Singing in Unison, Part 10 Loren Munk & James Kalm

Curated by Phong H. Bui & Cal McKeever

In loving memory of Neeli Cherkovski (1945-2024)

Ruttkowski;68 and Rail Curatorial Projects are proud to present the tenth installment of Singing in Unison: Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy, a multi-venue series of exhibitions that began in 2022. 

Singing in Unison, Part 10 presents a selection of paintings by Loren Munk (b.1951 in Salt Lake City, US) and videos by James Kalm (b.1951 in Salt Lake City, US), the dual creations of one artist. Munk spent three years in the army before attending the art students league on the G.I. Bill, leading to his complete dedication to being an artist. Munk’s cartographic research began during his time working deliveries for the art supply store Utrecht, where he amassed a database of names and addresses of artists and their studios. His diagrammatic thinking in his paintings, which he refers as “conceptual topographies,” has deep roots in immersive studies of art history, art theory, and esoteric philosophies.

While developing his own diagrammatic systems that integrate the process of mapping and making charts, Munk also began writing art reviews and dispatches for The Brooklyn Rail from 2000 to 2012. As his communal spirit flourished, the creation of his alias James Kalm as a filmmaker became the substitution for his writing. Munk then arrived at his pictorial maturity in 2006, with the coalescence of Munk’s hermetic commitment to the studio, and Kalm’s exploration of bountiful participation and documentation of the arts community, into one pictorial synthesis. It was during this critical interval that the new transformation of the two disciplines were concretized in their simultaneity in time and space. For Munk, the complexity of the writing permeates in the alchemy of painting, and Kalm’s footage of artist exhibitions and studio visits reveals his filmic production. Both are harmoniously deployed for the purposes of artistic restraint and self-prescribed magnanimity.

 

Date: October 17 – November 18

Opening reception: 6 to 8 pm October 17, featuring cooking performance by Rirkrit Tiravanija, Tomas Vu & graduate students from Columbia University

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