Susan Kleinberg

Susan Kleinberg is a New York-based artist whose work has been shown at three Venice Biennales, in 1995, 2001; and 2011; as well as during the 2005 Venice Biennale, sponsored by the Istituto Veneto, and the 2009 Biennale, sponsored by Telecom Italia. In addition to Venice, she has exhibited at galleries and museums around the world. Her most recent a large-scale installation, "Tierra Sin Males", is currently installed during the 2011 Venice Biennale in the TRA: EDGE OF BECOMING exhibition at the Palazzo Fortuny, curated by Daniela Ferretti, Rosa Martinez, Francesco Poli and Axel Vervoordt.

"Tierra Sin Males" was shown at the headquarters of Telecom Italia, the Cloister of San Salvador di Venezia, during the opening of the 2009 Venice Biennale. Kleinberg's accompanying drawings on seaweed paper, paintings and prints related to the piece, were shown along with the installation in Venice at the Chiostro del Bramante [1] in Rome in October 2009.

Over the past seven years, beginning in 2004, Kleinberg developed four high-definition digital projection pieces, BLOOD ROLL, D-ROLL, P-SPIN and "Tierra Sin Males", with related prints, drawings and paintings. BLOOD ROLL was shown first in November 2004 in Seoul, Korea, in a major international show at the Total Museum, curated by Chul Lee, commissioner of the previous Gwangju Biennale. In 2005, she showed BLOOD ROLL during the opening of the Venice Biennale, projecting it across the Campo Santo Stefano, Venice on the façade of the Istituto Veneto. Kleinberg installed P-SPIN at the Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg, Russia in the fall of 2007, in an exhibition organized by Olessya Turkina, a curator from the Russian State Museum.

In these four digital projections, a large glass globe seesaws tensely back and forth over a central fulcrum. Unpredictably, it spins 360 degrees. The movements are both with and against any predictable laws of physics or nature. The globe rolls upwards, almost off the edge, catches, spins back, spins forward faster, spirals, hesitates, continues … the shadow, density, reflection and refraction, contort and contract, shifting continually. The pieces speak to the fragility, and strength, of many systems, be they economic, political, environmental, institutional, physical or emotional. The pieces are led by deep reverberating sound tracks.

In 2003, Ms. Kleinberg mounted What Would Make for a Better World, a video installation for the “Future Democracy” exhibition at the Istanbul Biennial. For this piece she spoke with and photographed the least visible in society about what would make for a better world. The still photographs are joined to the moving sound on DVD, installed throughout the gallery space on monitors mounted on the walls. Hanging from the ceiling were painted Chinese fans with the photographs of the people in the piece embedded into them.

In 2001, she created Fear Not for the Venice Biennale, curated by Harald Szeemann. Fear Not was a video installation based around audio interviews about courage, which she did with people from every walk of life; from artist Chuck Close and President Bill Clinton to Gore Vidal, Albanian refugees, Spalding Gray, film director Sidney Lumet, domestic workers, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, Evelyn Lauder; as well as interviews in Italian with a similar spectrum of people, from President Silvio Berlusconi and Susanna Agnelli to fish sellers in the Venetian market. Following the interviews, Ms. Kleinberg photographed, or chose photographs of each of the individuals. These were linked to the audio track and installed on monitors, almost as Renaissance portraits considerably updated, throughout the Arsenale[2].

There have been numerous later exhibitions of Fear Not. It was shown in New York at P.S. 1/MOMA (2001–2002), was chosen as a Special Project for the Chicago International Art Fair (2002), was exhibited at the Neuhoff Gallery in New York (May 2002). Ms. Kleinberg showed related paintings and drawings at Venice Design Gallery, Venice, Italy (2001) and a preview installation at the Stark Gallery in New York (2001). In 2002 the piece was shown along with related prints at the Tasende Gallery in Los Angeles and the Tasende Gallery in La Jolla, CA; as well as at a benefit and lecture for the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles.

In 2002, Ms. Kleinberg did a piece at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, for the Biennale of Buenos Aires and delivered one of the opening lectures.

Kleinberg prepared the Italian version of Fear Not for the 2001 Venice Biennale at the American Academy in Rome, where she was Visiting Artist in Residence; and where six years earlier she also prepared her "Sposalizio del Mar" installation for the 1995 Venice Biennale.

"Sposalizio del Mar", whose reference was to the most important ceremony of the Venetian Republic, the Sposalizio Del Mar: the marriage of the Doge to the sea, floated in the Grand Canal between San Marco and San Giorgio. It was a bright yellow ring, based on the Apollo space capsule's flotation collar, filled with the golden detritus of Venetian history to the present. An audio tape of people talking about living in relation to the sea accompanied it. The piece was ultimately sold to the Province of Lake Como.

The beginnings of all of this work were shown at the Castelli Gallery in New York.

In 1994, she installed a large piece in the board room of Human Rights Watch's International Headquarters in New York.

Ms. Kleinberg traveled to Aurangabad, India in the spring of 1992 at the invitation of the Sarabai family, who have invited artists for many years to live and work there for extended periods of time.

Complete information about her work may be found at www.susankleinberg.com [3]

Education

• B.A. in Art and Philosophy, Pomona College, Clarement, California.

• M.A. in Art, Hunter College, New York, NY.

• Max Beckmann Fellowship, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY.

External links

• www.susankleinberg.com
• Corriere della Sera Review of Chiostro del Bramante exhibition in Rome, 2009
• Short Film of "Tierra Sin Males" Installation, Venice, 2009
• Short Film of Pulkovo Observatory Installation
• Atlantica de Las Artes Article
• Kunstforum 2007
• Rubin Museum (NY) Lecture
• National Women's Museum Biography