The collaborative duo Jennifer and Kevin McCoy present their latest works in the exhibition Show Me at this June’s Art Murmur. The exhibition expands on their previous investigations and gives way to a presentation of the contemporary spectacle that results from the aesthetic re-instantiation of obsolete technology on the one hand and a translation of the conventions and stereotypes associated with the art world on the other. In Video Inversion (2009), the artists use a found equipment crate as a stage for a deconstructed VCR. This antiquated film device is set upright exposing its underside as the machine is set in a repetitious cycle to load a cassette that is not forthcoming. In Artists Talks (2008), the McCoy’s enlisted unknown actors with no art-making or art history background to present and discuss an artwork that was supposedly made by him or herself. The three-minute video performances range from comic to insightful, but almost never adhere to the standardized language of a “real” artist’s talk. This work presents another type of closed-circuit system, bounded by limitations of categorization and knowledge that makes viewers question the arbitrary standard to which they hold any given genre. The McCoys succeed in further circumnavigating our reliance on systems of understanding and underscoring the futility of this dependence.

The McCoy’s work has been widely exhibited in the US and internationally, recent exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the British Film Institute in London, The Beall Center in Irvine, CA, pkm Gallery in Beijing, the San Jose Museum of Modern Art, the Nevada Museum of Art, and Artists Space in New York. Their art is held in numerous museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA-NY, The Milwaukee Art Museum, and MUDAM the Museum of Modern Art in Luxembourg. Articles about their work have appeared in Art in America, Artforum, The New York Times, The Wire, Art International, Wired Magazine, and The Independent.

June 5th, 5-9pm