01 Oct 2009

Mads Lynnerup at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, NY

From Thursday, October 1 to Saturday, November 28, the Mezzanine of the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute will be home to 'Take a Day for Yourself!,' a new installation by the Brooklyn-based Danish artist Mads Lynnerup. The installation opens on Thursday October 1st from 5 – 7:30 pm with a reception in EMPAC's Evelyn's Café and a talk by the artist.

The genre-crossing Lynnerup has long been interested in the everyday: His last installation was devoted to routines. But with 'Take A Day for Yourself!,' he charts what happens when people depart from those routines—or even disrupt them. Specifically, he's enlisted random members of the Troy and Rensselaer communities to take an unscheduled day off work or school or whatever else they're supposed to be doing. Everything else is up to them.

The rich and inventive uses Lynnerup's subjects make of their ensuing 12 hours of stolen time are shown on short videos and oversized posters that together make up a whimsical visual guide to taking a day off in Troy—or anywhere else, while gently tweaking some of our society's fundamental assumptions about usefulness, leisure, and productivity.

Mads Lynnerup's work incorporates video, printmaking, sculpture and performance in an ongoing investigation of phenomena that most of us take for granted. His subjects have included the anti-terrorist posters on the New York subways ('If You See Anything Interesting, Please Let Someone Know Immediately') and the daily routines of residents of a Copenhagen neighborhood ('Routines'). He has shown his work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, P.S. 1 in New York, and Warsaw's Zacheta National Gallery of Art, and is represented in the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, the Miami Art Museum, the Orange County Museum of Art, and the San Jose Museum of Modern Art.

The exhibition will kick off with an opening reception and artist's talk on Thursday October 1 from 5 – 7:30 PM. Lynnerup will attend a second reception held as part of Troy Night Out on Friday October 30 from 5-7 PM. All events are free and open to the public.

Parking for the Thursday, October 1 opening is available in the Rensselaer parking lot on College Avenue. Parking for general viewing hours of the installation is available on College Avenue or 8th Street near EMPAC, or in nearby campus metered spots.


About EMPAC

The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) opened its doors in 2008 and was hailed by the New York Times as a 'technological pleasure dome for the mind and senses… dedicated to the marriage of art and science as it has never been done before.'

Founded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, EMPAC offers artists, scholars, researchers, engineers, designers, and audiences opportunities for creative exploration that are available nowhere else under a single roof. EMPAC operates nationally and internationally, attracting creative individuals from around the world and sending new artworks and innovative ideas onto the global stage.

EMPAC's building is a showcase work of architecture and a unique technological facility that boasts unrivaled presentation and production capabilities for art and science spanning the physical and virtual worlds and the spaces in between.

About Rensselaer Polytechnic University

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, founded in 1824, is the nation's oldest technological university. The school offers degrees in engineering, the sciences, information technology, architecture, management, and the social sciences and humanities. For over thirty years, the Institute has been a leader in interdisciplinary creative research, especially in the electronic arts. In addition to its MFA and Ph.D. programs in Electronic Arts, Rensselaer offers Bachelor degrees in Electronic Arts, and in Electronic Media, Arts, and Communication – one of the first undergraduate programs of its kind in the United States. The Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies and EMPAC are two major research platforms that Rensselaer has established at the beginning of the 21st century.

Additional event information can be found on the EMPAC website, www.empac.rpi.edu.
Questions? Call the EMPAC Box Office: 518.276.3921