MORGAN O’HARA: LIVE TRANSMISSION, ON STAGE
The inaugural exhibition of Magdalena Keck Gallery ,“Morgan O’Hara: LIVE TRANSMISSION, ON STAGE,” opened at Roll & Hill at 3 Mercer Street in New York City on November 29, 2018 and has been extended from its original end date of February 21 to May 13, 2019 due to its popularity.
The established artist Morgan O’Hara began her series titled LIVE TRANSMISSIONS in 1981. Nearly 4,000 drawings have been made to date and all of them represent a recording by the artist of movement of live beings. This current exhibition, curated by Magdalena Keck, features drawings that capture the human movement of music, art, and dance performances recorded in real time by O’Hara using multiple graphite pencils at the same time. A line of text along the bottom of each drawing includes the date, location, and the performer, which becomes the title of the artwork itself as each piece represents a specific moment in time.
O’Hara received the prestigious Lee Krasner Award for a lifetime of artistic achievement in 2018 and her works are in the permanent collections of The British Museum in London, The National Gallery in Washington D.C., and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In the summer of 2018, a short film was produced documenting the artist creating three LIVE TRANSMISSION works in Venice, Italy.
In the beginning of 2019, Brick & Wonder published a personal account that describes the inspiration and motivation behind the creation of Magdalena Keck Gallery: “From the Interior Designer: Launching an Art Gallery that Won’t Stay Put.”
Above left: Installation at Roll & Hill
Above right: detail from “LIVE TRANSMISSION: movement of the hands of percussionist ESTEBAN ROBLEDO while doing a LIVE TRANSMISSION PERFORMANCE / Colectivo Mapocho / Santiago, Chile / 2nd Bienal Internacional de Performance / 5 November 2008 / 2”
Above left: detail from “LIVE TRANSMISSION: movement of the hands of musicians FLYN VAN HEMMEN percussion / BEN GERSTEIN trombone / GIAN-LUIGI DIANA laptop / Spectrum / New York / 2 July 2013”
Above right: Installation at Roll & Hill.
Photography: Jeff Cate
Film: Damien Neva