profile / exhibitions / alumni / art
April 25, 2014
Writer: Jered Gold

Spring: Then and Now

Alexis Marguerite Teplin (MFA 01)

Graduate Art alumna Alexis Teplin’s practice is noted for a theatricality based in seduction, artificiality and cultural signification—themes that harken back to Igor Stravinsky’s scandalous 1913 ballet, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), culminating in the “sacrificial dance” of a young girl.

Fitting, then, that California-born, London-based Teplin is among the artists invited by the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, housed in a former brewery in Zürich, to create new work that addresses the ballet, its context and its history for Sacre 101— An Exhibition Based on The Rite of Spring.

In the live performance piece P and C, the sound and movement of two players are constrained by brightly colored costumes designed by Teplin as they perform in front of one of her large-scale paintings. The artist was inspired by Natalia Goncharova, an avant-garde costume and set designer for Ballets Russes, the company that originally performed The Rite of Spring a century ago.

On view through May 11, the exhibition presents contemporary works alongside a selection of Sacre documentation, much of which is being shown in a museum context for the first time.