Beacon, NY—Multimedia and performance artist Joan Jonas will restage The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, following the overwhelming success of its 2005 premier, at Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries. Commissioned by Dia as a site-specific artwork, the performance will be presented over three weekends in October 2006. One of only two New York performances Jonas has created in over a decade, The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things is the second in a series of artist performances at the museum, following Robert Whitman’s Prune Flat and Light Touch in 2003.

Incorporating movement, sound, live music, and projected video footage, The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things is, in part, a response to the writings of German art historian Aby Warburg based on his visit to the American Southwest in 1896. Equally formative was her collaboration with renowned jazz pianist Jason Moran, who devised the score in tandem with Jonas as she developed the project in situ in the summer of 2005. Employing piano, African bells, and other instruments, Moran performs during each presentation.

Like other Jonas works, The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things touches upon themes pertaining to ritual, folklore, and myth. The work features an interplay of live actors, music, and video projections of pre-edited footage and closed-circuit live footage.

The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things will be presented on October 14, 15, 21, 22, 28, and 29, at 2 pm. Admission is $15 general, $13 for students and seniors, and $3 for Dia members. Tickets include museum admission. To reserve tickets, please call 845 440 0100, extension 44.

Joan Jonas
A pioneer of video and performance work, Jonas belongs to a group of artists whose use of live action and video beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s gave rise to contemporary genres of video art and performance art, which have been embraced by younger generations of artists.

Born in New York in 1936, Jonas received a BA in art history from Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts; studied sculpture at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; and received an MFA in Sculpture from Columbia University in 1965. She has performed and exhibited her work extensively throughout the world and has had major retrospectives at Stadtsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany (2000); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1994); and, most recently, at the Queens Museum of Art in New York (2003). Jonas's many one-person exhibitions and performances have included presentations at The Kitchen, New York (2004); the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago (2004); Kunstmuseum, Bern (1980); University Art Museum, Berkeley, California (1980); among others. She is currently working on a show for the spring of 2007 at MACBA, Barcelona. In 2000, Dia and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) presented a program of Jonas's film and video works at Dia's New York City exhibition facility. In 1988 Jonas was awarded the American Film Institute's Maya Deren Award, and was the recipient of the 3rd Annual Polaroid Video Art Award in 1987. Since 2000 she has taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Jonas lives and works in New York.

Jason Moran
Born in Houston, Texas, in 1975, Moran began studying the piano at age six. He attended Houston's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and later studied at the Manhattan School of Music with the pianist Jaki Byard. After joining saxophonist Greg Osby's band for a European tour in 1997 Moran made his professional recording debut on Osby's 1997 album Further Ado. His debut recording as a leader followed in 1999 and he has since released seven albums on Blue Note records. His latest album, titled Artist in Residence, features three commissions from American arts institutions: the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (MILESTONE), Jazz at Lincoln Center (RAIN), and Dia Art Foundation through Joan Jonas (The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things). Artist in Residence also features guest appearances by artists Joan Jonas and Adrian Piper. Moran was recently awarded the 2005 Pianist of the Year and Small Ensemble of the Year (The Bandwagon) by the Jazz Journalist's Association and the first-ever 2005 Playboy Magazine Jazz Artist of the Year.

Funding
Joan Jonas's commission for Dia:Beacon is made possible by the Dutchess County Arts Council; the Dyson Foundation; Jean Stein, JKW Foundation; and the New York State Council on the Arts. Support for video production during this project was provided, in part, by the Renaissance Society, Chicago, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries
Dia:Beacon, Dia Art Foundation's museum in the Hudson Valley, presents a distinguished collection of contemporary art from the 1960s to the present. Situated on the banks of the Hudson River in Beacon, New York, the museum occupies a former Nabisco box-printing facility, which was renovated by Dia with artist Robert Irwin and architect OpenOffice.

Dia:Beacon's expansive galleries comprise 240,000 square feet of exhibition space illuminated by natural light. The museum houses works by a focused group of some of the most significant artists of the last half century, including Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, John Chamberlain, Walter De Maria, Dan Flavin, Michael Heizer, Robert Irwin, Donald Judd, On Kawara, Imi Knoebel, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Blinky Palermo, Gerhard Richter, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Andy Warhol, and Lawrence Weiner.

Programming at the museum includes a series of year-long temporary exhibitions as well as public programs designed to complement the collection and exhibitions, including monthly Gallery Talks, music performances by St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, Readings in Contemporary Literature, Community Free Days for neighboring counties and an education program that serves area students at all education levels.

Dia Art Foundation
Dia Art Foundation was founded in 1974. A nonprofit institution, Dia is internationally renowned for initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving art projects. Dia presents public programs and its permanent collection of works from the 1960s through the present at Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries, in New York's Hudson Valley. Dia has also proposed a plan to relocate its contemporary exhibition program in New York City to a new facility located at the future entrance to the High Line public park in downtown Manhattan. Additionally, the foundation maintains long-term, site-specific projects in the western United States, in New York City, and on Long Island.