A Room for the Night
One can not search for home without simultaneously searching for a home away from home.
Hotel rooms are generally weird places, charged with both loneliness and sexual desire. They give the appearance of home but offer none of the release of the real thing and ultimately belong to no one.This twin aspect of travel, the desire for the familiar and the foreign, is at the heart of the series A Room for the Night.
The hotel as a portable home has long been a source of fascination and curiosity. After all, hotels are places where the illicit and the secretive meet the transitory and the ephemeral. Artists, writers, actors and musicians, as well as criminals, often use hotels as second homes, impromptu studios and secret hideouts. Sometimes these temporary accommodations become permanent residences. With this status as a democratic crossroads for the sacred and the profane, hotels seem to contain an endless supply of mystery and imagination. Jesus was born in a hotel, Robert Kennedy, Oscar Wilde, Nicola Tesla and Martin Luther King all died in one.
In my series A Room for the Night, I travel to different hotel rooms around the world photographing temporary sculptural assemblages that I secretly make out of the furniture and objects found in each room. Working alone and limiting my materials to only what I find in each room, furniture is stacked, leaned and balanced in configurations that often verge on the point of collapse. After these “sculptures” are photographed the rooms are carefully returned to their original condition.
Combining formal rigor with a surreal blend of humor and sexual innuendo, the photographs act to invoke internal and external states. They embody our attempt to personalize the spaces we inhabit while examining the loneliness and displacement we experience when living away from home.
Alex Yudzon (born 1977, Moscow)
Education
1997-1999 Bachelors of Arts in Painting: Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, UK
1995-1997 Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
Solo Exhibitions
2018
(Upcoming) Slag Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2017
ArtBastion Gallery, Unfamiliar Territory, Miami, FL
2016
Galerie Le Magasin de Jonets, Arles, France
Hasy Galerie, Brittany, France
2015
La Bottega Lab, A Room for the Night, Marina di Pietrasanta, Italy
2014
ArtBastion Gallery, The Great American Novel and Other Stories, Miami, FL
2012
DeCastellane Gallery, En Plein Air, Cape Cod, MA
2010
DeCastellane Gallery, Bedtime Story, New York, NY
2002
Tal Esther Gallery, The Hour Before Dawn, Tel Aviv, Israel
Group Exhibitions
2017
Anastasia Tinari Projects, Automythography, Chicago, IL
Leboudoir2.0, Welcome to Zoltavia, presentation and performance, Arles Photo Fair
Vive Art Benefit, Honey Ramka Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
The W Hotel, One Night Stand, curators Brigitte Mulholland, Ryan Michael Ford, NY, NY
The Cactus Show, curated by Dan Gratz and Letha Wilson, Craryville, NY
2016
Parlour Gallery, Cracking Up, Breaking Down, Brooklyn, NY
Slag Gallery/Site 57, two person exhibition with Margarita Sanchez Urdaneta, NY
Kolkata International Performance Arts Festival, SAC Travel Corporate
Presentation, 3 day performance with Vidisha Saini
Sao Paulo Photo Art Fair, Portas Vilaseca Gallery, Brazil
Wassaic Project, “Appetite for Destruction”, Wassaic NY
Art Bastion Gallery, Aspen Art Fair, Aspen, CO
2015
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Alternative Contemporaneity: Temporary
Autonomous Zone, Miami, FL. curated by Richard Haden
Aluna Art Foundation, A Russian a Cuban and a Chinese Walk into an Art Exhibition, Miami Beach, FL
Carbono Galeria, Releituras da Natureza-Morta (curated by Ligia Canongia), San Paulo, Brazil
14 Spring Street, The Apartment Show, curated by Asad Raza, New York, NY
Room Service Gallery, I Walk Deserts Full of Matter, Brooklyn, NY
Binyamin Gallery, Perpetuum Mobile, Tel Aviv, Israel
Wassaic Project, Benefit Exhibition, Wassaic, NY
Portas Vilaseca Gallerie, SP Photo Art Fair, San Paolo, Brazil
2014
Reverse Space, Winter Exhibition, Brooklyn, NY
Field Projects, Sojourn, New York, NY
Center of Global Justice, Moving Beyond Capitalism, San Miguel de Allende, México.
University of the Andes, Identity, Bogota, Colombia
2013
Reverse Space, Brooklyn, NY
Claudia Stone Gallery, Miami Projects, Miami, FL
Hunter Museum of American Art, Benefit Exhibition, Chattanooga, TN
Reverse Space, Benefit Exhibition, Brooklyn, NY
Acumen Space, Text + Message, Queens, NY
Reverse Space, Brooklyn, NY
2012
Wassaic Project, Return to Rattlesnake Mountain, Wassaic, NY
Reverse Space Spectrum Vision, Brooklyn, NY
2011
Momenta Art, Brooklyn, NY
2010
Volume Black, New York, NY
DeCastellane 18, Gallery, New York, NY
Milavec Green Gallery, New York, NY
2009
Art Basel Miami Beach, Allan Stone Gallery, New York, NY
2008
Art Basel Miami Beach, Allan Stone Gallery, New York, NY
Allan Stone Gallery, Group, New York, NY
2007
Luxe Gallery, New York, NY
2006
37 Margoza Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
2005
Cheryl Pelavin Gallery, New York, NY
2003
Tal Esther Gallery, The Home Show,Tel Aviv, Israel
2001
Ein Harod Museum of Art, I Hate You in June, Ein Harod, Israel
1999
The Art Space, Radio Asia, London, UK
Awards and Residencies
2017
Headlands Center for the Arts, 8 week residency recipient, Marin County, CA
Sirius Art Center, Artist in Residence, Cork Ireland
2016
Human Condition Global, Artist in Research fellow, NY
Vermont Studio Center Artist Residency, VM
Vermont Studio Center, Full Fellowship Award
Coovum Artist Residency, Chennai, India
Anderson Ranch Art Center,Presidential Scholarship recipient
2015
Wassaic Project Summer Artist Residency, Wassaic,NY
Luther Barnes Fellowship, Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY