Source: https://art21.org/press_release/art21-enters-julie-mehretus-harlem-church-studio-to-document-a-monumental-museum-commission/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 12:29:00+00:00

Document:
Artist Julie Mehretu at work on "HOWL, eon (I, II)" (2017). Production still from the Art21 Extended Play film, Julie Mehretu: Politicized Landscapes. © Art21, Inc. 2017.
(NEW YORK — September 13, 2017) — Art21 announced today the premiere of a new short film chronicling artist Julie Mehretu during the making of the artist’s monumental commission for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Over the course of a year, Art21 was granted exclusive access to film the artist and her team as they worked on the paintings in a disused church in Harlem. The film, titled Julie Mehretu: Politicized Landscapes, is the latest from Art21’s recently rebranded digital series, Extended Play.
The paintings, titled “HOWL, eon (I, II)” (2017), were installed in the atrium of SFMOMA’s newly expanded and renovated building in late August and unveiled to the public in early September 2017.
Continuing a nearly two-decade-long tradition of offering rare glimpses into the working processes of contemporary artists, Art21 documented many hours of work throughout the cavernous Harlem studio space. The resulting footage provides an intimate look at the making of these landmark paintings, capturing moments from the stretching of the canvases, to the development of the underpaintings, to visits from composer and friend Jason Moran.
Influenced by artists that have captured the vastness of the American West in their paintings like Albert Bierstadt and others from the Hudson River School, Mehretu was inspired to create her own take on an American landscape painting complicated by layers of meaning. Embedded into the layers of her gesso and paint are enlarged photographs taken from the news media of recent protests, riots, and conflicts addressing the racial politics of our day, and yet visible only as digitized ground. “The discomfort of being a person living and working in the United States is a place that these paintings were being made from,” says the artist in the film.
Art21 first filmed with Julie Mehretu in 2008. Based out of a Berlin studio space, the artist and her assistants were working concurrently on two projects: a series of seven 10-by-14-foot paintings for a show at the Deutsche Guggenheim and a single 21-by-85-foot commission for Goldman Sachs. Similar to the 2017 SFMOMA commission, the artist needed to work out of an unconventional space in order to be able to accommodate the scale of the works.
All six of Art21’s films featuring Julie Mehretu are available to watch free of charge on Art21.org.
Art21’s Extended Play provides a behind-the-scenes look at critical moments in artists’ processes and lives. Recently renamed, Extended Play is a refreshed version of the organization’s longest-running digital series. Through process-revealing footage and intimate interviews, Extended Play uncovers the provocative ideas and biographical anecdotes that inspire an artist’s work from conceptualization, to creation, to presentation.
The series launched in March 2008 under the title of Exclusive and was initially introduced as a digital complement to Art21’s award-winning television series, Art in the Twenty-First Century. The series has featured over 100 artists to date, including Sarah Sze, William Kentridge, Do Ho Suh, Cindy Sherman, Nancy Spero, Gabriel Orozco, Jeff Koons, Mike Kelley, Andrea Zittel, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others.
Julie Mehretu: Politicized Landscapes was produced and directed by Ian Forster, producer, Art21.

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