Exhibition / “Jaime Davidovich: The Live! Show”

Date: 22 January–13 February 2010
­Location: Cabinet, 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn, NY
Gallery hours: Tuesday to Saturday­, 12–6 pm, and by appointment
Opening reception: Thursday, 21 January, 7–9 pm

“The Live! Show,” an exhibition by New York-based artist Jaime Davidovich, examines the history of the artist’s pioneering cable TV show of the same name. Shown on Manhattan cable Channel J from 1979 to 1984, the program was equally inspired, says Davidovich, by the Dada performance club Cabaret Voltaire and the anarchic style of groundbreaking TV comedian Ernie Kovacs. Taking full advantage of the potential of early cable television for artistic experimentation, The Live! Show was designed to be what Davidovich’s calls “a television variety show of the avant-garde”: hosted by his alter ego “Dr Videovich,” it typically featured guest performances by other artists drawn from the vibrant New York art community of the period. In addition to episodes from the show, the exhibition will also showcase some of the objects that Davidovich, mimicking the commercial language of television, made to be sold during his show’s “Video Shop” segment.

This program is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

For a PDF of the press release for this exhibition, click here.

About the Artist
Born in Argentina, Jaime Davidovich has been living in New York since 1964. One of the first visual artists to work with video, he began to use the medium for his 1972 installation at the Akron Art Institute. In 1976, he and a group of other artists created Cable SoHo, an organization dedicated to producing and showing new artistic works on cable television. In 1977, he became president of the organization (changing its name to Artist Television Network), and started creating his own programs for cable. In 1979, he started The Live! Show, which was shown weekly on Manhattan Cable Television (currently Time Warner Cable) until 1984. Currently working on a “delete” project addressing the over-saturation of information in the globalized art world, Davidovich’s work is included in the permanent collections of numerous museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), and the Museo de Arte Moderno (Buenos Aires). In 2010, a major retrospective of Davidovich’s work is planned at Artium in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain.