has also been exploring the details and nuances of interior spaces and how architectural details often reflect human portraiture. In walking through the Hopper house, suddenly the two came together as the outlines of the newels of the staircases reflected facial patterns on the walls. “I am interested in the permanence of the inanimate ‘fixtures’ in the house (staircase, newel post) versus the impermanence of human existence,” she says. “In addition to being a beautiful presence in the entrance of this otherwise rather austere interior, a turned post accentuates the tension between positive and negative space. The curves also take on associations of human physiognomy.” Self Portrait, an inverted coiled vessel, rotates on a pedestal, creating an optical illusion of a portrait through negative space. Portrait of Hopper, a slip-cast 3-dimensional collage of clay, unrecognizable as a portrait until one notices the cast shadow, forces the viewer to go back and forth from the object to its cast image. Both objects conjure a sense of the passage of time, how easy it is to forget the past, but how important the accumulation of experience if one pauses to reflect on a life. A series of upside down cast heads merge a sense of playfulness with the dark and the ubiquity of anonymity. Self-portraits, these objects bring the exhibition together in a an unusual and unique way that meets the challenge of creating a show within the confines of a set of rules and a space so specific to a man whose name is synonymous with the quintessential everyman. Howard is best known for her set designs for the company Big Dance Theater. Her first scenic design in 1992 was a set evoking underground space through the use of video and found natural objects. Since then her sets have been an amalgamation of materials that reduce the idea of the program to a singular visual platform. She received a BFA from Syracuse University School of Visual and Performing Arts and an MFA from Hunter College. She also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. She has exhibited throughout the United States and has designed theatre sets around the world, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Dance Theater Workshop, NY, The Chocolate Factory, NY, Chaillot Theater, Paris, France, and Les Subsistance, Lyon, France. joannehoward.com. |
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Tony Oursler: hopped (popped)October 26, 2013 - January 12, 2014
Edward Hopper House presents a new installation by renowned multi-media artist Tony Oursler (b. 1957). Like Edward Hopper, Oursler grew up in Nyack, just down the road from the Edward Hopper House. Having spent his childhood exploring the same landscape from which Hopper drew his early inspiration, Oursler is uniquely poised to extend the framework of Hopper’s imagery into a combination of 2D, 3D, and moving image. For hopped (popped), Oursler has created five video installations to be specifically installed in the rooms of the Edward Hopper House, using Edward Hopper’s caricatures as a point of departure. These lesser-known drawings reveal a more improvisational, humorous approach, which Oursler sees as a potential bridge between the anarchic 1960s and ‘70s and the suburban landscape and somber quietude of Hopper’s melancholia. Oursler played a crucial role in the development of video art as a sculptural form. His work is in collections, and he has exhibited, in major institutions throughout the world, including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Wash., DC; and the Tate Gallery, London. This exhibition is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. New York Times Article>> |
I'm After Me: A Light Installation by Christine SciulliVideo of installation on view July-Sept 2011. Nyack, NY
In celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the Edward Hopper ArtCenter, Sciulli recalls the dilapidated state of the house in 1971, when local residents banded together to save it from demolition following the death of Hopper’s sister, Marion, in 1965. Absent human intervention, nature claims space. Decomposition, broken windows and wind make it possible for seeds to take root. In this installation,I’m After Me, grasses and brush in the once-derelict house recall the dunescapes of Hopper’sTruro, Massachusetts. |
