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Projects is an ongoing series of exhibitions in which artists execute installations and actions in the house to be viewed via the internet each month and sometimes in person.
PROJECTS 2005: Marisa Olson
Overture: an exhibition full of humor, fantasy, and the work of one frustrated musician
Wed February 16, 2005
7:00-9:30
February 16 - March 14
Marisa S. Olson always knew she’d be a star some day. Growing up in Germany, she lived for the Top 40 countdowns of American music, every weekend. She’s always been a singer and she’s pretty sure that she wrote “Eternal Flame” before the Bangles made it theirs. This Fall, Olson gained worldwide attention while training to audition for American Idol—all of which is documented at marisaolson.com. Despite the fact that her audition never aired, Olson’s still reveling in her own Idolatry.
With “Overture,” the artist invites you to come journey above
the clouds where a star resides. Read the diary of her training, see her
sculptural comparison of rock concerts and solo shows, let her serenade
you in the site-specific audio installation, “It’s All About
You,” or peep in on her wet and wild restaging of one of Hollywood’s
last big musicals, and—of course—watch the impressive footage
from her sadly unaired audition.
This new work is an extension of Olson’s ongoing interest in the
cultural history of recording technology, including questions of authorship,
storytelling formats, the rhetoric of the image, media specificity, and
the impacts of technologies upon social relationships. These interests
are specifically located within an investigation of the nature of the
contemporary art world and the “voice of the artist,” within
it. Borrowing from the lexicon of the music world, Olson’s work
asks ironic questions about the relationship between being a pop star
and being an art star. While they may exist as larger interrogations of
the nature of two commercial systems, they are also very personal reflections
of her own identity.
Marisa S. Olson has most recently performed or exhibited at the Berkeley
Art Museum, New Langton Arts, Southern Exposure, Pond Gallery, Lucky Tackle,
and Rx Gallery, in the Bay Area; Debs & Co., Foxy Productions, and
Flux Factory, in New York; and the Access Center (Vancouver), STUK/Zed
Cinema (Leuven-Belgium), the Futuresonic04 Festival, (Manchester), the
Electrofringe Festival, RocketArt Gallery (Newcastle, Australia), the
Machinista Festival (Glasgow), and VIPER (Basel), internationally. She
recently participated in an exhibition which Artforum highlighted among
their “Best of 2004” and while Wired has called her funny
and humorous, the New York Times has called her work "anything but
stupid.
See Marisa's Idol Blog here: www.marisaolson.com
Overture video still invite 2004
Installation Documentation:
It's All About You
Singin in the Rain
Easy Listening Disco Room Video 1
Easy Listening Disco Room Video 2
Videos:
The One That Got Away
Easy Listening
