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At the Aspen Art Museum, an exhibition you can read

Andrew Travers
The Aspen Times
Martin Creed, "Everything Is Going To Be Alright."
Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth |

If You Go …

What: “Stories We Tell Ourselves”

Where: Aspen Art Museum

When: Friday, March 27 through Oct. 25

More info: http://www.aspenartmuseum.org

Your appreciation of a good book, and understanding of it, grows with time and from chapter to chapter, from unexpected twist to unanticipated turn. The Aspen Art Museum is attempting to apply these narrative principles to the new exhibition, “Stories We Tell Ourselves,” which opens Friday and will unfold sequentially over the next seven months.

The works in the show explore the relationship between art and language. Its first chapter includes work by the author, filmmaker and artist Miranda July. Her “Eleven Heavy Things” is a series of sculptures – with text on them – that encourage viewer interaction, including pedestals to stand on that identify those atop them as “The Guilty One” and steel tablets into which viewers are invited to poke their faces.

Martin Creed, a Turner Prize-winning artist and musician, offers “Everything is Going to Be Alright,” a neon sign carrying that reassuring phrase, that has previously been displayed on buildings including the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh.



Anthony Discenza’s “End In Tears,” is a faux street sign, declaring in the plain red text of a “No Parking” sign: “It Will End In Tears.”

The first chapter includes eight additional pieces by Discenza, four in all from July’s “Eleven Heavy Things” series, and a text-based work by Peter Fischli and David Weiss.




Over the coming months, new chapters will include language-related works by artists like Louise Lawler and Yoko Ono. The show will play out through the museum, rather than in a specific gallery or two – the exhibition is expected to hit three galleries, the commons area outside the museum, the staircase leading to its rooftop deck and its glass elevator.

“Stories We Tell Ourselves” is one of three new shows opening at the museum this weekend. The other two are “Landscape Paintings” by mixed-genre artist Rodney McMillian and the group show “Second Chances.”

The art film “The Future Yesterday” will also screen through Sunday. The museum will host a presentation of “Lebanese Rocket Society,” a film about the students and scientists who developed a space program in Lebanon during the 1960s, on Friday at 7 p.m. in conjunction with the closing weekend of “The Future Yesterday.”

atravers@aspentimes.com