Opener 31: Tim Davis — When We Are Dancing (I Get Ideas)

Tang Teaching Museum Presents New Work by Tim Davis in Solo Exhibition
October 20, 2018 – January 6, 2019

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY (July 18 2018) — The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College will present a solo exhibition of Tim Davis’ recent work in video, sound, installation, photography, and more. Opener 31: Tim Davis–When We Are Dancing (I Get Ideas) features more than 30 recent works and provides an in-depth look at the creative process of an artist, musician, and writer whose visual art riffs heavily on his initial start as a poet. In all of his projects, Davis explores the intersections of humor and longing, the ridiculous and the sublime, the abject and the beautiful. Each of his projects begins with a sudden insight and then bores down into the bedrock of obsession.

Opener 31: Tim Davis—When We Are Dancing (I Get Ideas), curated by Rachel Seligman, Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs and the Malloy Curator, in collaboration with the artist, is a collection of collections that reveal the artist’s visual terrain. Highlights include Curtain Call (2018) and Tuning Up (2018), videos that explore the periphery of performance; Uneasy Listening (2018), an installation of three turntables on loop that invite visitors to play, swap, take, or leave easy listening records; and Light Comedic Grave Rubbing (2018), a series of grave rubbings of unusual or humorous names of the deceased. Rooted in all his mediums is an urge to collect and a desire to reveal the universal nature of narrative building.

Tim Davis was born in Blantyre, Malawi, and lives and works in upstate New York. He is a Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize recipient and the author and subject of several monographs including Quinto Quarto, The New Antiquity, Permanent Collection, and My Life in Politics. His installation Elevator Music 29: Tim Davis—Unphotographable was on view at the Tang Museum in 2015. His works are in the permanent collections of institutions including The Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Walker Art Center, among others. He is a regular contributor to Aperture and Cabinet magazines, and his recent album It’s OK to Hate Yourself, is available on vinyl. Davis received his BA from Bard College and an MFA from Yale University.

The Tang’s Opener Series surveys the work of emerging and mid-career artists in what is for many, their first solo museum exhibition. Past Openers have surveyed the work Amy Sillman, Los Carpinteros, and most recently Njideka Akunyili Crosby. The Opener series is supported by New York State Council on the Arts, Overbrook Foundation, Beverly Beatson Grossman '58, and Friends of the Tang.

Opening Reception
The exhibition opens Saturday, October 20, 2018. In celebration of the opening, Tim Davis will lead a gallery talk at 4 p.m. A public reception will follow the event.

Credits
Opener 31: Tim Davis—When We Are Dancing (I Get Ideas) is organized by Rachel Seligman, Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs and Malloy Curator, in collaboration with the artist. The exhibition is supported by The Friends of the Tang.

Tang Teaching Museum
The Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College is a pioneer of interdisciplinary exploration and learning. A cultural anchor of New York's Capital Region, the institution's approach has become a model for university art museums across the country—with exhibition programs and series that bring together the visual and performing arts with fields of study as disparate as history, astronomy, and physics. The Tang has one of the most rigorous faculty-engagement initiatives in the nation, the Mellon Seminar, and robust publication and touring exhibition initiatives that extend the institution's reach far beyond its walls. The Tang Teaching Museum's building, designed by architect Antoine Predock, serves as a visual metaphor for the convergence of ideas and exchange the institution catalyzes. More information at http://tang.skidmore.edu.