Trisha Donnelly, Let 'em, 2005 Courtesy of the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York

   Trisha Donnelly received her BFA from the University of California in Los Angeles (1995) and her MFA from Yale University School of Art (2000). She adopts video, sound, photographs, drawings, and performance to explore the power of the human mind to will ideas into existence.

   Donnelly creates coded communications through the power of her expressions and gestures. She first attracted attention with Untitled (jumping) (1999), a projection in which she moves in and out of the frame, in slow motion, as she performs the signature movements of unidentified musicians, from rock stars to easy listening, embodying their most intense moments of performative transcendence. In more recent projects, she utilizes photography and video to present fragments of lost performances or collaborations. For her first solo show in New York at the Casey Kaplan Gallery in 2002, Donnelly rode into the crowded gallery on a horse and voiced a cryptic declaration of defeat: “If it need be termed surrender, then let it be so, for he has surrendered in word, not will. He has said, 'My fall will be great but it will be useful.' The emperor has fallen and he rests his weight upon your mind and mine and with this I am electric. I am electric." With this gesture, Donnelly acted for Napoleon Bonaparte, serving as a time-traveling courier who delivered the missive he should have sent forth at Waterloo in 1815. Other works that employ text harness our imaginations with the lightest possible touch; "slipping into the back of people's minds," where her simple suggestions flower into individuated ideas in our minds.

   Trisha Donnelly was awarded the Central Insurance Prize, Cologne in 2004. Solo exhibitions of her work include MAMBO, Bologna, Italy (2007); Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany (2006); Artpace, San Antonio (2005); Kolnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2005); Kunsthalle Zurich (2005); exhibitions include Whitney Biennial – Day for Night, Whitney Biennial, New York, NY (2006); 1 Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, (2005); Collection (or How I Spent a Year), P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island, New York (2004); 54th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA (2004); KONTEXT, FORM, TROJA, Wiener Secession, Vienna (2003); Untitled (Jumping), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France (2003); Moving Pictures; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain (2003; and Guggenheim New York 2002); Dreams and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2003); Forum – Hello, My Name Is…, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA (2002); and Dedalic Convention, Museum für angewandte Kunst (MAK), Vienna (2001).

More Information:

http://www.caseykaplangallery.com/menu.html
http://www.airdeparis.com/trisha.htm#
http://www.cmoa.org/international/the_exhibition/artist.asp?donnelly
http://www.villagevoice.com/art/0444,saltz,58022,13.html
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_186_1.html
http://www.artpace.org/aboutTheExhibition.php?axid=258&sort=artist