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Mirage Installations

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Installations
Description
Collections
Exhibitions and Installation Views
Installation Drawings
Floor Plans
Interviews

Installations

  • Joan Jonas, Mirage, 1976/1994. Multimedia installation with videos (Good Night Good Morning [1976] and excerpts from Volcano Film [1976], May Windows [1976], and Mirage [1976]), props (metal cones, found Mexican mask, hoop, and drawing on blackboard), stage, and photographs.
  • Joan Jonas, Mirage, 1976/1994/2005. Multimedia installation with six videos (Car Tape [1976], Volcano Film [1976], Good Night Good Morning [1976], May Windows [1976], Mirage [1976], and Mirage II [1976/2000]), props (seven metal cones, one found Mexican mask, three hoops, and two drawings on blackboard), stages, and photographs. The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gift of Richard J, Massey, Clarissa Alcock Bronfman, Agnes Gund, and Committee on Media Funds, 2009.
  • Joan Jonas, Mirage, 1976/2001. Installation with film (Mirage [1976]) and video projection (Mirage II [1976/2000]) and two videotapes transferred to laserdisc shown on a monitor: May Windows (1976); Good Night Good Morning (1976); both repeated continuously. Collection Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase, with funds from the Film and Video Committee, 2002.158.

Description

Mirage (1976/1994) and Mirage (1976/1994/2005)

The multimedia installation Mirage (1976/1994/2005) varied considerably from its initial presentation in 1994 until its current form in 2005.

The first version, Mirage (1976/1994), conceived for the exhibition Joan Jonas: Works 1968–1994 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, included photographs of Jonas’s performances Mirage (1976) and the related performance Funnel (1974). A table-like stage platform held several props from the Mirage performance, including the found Mexican mask and a hoop. Nearby were a vertical monitor displaying the video Good Night Good Morning (1976), several metal cones, and a blackboard with chalk drawings. Projected on a screen above the stage platform was an edited compilation of fragments of the films Mirage (1976), Volcano Film (1976), and the video May Windows (1976), all of which had been included in the performance.

In 2000, for her retrospective exhibition at Galerie der Stadt, Stuttgart, Jonas modified the installation again, omitting the Funnel photographs and replacing the edited compilation of film and video fragments she had used previously with the new video Mirage II (1976/2000) and the full-length version of the film Mirage (1976) (transferred to video).

Jonas subsequently expanded the installation again in 2005 when she showed it at Yvon Lambert gallery in New York, where she separated the videos into individual channels, providing a projection screen or video monitor for each of the six video components: Car Tape (1976), Volcano Film (1976), Good Night Good Morning (1976), May Windows (1976), Mirage I (1976), and Mirage II (1973/2000). Jonas also included additional props, blackboards with chalk drawings, stage platforms, and a hopscotch chalk drawing, which is drawn anew each time the work is shown. It was this version of the installation—Mirage (1976/1994/2005), shown at Yvon Lambert—that the Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired in 2009.

Mirage (1976/2001)

For the exhibition Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art, curated by Chrissie Iles at the Whitney Museum in 2001, Jonas created another version of the installation—Mirage (1976/2001), now in the Whitney’s collection—which includes film and video projections as well as videos shown on a monitor. In contrast to Mirage (1976/1994) and Mirage (1976/1994/2005), in Mirage (1976/2001), Jonas uses only film and video images to define the space of the installation; there are no props, photographs, or additional components. The installation comprises a projection of the film Mirage (1976), shown alongside a slightly smaller projection of the video Mirage II (1976/2000). In front of these two projections is a monitor turned on its side showing the videos May Windows (1976) and Good Night Good Morning (1976). 

—KP

Bibliographic References

Iles, Chrissie. “Joan Jonas Mirage.” In Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art, edited by Chrissie Iles, 148–153. New York: Whitney Museum, 2001. 

“Joan Jonas, Mirage, 1976/2001.” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Jonas, Joan. “Mirage (1976).” In Joan Jonas: Performance Video Installation 1968–2000, edited by Johann Karl Schmidt, 124–33. Stuttgart: Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart; Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2001. 

Simon, Joan. “Mirage [Installation].” In In the Shadow a Shadow: The Work of Joan Jonas, edited by Joan Simon and Joan Jonas, 228. New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2015.

Williams, Robin Kathleen. “A Mode of Translation: Joan Jonas’s Performance Installations.” Stedelijk Studies, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 1–19.

For further reading, see Mirage Bibliography.

Collections

Exhibitions and Installation Views

  • As Mirage (1976/1994), Joan Jonas: Performance, Video, Installation, 1968–2000, curated by Andrea Jahn, Galerie der Stadt, Stuttgart, Germany, November 16, 2000–February 18, 2001.
  • As Mirage (1976/2001), Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art 1964–1977, curated by Chrissie Iles, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, October 17, 2001–January 27, 2002. (Installation View)
  • As Mirage (1976/1994/2005), Joan Jonas: Moving in Place 1976–2000, Yvon Lambert, New York, January 5–February 26, 2005. (Installation Views)
  • As Mirage (1976/1994/2005), Joan Jonas: Two Works, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy, May 30–July 30, 2006
  • As Mirage (1976/1994/2005), Joan Jonas: Timelines: Transparencias en una habitación oscura/Tranparències en una habitació fosca/Transparencies in a Dark Room, curated by Bartomeu Marí, Museu d’Art contemporani de Barcelona, September 20, 2007–January 7, 2008; traveled to Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, April 28–June 29, 2008. (Barcelona Installation Views) (Geneva Installation View)
  • As Mirage (1976/1994/2005), Performance 7: Mirage by Joan Jonas, curated by Barbara London, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, December 18, 2009–May 31, 2010. (Installation Views)
  • As Mirage (1976/1994/2005), Collection 1940s–1970s, MoMA reopening collection installation, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 21, 2019–October 25, 2021. (Installation Views)

Installation Drawings

  • Joan Jonas, Untitled (Mirage installation drawing), from untitled notebook (number 7a), 1991. (Notebook Images)

Floor Plans

  • Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art 1964–1977, curated by Chrissie Iles, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, October 17, 2001–January 27, 2002. (Floor Plans)
  • Performance 7: Mirage by Joan Jonas, curated by Barbara London, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, December 18, 2009–May 31, 2010. (Floor Plans)

Interviews

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