Rachel Perry Welty: 24/7

Voorhees Special Exhibition Gallery
Jan 28, 2012 - Jul 01, 2012

Rachel Perry Welty is a Boston-based conceptual artist who creates humorous, beautifully crafted, process-based work on the subject of life in the twenty-first century. Addressing issues that include consumerism and the cycle of purchasing, collecting and eventual purging, as well as social networking, information overload, narcissism, language and time, she uses fruit stickers, restaurant take-out containers, messages left on her answering machine, medical records, toys, and email spam as materials for her art. By drawing attention to what she describes as the "business of living" – the unremarked and insignificant moments, detritus, and every day materials of our lives – Welty reminds us to look at what we overlook and to pay attention to the momentary.

Marking the artist's first large-scale solo museum presentation, the exhibition includes drawing, sculpture, collage, installation, video, photography, and performance works using iPhones, Facebook and Twitter. Rachel Is, her online performance of March 11, 2009, in which she documented her activity every waking minute in one 24- hour period and her acclaimed Karaoke Wrong Number (collection Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston), a video of the artist lip-synching the voices of strangers who mistakenly left messages on her answering machine, are both included in this 10-year survey. Her interactive Twitter piece is ongoing throughout the run of the exhibition at the Zimmerli. De-accession, the verb used by museums to described the process by which they cull works of art from their permanent collection, is the title of another ongoing, installation at the museum documenting the removal (through discarding, donation, gifting, selling or recycling) of one object from her own possession each day beginning on October 5, 2005. Large scale photographs of performative work, site-specific sculptures using fruit stickers, twist ties, and aluminum foil, and a series of collages referencing the ubiquitous music that plays around us as we do errands and aptly titled Soundtrack to My Life are also included.

The exhibition is accompanied by an artist's book with essays by Nick Capasso and Stephen Merriam Foley, and a cell-phone audio tour conducted by the artist.

Rachel Perry Welty: 24/7 was organized by Nick Capasso, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Lexi Lee Sullivan, Koch Curatorial Fellow, the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. The presentation at the Zimmerli is organized by Donna Gustafson, Andrew W. Mellon Liaison for Academic Programs and Curator.

Admission:
$6 for adults who are not members. $5 for citizens over 65. Members, children under 18, Rutgers University students, faculty, and staff with a valid I.D. enjoy free admission. Free admission for all visitors on the first Sunday of every month.

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