Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, Los Angeles, CA
The artists included in the exhibition (re): unhistorical documents participated in the postmodern forum in the ways they reinterpreted, reevaluated, retraced, and reframed art history, introducing it into critical contemporary dialogue. Their appropriation of iconic works is one of the oppositional strategies of postmodernism’s ongoing process of resistance to mainstream ideology and the centrist values of unity and significance that challenged the authority of the past. These and other artists do not refer to iconic works simply because they are easily identifiable, but also to call attention to the effect of the distance between then and now. Memorializing the past by referencing a work, they conflated it with its old and current histories, and supplied it with a legacy of artistic process. Participating artists: Rachel Lachowicz, Angela Ellsworth, Micol Hebron, Angela Marzullo, John Millei, Richard Newton.