Book Signing and Artist Talk | Shimon Attie Starstruck: An American Tale

Presented by Jack Shainman Gallery, Lehigh University Art Galleries, and Black Dog Press

Celebrate the release of the monograph Shimon Attie, Starstruck: An American Tale on Saturday, Oct. 21, 3-5pm at Jack Shainman Gallery.  Co-published by Black Dog Press (London) and Lehigh University Art Galleries (Bethlehem, PA), the monograph includes essays by Hannah Klemm, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Blanton Museum of Art, and Ed Simon, writer and editor of Belt Magazine.  The event will include an artist talk with Shimon Attie and discussion with the book’s editor, art historian Nicholas Sawicki (Lehigh University), followed by a book signing.  Copies of the monograph will be available for purchase.

About Starstruck: An American Tale
Invited to create a new body of work as Lehigh University’s Horger Artist-in-Residence (2021-22) Attie created an artwork which interrogates Bethlehem’s past and present as a microcosm of America, titled Starstruck: An American Tale.

Following the city’s founding as “The Bethlehem of North America” by Moravian Christian reformist and utopian settlers in 1741, it later enjoyed an industrial heyday in the late 19th to 20th centuries as the capital of America’s steel industry and then saw a subsequent collapse during the 1980s. Attie’s project explores this distinctly American brew of religious utopian fervor, industrial capitalism’s rise and fall, and, finally, its reinvention in catering to the dreams of making it big on the part of casino goers.

The completed artwork is a hybrid video and sculptural installation which juxtaposes and examines Bethlehem’s past and present.  Starstruck: An American Tale was exhibited at Lehigh University Art Galleries, Lehigh University, September 6-December 3, 2022.

About the Publication
Starstruck: An American Tale maps the artist Shimon Attie’s newest project, a cut through the layers of America past and present at the site of the historic steel town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The monograph documents Attie’s multi-year project of excavating stories of the city by filming community members, clothed in contemporary and historical dress, transiting iconic local buildings and topography – and the resulting exhibition at the Lehigh University Art Galleries, anchored by a two-channel video and a modified scaled facsimile of Bethlehem’s 90-foot-tall lighted sculptural representation of the biblical Star of Bethlehem, a civic project from the 1930s that overlooks the city from above to this day. The book is published together with the Lehigh University Art Galleries.

Shimon Attie (Author), Nicholas Sawicki (Editor), William B Crow, Hannah Klemm, Ed Simon (Contributors), Hardback, 28 × 23 cm | 11 × 9 in, 128 pages, ISBN 978-1-912165-53-7

About Shimon Attie
Shimon Attie is an internationally renowned visual artist whose practice includes creating site-specific installations in public places, immersive multiple-channel video and mixed-media installations, and fine art photographs.  For two decades, Attie has made art that allows us to reflect on the relationship between place, memory and identity. In many of his projects, he engages local communities in finding new ways of representing their history, memory, and potential futures, and explores how contemporary media may be used to re-imagine new relationships between space, time, place and identity. 

About the Horger Artist-in-Residence
Established in 2016, Lehigh University’s Theodore U. Horger ’61 Endowed Artist-in-Residence for the Visual and Performing Arts was created through an estate gift from the late Theodore U. Horger in order to bring visiting artists to the university. Attie is the sixth artist-in-residence in the program, and as part of his residency held an appointment as visiting professor in Lehigh’s Department of Art, Architecture and Design.

Event Details
The book signing and artist talk with Shimon Attie will occur on Saturday, October 21, 3-5pm at Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 W. 20th Street (7th floor private viewing room).  Copies of the monograph will be available for purchase.  The event will include light refreshments.  Free and open to the public.  The event location is accessible using the building’s elevator.