Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to present the opening reception of two concurrent exhibitions: Continuing Studiesby acclaimed Korean artist Kim Beom and No Time Left To Start Again/The Birth and Death of Rock ‘n’ Roll: Poetry by American conceptualist Allen Ruppersberg.  Both exhibitions reconstruct concepts of knowledge, engaging and challenging how we learn and the ways in which we are taught.

Continuing Studies by Kim Beom 

Continuing Studies is a collection of drawing, video, sculpture, installation and painting by Kim, spanning twenty years, that rests these questions within a larger framework of education and learning. How does one teach someone to understand, and inversely, how does someone come to understand the teachings of another? The works in this exhibition take their structure from conventional strategies of learning (lectures, books, how-to videos), but lead away from expectations as a rock is taught the entire oeuvre of the Modernist Korean poet Jung Jiyong or a model ship learns it will never touch the sea. A Rock that Learned the Poetry of Jung Jiyong (2010) is a twelve hour video that in an absurdist gesture, has a literary professor teaching a rock the entire oeuvre of the Korean Modernist poet Jung Jiyong. This pedagogical inference is also played out in his video Yellow Scream (2012), which is a spoof on how-to-videos in general, but more specifically the impossibility of teaching someone how to be an abstract painter – an intangible practice in itself. A Ship That Was Taught There Is No Sea also shakes the conventional structures of learning – who and what can be taught, disrupting the norms of pedagogy with illogical gestures and blatant humour.  This exhibition will show Kim’s unique approach to learning, in its questioning of the accumulation of knowledge verse understanding.

 No Time Left To Start Again/The Birth and Death of Rock ‘n’ Roll: Poetry by Allen Ruppersberg

Allen Ruppersberg’s No Time Left To Start Again/The Birth and Death of Rock ‘n’ Roll (2010 – 2012) is a history of American music built from the artist’s vast collection of records, sheet music, magazines, photographs, article clippings and music paraphernalia. Ruppersberg’s selection from his archive traces the origins and trajectories of Rock ’n’ Roll in five sections, mapping its beginning in the early 1900s, and declaring its end in the 1970s when, in the artist’s words, “the spark of invention in Rock and Roll had begun to change into what we now call Rock.” Introduction, Poetry, Home, Church, and Fun are the categories given to Rock ’n’ Roll’s progression through Gospel, Boogie Woogie, Blue Grass, and other movements, and demonstrated in photographs and obituaries which refer to their own selection through their companion boxes of ephemera. Pinned to panels of silkscreened pegboard, each stage of Rock ’n’ Roll ephemera is signaled with a new color scheme, rendered in graphics of targets and pennants.

On view at Plug In ICA is Poetry. Against a backdrop of pale blues, greys, and blacks, Poetry’s images draw on a history of Jazz and Blues. As an example ofNo Time Left to Start Again, Poetry suggests history as multiple rather singular, an entity that can be entered through several different angles and navigated through personal narrative.

Plug In ICA gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, and we extend gratitude to The Winnipeg Foundation and all our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers.

For general inquiries please contact info@plugin.org

For media inquiries please contact: Janique Vigier at janique@plugin.org or by phone at (204) 942-1043 ext. 27