The UMPRUM Visiting Artist in the fall semester 2020/2021 is Sam Lewitt

The Program of the UMPRUM Visiting Artist Studio in the fall semester 2020/2021

UMPRUM is proud to announce that the visiting artist for the 2020/2021 fall semester is Sam Lewitt.
Sam Lewitt is a conceptual artist based in New York and Berlin. His work investigates systems of meaning, production, mediation and exchange as they are manifested materially.
Recent solo exhibitions dedicated to Lewitt’s work have been held at Miguel Abreu Gallery (2020, 2018), Galerie Buchholz, Berlin and Cologne (2017, 2013), Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren (2014), and Galleria Franco Soffiantino, Turin (2009, 2007). His work has also appeared in exhibitions at the 57th Venice Biennial (2017), Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Museum of Modern Art, Bergen Kunsthall, Secession, La Panacée and others.

 

Program description

Course Title: SCALES

From global environmental crisis to the 125 nanometer coronavirus: This class is going to ask what aesthetic mediations help us map the scalar shifts that link micro and macro phenomena, which otherwise seem too large or too small for sensible experience to encompass.

Over 60 years ago Barnett Newman famously announced: “In the end, size doesn’t count.... It’s scale that counts. It’s human scale that counts. The only way you can achieve human scale is content.” Robert Smithson concurs over a decade later: “Size determines an object, scale determines art.”
 
What do we mean when we talk about ‘scale’? What are we to do with scale correlative to questions of growth? Whether we are talking about economic or bio-physical growth, the concept of scale will clearly function as a limiting factor (i.e. “growth at what scale?”) What Newman makes clear is that scalar limits are fundamentally relational. What we will seek to address is the manifold ways in which concepts of scale and growth demand to be thought in terms of intertwined levels of relation. The questions come fast and hard once we accept that the aesthetic-relational concept of scale denotes more or less fine-grained levels of political and ecological consideration, all of which are already engaged in the logic of growth and its limits.
 
The structure of the program

The visiting artist will give a theoretical and practical course.
The schedule will be structured in several intense workshops with the presence of both the visiting artist and the Czech pedagogue Sláva Sobotovičová throughout the semester and in regular working sessions once a week with the Czech pedagogue only.
 
Applications

The program is part of the Fine Arts Department of UMPRUM and is primarily reserved to its students but offers limited numbers of places to the students of other departments of UMPRUM. Students of the bachelor, master and PhD programs can apply.
All students apart from the students of the first year of Bachelor Program and the students currently graduating from Bachelor and Master Program are encouraged to enroll. The Visiting Artist Program is open to students of Fine Arts Department and all other UMPRUM departments in limited numbers.
To apply, students must have completed their previous semester and enrolled in the next semester. For applications please contact the UMPRUM Study department.
For more information please contact the Program’s Czech pedagogue Sláva Sobotovičová, ssobot@vsup.cz, 737 620 381
Studying with Sam Lewitt can be particularly recommended to students interested in analytical approaches and in the critical potential of artistic practice.


In the past UMPRUM has hosted courses of the following visiting artists:

spring 2019/2020 Tyler Coburn: Counterfactuals
fall 2019/2020 Justin Fitzpatrick: Critical aspects of painting
spring 2018/2019 Nina Beier: Cultural meanings of material and objects
fall 2018/2019 David Maljković: Crossovers of installation
spring 2017/2018 Marie de Brugerolle: The legacy of performance