The World Is Their Playground: See New Work By Alan And Michael Fleming At Happy Collaborationists This Saturday
By Julia Weeman in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 20, 2012 8:40PM
At Rest: photo series by Alan and Michael Fleming
The twin brothers are known for an actively physical, playful approach to making art and often incorporate humor into their work. We're excited to see what this show has in store as Happy Collaborationists has a reputation for giving artists free rein in the unique apartment gallery space, and we're looking forward to seeing how the Flemings take advantage of that liberty.
This exhibition will explore the way we as humans relate to the world through our bodies. The work will reveal “a phenomenological investigation of space, place and experience” with the pair using their own bodies as tools for measurement and comparison. Shown for the first time in the United States, one of the central works in the exhibition is a video shot in Denmark of the pair relating to architectural spaces around Copenhagen. Michael Fleming spoke of it as "architectural investigations dealing with urban spaces...us treating our bodies like sculpture."
Another video, "Perspective Portraits" was made during the ACRE residency. Michael Fleming described it as "a splitscreen comparison portrait of the two of us in a lush open road landscape." There will also be a photo series entitled "Scale" - the series title has a dual meaning as the pair both scale the wall of an abandoned building and use their own bodies as a ratio to measure it.
The Fleming twins have been collaborating as artists since 2005 and have exhibited both nationally and internationally in Chicago, New York, Berlin, Copenhagen, Glasgow and Rio De Janeiro. Their spans a range of mediums including performance, video, and sculpture. Their recent solo exhibition, GAME ON, at threewalls was a lighthearted, poignant body of work that the artists made while living apart for a year. In 2012 they were selected for the Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) Program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and as a result their work will be included in the 2013 Bronx Biennial.
In 2008 their video series "At Rest: The Body in Architecture" won the "Performing" section at the Kinolewchyk Festival at the Idea Museum in Lviv, Ukraine. In 2006 they were awarded the "Group 4 Award" from the Foundry Art Centre for their video "Defining the Frame." The twins received their MFA in studio from the Performance Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where they attended graduate school as a collaborative. They also both received their BFA degrees in painting from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.