21c Museum Hotel Louisville is thrilled to present a special night celebrating our new exhibitions, Fallen Fruit: The Practices of Everyday Life and 21c at 10: A Global Gathering. Beginning at 6:30pm, we will welcome a discussion with Los Angeled-nased Fallen Fruit artists David Burns and Austin Young.

About Fallen Fruit
Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration originally conceived in 2004 by David Allen Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young. Since 2013, Burns and Young have continued the collaborative work. Fallen Fruit began by mapping fruit trees growing on or over public property in Los Angeles. The collaboration has expanded to include serialized public projects and site-specific installations that invite the public to experience the world as a fruitful place. The artists have realized projects at a range of institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art , Hammer Museum, Atlanta Center for Contemporary Art, Prospect 3 New Orleans, and Portland Art Museum.

About Fallen Fruit: The Practices of Everyday Life

“Fallen Fruit’s immersion into the people and places that have shaped this community reveals a multitude of stories and connections in a visually dazzling and profoundly genuine expression of place making,” said Alice Gray Stites, 21c Museum Director and Chief Curator. “21c is proud to have commissioned an ambitious project that is truly locally engaged and globally connected. The installation addresses a universal aspect of the human condition, hunger—to be fed, to be seen, to belong, to be loved. The persistence of these desires fosters the continuity of ritual: the practices of everyday life don’t really change—we eat, drink, we talk, we congregate and celebrate in ways that would be recognizable to our forbears at least a century ago—these acts retain meaning and promise.”

We are interested in the idea of the public, citizenship, and community, and how everyday people are poets and scribes and artists and documentarians as much as they are strangers, neighbors, and friends.

David Burns and Austin Young, who work as the duo Fallen Fruit, explore and transform located geographies and narrative histories at the intersections of public and private spaces. This site-specific commission is inspired by a wide range of definitions of “the public,” from the stranger or passerby to the vast public spaces of the Internet, and includes collective histories found in native and creationist mythologies, generational knowledge, and public and private archives.
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About 21c at 10: A Global Gathering

21c was founded in 2006 by Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, contemporary art collectors and preservationists who are committed to broadening public access to thought-provoking contemporary art through acquisitions, exhibitions, and innovative cultural programming. Now a multi-venue museum, 21c also organizes exhibitions and events in Cincinnati, Bentonville, Durham, Lexington, and soon, Oklahoma City. As 21c has expanded, the permanent collection has grown, and now includes artworks from all over the world, in media ranging from handcrafted textiles to digital generations, alongside painting, photography, sculpture, video, and performance. As seen in this selection of highlights from the collection, prevalent themes include portraiture and identity, landscape and the environment, politics and power. Artists both internationally known and emerging are represented in the 21c collection: Bill Viola, Kehinde Wiley, Anthony Goicolea, Ori Gersht, and Zanele Muholi have been collected and exhibited by museums across the globe, while Andrea Shipani, Carlos Quintana, Quayola, Wim Botha, and others are just stepping onto the world’s art stage. From portraits of victims of violence by Titus Kaphar and Miguel Angel Rojas, to visions of our endangered or decaying environments by Marco Veronese and Fabiano Parisi, to critiques of military might by Democracia and Anastasia Taylor-Lind, these visionary artists create aesthetically and conceptually engaging works that reflect how we live and die, work, play, and dream in the 21^st century; their revelations may inspire insights into how we might build and share a progressive future worldwide.

During 21c’s first decade, nearly 100 exhibitions have been presented to the public, including Cuba Now!; Alter Ego: A Decade of Work by Anthony Goicolea; Hybridity: The New Frontier; Aftermath: Witnessing War, Countenancing Compassion; Seeing Now; Wild Card: The Art of Michael Combs; Dis-semblance: Projecting and Perceiving Identity; Albano Afonso: Self-Portrait as Light; and Pop Stars! Popular Culture and Contemporary Art. In addition to featuring works from the 21c collection, these exhibitions also include loans from other museums, galleries, and artists. Since 2006, 21c has collaborated on arts initiatives with artists and cultural organizations worldwide, including Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, MASSMoCa, North Carolina Museum of Art, Speed Art Museum, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Creative Capital Foundation, and others.

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