Chinatown, New York
Lisi Raskin
Recuperative Tactics
Art in General"The space of a tactic is the space of the other…. It must vigilantly make use of the cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers. It poaches in them. It creates surprises in them. It can be where it is least expected. It is a guileful ruse.1” Art in General is pleased to present Recuperative Tactics, a New Commission by Lisi Raskin, from April 19 – May 31, 2014 in Art in General’s sixth floor gallery. A large-scale, site-specific environment, Recuperative Tactics leaves behind the Cold War narrative that has pervaded Raskin’s practice to tackle the geography of the forgotten. Recuperative Tactics is an immersive installation reconstructing Raskin’s 2013 experience of traveling in Afghanistan, made possible through a Creative Time Global Residency Grant and the generous support of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation. By building on the physical remnants of previous works, leftover materials, and discarded objects, Recuperative Tactics suggests histories compounded into new form. Suturing found materials into an architectural palimpsest, Raskin transforms the gallery into the site of an attempted reconstruction of memory, riddled with the complicated cyphers of an outsider’s account of the vestiges of war. Employing abstraction and alteration to fashion an environment whose method of production is visible, Raskin’s methodology reveals itself as a means of communication. While the installation’s title suggests making amends as a means of moving forward, recuperation is also a calculated political maneuver “by which those who control the spectacular culture co-opt all revolutionary ideas by publicizing a neutralized version of them, literally turning oppositional tactics into ideology.2” Raskin plays with the duality of recuperation, subverting the US government’s grand narrative about Afghanistan by threading and folding it into one of infinite narratives. This exhaustive and open-ended approach is a tactic to reconcile the enormity of a place in continued conflict, and a means to acknowledge the multiplicity of viewpoints at play in any given story. Raskin’s tactics, what Michel de Certeau calls “calculated actions determined by the absence of a proper locus,” highlight the gaps in the hegemonic narrative, the cracks through which entire experiences are fated to disappear. Concurrent with her show at Art in General, Raskin will have a solo exhibition of new paintings at Churner and Churner. The abstract paintings, made from earlier artworks and ranging in size from a few inches to a few feet square, present a counterpoint to her large-scale installation, while continuing to engage questions raised by her trip to Afghanistan. The exhibition runs from April 17 through May 31, 2015. Since 1998, Brooklyn-based artist Lisi Raskin has traveled to the Arctic Circle, former East German and Yugoslav Atomic bunkers, and through the American west exploring the intersections of nuclear-age fears and utopian mythologies as they manifest in the oral histories and architectures of the Cold War. Raskin’s on-site research has informed the making of paintings, drawings, objects, videos, and large, constructed environments exhibited in the United States and internationally, at institutions including Kunsthaus Graz, Casino Luxembourg, the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the Contemporary Art Center Vilnius, PS1/MoMA Contemporary Art Center, the Blanton Museum of Art, and the Center for Curatorial Studies/Hessel Museum at Bard College. Her web projects have been published in Triple Canopy magazine, as part of The Dia Foundation web projects, and on Creative Time Reports, where she is a regular contributor. She has built large-scale environments at the 11th Istanbul Biennale, the 2nd Athens Biennale, and the 3rd Singapore Biennale. Additionally, Raskin has embarked on projects that deliberately explore the intersections between utopian architecture, community connectivity, and art pedagogy, including an ongoing collaboration with artist Kimberly Kay. Under the working title of MOTORPARK, Raskin and Kay are in the process of transforming a 1996 Bluebird school bus into a mobile, programmable project space. Raskin was born in Miami, Florida. She received her BA in Fine Arts from Brandeis University in 1996 and her MFA from Columbia University in 2003. Raskin and her work have been the subject of reviews and articles in publications such as Artforum, Flash Art International, The New York Times, and Art Lies, among others. Currently Raskin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, in Philadelphia, PA. 1De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Reprint ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011, p. 37. 2Kurczynski, Karen. Expression as Vandalism: Asger Jorn’s “Modifications”, in RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics No. 53/54 (Spring – Autumn, 2008), pp. 295-6.