Gallery exhibition: October 1 – November 21, 2020
Online preview: August 1 – September 30, 2020
Peter d’Agostino: A-bombs / Climate walks, the artist’s personal view of nukes and the changing climate, will be on display at the Transmission Gallery, October 1- November 21, 2020. TRACES (1995/2020), a work in the exhibition, is available for preview August 1 – September 30 on www.thetransmissiongallery.com and at the gallery by appointment. Beginning August 7 visit on Fridays & Saturdays 12 – 5pm (health orders permitting).
Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Atomic Age, TRACES is the culmination of Peter d’Agostino’s lifelong obsession with the tragic consequences of nuclear proliferation. He was born in 1945, between the A-bomb test on July 16 in New Mexico, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6 and 9. The TRACES video installation initially premiered at three art museums across the U.S. beginning in Baltimore, March 1995. During August, it was incorporated into the 50th anniversary series of events, “Becoming Death: Cinema and the Atomic Age,” curated by Steve Seid at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive. TRACES is a limited edition box set composed of a video, photographs, catalogue, letters and related ephemera dating back to 1945. It also addresses the controversy surrounding the Smithsonian’s decision to modify the “Enola Gay” exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC that opened in June, 1995.
Even before the world’s COVID pandemic took hold early in 2020, the Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their Doomsday Clock forward to 100 seconds to midnight signifying that we are living in history’s most dangerous era, as “Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change.”
Recent and restored works in the Peter d’Agostino: A-bombs / Climate walks exhibition reflect these concerns. They are TRACES (1995/2020), TRACES: virtual installation (2020), World-Wide-Walks / Atomic – Hydrogen (2020), World-Wide-Walks / between earth & water / ICE (2014/2020) and VR/RV: a Recreational Vehicle in Virtual Reality (1993/2020).
A selection of books and catalogues related to the artist’s work will also be available in the gallery, including: World-Wide-Walks / Peter d’Agostino: Crossing Natural-Cultural-Virtual Frontiers (2019), Peter d’Agostino: COLD/HOT – Walks, Wars & Climate Change (2019), Peter d’Agostino: World-Wide-Walks / between earth & sky / 1973-2012 (2012), Peter d’Agostino: Interactivity & Intervention, 1978-99 (1999), TRACES: a multimedia installation of the Atomic Age (1995), TRANSMISSION: toward a post television culture (1995), TRANSMISSION: theory and practice for a new television aesthetics (1985), The Un/Necessary IMAGE (1982), Photography and Language (1976).
Peter d’Agostino‘s pioneering video, photography, and new media projects have been exhibited internationally for over five decades. His work was in the Biennials of Sao Paulo, Brazil; Gwangju, South Korea; Whitney Museum, New York; and is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive; Oakland Museum of California; National Gallery of Canada; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Charleroi, Belgium; Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona; among others.
Born in New York City, 1945, d’Agostino lived in San Francisco from 1968-77; his works of the 1970s were in the following survey exhibitions: Space-Time-Sound: Conceptual Art in the San Francisco Bay Area- the 1970s (1979), California Video (2008), Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-81 (2011-12), State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970 (2011-14). He divides his time between the Bay Area and Philadelphia, where he is currently Professor of Film and Media Arts and Director of the Climate, Sustainability & the Arts working group at Temple University. A complete list of his projects is at peterdagostino.com.
