Miranda July

Deitch Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of Eleven Heavy Things by Miranda July from May 29 through October 3, 2010. The exhibition features a series of eleven sculptures that encourage viewer interaction in New York City’s Union Square Park. The work was first exhibited in a garden within Giardino delle Vergini for the 53rd International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale. This second incarnation of Eleven Heavy Things marks its United States debut.

The cast fiber-glass, steel-lined pieces are designed for interaction: pedestals to stand on, tablets with holes for body parts, and free-standing abstract headdresses. A series of three pedestals in ascending height, The Guilty One, The Guiltier One, The Guiltiest One, ask the viewer to ascribe their guilt relative to the people around them. A large flat shape, painted with Burberry plaid, hovers on a pole, waiting to become someone's aura. Another hanging shape looks like an intricate lace headdress. A series of tablets invite heads, arms, legs and one finger: “This is not the first hole my finger has been in, nor will it be the last.” A wider pedestal for two people to hug on reads, “We don’t know each other, we’re just hugging for the picture.” July assumes and invites the picture — these are eleven photo opportunities, in a city where one is always clutching a camera. Though the work begins as sculpture, it becomes a performance that is only complete when these tourist photos are uploaded onto personal blogs and sent in emails. At this point the audience changes and the participants become the subject of the work.

Miranda July is a filmmaker, artist, performer and writer. She grew up in Berkeley, California where she began her career as a teenager, writing and directing plays. July’s videos, performances, and web-based projects have been presented at sites such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and in the 2002 and 2004 Whitney Biennials. She wrote, directed and starred in her first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), which won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Camera d’Or. Her fiction has been printed in McSweeney’s, Harper’s, and The New Yorker and her collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You (Scribner, 2007) won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. In 2002, July created the participatory website, learningtoloveyoumore, with artist Harrell Fletcher, and a companion book was published in 2007 (Prestel). She lives in Los Angeles, where she is currently working on a new feature film, The Future.

Eleven Heavy Things is presented by Deitch Projects as its final public project. The work is exhibited in cooperation with the Union Square Partnership. Following the close of Deitch Projects, Eleven Heavy Things will be managed by Suzanne Geiss with Alexxa Gotthardt as project coordinator.

Parks & Recreation’s temporary public art program has consistently fostered the creation and installation of public art in parks throughout the five boroughs. Since 1967, collaborations with art organizations and artists have produced more than 1,000 public art displays in New York City parks.

Miranda July
Center Lawn, Union Square Park, New York