Today (and Tonight) : All-Day Performance and Evening Reception : Michael Waugh @ Winkleman Gallery

Michael Waugh performance and reception for the artist | Today!

Stop by 27th Street, Friday, February 1, during an all-day performance or stop in the gallery afterwards for an artist's reception.

Performance: 10:30 am through 6:30 pm
Reception: 6 - 8 pm

Winkleman Gallery in conjunction with Schroeder Romero Gallery are pleased to announce an all-day performance by artist Michael Waugh as part of his ongoing solo show Offenses Against One’s Self. The artist will read, non-stop for an eight-hour work day, starting at 10:30 am and ending at 6:30 pm. Please join us at any time during the performance, or catch him during the home-stretch: The final half hour of the performance (6 to 6:30 pm) will overlap with a reception for the artist from 6-8 pm. 

Waugh will be reading aloud from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which is the text that Waugh uses in most of the work on view in the gallery. This marathon-length performance helps underscore the artist’s ongoing exploration of labor and value in artistic production. This reading will be a continuation of the performance that Waugh began at the University of Connecticut’s School of Business (see image above), where he read from the beginning of Smith’s book – also for eight hours, non-stop. He will continue staging eight-hour performances (later in 2013) until he has read aloud the entirety of the book.

The date of February 1st was chosen for this performance as a memorial for the artist's great-great-great-great grandfather, Gideon Dexter, who died in a working-class rowing accident on January 31, 1827, having rowed himself to exhaustion against an unexpected storm. His frozen body was found off the coast of Martha's Vineyard and returned home the next day, February 1st.

Michael Waugh began doing live readings and performance while earning his MFA in poetry at Texas State University. After earning his second Master's degree (in visual art) from New York University, Waugh began combining his training. In September of 2000, he staged his first 8-hour long performance, on the corner of 20th St and 11th Avenue in New York. He has also staged 8-hour performances at the Austin International Poetry Festival, the College Art Association's annual conference, and at the PULSE contemporary art fair in Miami. His video work presents documentation of even longer, performative projects. And his labor-intensive drawing practice, in the context of his performance background, exists as a fetishized record of his Herculean (or perhaps Sisyphean) efforts. Waugh's work has been exhibited at Winkleman Gallery (NY), Schroeder Romero Gallery (NY), Ronald Feldman Gallery (NY), Diverse Works (Houston), El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Havana), the Arkansas Arts Center (Little Rock), The University of Connecticut (Storrs), and the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art (AR), among others. He has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, The Marie Walsh Sharp Space Program, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.