The Eye That Writes

Dia:Beacon Inspiration

2011-05-19T01:18:00.000-07:00

Traveling from San Francisco to New York, I was both excited and unsure of what to expect. I was looking forward to visiting the myriad of locations listed on our itinerary, but I was so severely exhausted from the previous three months of class and travel, I did not know what to expect from myself. Little did I know that the next five days would be the most energizing week of my academic career. Searching for a research topic for a final paper was proving to be difficult as the semester progressed but during my trip to the Dia:Beacon, inspiration found my project.

The Dia:Beacon is located a distance away from NYC and required an entire daylong commitment, but this excursion proved to be the most exciting of the entire trip. The Dia:Beacon is a spectacularly converted Nabisco boxing factory from the 1920’s and is both expansive and spacious. Surely, something of this size and stature could never be found on the island of Manhattan. Rooms dedicated to Warhol, Chamberlain, On Kawara Gerhard Richater, Donald Judd Dan Flavin, Robert Smithson, Bruce Nauman among others was the most exciting collection of artists and space I have ever encountered. The de Mineo family collection of Rothko commissioned Mineo Chapel resides in Huston, as does the rest if the family’s collection, however, the contemporary collection of work located at the Dia:Beacon proved to be as inspirational as its physical move to Beacon, NY.

The Dia Foundation modeled its New York foundation after the German Kunsthalle model of exhibition organization, with some American modifications. The Dia Foundation held steadfast to its commitment to maintain the integrity of the art of contemporary artists. Exhibitions at the Dia New York were scheduled to only hang for one year and comprised of Dia commissioned works only with each floor of the foundation dedicated to one artist. Group shows were allowed, but only in the form of monographic shows, never a retrospective.

Historically, the 1980’s were filled with traveling blockbuster shows, but the Dia’s refusal to conform to the quid pro quo resulted in bad reviews and very little press coverage of its space in New York. Visitors to the Dia New York were rare therefore, the Dia aimed to perform to the purpose of the project of the artist, not the viewing audience. The Dia received much criticism for continuing its elitist behavior by moving to Beacon, NY, however, once the space is viewed, there is no question that New York City could never have produced a space as vast and buried in nature as the Dia:Beacon. It’s almost forgivable that one must go through Poughkeepsie, NY, before you arrive at the Dia:Beacon, NY.

Artist Robert Irwin even enjoyed hanging his work during a yearlong exhibition, only to have it taken down, modified by him to his liking and hung again for another year. Irwin also redesigned the building the Dia currently resides in, successfully repositioning the interior and salvaging beautiful original wood flooring. The Dia:Beacon is a successful space; beautiful in design and the pieces it holds

My visit of the Dia:Beacon sparked my interest in contemporary land artists such as Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer. The Dia:Beacon owns the Lightning Fields project created by Walter De Maria. Questions about the conception, creation and maintenance of the project were brought up. Land was purchased, de Maria was commission to create the steel rods and the placement was grid like and intended to distance itself from the gallery scene of the east coast. This pioneer endeavor of purchasing land to control the space and create the work was an extraordinary concept. The idea that these locations were created to step away from the commodification of the art world and have now become a destination location, a pilgrimage to Mecca, has created a geopolitical question. Purchase of land for art pieces creates questions of geopolitical associations, patronage, conservation and ideas of permanence.

De Maria’s Lightning Field is alive and needs to be maintained, creating the three things needed for land art pieces like the Lightning Field - 1) an art historical prominence of the project and artist 2) a successful art dealer who knows the business of art and 3) an individual with wealth and capital to complete the project. This idea of patronage is what jumped at me the most during our visit to the Dia and sparked my interest in the creation of land art leading me to choosing the creation of land art, its geopolitical interests, permanence and patronage as my final paper project.

Overall, the trip to New York was an excellent opportunity to get to know my fellow classmates, and have conversations about the spaces, pieces, lectures, exhibition tours and the city over dinner and a few glasses of wine. This was an excellent experience I will hang on to for a long time.

By Isabella Shirinyan

MOCA, Dialogue and Curation

2011-05-17T06:16:00.000-07:00

While traveling to various museums in the Los Angeles area with Hanru’ s class, I was vitally aware of the cultural potential of museums, the need for interpretation and learning and the appeal of some institutions being open for longer than a few days a week. While visiting such locations as the Hammer Museum, LACMA, MOCA or the Jurassic Technology Museum reminded me of the importance of existing exhibitions – and the need for specific exhibitions- as they often define the heart of the museum.

Exhibitions have a unique ability to reveal and conceal the faults of an institution – and a great show has the ability to leave a prestigious mark. Author and exhibitor Kathleen McLean writes that “ exhibitions show things, whether a work of art or a working machine, a history timeline or a bit of bone. The form of exhibition is the one feature common to all museums, from institutions engaged in scholarly research for a small professional audience to a large multidisciplinary organizations providing services for the broadest spectrum of people.” And as graduate students who traveled from a new destination and dialogue to another, a conversation of curration and presentation began to construct itself within our three days: curation of exhibitions defines the soul of an artistic space and if done wrong, it exposes a lack of dialogue within an institution.

The lack of dialogue in certain institutions was evident and the class was given additional curatorial information by curators and artistic directors of the institutions that was not public knowledge. This was a grand treat. At various institutions that shall remain nameless, MOCA was highly criticized for lacking a general direction in their curatorial and exhibition departments. Comments were made which insinuated a lack of creativity and overall talent, however, having scheduled our group visit to MOCA on the last day of the trip, I was unable to neither agree nor disagree with this contention until I had witnessed it for myself. Having said that, I was unable to shake a curiosity about the MOCA and upon meeting its curator, Alma Ruiz, and touring MOCA at the Geffen Contemporary, I was finally able to understand the whispers, and concerns of its large and small contemporaries.

With five curators planning and designing shows at the Geffen center one begins to wonder which curator was able to strong arm the other in order to gain the upper hand in its design and conception. Comprising of five pieces created by 6 artists, the Geffen center is exhibiting Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color, and Space" a show predominantly showing Latin American artists and curated by Latina Alma Ruiz, MOCA curator and the concept creator of the exhibit. Shown are pieces from Carlos Cruz-Diez, Julio Le Parc and Jesús Rafael Soto, Lucio Fontana and a group piece from occasional working partners Hélio Oiticica and Neville D'Almeida. The work exhibited reflects primarily on the notions of light and space – and with five extremely large pieces from larger than life artists – the Geffen MOCA is able to exhibit the growing popularity of these Latin American artists within the contemporary field. However, how does this new exhibit define the soul and definition of the institution it exhibits, except for the seemingly gimmicky pool chosen as an exhibit and one, which lacks all connection to the other pieces? While the goal of the show may have been to “ lodge an expansion of perceptual consciousness within those who encountered it” the scale of the pieces were far too sparse to act as a conduit of its artistic functions.

Lucio Fontana’ s piece looked like a signature caught it mid-air. It was the epitome of postwar three-dimensional art – compared by the Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight to Pollock’ s drip paintings. Soto’ s plastic rubber tubing allowed for the visitor to engage in the piece and become part of the motion. Le Parc’ s play on light and texture with the use of mirrors and a projector was oddly placed and the set of all five pieces lacked any obvious direction for the visitor, but always began at the first piece, Fontana’ s light sculpture. Oiticica and D'Almeida’ s piece was a combination of a swimming pool and slide show. Allowing the visitor to dive into the pleasure principle of life: leisure (and cocaine). The set up of the entire show failed to utilize the imagination of the visitor irregardless of the books and information available on near by stylish tables artfully lighted by lamps and video installations exhibiting information about the artists. I walked in thinking it was another installation only to realize that it was an information center.

By Isabella Shirinyan

2011-05-15T21:14:00.000-07:00

JOSE PARLA

Recent showing of: ‘Walls, Diaries, Paintings'

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery

Jose Parla, a Cuban-American artist grew up in 1980’s Miami in the midst of its cocaine era, and during graffiti art’s debut as a cutting edge form of artistic expression. Since then, he has combined his street art aesthetic with his formal arts education and earned critical success by bringing his wall installations and paintings in to the white cube environment. Among many other venues, Parla has exhibited at Emmanuel Perrotin gallery in Paris as well as with Deitch Projects in NYC and has been featured and discussed by major art critics and publications. After viewing his impressive resume, I continue to be surprised by how easy it seems for artists to capitalize upon established visual and narrative tropes. While visiting the Chelsea galleries in NYC this past March, I found Parla to be a manifestation of what is problematic of the commercial art scene in NY in general: that there is a rigid fixation on the old guard and a predictable repertoire of work. In short, among many of the reputable galleries in one of the world’s most central commercial art spots, there seems to be very little that is actually new or risk taking in the Chelsea galleries. My impression in many of the galleries was, what sells is what shows and that what shows often utilizes established aesthetics while espousing played out or over emphasized critical themes. Whereas Parla’s success seems to rely on the appeal and popularity of the street art aesthetic, Mike Weiss Gallery’s recent Hermann Nitsch exhibit featured safe, colorful, and fun-loving performances (the remnants of which were for sale in the gallery) while relying on the capital of the artist’s former infamy and affiliation with the Viennese Actionists.

Walking down West 24th Street Jose Parla’s work was visible through the gallery windows across the street and was immediately captivating. Parla’s work points to the city surfaces as a billboard- journaling accumulative experiences. He resites this urban experience and imbues it with his own layer of palimpsetic code within a context where every thing exists because a decision was made, and therefore has an automatic air of meaning: a gallery. Parla mimics aesthetics of abstract expressionist gestural calligraphic mark making with Dada-esque inclusions of flyers and posters found on the street, on backgrounds that could easily be, and sometimes really are, graffiti covered walls. In combining these three trends, Parla clearly shows his predilection for the idea of texts meaning versus its actual meaning- opening the work up to reflecting the viewers personal narratives and associations of urban environments. Parla treats text in a manner similar to the Cubist and Dada artists whose fixation arose out of the mass production of newspapers and advertisements and the ensuing everpresence of words in the public visual milieu. Typography contributes to the visual experience of Parla’s art work, a formal and compositional device, they are spatial figures drawing attention to the textuality of text and suggesting the potential textuality of the other, non textual Twombly-esque marks in the work.

There is a simultaneous escapism and familiarity appealing in Parla’s work which becomes, a carnival of the evidence/impersonations of contemporary life and the sexy side of urban grit. Clear but textually indecipherable representations of daily urban experience make the work accessible, giving it impressions of layers of content, meaning, and human presence while at the same time that they absolve the viewer of the responsibility of really decoding the works meaning, making it a sensorial, what Parla terms, “reading through feeling” experience.

Perhaps there is a cynical assumption of insincerity that underwrites quotidian work presented in a white cube environment. And so, maybe the fact that Parla is one of the grandfathers of the street art movement is historically important in establishing that he was at least at one time sincere. However is there not a certain falseness to work which talks about everyday experience when it represents the everyday experience of that artist a long time ago? How long ago did he develop this idea and how many times has he repeated it since that ideas inception? The combination of these tastes which are so everpresent, from Urban Outfitters graffiti art appeal to the fact that Twombly’s can be found in most museums of modern art, and the fact that Parla’s work has not changed significantly since he became popular, makes me doubt the sincerity of his work as little more than him riding the wave that he helped create.

Interview with Jose Parla:

1-2-1 w/jeffstaple feat. Jose Parla from jeffstaple on Vimeo.

-CAT UTHASOONTHORN

2011-05-03T23:12:00.001-07:00

Means and Meaning: Painting for a Recession

The Economic Art of Sergej Jensen

Rebecca Ahrens

Review of solo show at MoMA PS. 1, January 23, 2011 - May 2, 2011

Denmark-born, Berlin-based Sergej Jensen (b. 1973) is a painter against the odds: in a time when critical theory favors post-object installations and abstract painting is decidedly out of favor within the art world, Jensen revels in the conflict between the real versus the virtual. While surrounded by an overall mistrust of materialism in the current economic climate, Jensen pursues immaterial tangibility. Jensen, who is the current subject of a monographic show at MoMA PS.1, produces “paintings without paint,” as he calls them. His “paintings” reflect the material collapse of our postmodern, informationalized society. Jensen acknowledges the rich creative activity of the past to produce its 21^st century incarnation through a recollection that is time-worn and timid. Following the same impulse that inspires the current make-due-with-what-you-have, recession sentiment and micro-utopian artistic communities, he creates artwork in relation to circulation and exchange. His paintings reveal the process of frugal consumption as a new form of artistic labor. Jensen’s consumption based art addresses these economic and cultural transformations through appropriating the strategies of the readymade and recycling the technologies of mass reproduction, allowing for the art object to persist.

At PS. 1 Jensen’s work hung quietly on the wall. Adjacent were voyeuristic, participatory works that sum up a large part artistic production in the last decades. His paintings are breathtakingly fragile and shy abstractions. A descendant of Post-minimalism and other process-based art categories of the 1960s and 1970s, Jensen de-emphasizes the surfaces on and with which he works- raw canvas, burlap, linen, wool, silk, denim- through subdued neutrals and secondary and tertiary colors and geometric forms. Rather than brushstrokes, we see attended to textiles; he sews and irons patches, applies pigment and diamond dust, joins remnants of fabric, crochets, bleaches, stains, and dyes. But his paintings are never over-worked. Instead they affirm a thrift of gesture.

Within Jensen’s work then is both a reference to high modernist painting and its dematerialization- its funeral. In a recent interview, Jensen states that his first experiences with the modern master painters was obscured by dust and decay- due in part to the poor upkeeping of his local art museum and in part to an early recognition of the inevitability of art historical time. Painting has perhaps come under the most metamorphoses, from early civilization’s wall paintings to minimalist hues and Jensen’s reference to painting is not to deny or create antagonistic affect, rather Jensen follows natural developments of the genre, to work with the remains of a neglected form, to re-stitch what is left after classical, humanist perspective and individualism have dissipated.

But Jensen is not working through the archaeological reconstruction of modernism's rack and ruin nor deconstructing works from the past. He is more concerned with the history of his materials. He reclaims fabrics to produce visual and reminiscent associations from the stains, holes, cracks and other traces of wear. Jensen’s studio is filled with scrap piles, strips of fabric and material for later use. Some may call the obsessive accumulation for a rainy day hoarding; let’s just call it frugality.

While there are obvious craft associations, his use of fabrics reference the fashion and other creative industries as much as they do the domestic sphere. The colored-dye dots on the selvage of manufactured fabric in Untitled, 2005, nods to the materials’ previous life in commerce. The burlap sacks sewn together in Tower of Nothing II, 2004, for example, are money bags used to transport cash. The title of Come on, let's make fifty-fifty, 2003, refers to the terms of the artist-dealer split. Untitled (Binary One) and Untitled (Binary Zero), both 2005, feature bills in various currencies affixed to raw canvas. The money on canvas is an obvious jab at the status of the art market. Here, the global economy is crossed with the economy of Jensen’s gesture. The bills themselves are arranged with attention- the colors blend in and out of one another, rescuing the works from being mere didacticism. The paintings’ use of binary code also speaks to the technologies that run our economy and our day-to-day lives. They map an analogy between the components of the digital and analog worlds. Also, the binary zero and one are allegorical signs for the similar recombinant programming of technology and the elemental materials of his practice.

Jensen boasts that he never alters the exhibition space in which he shows. Opposed to the universal no-places of utopian modernism, he grounds and localizes the sweeping aspirations in today's social world. Installation within the pre-existing conditions performs an economic use of actual space.

The reuse and recycle mentality is indicative of a greater cultural shift from the 1980s resurrection of painting (the art market and feel-good conservatism). Today is marked by the simultaneous rise of environmental activism and ecological consciousness, the current state of world-wide economics, and a post-9/11 reservation of cultural economy. Jensen’s paintings- their characteristic reuse and restraint- are absorbed in the recession of contemporary capitalism. Jensen’s work gives shape to recent reconsiderations of modernism’s utopias. His paintings remind us that it is not art that is on its way out, but the modern myths of painting and of American neoliberal capitalism.

MoMA New York: Contemporary Art from the Collection - look at Huma Bhabha and Y.O.

2011-05-02T12:42:00.000-07:00

EXHIBITION TITLE: Contemporary Art from the Collection

LOCATION: MoMA New York

DATES: June 30, 2010 – May 9, 2011

CURATOR: Christophe Cherix

Christophe Cherix is the curator for the exhibition “Contemporary Art from the Collection” currently at view in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mr. Cherix is also is the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Chief Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books at The Museum of Modern Art. Being a native of Switzerland, Mr. Cherix received a License ès lettres from the University of Geneva.

As the curator, Cristophe Cherix assembled these particular works to invoke discourse and debate in regards to topics such as ethnicity, gender, economics and politics all of which pervaded every facet of artistic production since the 1960s. The exhibition’s installation moves in a chronological order dating the artwork from the 1960’s to as late as 2007. A variety of mediums are highlighted from all of the museum’s curatorial departments which are exemplified in approximately 130 works of art.

Huma Bhaba’s is an artist born in Karachi, Pakistan. Ms. Bhabha currently lives and works in Poughkeepsie, New York. She has a series of etchings in the exhibition called “Reconstructions” which particularly moved me. Seven etchings were hung in a row varying from 29 1/2 x 36 5/8" (75 x 93 cm) or 25 x 34" (63.5 x 86.4 cm). They were particularly startling yet beautiful images merging a line between the photographic and stylized hand rendering coupled with the technical aspects of the printmaking medium.

Visiting Pakistan every year, Huma Bhabha was inspired in the city of Karachi for this particular body of work. Huma Bhabha stated in an interview with MoMA that the city of Karachi is under constant construction and one can see many unfinished foundations all over the city. She imagines the foundations being re-born, rising as a phoenix from the ruins of war and environmental destruction. (From the MoMA Audio Program excerpt Contemporary Art from the Collection, June 30, 2010–May 9, 2011)

The beautiful etchings Huma Bhabha created go through a timely process from idea to fruition to form a finished image of social significance. She first collects discarded materials and fashions them in to figures; eroded, distressed and burnt out. She then juxtapositions them within photographic images of the varying foundations found in Karachi, Pakistan. Huma Bhabha then draws on them with India ink then applies the image through the etching process, printing them in black ink at its final stage.

Huma Bhabha’s images play a significant role in the debate and discourse concerning war, ethnicity, and politics. Her work seems to create this environment of anti-spectacle in which the viewer is compelled to make the pilgrimage mentally to discover the aura, the backstory in which the images describe. “Yes they are beautiful and profound, yet they are telling me something.” That is the strength of this body of work; it compels the viewer to seek the story of her native country of Pakistan. Huma Bhabha’s etchings live in a strange world of materiality on paper yet ephemeral from the photograph of the foundation which has no existence anymore.

While contemplating Huma Bhabha’s work I continued to walk through the exhibition in the museum. Suddenly, I was pleased and excited to come across an unintentional discovery. In every gallery I discovered small little phrases written in ink on the walls and also one on heavy cardboard glued to the floor. This “hunt” for all of the little interventions around the many galleries in the exhibition was fun for me and yet reminded me also of the truly contemporary nature of many of the art works which surrounded me. There where quotes such as: “Have the courage to tell him you love him”, “envision spring”, “smell the summer”, etc. They were all signed Y.O. I can only assume that they were made by Yoko Ono because her work was in the exhibition also. This intervention was an interesting display of how “Y.O.” affected the landscape of the institution. She posed questions of space versus production, ephemera and documentation. I was compelled by the relational aesthetic of the art directing the viewer as a participant to “hunt out” these small, little, personal treasures written by the hand of the artist. I found it also interesting that many people walked by without noticing even one. The aura created from the personal aspects of these messages connect the viewer to a more intimate relationship with the artist. This relationship creates a back-story for those who have not seen them to make the pilgrimage to the museum as well as a personal invitation for those who have to return.

MoMA, New York has treated us with sharing a portion of its collection through the exhibition “Contemporary Art from the Collection”. I would recommend taking the time to catch this show before it ends in May. Huma Bhabha’s series of etchings are complex and beautiful and asks the viewer to notice and contemplate the state of affairs in Karachi, Pakistan and its people. Although influenced by Pakistan, for me, Bhabha’s work represents imagery of our contemporary global stance and how America influences the rest of the world and its people. Many Americans understand the world and its issues through media and biased news coverage. The general American may not know what life is like in other countries let alone see the world through the eyes of others living in the disparage of war or a post-war situation. The reality may be hard to fathom for most. Interestingly however, it seems many American’s have an opinion on the matter regardless of their knowledge and experience with world affairs. In retrospect, that is the reason why this body of work is so important to me. Being a veteran of the first Gulf War, through Huma Bhabha’s work I see the influence of a wartime and post-war scenario. I see the destruction and the pain; however, I also see the determination of a people and an inspiration and imagination for growth and the rebuilding of a future which is more positive than the period of earlier circumstances which were more difficult and costly to their country and its people. I see creativity, optimism and realization; that is what moves me most about this body of work. I hope others who do not have the experience of war, other cultures and their difficult experiences with war and conflict can somehow understand through this work the difficulty of war and the difficulty of re-growth after a war and America’s positive, as well as negative impact on the world and its people.

In regards to the tiny interventions on the walls and floor by “Y.O.”, they serve as a constant reminder of the contemporary aspect of the exhibition throughout the chronology of the works involved. However, these interventions pose questions which have been debated at length and have cost municipalities millions of dollars in precious city funds for a very long time. That is the question of graffiti. There are examples of graffiti on walls since the time of the Egyptians. Graffiti has been used to express dissent with a government, a form of creative expression, as well as the simple markings of territory for gangs. One thing they have in common nevertheless is the simple fact that someone has to pay money to clean it up. It may be art but it is on another person’s property that may have not consented to such an intervention. As I stated, this debate has been going on for a very long time and I am not here to participate in that debate or provide answers. I am just curious what the social implications are for galleries and institutions in the future for sharing such interventions as art, especially when children and adolescents view such interventions at institutions whether they be real, documented or praised with historical and cultural relevance.

Orlando Lacro

Where is the Exhibition Space When There is No Space

2011-04-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

There is no most stupid, only more stupid

There are two versions of graduation show plan in front of me. These days, the map of the plan brings a storm and drives everybody crazy in our school. Sadly , I became the most unfortunate man of this crisis. And now, I don’t even have a place to show my artwork! I turned in my proposal and pointed out I just need a simple darkroom, but all I have here, as it is shown in the map, is just a 23 by 4 feet hallway. I couldn’t find any way to show my laser lights installation piece among this area.

So, what I had to face —I have no space.

Exhibition without space

I always believe in a Chinese proverb 否极泰来，“Pi Ji Tai Lai” (Things turn to be better when they come to the extremely bad). So, I think this is the worst situation for an artist in a group exhibition, especially; I am paying to show in vernissage.

Through art history in exhibition, artists have faced a similar situation, like the first exhibition of impressionism. That exhibition was host in a tent outside of an official exhibition building. Along these lines of exhibit without space, NYC challenges the audience by shifting the meaning of display when it happens outside a gallery space. I think the most valuable exhibition space is underground of New York City—the subway of New York (MTA).

Doing art in the subways in New York

The New York subway is truly unique. In its 100+ years of existence, it has become so much more than just a mode of transportation. It is an experience: a canvas for artists, a venue for musicians and a sort of dendrochronological record of the city’s collective subconscious. While moving transporting millions of people where they need to go each day with a minimum of logistical fuss and environmental muss, The New York metro also serves as a great humanizing, socializing force. After all, spending time in the company with strangers is one of the earth's oldest, most direct and stimulating forms of education. Travel is broadening, as they say, and New Yorkers can learn a good bit about the world simply by exercising their right to a $2.75 ride. The experience, formative to natives, transformative to later arrivals, encourages tolerance, curiosity and creativity, basic ingredients of cosmopolitanism.

New York’s subway art started by late 1980’s. I think of doing art in the subway as a powerful concept, a powerful conceptual artwork. People expect it now, which is wonderful, and it has completely changed the environment of the sys- tem. It has made it into the most democratic museum in the city with artists of a caliber that you would see at MoMA like Elizabeth Murray, Roy Lichtenstein, and Sol LeWitt.

When we see the great success of New York subway, we also mentioned that New York subway is not built for art. As what I am facing now, environment had never left any space for art. With an effective usage of the environment, a lot of art work achieves success in the subway. A great example for this is Tom Otterness, a New York city-based sculptor. Tom Otterness's "Life Underground " (at 14th Street and 8th Avenue) has emerged as one of the most popular pieces of subway art in the system. Regular riders doubtless noticed that installation took several years, owing to long disputes with bureaucrats. Currently, Otterness reates exclusively public works and like other public artists -- Christo and Jeanne-Claude come to mind -- he considers dickering with officials as part of the creative process. In the meantime, parts of this installation appeared all over town, from Central Park to Battery Park City to Downtown Brooklyn and Pratt Institute. The entire installation, as Otterness conceived it, is now in place.

The absolutely no means absolutely yes, abandoning the “reliability of art in environment” and change it into “the art changes with environment”. Then, the exhibition environment wouldn’t affect the concept of art. I made a decision, I abandon my dispensable show space.

Time to change, time to go out

Sometimes large, sometimes small, the art in the subway system includes murals of glass, ceramic or stone mosaic; windows and walls of stained glass; sculpture; and forays into Conceptual art and installation art, all permanent. They have been made by artists known and unknown from all corners of the New York art world and beyond. For better and sometimes for worse, this underground type of work reflects the subway's vibrant social reality: it is a fascinating exercise in artistic democracy.

Since I give up this inherence space, then I need to push my art into extremely large or extremely small scale.

An ghost exhibition beyond the Vernissage

If the storm has to come, let it comes harder. How I push my work into the ultimate? This question bring my memory to Yoko Ono’s piece now showing in MOMA New York, the Museum of Modern (F)Art.

one foot by one foot catalogue- the title seems to be Museum of Modern FArt (Ono is carrying a shopping bag with the letter “F” directly beneath the Museum of Modern Art marquee)- which details her concept at length; the catalogue was designed by Ono and produced by Michael Gross.

Since the museum wouldn't give her an exhibition, she curated an exhibition by herself--gesturing at the photographs of her renegade show that are now installed in the galleries. Called The Museum of Modern FArt, the 1971 piece, which went on to became somewhat famous in the alternative Fluxus art community, involved Ms. Ono strolling in as a visitor and then setting scores of flies loose in the MoMA sculpture garden.

Obviously, this is the paradise of artist and curator should both know how to bring the work close to audience and also make sure the artist’s own identity didn’t lose. This is a common goal even sometimes artist and curator may drop into two different directions. But curator should not refuse that there is something can go beyond the exhibition and the physical show space to connect between artist and audience directly heart to heart. And when there is no actual art work, what left over with no space but everything surround with the environment is the soul of the artist.

Alright, I will “cut” this exhibition, cut the whole space. I am going to create an ghost exhibition which is my exhibition beyond the Vernissage

Steps of Cut as shown below:

install all the laser light in public area to cut the space
to abide two principles:

don’t obey the law of US, not going to hurt human bodies
not affect on others artwork and their private space
set up labels next to installed area, define the concept of cut in each space

The Absence of Space, Transcending in Time

2011-04-25T19:52:00.000-07:00

Robert Irwin

rendering of museum ground floor

1999

Why do even the best-installed shows have the appearance of a dud? Why are the plain white rooms of a modern museum as oppressive as the imperial halls of our older museums? Could it be that we spread culture not to liberate but to enchain? It seems strange to me that the “disadvantaged” should want to enter into the cultural trap: if you join our news we will give you the benefits of our discontent.

Modernity is all about objects. But an object is just an object. Those objects are inside of the “white cube”, and yet nothing seems to belong there. As is stated on the website:

Dia’s museum in Beacon has been conceived as an extension of these fundamental tenets: the work of each artist is to be shown in relative isolation, most of the installations are intended to be long-term or permanent, and the spaces are either designed in consultation with the artist or are based on previous installations by the artist.

Michael Heizer
Negative Megaliths
1998

As Pollock took his canvas off the easel in his reinterpretation of the tradition of painting, Michael Heizer and artists like him left the studio altogether, stretching the already elastic boundaries of modern art—in physical, temporal, and conceptual dimensions—to the point where traditional categories of painting and sculpture became nearly irrelevant.

The historical relevance of Dia’s collection, and the founders’ original vision was to present artists’ work not only in depth but also in isolation, and in whatever location and circumstance were dictated by the artist and the needs of the work. That outlook corresponded with a strong impulse of the time to break free of the boundaries of the traditional gallery and museum. In Dia, all the work should remain in this space exactly as the artists placed them. (Dia:Beacon, Lynne Cooke and Michael Govan, page 20, Published by Dia Art Foundation, 2003)

By the time artists started trying to show out of those white walls, the museums were setting up a dialectic that pointed to a condition that was outside the gallery and somehow returned to the gallery. Museums like Dia: Beacon, they set up contrapuntal relationships between the institutional indoors and the great outdoors by importing natural and industrial materials previously foreign to art into the exhibition space.

San Francisco Art Institute MFA Exhibition Plan of 2011

Then, what’s left to exhibitions? Is there something else rather than show space. I look into their “closing hours”. I just had this conversation with the curator of the school’s MFA exhibition. Space splitting is a trouble of a 109 artists’ group show. Definitely, no single way can satisfy everybody. Beyond the revolutionary usage of space inner or outer of “white walls”, there is far more to go for avant-garde curators to setup a different exhibition in art history.

What’s going on with those “closing hours”? About 10 artists among those 109 required a darkroom to show their work. Why do we need a darkroom inside a show space? Is it because exhibitions always happened in the daytime? Then why don’t we divide these 109 people into two groups but showing in one space? A darkroom is used to hide light, and keep in the dark. To me, it’s just a fake dark. But when night comes, do the rooms still need to hide? Or can all the works needing to be in a darkroom show up naturally? Time switching is magic to exhibitions.

--Zizhou(Anita) Wang

From Modern to Contemporary: Museums in New York

2011-04-25T16:52:00.000-07:00

Madison Square Park, 2011 Douglas Yee

New York, New York. As Frank Sinatra so famously sings, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” But does this city still determine success? Or, more specifically, does it still determine the circulation of cultural production? Okwui Enwezor, the prestigious international curator, art critic and writer, recently said (during drinks in the Bowery) that artists no longer come to New York to make it, they come to New York to get lost. The skeptic in me wants to interpret Mr. Enwezor’s comment to mean that if you have not already made it by the time you arrive in New York: Good Luck. That New York may no longer have the privilege of cultural producer, but is now rather a cultural digester. What I believe he meant though, was that New York is no longer the only metropolis that confirms the legitimacy of international cultural distinction. In an increasingly transnational world, urban centers such as Mexico City, Havana, Shanghai and Johannesburg, to name a few, are innovating and producing artists whose works are having a global influence. But, that long, narrow strip of Manhattan still holds an allure as the pinnacle of success. Many in the arts (artists, curators, gallerists, etc.) feel the draw of New York. So, how are artists, who can’t resist this city’s gravitational pull, managing?

Interior of the Guggenheim Museum in New York

In our recent visit to New York, we made our way from museum to gallery to museum carried along by the rush of humanity and the loud, clatter of the subway. Being met by curators who briefly introduced us to the history of each museum, its collection and its vision was as exciting and exhausting as the crush of humanity flooding the streets of the city. It was at the Guggenheim Museum that we received a breath of inspiration. Alexandra Monroe, Senior Curator of Asian Art, introduced us to Filip Noterdaeme, who would lead us up the winding path of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural Oz. The Guggenheim is one of the world’s most fabulous institutions but museums are not only bricks and mortar in the middle of Manhattan. Museums are ideas. And Mr. Noterdaeme is constructing his own conceptual museum. The Homeless Museum of Art, established in 2002, is “a live-in museum in a rental apartment in Brooklyn, an activist's initiative, an exhibit in a vacant artist studio, a collection of original artworks, and a mock museum booth embedded in a commercial art fair” (http://www.homelessmuseum.org/). Mr. Noterdaeme performs the role of museum director, board of directors, artist, art and full-time resident (and I imagine it is inevitable that he must also perform the role of visitor at times.)

Homeless Museum of Art at the 2005 Armory Show

Mr. Noterdaeme’s intense passion and knowledge about the history of the Guggenheim’s collection was transfixing. To him, the museum was the portrait of Solomon R. Guggenhiem. The artist Hilla Rebay, who was commissioned to paint the portrait of Mr. Guggenheim, subsequently inspired him to found the museum. Her ultimate influence and contribution was facilitating a profound portrait of the man through an entire collection of art: the Guggenheim Museum. Mr. Noterdaeme, with superb detail and knowledge, shared the history of the institution, its collection and its individual paintings. He transformed the Guggenheim, an iconic monument to a philanthropic donor of immense wealth and a cultural Mecca for the world, into an experience beyond one painting after another. Mr. Noterdaeme paid homage to the Guggenheim as a modern museum, yet he himself is a contemporary museum.

Museum Haulers, 2005 Filip Noterdaeme

The ease and excitement with which he guided us through the Guggenheim belied an aspect beyond basic museum docent. His experience as a university professor at New York University, the New School and CUNY was evident. The question that stayed with me was whether or not Mr. Noterdaeme’s lecture at the Guggenheim was in fact an artistic performance? His response was that:

Every half-decent teacher is a bit of an actor/performer, and vice versa. I think both my students … and museum audiences …appreciate my teaching/performing style – affectations, accent, extravagance, mannerisms – precisely because it betrays, or, rather, celebrates, a perpetual state of inner conflict that has me perform a sort of Fox Trot among a set of alter egos that are never perfectly in step with the music at hand. This foxy dance is a fun "act" to perform because it leaves ample room for improvised, free-style movements never danced before.

Mr. Noterdaeme, an artist who has not found his celebrity in any cultural capital, is dancing to make it in this vibrant city; as long as his feet keep moving, keep touching the ground, he will not get lost. New York may no longer be the epicenter of cultural production but it still dominates cultural economy. Mr. Noterdaeme is an example of how artists must navigate between survival and art in this seductive and ruthless city. It is clear that, for what I imagine the majority, part of surviving as an artist in the city requires alternative endeavors. If you are in New York and have not made it, don’t lose yourself: dance through your alter egos. Be artist, performer, lecturer and teacher. Mr. Noterdaeme seems to be navigating his path with creativity, deftly dancing between his art and his livelihood.

HoMu BRKLYN

New York is not the only city that currently defines the success of art. But, it is still compelling. If one makes it in New York, it might still be true that one can make it anywhere. However, one can also make it in San Francisco, Havana, Amsterdam or Berlin. I am ready to lose myself in my own making.

-Sheeka Arbuthnot

The Talent Show

2011-04-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

The issues of fame and voyeurism have always been part of our society, but what has happened in this digital age of easy access and continual information? It seems that everyone wants their privacy but at the same time everyone wants to be famous, there is a contradiction in these behaviors. The exhibition on view from December 12, 2010 to April 4, 2011 at the MoMa PS1 is aptly titled The Talent Show, curated by Peter Eleey, it showcases artists dealing with these themes of exhibition and voyeurism in contemporary society; many concerning the digital age and the effects of web-based social networks on our social interactions. I thought it poignant that upon entering the first room of the exhibition we are greeted by one of Andy Warhol’s screen tests. As I viewed the show, what I found interesting the relationship that emerged between artist, art, participants and audience. How the “participant” (whether he/she is aware of it or not) become part of these artworks and become placed in this gallery context that highlights these issues of privacy and voyeurism.

Whether it be the artist’s own struggle on view for everyone as apparent through Hannah Wilke’s battle with disease in The Intra-Venus Tapes 1990-1993 or whether it is exposing other people’s, as in Amie Siegel in her series My Way (2009), a video of compiled footage from youtube of people singing cover songs; these artworks deal with the issue of self exposure.

Screenshot from My Way 1 (2009)

Image courtesy of Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard

In Shizuka Yokomizo’s series Strangers (1999), subjects are left an anonymous note at their house, asking them to stand in front of their window, indicating a date and time when the photographer will come and take a picture and that is all; there is an interesting relationship created between the photographer and subject, that is then captured by the camera, a tension emerging between personal exhibition and voyeurism. As the wall text indicated: “…blank and searching stares of her participants anticipate the combination of anonymity, desire and exhibition that under girds today’s virtual world”.

Shizuka Yokomizo Stranger 6 (1999)

Image courtesy of http://arttattler.com/archivetalentshow.html

Another work changeling the relationship of artist/viewer is Adrian Piper’s Context #7 (1970) which consists of comments, drawings, and thoughts written by people who attended a show opening in 1970 and were asked to write on this notebook. When viewing this installation I immediately thought of a project that can be related to this exhibition. The Scattered Light Project is collaboration between ROLU design studio from Minneapolis and Brooklyn based artist David Horowitz. This project consists of photography “Assignments” that people are asked to complete, these assignments are written on ROLU’s website and are distributed via email and blogs. Examples of these assignments include "A view of a flat horizon line over land or water” and “"A view of your bedroom laying on your bed". These photographs then are uploaded onto the online gallery and showcased at the Art of This Gallery in Minneapolis.

Scattered Light Project Assignment 2

Image courtesy of ROLU Studio http://www.ro-lu.com/

Both The Talent Show and The Scattered Light Project pose an interesting question: how is our society behaving in this contemporary context? And, how art itself shifting to comment on these behaviors and issues of privacy and authorship? Now that there are means to track and archive our every move through various media formats (video, photo, audio) and make them available immediately to a broad audience through technological means, our sense of privacy and desire to exhibit our selves are highlighted; with these changes in society being archived and at the same time analyzed and brought to light through art, we as an audience become more aware of our own desire of self exhibition.

Cecilia Salinas-Rios

Cracker

2011-04-25T01:20:00.000-07:00

Exhibition: Shame The Devil

The Kitchen

New York, New York

March 17th, 2011

Individual Artists: Kenya (Robinson) - Kenya Eats a Cracker

Curator: Petrushka Bazin

Kenya (Robinson) - "Kenya Eats a Cracker" - The Kitchen

The show, "Shame The Devil" at The Kitchen gallery in the Chelsea art district, is a group exhibition examining the parallel abilities of stand-up comedians and visual artists to play the roles of cultural observer and provocateur. Curated by guest curator Petrushka Bazin, the show features new sculpture, installations, video and photography by the artists Jabari Anderson, Elizabeth Axtman, Michael Paul Britto, Wayne Hodge, My Barbarian, Huong Ngo, Jessica Ann Peavy, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Kenya (Robinson) and Jimmy Joe Roche.

In all of its various forms, including stand-up, theater, literature, television, and film, comedy has long provided valuable inspiration and techniques for artists seeking to critique society. The artists presented in Shame The Devil utilize parody, satire and dark humor to explore the socio-political dimensions of power associated with cultural, racial and economic issues. Titled after the idiom "tell the truth and shame the devil," which means to speak honestly and without censorship, the exhibition investigates comedy’s ability to survey and challenge the values of those confronted by its jokes.

The artists’ works examine the subtleties and structure of stand-up comedy routines, the mannerisms, oral and physical stage where performances take place. The agency of comedy is considered as a subversive political strategy, inciting debate and reflection. Following the long tradition of political caricature, the artists offer humorous send-ups of political commentary on critical issues like racial profiling, anti-terrorist paranoia and right-wing extremism. The works also highlight the inherent therapeutic qualities of comedy for both stand-up comics and artists who must use humor to assuage harsh realities.

Working in performance, I felt that the performance work, "Kenya Eats A Cracker" by Kenya (Robinson) was very intiguing. There were Ritz crackers, Club crackers, Triscuits, Chicken in a Biskits, Honey Maid graham crackers, and even Premium Saltines (those great objects of desire in Ed Ruscha's 1970 film Premium) sitting on plates on a table at the opening. Very much ready to eat, I was sad to learn that the fine spread was not for the visiting public, though my pain subsided somewhat when I learned that they were to be used for a performance by the artist. At least someone would be enjoying the tasty snacks.

Kenya (Robinson) - "Kenya Eats a Cracker" - The Kitchen

Wearing a yellow raincoat, she walked up to the cracker–covered table, sat down, and started eating. A crowd formed around her as she grabbed crackers by the handful, stuffing them in her mouth, staring up at the crowd, and chewing in rapid bursts as crumbs fell from her lips.

A voice came from nearby speakers as she enacted her feasting. "At Triscuit, we believe less is more," the affectless narrator intoned. "That's why we bake our crackers with quality ingredients like Soft White Winter Wheat." (All quotes come from a paper available at The Kitchen, where her cracker boxes are still on view.) The narrative traveled from the production of Triscuits to the history of Carr's Crackers ("Jonathan Dodgson Carr created the first table water cracker in 1890…") to the Israelites' exodus from Egypt. Kenya kept eating. She took rapid-fire bites, then slow, long chews, and then steady open-mouthed munches, offering a full compendium of eating options.

"It's best when used by January 29, 2011, or better still on January 29, 1954, when Oprah Winfrey was born," the voice continued. "Open here. Made with smiles and a product of the USA." Kenya continued her dining as the voice continued to speak. "Open other end. Lift tab to open. Push to open. Open here." And then the voiceover ended and she got up from her chair and walked off. There was some light applause.

Kenya seems wonderfully out of touch with the times. Much of the most acclaimed or at least most visible, performance art recently has involved the glorification of long-term suffering such as Marina Abramovic's The Artist Is Present at MoMA.

In contrast, while very much present in her work, Kenya creates for herself a great and pleasurable time. She enjoys the bounty of an unusual buffet in "Kenya Eats A Cracker" , while she twists the codes that govern our basic needs, such as shelter and food, in ambiguous ways and pushes them toward the precarious point when they may break, when the house guest outstays her welcome or when the woman munching maniacally on crackers moves from a representative of freewheeling fun to an object of ridicule. And then there are the racial overtones in Cracker's title and text. What are we to make of them?

2011-04-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

Arcs and Lines

DIA BEACON, New York

Artist: Sol Lewitt

Exhibition: Sept 16, 2006- Sept 2010

March 14,2011

I was drawn to the abstract drawings on the walls inside the Dia Beacon the installation by Sol Lewitt. As an American artist, he was one of the leading representatives of Minimalism and Conceptual Art. His large scale wall drawing installations occupy the interior walls inside the Dia Beacon, New York. Lewitt used a visual vocabulary in which he created monumental drawings the size of paintings through color, lines and geometrical forms. Sol Lewitt’s drawings re-use the wall as a surface for his artwork and uses materials such as pencils, brushes, paper, crayon and ink to draw.

It is interesting what he thinks about the relation between the work and the viewer. Sol Lewitt said his work is “made to engage the mind of the viewer rather than his eye or his emotions” (Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, Sol Lewitt 1969). As I walked through the space, both my mind and eye engages with Sol Lewitt’s installation, which affects my emotions too. Plainly, through simple geometric forms and color he questions the combination of sculpture, drawing, and painting. Using complex forms would confuse the work, however, with Lewitt, simple form diminish the arrangement of the space as a property of the architecture as installation site.

Transforming this nonexistence to a concrete form with which the viewer engages, Lewitt’s drawings create an experience by amalgamating painting, drawings and geometrical sculptures. Sol Lewitt’s works explore ideas such as ephemerality and time through space. His art is formed by one artist (himself) and then carried out through collaboration (by written instructions). This continuity enables his work to expand beyond his physical presence. “The idea becomes a machine that makes the art“ (Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, Sol Lewitt 1969). Once it is out of the artist’s hand, there is no more control in how the viewer will experience the work. This adaptation strongly engages and expresses Sol Lewitt’s concern to make his work mentally interesting to the viewer. As such, the simplicity is a very successful idea but his methods of creation – collaboration brings up larger issues concerning practice within the art world. One of the issues that Lewitt’s methodologies address is the idea of authorship. Presented as a plan through instructions, sketches, scribbles and drawings to form a finished product, who, then, creates the work? Lewitt’s artwork questions not only the idea of copywrite but also how “presciousness” is applied towards art as an object. How can the artwork be a commodity at the same time as being ephemeral?

Cristina Guerreiro

Abstract Expressionist New York and Street Art

2011-04-18T22:08:00.000-07:00

Exhibition: Abstract Expressionist New York

Museum of Modern Art

New York, New York

October 03, 2010 - April 25, 2011

Street Art

Lower Eastside

New York, New York

Individual Artists: Willem de Kooning

Robert Motherwell

Anonymous

Curator: Abstract Expressionist New York

Ann Temkin

The Abstract Expressionist New York Show at the Museum of Modern Art exhibits the museum's vast collection of nearly 100 paintings, about 60 sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, films, and archival materials that were collected since the 1940s under the tutelage of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. He was the museum's visionary and founding director that catapulted New York as the center of the international art world in the 1950s because of the Abstract Expressionist collection. Ann Temkin, chief curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture cleared out the fourth floor of its permanent collection, a first in the museum's history, and devoted the entire floor to this exhibition. Some of the artists' works shown are by Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner, David Smith, and Willem de Kooning.

Willem de Kooning's 'Painting 1948' intrigued me, though I didn't realized MoMA's bias against his work, and to this day, they only have four of his paintings, but of how prophetic his black-and-white paintings were, that he started in 1946. de Kooning was influenced by Pablo Picasso and Ashille Gorky, and also by the Gestural branch of the New York School, but it wasn't until he met Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline that his paintings started to sizzle, as can be seen above.

So here is the stretch, with the previous day's visit to the New Museum, exploring the Lower Eastside before our planned visit there, I noticed a storefront, 'international playground.' on Rivington Street, and noticed that the rolled security gate had graffiti on it, shown above. Of course, I knew that this was not an act of vandalism on private property, as this graffiti was more about making a statement of the type of lifestyle that this store has to offer with its cutting edge goods to the general public. As I continues to roam around this area, I came upon Freeman Alley, image shown below, and noticed the graffiti on the side of this building, (I also saw a relationship to Robert Motherwell's 'Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 108,' also at the MoMA show), which is an act of vandalism, but fits the context of this changing neighborhood. For some reason, street art is now hip and chic, adding flavor to the 'hood.'

So, which came first, the chicken or the egg? de Kooning's series of black-and-white paintings were started in 1946, and the graffiti seen in the Lower Eastside, I would say, are from the recent past, maybe a few years old. Did de Kooning influence the street artists, or is it purely coincidental? I'm pretty sure that de Kooning didn't do any street art in his time, so how did this come to be, this parallel that I see in 'Painting 1948' and the graffiti in the Lower Eastside? Both have the physical gestures and markings, and one can also say that both, in their respective time, broke the rules. These are some good questions to ponder upon, but probably, unanswerable.

Douglas Yee

April 18, 2011

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/abexny

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/arts/design/01abex.html

Photographs by Douglas Yee

Santa Monica Museum of Art

2011-03-09T14:40:00.000-08:00

EXHIBITION TITLE: Al Taylor: Wire Instruments and Pet Stains

Project Room: The Donkey Show

Project Room: Daniel Cummings: Recent paintings

LOCATION: Santa Monica Museum of Art

DATES: January 21 – April 16, 2011

CURATOR: Information not available

Formerly located on Main Street, the Santa Monica Museum of Art is now currently located at Bergamot Station (in the Westside of Los Angeles), nestled amongst other similar spaces making it a part of Southern California’s largest art gallery and cultural complex. The museum prides itself as a risk-taking, non-collecting museum. The programming is focused on emerging and established artists and is intended to spotlight “untold stories and pivotal moments in the history of contemporary art and culture” within “diverse aesthetic, cultural and ideological perspectives”.

Among first entering the museum one is greeted by an unrestrained souvenir–style shop. The items contrast from catalogs and books, to varying pop-culture and kitsch souvenirs. This is quite an asset if one has to force family members and friends to join you whom are not particularly interested in art and culture. There are three galleries in the building, one large gallery and two small “project rooms”.

Upon entering the largest gallery, I am consumed by lines and negative space in a very unique minimalist perspective. I see on the wall text that the artist is Al Taylor. The late Al Taylor (1949-1999) was a former studio assistant to Robert Rauschenberg. This particular exhibition features two bodies of work, wire instruments (1989-1990) and Pet Stains (1989-1992).

The work is fascinating and at once engaging. There are spatial works on the floor and pictorial paintings and drawings throughout. At first glance one does not notice any obvious relationships within the spatial and pictorial works, that is until one pays much closer attention to the lines. It then becomes apparent that the lines in the sculptures and the lines on the paintings have a unique mimicking attribute to them. It is unsure if Al Taylor transcribed the lines of his paintings into his sculptures or if he associated the lines of his sculpture into the flat dimension of paper. It is at this moment that I have come to realize that they are one in the same and that the sculptures and the paintings in direct proximity have an integral relationship with each other.

I find that Al Taylor did not have any profound distinction between the three-dimensional architecture and the two-dimensional drawing; they are one in the same. They are true studies of line and space manufactured with a unique parcel of material. The spatial works were constructed with wood, plastic and wire and the drawings consisted of ink, pencil, gouache, toner and paint.

A particular painting that stands out in my mind “Untitled (Puddles)” 1990, made with pencil, ink, xerographic toner and solvent on paper. It is quite a large painting with a series of circular objects across a rectilinear picture plane. Although they did not remind me of puddles or shapes of pet urine stains, the work did envision a scene for me of a landscape of waterfalls pouring on to one another within the ephemeral negative space prominent in his paintings. Many of his works assume a receding feeling of atmospheric perspective similar to many traditional Chinese paintings. Like the emotional content conveyed from traditional Chinese paintings, I also received that same calm, and serene feeling from Al Taylor’s work.

Noticing the relationship between the spatial and the pictorial works, I find that this is an integral part of the viewing experience which will allow the viewer a deeper understanding of the process and forethought of Al Taylor’s work. The overall installation was successful and the atmosphere and mood was indicative of the work shown.

This was my first time viewing Al Taylor’s work and although I do not have a keen aesthetic for such minimalism and abstraction, I did enjoy Al Taylor’s exhibition as well as the paintings with the urine stains tagged with the various names of the pets’ that made them. Overall this made an interesting juxtaposition of scenery in relationship to the various other installations in the busy and gallery-filled expanse of Bergamot Station.

As I made my way forward to the next gallery I found a wonderful display of vintage pictures and period memorabilia, which was the basis for the second, exhibit “The Donkey Show”.

The Donkey show is a light-hearted look at the history of the donkey- painted-as-zebra souvenir photographs so famous in the Mexican border town of Tijuana. At once a little snicker came from my mouth and a crack of a smile entered my lips because I too have seen those very donkeys’, which were spray-painted with black stripes to look like a zebra. After browsing more of the vintage pictures my smile faded into unease as I realized that this discomforting tradition has been happening to the donkey for a long time. The adult-natured, fun and witty slogans on the tourists’ sombreros did not seem so fun and witty for me anymore. Slogans such as “jack-ass”, “drunk-amigo”, and “Cisco-kid” were a few of the more light-hearted sayings. Asides the souvenir-turned-documentary photographs of the donkey-zebras it was interesting to see the advertising artwork of the flyers, vinyl record covers and other material from Tijuana Mexico from the 1950’s. At the time, these artifacts were a commodity in which this exhibition has transformed them in to true kitsch at it’s highest.

The final gallery housed several paintings by an artist named Daniel Cummings. Daniel Cummings execution lacked the energy, complexity and rhythm expected of such work and was for a lack of better words quite “obvious”. His color palette was monotonous and lacked the emotional gravity I would compare to others of that genre such as Franz Kline and Hans Hofmann. I did not quite grasp the relationship of the three utterly unrelated shows sharing the same context, time and space; however, upon reading the mission statement of the institution I do understand the programming and the reason why these shows happen to be shown in conjunction with each other. It seemed as if the grouping was random and there was no curatorial forethought involved although it does meet with the curatorial goal of providing a type of programming which oversees the needs for many facets of the community. The Donkey Show and the Daniel Cummings paintings were an interesting look into the past as well as a possible look into the future and the survey of Al Taylor and his bodies of work: Wire Instruments and Pet Stains was a fantastic journey into the relationships of space and time.

2011-03-09T09:47:00.000-08:00

Unusual Spaces

Karla Black 'All of This and Nothing'

I was mesmerized by the artwork of Julian Hoeber and Karla Black at the Hammer, in Los Angeles 2011. I was interested in the relation of architecture, displacement and psychology which I experienced through both artworks.

Glasgow- based artist Karla Black is known for using ephemeral and fragile materials. The artist uses basic and affable materials such as plaster, chalk dust, paper, and also other everyday objects such as face cream or house liquid cleaners and pink colors that strive to bring domesticity and beauty into place. She describes her work as “A need to just grab the World.” Karla Black’s work is site-specific and her works have a need for a larger scale space. Combining fragile works the artist has to consider where the works can be placed. I enjoyed the simplicity of the work.

At first sight I question myself, “what am I looking at?” Karla Black’s installations play with the idea of perception in a different way from Julian Hoeber’s work. We experience her work through the materials themselves such as an amusing smell. Although I enjoyed the materials and her minimalist style, I felt confined inside a room where it is not only the work that conducts us through the space, but also museum guards too; I was constricted inside a room, watching my step. I didn’t feel as much a connection to the work and to me her work reminded me less of an installation but rather as a painting. The only difference to me was the space where the work itself was placed on the floor and seemed intangible.

Mick, Hou Hanru, Anita and Cecilia inside 'Demon Hill'

For this exhibition, LA-based artist Julian Hoeber presented the populist “Demon Hill” base structure. As I walk inside the structure, a shack where I experience gravity and a sense of confusion. There is a playfulness to the work that explores psychology and gravity at the same time. At first from the outside space I felt familiar with this regular architecture and then I realized there is a trick in order to convey an illusion of space. It’s tipped as a compound bevel. The artist works are very much inspired by Op Art and a distinct style towards minimalism and at the same time plays with architecture. Julian Hoeber’s work also play with reality and perception, the viewer being disoriented with the mystery spot entering in a bizarre dangerous World, and in order to feel it I had to step inside these environment.

I was also interested in the process of both works. Is the work completed inside the space or they are shipped to the exhibition? In order to complete both works inside different spaces, while one goes through a labor intensive work the other has to follow instructions using fragile materials spreading construction powder carefully on the floor, layer by layer. Once these tactile surfaces are completed then the beauty of the artist’s work speaks to the surrounding space.

Cristina Guerreiro

Access to Art?

2011-03-09T08:32:00.000-08:00

Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color and Space

The Geffen Center at MoCA, Los Angeles

December 12, 2010-February 27,2011

Access to Art?

As personal art collections increasingly become visible to the public, either through donation to an established public museum or through the founding of a private museum open to the public, a logical assumption would be that a broader audience is desired. Los Angeles has a diverse collection of contemporary art, from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), LAXART (an independent arts organization), to the Hammer Museum (originally a privately funded museum now under the auspices of the University of California Los Angeles.) The opportunity to view contemporary art is admirable in this city. But, if the art is there for residents and visitors to view, does it mean that they have access to appreciate it?

A curator is a facilitator for access to art. A possible description for the work of a curator is to display art for the reception of an audience. In this way, a curator becomes a potential mediator between the art and the audience. His or her interpretation becomes a factor in the relationship between artist, object, and viewer. This is a unique position to fill: as an individual who is presumably educated and informed in the theories, methodologies and history of art, the curator is an “insider” of the art world. However, the curator, particularly of a museum, presents the works to a broader audience. It is a destination where the general public (not only “insiders” of the art world) expects to experience artistic culture. The art museum, as compared to an independent art-space, gallery or biennial, is a codified institution in the broader reception of art.

The curator of contemporary art is participating in the discourse of art as it is being produced and received. Art production and critique in the twentieth century shifted the parameters of artistic interaction with the audience away from the object on a wall or pedestal, to an experience of process or engagement, often resulting in dematerialization. Restructuring the cultural paradigm in this way is exciting and holds the potential of more engaged access for a broader audience. However, it is essential to remember that the developments in artistic production are new. The general audience still does not know what the symbols are that artists are using. The semiotics of contemporary art has not been translated into a communicable language for the public.

The art object has been privileged in cultural appreciation to such an extent that audiences have an expectation of this when appreciating art. Without an object, art is often difficult for a general audience to process. In an effort to look at the curation of contemporary art beyond a binary approach, I have resisted referring to the general public as the “mass.” The reception of contemporary culture is more nuanced than a dual audience of “elite” and “mass.” I would, however, like to appropriate Clement Greenberg’s definition of kitsch as pre-digested cultural experience. As I stated earlier, the evolution of art appreciation has produced an expectation of a certain kind of object, preferably a painting, drawing or sculpture. While the referents within the art object may be unrecognizable to a broader audience, the ability to recognize that they are experiencing art has long been predicated upon the object. Discussions with a number of art appreciators who have difficulty accepting certain more explorative contemporary art practices as art (despite the development of conceptual, installation, and performance movements in the last sixty years) complicates the dual audience of Greenberg. It also complicates the role of curator to communicate contemporary art to an audience. The meaning should not be pre-digested by the curator for an audience.

As an artist, the process and production of art may be to push the limits of expectations. As a curator, it is also valid to push the expectations of an audience. But if you want to expand your audience (as the market necessity of a museum demands) there remains a responsibility to attempt to provide access. The exhibition space, again be it a museum, gallery, independent organization or a biennial, is a space of communication. It is often iterated that contemporary art attempts to make art more accessible to the public. That it attempts to break down the division between audience and art.

Alma Ruiz is the Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Los Angeles where her current exhibition, Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color and Space, is being shown. The exhibition includes five large scale pieces by artists from Latin America. Presenting works from the mid-twentieth century, Ms. Ruiz is showing artists who explored the use of light, space and color. Artists working before better known California artists began playing with these media in the nineteen-seventies. The works that she includes are successful in bringing the audience into direct physical contact with the art. Visitors walk through the blue, plastic threads of Jésus Rafael Soto (fig. 1), feeling the work against their bodies. For an even more thorough immersion, one can swim in the pool of Helio Oiticica and Neville D'Almeida (fig. 2), an artistic duo from Brazil, watching the reflections of their video installation play across the water. The physical interactions continue with explorations of light by Lucio Fontano, Carlos Cruz-Díez and Julio Le Parc (fig. 3). In order to engage the audience, Ms. Ruiz has surpassed the expectation of visual contemplation of a work of art and selected artists who work in multi-sensorial media. She has curated an exhibition that collapses the space where a visitor might ask “Is this art?

Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color and Space accomplishes the goal of material immersion with a work of art. The challenge will be to provide contemplative access to audiences for works of art that do not facilitate physical engagement.

-Sheeka Arbuthnot

Conversation on Issues of Contemporary Curating

2011-03-09T03:58:00.000-08:00

Exhibition Title:Suprasensorial—Experiments in Light, Color, and Space

December 12, 2010—February 27, 2011

The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

terms:

Outsider-Insider: non-artist and non-curator; was studing business administration for 5 years, now in San Francisco Art Institute studing art and curation for almost two years, in the process becoming an artist-curator.

Insider-Insider: artist-curator; is an artist in printmaking for 12 years, curator for two exhibitions recently.

Representation: George Steiner, Real Presences, University Of Chicago Press (April 23, 1991)

(Anita and Swing on the way back from The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA).

Anita (Outsider-Insider): Toward the last you stated that the question concerning curator’s role is not a question about curating.

Swing (Insider-Insider): Sometime you don't have to put a name on that thing( sign ). Exhibition making, art making. Curators seemingly want to be artists like Harald Szeemann. In other words, curators are in a role of creating, which same with artists. Exhibition became curator’s artwork. In the opposite, some artists designed a way how to show their arts to audience, therefore, these artists are doing what curators suppose to do.

Anita: Moreover, the coming to meet us is not at all a basic characteristic of role of curator, let alone the basic characteristic. If curators encountered so many obstacles and critiques in their own development of the dream exhibition, seems like they became artists. Then why not forget the curator?

Swing: The curator gathers, just as if nothing were happening, each to each and each to all into an abiding, while resting in the connecting of artists and exhibitions.

Anita: So curators are abiding expanse that, gathering all, opens in themselves, so they are in the openness to let everything to merge together. Like host and organizers, just to direct. Then, why do we need exhibitions? As curators, we can just open the doors and allow artists to plan their own destiny.

Swing: If we analyze exhibitions in an ethic way, then exhibition is a bridge. This bridge connects artists and audiences. In my point of view, the first thing of curators need to do is to create a context—the context of interpretations and reading, and the context of artists work. Curation is not just about to host, but a starting point and discourse base for artists and audience.

Anita: Perhaps in contemporary art world, curators are closer to create rather than organize. And to the openness characteristic of curators, who have to go beyond the various types of artists. Because contemporary thinkers from different disciplines and a whole set of nonartists, including people working in any field of research or occupation anywhere in the world. These people would not be producing art at all, but would be involved with the artists or artworks in a permanent forum or fair for real-time thinking. The fact is that contemporary art world is an intellectual forum for non artists and artists to converge within, curators have to think of ways to create a dialogue by who they choose and how they frame the ethos of each exhibit.

Swing: Curators have two functions: re-presentation and re-figuration. His major task is a "participant observer.” He or she is an reporter first, but his or her presentation of the report has been interfering and changing realities in the art system. He or she has to observe the artists and their life-world, and with this the two conspire together to make it happen.

Anita: Artists as producers to produce their product as artwork. And exhibitions are places to make transactions happen, like supermarket or shopping center. But curators are like an invisible hand to control the transaction between artists(producers) and audiences(customers), and to control the trend of which exact way they connected through exhibitions.

Swing: In the course of the exhibition, curators like a Libra, balance the relationship between artist and audience. In the context of contemporary art, the artist focuses on the feelings of self-expression, their approach is more a way of metaphor. Meanwhile, audience has their natural curiosity. Artist and audience are like the Yin and Yang of Tai Chi, belong to each other and live with each other. Both of them together became the exhibition itself. Therefore, once curators or others can balance the relationship between these two, then the exhibition is successful.

Anita: This is so how difficult for artist to become curators. Artist-curators mostly holding an exhibtion to make their artwork in the way of their willing to show up. Not only in solo exhibitions, but group exhibitions also have an fair-unfair problem, such as space or location to show of each artist in an exhibition. They want to break the boundaries, and be holding a new path towards a real growth of diversity and freedom in thinking about the art system. But group exhibitions need something in common. There are big differences between curators and artists.

Swing: As an artist-curator, I already established and have reached a reflective point in my career, I can understand what and how an artist wanted to tell the audience. As a curator, a new career now, I can merge aspects of artist and curator, and to dip a little deeper on both sides. An ideal curator has to know how to balance between artists and audience. As we saw in MOCA, curator Alma Ruiz was really closer to the three artists in Suprasensorial exhibition, she knew exactly what the artists want. But once she getting closer to the artists side, she half closed with audience.

Anita: Exactly, Cruz-Diez’s Labyrinth for a public place, is so easy to get in and figure out with three colors in the space, but no one would get it what the artist want when outside of the space. However, it also seems that viewing the 3 rooms from different perspectives may have been intentional. Firstly, the exhibit was laid out so that you visit the neon piece, the mirrored room piece and then exit from that to be confronted with a white wall with 3 colored windows. This is the viewers first experience with the piece and it is a very different experience, physically and sensorially to the one they have when they make their way around the the front and inside of the piece. This shifting experience of the piece seems to be part of the whole ethos of the light and space movement and therefore comes across as very intentional on the part of the curator.

Carlos Cruz, Dies Cromosaturación(1965)

Swing: Well(sneer), she understand what the artist want. The artist want audience to figure it out by themselves. And Alma Ruiz didn’t do anything wrong with it.

Anita: But curators should be in charge with directing artists, and guiding audience. Of course, she doesn’t need to give a sign to tell people about the colors on the back of space, but she could do something to make it more obvious rather hiding behind the building columns.

Swing: So the room could shrink a bit, and could be set in the center for both sides showing up like front turn to right side, and turn the back to left side. Alma Ruiz is a good curator, she shows the respect to the artist, and surprised audience too. Sometime, curators are bounded with such an limited utility. Like the space of this show, everything is big, huge space, but columns of this building could not be avioded.

Anita: Alma Ruiz was totally understandable with the show she curating, and she understand from the bottom of her heart. And so many curators are willing to use the thesis to express their own thinking, and to make exhibition as their own artwork, they’ve become artist of artists. Then how to balance between thesis of exhibitons and artists’ own theme?

Swing: Engaging with and working in each modality expands of curator’s idea of what is possible, and ultimately strengthen curator’s work with artists’ perspectives. Sometimes, it even easier, if curators and artists think alike, or want to see sort of similar reflection through audience, then they are performing as one.

Anita: When artist-curator in charge with an exhibition, the artist presented the work itself a thought, an idea, and the soul of the exhibition. Then the artist put the time in the planning of the exhibition works of art themselves as good performance out of ideas.

-- ZIZHOU (ANITA) WANG & XIAOYING(SWING) ZHOU

2011-03-09T00:43:00.000-08:00

Lumiére en mouvement (1962) by Julio Le Parc at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

In the hour it took us to get from LAX to downtown on the Wednesday morning we arrived to Los Angeles, as we drove through the highway, I could already sense that LA was going to be different from what I expected. For some reason I envisioned a place where the glamorous Hollywood lifestyle coexisted with endless 99 cent dollar stores and that all this would be reflected in our visits to the different art centers; but what struck me instead was the transportation time it took us to get from one place to another. I found myself referencing Marc Augé’s term of “non-places” as we seemed to spend a lot of time in the car, moving through these types of spaces, on freeways trying to get from one gallery to the next. This experience made me think of how the contemporary art galley scene functions in a non-pedestrian friendly city like Los Angeles.

The larger and more centrally located museums like the MOCA, LACMA, Hammer and the Getty Center, worked as larger cultural hubs featuring not only local artists but many contemporary international artists as well; spaces dedicated to showcase a wider array of artists to a broad audience. But what interested me were the smaller galleries and their function in terms of content and location. Visiting these galleries I sensed a real collective sense of promoting new young local artists, these spaces that allow young contemporary emerging artists to showcase and build a community and show work directly related to their LA context.

Santa Monica Museum of Art

The Santa Monica Museum of Art, located in an old storage complex transformed into a cultural community, consisted of multiple gallery spaces isolated in suburbia in Santa Monica, just a few miles away from a big shopping avenue. I found it interesting to view the more commercial galleries that concentrated more on prints and paintings, in juxtaposition with the SMMoA’s exhibition Wire Instruments by Al Taylor.

In terms of audience, what is the difference of stumbling into an art gallery walking through the city and driving your car through the traffic on the 101 particularly for the purpose of visiting a specific gallery? It is worth to mention that LA is a car driven (pun intended) city, where pedestrians take second place in the wide streets and long blocks. What audience are these smaller spaces where contemporary art is shown intending to attract? I found that many exhibitions in these galleries scattered through the city concentrated in conceptual art as well as installations, galleries such as Redcat and LAX located on La Cienega Blvd. next to the Santa Monica freeway, featured independent local artists that create site specific large scale installations.

After driving past suburban houses with front lawns, we went over to the Christopher Grimes Gallery showing an installation by Olivier Mosset. The gallery’s location right next to a Hawaiian travel agency and gas station made me think of how these spaces function in direct relation to their geographical context. Who is the audience that visits these galleries? Are they intended to function specifically for people who know where the galleries are? Or do they exist immersed in these suburban areas with intention to expose this type of art to a different audience? How is this audience intended to interact with this type of conceptual art?

Thinking about this relationship of art and its audience in the Los Angeles context, I found the exhibition at the MOCA Geffen “Suprasensorial: Experiments in light, color and space” to be very successful in engaging the community to a contemporary art. Curated by Alma Ruiz, it features Latin American contemporary artists whose work focused in explorations of space and light created in the late 60s and 70s. The pieces in this exhibition are completely experiential and become completed by the viewer at the moment of their physical interaction. I believe that by bringing these types of exhibitions that challenge how one experiences the work, a codependent relationship is created between art and audience.

Penétrable BBL bleu (1999)

Kinetic artist Jesus Rafael Soto’s Penétrable BBL bleu (1999) is a penetrable structure that is meant to be felt and intersected by the audience.

Cromosaturación (1965)

Carlos Cruz- Dies Cromosaturación (1965) allows the viewer to be immersed in a chromatic space that changes as the viewer’s position also changes.

CC4 Nocagions (1973)

The exhibition’s last piece, created by Hélio Oiticica CC4 Nocagions (1973) features a pool where people can literally go inside while projections are shown.

These type of exhibitions create a closer connection of the viewer and contemporary art, especially in a city like Los Angeles, where the fast paced lifestyle and technology driven society make way for these moments of interaction and contemplation of sensory experiences.

Cecilia Salinas-Rios

2011-03-08T23:11:00.000-08:00

Napoleon in the Eye of a Needle

“No One May Ever Have the Same Knowledge Again”

In 1959, California resident David Wilson bought the ground floor of a Culver City building to establish a business specializing in tile-flooring. While seemingly innocuous, this business venture housed the seedlings of a great uncovering. Buried under the floorboards and uncovered during renovation was a plan for “Obliscence, Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter” by Geoffrey Sonnabend. Wilson then proceeded to tack the fading diagram in the building’s storefront. Soon after his tiling company opened its doors, masses made pilgrimages to view the odd illustration. Some even donated their own objects of curiosity; with that, The Museum of Jurassic Technology was born.
The Museum of Jurassic Technology’s founding myth is in Lawrence Weschler’s book, Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology. Rather, I should say that it is believed to be in the book, which incidentally, has been checked out of the library for the past week.
This dark and curious museum impacted me more than any other museum or alternative art space that we visited on our pilgrimage to the great cultural capital, Los Angeles. The museum is a hybrid: part natural history museum, part art museum, two parts cabinet of curiosity. At the center of it all, the space serves as institutional critique. Can I even use that phrase anymore? Regardless of how passé the categorization of challenging the institution has become, it is an appropriate framework here. The Museum of Jurassic Technology examines the relationship between objects of contemplation (many of which are reproductions of other non-visual materials) and discursive spaces.
The Museum of Jurassic Technology has a realized presence— a narrative weaved together from anonymous letters to the astrologers of Mount Wilson, ferns from Napolean’s first grave on St. Helena, Soviet dogs in space. The narrative rings clear in the over abundance of context. Wall text, videos, and sound recordings fill the darkened corridors and illuminate the oddities on display. The foreignness, and often absurdity, of the exhibitions and their contexts reveal what is lurking in the dusty corners of every museum or site of cultural production. In a time when the author is believed dead and postproduction (appropriation) is the name of the game, such strong, non-traditional articulations exhume discursivity. The content of discourse too digs up forgotten tales and broader histories of knowledge.

Time travel to 1997

Rebecca Ahrens

Charles Gaines' "Manifestos"

2011-03-08T22:07:00.000-08:00

Exhibition Title: all of this or nothing

Individual Artist: Charles Gaines

Location: Hammer Museum + LAXART, Los Angeles, California

Dates: January 30 - April 24, 2011

Curators: Douglas Fogle & Anne Ellegood

all of this or nothing at the Hammer Museum is the sixth series of its invitational biennial, showcasing Los Angeles based and international artists, all of which are either emerging or established. The participating 14 artists are Karla Black, Charles Gaines, Evan Holloway, Sergej Jensen, Ian Kiaer, Jorge Macchi, Dianna Molzan, Fernando Ortega, Eileen Quinlan, Gedi Sibony, Paul Sietsema, Frances Stark, Mateo Tannatt and Kerry Tribe.

The premise of all of this or nothing is for the participating artists to explore fundamental questions about the experiences of existence in the world we live in, for art’s potential to reveal the mysterious and the magical though the use of various mediums; painting, sculpture, drawing, installation, sound, performance, and the moving image. One of the standouts is Charles Gaines, and his work, “Manifestos.”

The magical work of Charles Gaines, Manifestos, 2008 is a multimedia installation of four thin flat screen television panels, each sitting atop medium density fiber board pedestals, with each flat screen panels scrolling manifestos, along with musical score drawings from the Internationalist Socialist Congress’ Socialist Congress (1917), the Situationist International’s Conscious Changes (1961), the Black Panther Party’s Black Panther (1966), and the Zapatista Army of National Liberty’s Zapatista (1993), all manifestos dedicated to the human rights and social necessity to freedom, as well as the personal power in self-determination.
Upon entering the gallery, I noticed four flat screen televisions on podiums, along with two speakers to the left and to the right the screens. The installation also included four framed musical drawings/scores of the manifestos, each measuring 62 1/2” x 45 1/16,” made with graphite on paper, as each disparate components arrangement define in the gallery space as clean, meticulous and simplistic in its organization. Once ensconced in the gallery, this installation began its magic with the left screen scrolling text from the first manifesto, accompanying it is a piano quintet from the musical score made from it.

One cannot help but think of Richard Serra’s piece, Television Delivers People, 1973:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbvzbj4Nhtk
with its scrolling text, and accompanying elevator music about the psychological manipulation of advertisements on television, and the subliminal message from elevator music, on how Americans are controlled and brainwashed into being consumerist by buying things that they don’t need. Though different from Gaines,’ both works do raise the consciousness of the viewer.

Gaines composed each of the manifestos into musical scores, as each letter corresponds to its musical note, e.g., the letter ‘e’ from its respective manifesto corresponds to the musical note of ‘E,’ and when a letter didn’t correspond to a musical note, he uses a pause note. With the first manifesto/score finished, the second screen begins with a different scroll text, accompanying by a new piano quintet, and so on, and so forth with the third and fourth screen/manifesto. Once completed, the scrolled text is shown again on the flat screen with its respective manifestos, along with a cacophony of sounds from each of its scores. With this resonance of sounds, it is truly a work of art that ignites thought, contemplation and reflection from its melodious and harmonious scores.

Would art, then, have the capacity to cause social change in our world, or is it a pipedream to even consider this?

Bibliography:

http://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/detail/exhibition_id/197

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/02/art-review-charles-gaines-manifestos-at-ucla-hammer-museum.html

Charles Gaines: Studio Visit – November 2010

http://hammer.ucla.edu/watchlisten/watchlisten/show_id/502553

Douglas Yee

‘Gedi Sibony - The Deception of Context’

2011-03-08T20:09:00.000-08:00

exhibit:

‘ALL OF THIS AND NOTHING’

Hammer Museum

January 30 - April 24, 2011

Gedi Sibony’s unconventional sculptures, exhibited as part of the Hammer Museum’s, ‘All of this and Nothing’ show, compel the viewer to tow the line of what can be thought of as an art object. Though much contemporary art presents this same challenge, Sibony’s pieces have a sincerity in their origins, and tactility in their materials, that seems at the same time universally, and surprisingly, appealing.

Gedi Sibony

The Predicament (what it is that ceases)

2009

Sibony’s sculptures often consist of found, salvaged, and recontextualized objects which were in their former lives, discarded, unfinished, or incidental. Site-specificity is at the heart of understanding Sibony’s works as, given the familiarity of the objects he chooses, placement in white-cube environments becomes a catalyst for their reconsideration. Sibony’s work is about the experience of living in the world, about ‘when’ and ‘how to’ look at things. Much of his inspiration derives from the things he lives around which is why objects in his studio often become the subjects of/or literally become, his pieces (as is the case with both pieces in this entry). Dominic Molon, Chief Curator at the St. Louis Contemporary, notes how Sibony’s work derives from his experience of “living in the world,” suggesting that “it’s almost as if the art finds the artist, rather than the other way around.”

Sibony reinvests in mundane materials such as cardboard, packing materials, walls removed from his studio, a tarp draped over an easel which accidentally embodied his dream of a floating sculpture, and breathes in to them a new aesthetic life, a new identity in a new home, and hence a brand new reception. The artist is occupied by the notion of waste - both that of discarding perfectly good materials and also the energy spent in remaking and replacing the discarded. As with ‘The Cutters, 2010’, a wall removed from his studio, and his other smaller pieces at the Hammer which were the backsides of frames and drawings salvaged from yard-sales, Sibony seems not only to reclaim objects but to draw attention to their traces of history, and respective roles within what Molon calls, “the industrial food chain.”

Gedi Sibony
The Cutters
2010

The success of Sibony’s work relies heavily on how it occupies space. The placement of his pieces creates a balance with the architecture of the gallery that is both graceful and uncanny. There is a surreal inappropriateness to such rough objects at once alluding to landscapes, or the passage of time, while, evoking an emotional recognition that things so commonplace, so incidental, so unfinished -gone just slightly awry- can all of a sudden be beautiful, and oddly consoling.

Trash to Monument.

Sibony’s sculptures also challenge the convention of the ready-made by simply presenting unmodified, prexisting objects in a new context. From everyday context to art context, Sibony shifts their conceptual context from discarded or incidental, to intentional. With respects to his trash objects, Sibony transforms something that was formerly a liability in to something precious. He takes something that is a material, financial, spatial, and environmental burden to society - something that has to be processed as waste- and not only recirculates it back in to society, but hails it as monumental and important.

Deception of context

There is a magic of balance and transformation that happens with Sibony’s work at the same time that there is a nagging sense of the absurdity of what we will consider seriously when asked. This seems to beg the question of what is not worthy of our deeper considerations. What is it exactly that makes this work interesting? Is it the consistency of his message? The romance of it? Our realization that we agree with Sibony? Or just the social pressure to agree created by these objects placement in an intellectual space?

Finally, there is a humor in being asked to consider the unimportant as monumental. Sibony’s pieces are thoughtful, simple, and austere enough to command consideration, to know that you aren’t having a joke played on you, but with the simultaneous understanding that you are considering a nicely placed piece of trash, or at the most, some utilitarian commonplace object. What makes Sibony’s work so successful to me is that sometimes its only distinguishing characteristic from something leaning against a dumpster, or sitting in an empty storefront, is his level of intention and the consideration that this intention and consistency compels in his viewers.

CLICK HERE: Gedi Sibony talking about sculpture

CLICK HERE: Interview with Dominic Molon, Chief Curator at St. Louis Contemporary Museum of Art

- CAT U-THASOONTHORN

Daddy Issues Done Right

2010-05-06T15:24:00.000-07:00

EXHIBITION TITLE: Jennifer Locke: Video Action / Calvin Trezise: Love is Not Enough LOCATION: Queens Nails Projects 3191 Mission St. San Francisco, CA 94110
DATES: April 9 - May 8, 2010

In Calvin Trezise and Jennifer Lockes joint show at Queens Nails Project in the Mission, one is confronted with images and video that are recognizable but also performative. Although both the video work entitled Video Action and the performance based photographs entitled Love is Not Enough are equally powerfully and seem to work well with each other. I am choosing to focus on Calvin Trezise, as I was actually able to discuss each of his works with him. An SFAI graduate, Calvin is friendly and openly admits to having “daddy issues” which is quite obvious in much of the work on display. He is deeply influenced by Lacan and Freud and The Function of the Veil. This may relate to the picture he has of a woman from the torso down with a (45mm?) silver gun inserted, as if a penis into her hairless almost pubescent vagina. Partially disturbing and somewhat unimpressive to me, Calvin described it as one of his favorites. Up close and in your face the image is powerful but I wonder if it doesn’t play on the obvious shock value a little too much with offering more of a critique. Is it an obvious artistic trope? An interesting piece which seems to act out “the veil” is a full color photograph taken in a hotel bathroom with the artist standing naked facing the camera and a plastic (dare I say a large condom positioned over him covering his “head” and ending around his calves. His clothes are piled next to him and he is situated in the corner of a room with a door on one side and a blow dryer and mirror on the other. Both funny and bewildering, in the sense of play it required the artist to engage in and bewildering because the act of covering the naked body with a plastic bag and the implications, such as death, like a body bag, separation from other life, protection, suffocation, etc.

As a complement to the disturbing nature of the gun inserted into the vagina photograph (none of the pieces have labels or names placed near them), he has another print taken at the same motel except in this scene he is faced down on a polyester comforter on top of a bed naked except for his shorts which are pulled down right below his buttocks. He is curved so as to position his face down onto the bed and his back arched with his rear sticking out. His knees are bent towards his face and his feet are pushed behind his buttocks. A sword (a children’s toy) is inserted in to his ass hole. He says he felt the need to take that photograph as a counterpoint to the gun in the vagina shot. I’m glad he felt the need for balance, but I am not sure what they accomplish?

The most amazing work on view is a large photograph of a landscape, which has been carved into what looks like a vagina. It is actually a naturally made space carved into the hill by the cows that graze in that area. Where the hill ends it the perfect day blue sky begins. If one looks closer at the center of that crack or towards the center of the hill is a speck of white that when focused on appears to be the body of the artist spread with arms and legs stretched out and his face inside the natural crack or deepest exposed space on the hill.

To the right of the landscape photograph is for me what is the most problematic piece in the show. It is a picture taken in a hotel room of a naked transgendered woman with a mask and cape on and nothing else. Therefore, what are seen are the breasts very nice legs and stomach and a small penis that looks to be going through hormone therapy. I find this piece to be problematic because the clearest insight to a human sense of a soul in my opinion is the eyes and in this case the mask has bulging white circular bulbs in the place where eyes would be giving this woman no identity. Instead, she is used either to represent the shame that comes with the process of gender identification and the sexual arousal often associated with transvestite behavior. The more that we hide the eyes and faces of the transgendered the more alienation will be associated with those who make the brave choice to make that very difficult decision. Placing a cape and a mask could also be interpreted as someone that should be hiding from society and not allowed an identity. The fact that the mask is that of an alien further problematizes the issue because for those who already feel alienated why would you chose to alienate them further by representing her (the person in the picture) as a character that is not of this world and are often thought of as a threat. The fact that it is also taking place in a hotel room further situates this displacement.

-- KIM SILVA

Location: Here and There, Us and Them, You and Me

2010-04-26T17:03:00.000-07:00

EXHIBITION TITLE: Hollywoodpedia by Artemio Narro
LOCATION: Galería de la Raza 2857 24th St. San Francisco, CA 94110
DATES: February 6 - April 4, 2010
CURATOR: Rachel de Anda

“El sueno americano empieza y termina en HOLLYWOOD, en esa montana que contiene los sueños y las pesadillas de una sociedad que nunca descansa en su búsqueda de reinventarse a punta de ilusión, de la imagen en movimiento y la recreación de un mundo siempre nuevo, pletórico de esperanzas pero también de dolor y terror interior...exportando al universo su saga de sangre” Danielangulor

How is the location important to address such a fine social and cultural critique?

Artemio Narro Hollywoodpedia (photo courtesy of Frida Cano)

Galería de la Raza, located in the Mission District, is a non-profit community-based arts organization whose mission is to foster public awareness and appreciation of Chicano/Latino art. The gallery, divided into different sections, functions as a great laboratory for investigating and exhibiting contemporary issues in art, culture, and society, mainly showing Latino artists. This time, in collaboration with Queens Nails Projects and during the Mission Arts and Performance Project night opening, Mexican artist Artemio Narro presented his Hollywoodpedia art piece. Indicated by the title, Hollywoodpedia is an encyclopedia of the most recurrent topics that the Hollywood film industry exports to the world. Dichotomies such as Love/Hate, Life/Death, Peace/War, Good/Evil, Happiness/Sadness, Success/Failure, were the 12 themes that the artist addressed in video installations. Because of the amount of equipment he used, Artemio had to completely change the gallery space from its usual set up. The work is the result of editing more than 15 thousand dialogs from scenes of 1,500 films, which constitutes 3,000 hours of watching the most “successful” films in Hollywood’s history. The gallery presented in twelve monitors the themes mentioned above, and in the back room, three edited films that, through splicing together different dialogues and images, pointed out the satirical relationship between the two. For example, a Marlon Brando monologue was visually acted out by Winnie the Pooh, who was frightened during a lightning storm.

Artemio Narro Hollywoodpedia (photo courtesy of Frida Cano)

The most significant connection Artemio emphasizes with this particular project is his use of mixed imagery tapping into popular memory of the emotions the films should evoke. What is most interesting about his work is that it touches on a symptom of the Latino condition that I call ‘mainsdream’. The mainsdream is a misunderstanding of so-called mainstream culture, which is usually felt by people who don’t live in or have limited access to conventional culture. In this case, Artemio talks about the exported imagery from Hollywood mainstream films that are reinterpreted, learned, and generally loved by Latino spectators of a litany of blockbuster celluloid. As a response to the close historical relationship in terms of power and domination between Mexico and the United States, Hollywoodpedia contains those exact mainstream film moments that mainsdream-film-lovers keep in their memories and hearts. Artemio’s Hollywoodpedia is a very unique and pertinent comment that makes a social and cultural critique of today’s mainstream/mainsdream condition; this is the imposition to see and live the world in one exclusive way: Hollywood’s way.

Artemio Narro Hollywoodpedia (photo courtesy of Frida Cano)

The project has been presented previously in Mexico (2005), Peru (2008), and this time in the United States (2010). This fact, however, makes me wonder about the impact that Hollywoodpedia has in the different locations of its display. The effect that this project achieves has to do with the kind of public that it refers to. In other words, Hollywoodpedia is designed to create dialog with mainsdream spectators, the reception of the work changes when the location of display is moved. For example, how would the work be received if shown in a theater in Hollywood itself? What if the audience did not consist of the neighbors from the Mission District but film lovers from Hollywood? Would the location change the reception of the art project? What kind of impact would this cause in the art world? Would Artemio’s piece have an effect on the film industry? Or better yet, would it distort the way in which Hollywood imposes its insidious point of view, telling the world outside the United States how to see and live? It is only a matter of time before Artemio disrupts the Hollywood film industry by presenting his project in a solo show in Hollywood, breaking down the “great wisdom” that has been disseminated by Hollywood films and that effects today’s mainsdream reality.

-- FRIDA CANO DOMINGUEZ, Fundación/Colección Jumex scholar

Re-imagining the Past

2010-04-26T15:29:00.000-07:00

"Perhaps Zhang offers a new model for the wider Chinese art world; making Chinese culture new, not by abandoning the past, but by re-imagining it." - Philip Dodd

Zhang Huan Three Heads Six Arms 2008

As part of the Shanghai Celebration, Zhang Huan's sculpture Three Heads Six Arms, 2008 will premiere this May 2010 in San Francisco in the Civic Center across from City Hall. The sculpture weighing 15 tons and standing over 26 feet tall, is part of Zhang Huan's sculpture series depicting Buddha arms, legs, feet, hands, and heads. This monumental series is inspired by the artists’ experience of seeing remnants of religious sculptures destroyed during the Cultural Revolution for sale in a Tibetan market.

Zhang Huan (B. 1965) is known primarily as a performance artist of the Chinese Avant-Garde movement. He started his artistic training at the age of 14 in the Su style or Soviet style under the tutelage of Gu Xijiu. In college, he became fascinated with Millet due to the romantic notion of everyday ordinary life. At the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Zhang Huan also learned the Su style painting, which emphasized the texture and spatial quality of a painted object. Zhang Huan marks his shift away from oil paint to performance due to an occasion in which he found a discarded mannequin leg on the street proceeded to attempt to walk on three legs. The experience of using his body as an art medium was extremely moving to him and from then on he shifted his art practice towards performance.

The work of Zhang Huan can be divided into three phases. The first phase started in the 1990’s in the Beijing East Village. The second phase took place after Zhang Huan immigrated to New York in 1998, and the third phase is the creation of installations, sculptures, and ash paintings starting in 2005 after moving to Shanghai.

Three Heads Six Arms is representative of the third phase of his oeuvre in which he shifted his art away from his well-known performance art practice towards an object based art practice. In his work since 2005, Zhang Huan work deals with the themes of recollection and memory. Zhang Huan states that “Life is a process of transmigration, I want to express and record this process." Three Heads Six Arms exemplifies the shift in artistic practice of the Chinese Avant-Garde to a re-imagining of the Chinese past.

“Today the entire country of China is running forward, you can say that we are looking back to China.” – Zhang Huan

-- CHARLOTTE MILLER

BK Studio Visit with Damian Stamer

2010-04-25T20:02:00.000-07:00

Damian Stamer is an artist I have always admired, though it is not easy for me to articulate why I am drawn to his work, besides the obvious that he is a very gifted painter and colorist who at a very young age has mastered his technical skill and has experimented with several styles and is finally coming into his own and creating a unique Damian elegance. Damian is not your typical artist, he doesn’t wear things to stand out and judging him on looks, you would assume he works an average job. He is incredibly humble and his muted intelligence and intuition takes you by complete surprise. Having spent a year in Germany and a year in Hungary, it is amazing to see the evolution of his painting and how all his experiences have embedded themselves into this work, especially after two years of living in New York and being surrounded by the center of the US art world. His Williamsburg studio is filled with light pouring in from the windows as well as the energy that can of the BQE that can be viewed from these windows.

Damian Stamer Haymaker

His paintings take hold of you and are hidden with meaning, the viewer discovers new elements at every, subtle turn. This hide-and-seek effect stems from the painting process. He enjoys adding images and then painting over them, so that only fragments of the original object/identity remain. Damian seeks to create a similar effect of layered billboards when the old posters are peeling away, a way of documenting time. I found myself looking and looking again at his paintings and as someone I have known for a while now, I still have the same reaction when I look at his paintings as I did the first time I saw them and when a new work in unveiled, even if it is not “finished”, I am speechless and find myself looking at the work for hours, revisiting different components and trying to dissect the canvas that truly seems alive. Stamer is able to capture movement, dynamism, ocean, still life, and landscapes (most widely used in his most recent works) and has clearly been influenced by Gerhard Richter, Neo Rauch, among many other East German artists, specifically of the Leipzig School. Damian often deals with the subject of twins and doubles since he has a twin brother who he is extremely close to and lives with, though they are very alike in some ways, Damian is a painter and Dylan is an investment banker, so Damian thinks about their relationship and the science behind being a twin and it often finds its way into his work.

Damian Stamer South Lowell Dusk

His most current paintings deal with the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate elements and painting techniques. In attempts to marry pastoral landscape with both abstracted and non-objective forms, he constructs a new space, unique to the medium of painting. In addition to providing an opportunity for more realistic rendering, the landscapes push the depth of the painting, and therefore give the abstracted forms more space to inhabit.

Damian’s current process involves a great deal of trial and error, as he is letting the painting work itself out on the canvas. Compositional thumbnail sketches are used only in the most initial phases of the painting, afterward he tries to allow the uncontrollable drips and more freely painted marks to inform his next moves or aesthetic decisions. The end results are paintings that create almost dream-like worlds where dichotomous elements can live together and explore the painted spaces of their own creation.

However abstracted, there exists a visual world in which someone or something could live. Instead of a house on a flattened picture plane, the house rests in an environment. Even the stroke of color or geometric forms are applied in such a way as one can imagine moving around them. The abstraction is grounded by the physical laws of the natural world, and therefore lends itself to the possibility that someone has navigated these unexplained surroundings.

Damian Stamer Barnyard Brawl

After leaving the studio, Damian was headed to North Carolina and Europe for the next month in hopes of travel, inspiration, adventure and completing his next series.

-- MARLY HAMMER

Desert Musical Oasis: Coachella 2010

2010-04-22T14:58:00.000-07:00

EVENT: Coachella Music Festival
LOCATION: Palm Desert, CA
DATES: April 16 - 18, 2010

A recent festival junkie, I have traveled across the country to sample regional, rhythmic delicacies. From Rothbury in Michigan to Austin City Limits in Texas, each festival comes with their own breed of fan and their own breed of music. Though I was born and raised in California, AP testing schedules dissuaded me from attending Coachella in the past. However, with only the lurking doom of graduate finals, I manged to place responsibility on hold for the yearly event. And oh, what an event it was.

The highlight, beyond the musicians? The fashion of course. Women sported uber-chic cutoff shorts paired with leather boots and vintage sunglasses. The look was monotone and drowned in a pool of Echo Park cliches. Thankfully, Dita von Teese and her disco-influenced posse silenced the crowd with her vintage appeal. Men, conversely, ignored the skinny jean and plaid button-up fad. Instead, hairless, shirtless bodies ran wild in the desert heat. Excuse me as I place my judgments on hold. Let's talk music. Each day featured a definitive highlight. LCD Soundsystem enveloped the nighttime drowsiness with a constant stream of persistent danceable beats. Even the shyest of folk jumped wildly. James Murphy, LCD alum and founder of DFA records, is not the average indie man. He does not weigh 40 pounds nor does he advocate cynicism. Instead, James Murphy is a legend amongst the average fellow. His normalcy highlights his exuberant talent. Though most stayed for Jay-Z, I was not emotionally prepared to sacrifice perfection with fame. So, as LCD still lingered on the tongue, I traced back to my hotel.

Words cannot express Day 2 of Coachella. Ignore The Gossip, or She & Him or Beyonce sightings backstage as she searched for snacks. Day 2 was dominated by Die Antwoord. Making their American debut, the part trip-hop, part performance artists from the slums of South Africa disturbed the ill-informed crowd with their emaciated bodies and their music videos featuring the terminally ill...while those of us who know the brilliance stood their with mouths ajar and eyes watering. The audience began with nearly 200 members and dwindled down to half as each song became increasingly more aggressive and each beat became increasingly more indirect.

And as the event progressed, the temperature rose, and soon even the A-list celebrities wilted in the midday sun. Florence and the Machine gave an energetic and solid performance, while Orbital whisked the tent back to the days of nineties house. All sinfully pleasurable, my one complaint is the heat and the twelve dollar drinks...both of which avoidable with the necessary precautions.

In correlation with the festival, I had the opportunity to interview the San Diego band The Soft Pack. Four guys with the simple desire to play rock n' roll, their newness in the musical realm has not dissuaded their fame. Already a festival favorite, these four simply boys who have a keen admiration for improv, prove that pretension and fame do not go hand-in-hand.

(interview courtesy of http://www.popnography.com)

Courtney Nichols: Let’s talk about your recording process. This might seem silly, but a lot of artists have revealed to drinking while in the studio. Do you guys drink while you write?
Matt Lamkin: We don’t drink really when we record.
Brian Hill: Ideally, you go in and you’re totally clear headed.
Matt: For us we always wanted to go in and get out and hammer it out.
Brian: It doesn’t really worth all that when you are drunk and you want to add something because then you end up deleting it because you know it sounds really terrible.

Do you brainstorm at your house or in the studio?
Matt: We brainstorm at Matty’s garage and all mess around.
Brian: On our own time we all have guitars lying around. We come up with ideas and bring that stuff to what we will start recording.
Matt: We have pretty much everything written by the time we go in. There’s not much left up to chance when we go into the studio.
Brian: There’s always a possibility when you don’t have that stuffed nailed down that once you go into the studio it will drive you crazy.

How do you name a song? Is it typically lyric based?
Matt: Yes, usually lyric based. I try to come up with the simplest, main thread that runs through the song - something catchy and easy to remember.

So then music is created first?
Matt: Basically how it works, someone will bring a guitar or Brian will put something together and play a little thing and we will try it out. We will play with the band for however long it takes to hammer it out and once we get the song done I will write lyrics—
Brian: Or sometimes, he writes lyrics on the spot.
Matt: We’ve done a couple of songs where we have switched instruments. We were bored and frustrated and everyone would play another instrument and we would record it with a couple songs. I made lyrics on the spot for a couple songs.
Brian: And they never changed.
Matt: It’s pretty cool.

And your genre, how would you define that?
Brian: I always just say rock n’ roll because that makes the most sense to me.
Matt: But we are also kind of indie, alternative. I call it party angst.
Brian: Matt come up with power conservative, which I like a lot.
Matt: It’s just a concept.

So are your audiences as diverse as the genres?
Matt: Actually yeah. You get a lot of men and women who come to our shows. You don’t want to be grouped.

Different ages, sexuality—
Matt: Yep!

Now, I’m not going to ask why you changed your name to The Muslims, but did your past audiences follow you? Or do many now know that you are the same band?
Brian: There are some people still do not know it is the same band and some people don’t know it’s the same people—well at least Matt and Matty are the same people—so they’ll say, “Oh I liked them better when they were The Muslims.” But it’s the same people! All the touring we’ve done by this point has been as us. It’s just a name.

You’re from San Diego originally. How has that affected your music?
Matt: Growing up in San Diego, following all the San Diego bands. There was a really great scene in the nineties. Three Mile Pilot….all these bands with a really cool and creative atmosphere. It definitely shaped us.

Do you still follow any San Diego bands?
Matt: Totally, we just did a tour with The Breeders who are a really cool San Diego band.
Brian: El Mania, their alter ego band, is really great. It’s nice to know what’s going on in your hometown.

You live in LA now right?
Brian: We do. It’s a lot better than I thought it would be. There’s a lot of good, random comedy to see.

You’re comedy fans?
Brian: When you’re home and you were on tour for a long time, it’s kind of more appealing to see stand-up. When you are in a band the last thing you want to do when you got off of touring is hear somebody play really loud.

Where do you go in LA?
Brian: The Upright Citizen’s Brigade is really good. Is there one in SF?

No, but I always wanted to go to the Facebook Night they have in LA.
Brian: Oh! I heard that’s really good.
Matt: Jeff Garlin has a weekly show there. Sometimes he’s not there because he’s working on a show, but he’s really good. He has great guests. Robin Williams was there. And it’s always a dollar. There’s also the Hollywood stuff like Laugh Factory.
Brian: Yeah, Hollywood Improv has this thing—I don’t know what to call it—with these bizarro comics.
Matt: There are a couple good guys. There’s Joe King who is a big name in LA, and Rick Shapiro.

I feel like I’ve heard the name Rick Shapiro before.
Brian: He’s been on a lot of shows. He was on HBO’s Louis C.K. Show. He was the neighbor. He’s really funny.
Matt: Yeah, he’s a really cool guy.

Do you practice improv at all?
Brian: I have completely respect for anybody who does it really well. I don’t think I could do it. No way. It’s so scary to just get up there in a theater, in front of a microphone, with a crowd.

What’s the difference between that and being in a band?
Brian: You can rely on other people. I’m a drummer so I have all this stuff around me. I have this physical barrier between the people and me. I’m not really giving anything of myself except how I am playing. I’m not making up good stories so that people are laughing.
Matt: It’s a real fucking skill. It’s amazing. Dave Chapelle is my muse. He’s such a genius.
Brian: He’s such a good storyteller.

I’m sure comedians think this of musicians as well.
Brian: Yeah, I’m sure. Like Belushi got Fear on Saturday Night Live. He tried to get Black Flag on there too.

Do you guys have any other hobbies or do you just stick with the music realm?
Matt: Brian’s a record collector.
Brian: I haven’t done anything productive with it like turning it into a night where I get free drinks. I’m going to work on that. That’s the next step. I don’t want my records to just sit there.

Do you have a prized record?
Brian: Oh yeah! Oh yeah! Nightmares in Wax – Pete Burns’ pre-Dead of Alive disco-punk band. I found the 12-inch. I’ve been looking for it for years. It’s all these homoerotic songs. The title track is Black Leather. So awesome!

Did you find it at a garage sale? Or online?
Brian: I found it on Ebay. I’ve been looking for it for years but it’s always really expensive. I found a torn up copy where the record was perfect and the sleeve was really torn up. I didn’t care. I had to have this record. That was Holy Grail record and now I don’t really know what I need. I go to record stores and I guess I don’t need anymore records because I don’t need anything that I have to tear through the rack to find.

Are there any record stores in LA you can recommend?
Brian: Of course there is Amoeba, which is great. There’s a really cool little one called Territory that used to a BBQ place / record story but I think the BBQ side of it is closed now. Territory is in Silverlake and in Los Feliz there is Vacation Vinyl.
Matt: All around awesome place.
Brian: The people that run that are really cool.

So you are signed to Kemado Records. They are very community oriented. How did you get involved with them? Their ideas behind co-op music shops are so utterly unique.
Brian: We just met the guy. A friend of ours, Paul introduced us to the guys who do the label and we just hit it off with them. We thought they were really cool. A few months went by and we did CMJ and they still wanted to work with us.
Matt: They were the first to give us a deal. They were the longest to maintain interest.

Have you met the other bands on the label?
Matt: Dungeon is really cool.
Brian: They’re putting out a record by this girl named Cameron and her backing band is really cool. A hardcore band. They got them reunited to be her backup band. It’s really cool music—kind of indie-ish and current.
Matt: The Sword.

I ask because many bands haven’t met or even heard of the bands on their record label.
Brian: Sometimes bands put out such a variety that they wouldn’t get a chance to play together.
Matt: Children are pretty good.
Brian: They are cool. Kind of like Metallica.

Old Metallica or new Metallica?
Brian: Old! Like Master of Puppets.

Well, let’s finish off with a question of sexuality. Brian, you are out and proud. Do you think that is necessary in the music world?
Brian: I wouldn’t put it on anyone else to handle it any one way. Whatever is right for you. It’s definitely more beneficial the more people that come out and are public figures or are in any kind of media position. It helps anyone who is younger or people like me who didn’t have a gay role model while growing up and didn’t know what it meant to be gay and be an adult and function in a cool way, not living this life that was less then what you wanted. Not like it was that hard when I grew up.

So did you create the name of The Soft Pack. It has gay written all over it!
Brian: You’re only the third person who has gotten it! I’ve been saying it a lot more. I don’t think it hurts anybody. But then again, I wouldn’t tell anybody about how to discuss their homosexuality. For me, now that I’ve been out, I never want to be closeted. Why? I feel so much better about myself.

And that has affected your confidence on stage?
Brian: Totally! I don’t think I could do this if I was doing two things at once. I would probably work in an office and not talk to anybody.

Soft Pack tour dates and awesome polaroids can be found here: http://thesoftpackofficial.com/

-- COURTNEY NICHOLS

The Hole as a Whole

2010-04-22T00:26:00.000-07:00

EXHIBITION TITLE: MOMENTS (Bringing Back the Now) Moment 1 of 3: 100 Performances from the Hole – Take Two
LOCATION: SOMArts Cultural Center’s Main Gallery 934 Brannan St San Francisco, CA 94103 DATES: March 6 - March 20, 2010
CURATORIAL TEAM: Kevin Chen, Jackie Im, Lex Leifheint, Lucy Kalyani Lin, Peter Foucault, Justin Hoover and Jennifer Locke

"This soil and the space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity's jurisdiction." Mark Brest Van Kempen's text from the Free Speech Monument, Berkeley.

How can a hole function as a depiction of completeness and freedom? An interesting show at SOMArts featured a hole as main character for creativity, freedom, and craziness throughout live performances. Artist and curator Justin Hoover originally conceived the idea of honoring a hole. The show was based on Hoover’s short lived Garage Biennial, in which he first invited people to use a hole as a performance venue. Inspired by a (w)hole and expressed alive in front of the audience, the 100 performances’ exhibition featured professional artists and amateurs in the same stage, where singers, rock stars, and dancers play with the hole’s emptiness and bring completion within their acts. Over the course of six hours, participants created a multitude of two minute performances. To me, the event was more like a theatrical play in which the audience got bored as well as amused at certain moments, so minutes of climax and tension along with ones of calm and boring-ness were staged. Based on what I saw, San Francisco could be identified as a key place to experience live art. If so performance may be the Bay Area's primary medium of visual art. What does this claim suggest about San Francisco’s temperature in contemporary art?

Regarding the main character: what was a hole doing in the floor of a gallery space? Located in the west corner of SOMArts main gallery, a 5' by 6' by 3' hole, previously used as a mechanic's pit, has participated in art installations since Justin Hoover came on board as the gallery director. Instead of hiding or fixing the hole, curators at SOMArts made it evident as a submerged stage for anyone who had something to express. (This hole reminds me of the one that exists in the University Museum of Science and Arts in Mexico City MUCA Campus, where the only time the hole was shown was in Helen Escobedo’s solo exhibition in 2000. Escobedo knew about the hole since she was the director of that museum for several years. The artist broke the floor of the gallery and made the hole a part of her installation for a specific artwork. The audience was amused by the fact that the solid floor of the gallery where they were standing was actually full of emptiness.) SOMArts’ hole gathered more than 100 performance artists who made a variety of work ranging from fantastic to failed. Since there were 100 options on the menu, audience members were able to find something they liked. However, this makes me wonder about the parameters of a successful performance. Is a positive response and participation from the audience what determines success? Or is it the content of the work shown there the only aspect that determines good work? What if the performance did not shock the audience? Instead, if boring-ness ruled, was the performance good? What if nobody claps at the end of it? In this questioning, I want to focus on one performance that went beyond these limited questions and audience’s expectations: Third Hole by performance artist Kathryn Wiliamson, an MFA candidate at SFAI. Kathryn uses her body to perform in everyday situations, from falling down on the street to drinking an excess of water. She states, "I believe art happens everywhere." Kathryn has developed a very interesting body of work that emerges from what she observes from her environment.

Kathryn Williamson Third Hole

For MOMENTS, Wiliamson prepared what I interpret as a summary of the whole evening's event: one action followed by another that could not be easily predicted. Kathryn entered the hole in a very focused mood. Once there, she started to get undressed and people grew quiet when they saw that she was stripping. However, Wiliamson stopped undressing when she got to the layer of her skin tight black suit. This time, she took the scissors and cut a hole in the fabric around her crotch. One might have expected the performance to continue along the lines of Yoko Ono's Cut Piece. But instead, Kathryn again changed direction when she took a rod and inserted it inside of her vagina. Was it a dildo? No. Kathryn lit the cylinder, assumed a yoga position with her legs in the air, and sparks started to fly out of her vagina. Was it going to explode? Would she be hurt? The sparks subsided and for the next few minutes colored gas came out and invaded the whole gallery. (At this point, Justin asked the crowd to exit the site since it was difficult to breath.) Was there any clapping at the end? Did the performance fulfill peoples’ expectations? Did the element of shock force people to like or dislike this performance? Interesting questions are the ones that I keep asking myself regarding this specific performance. One last question is the one that could abstract them all: Is a great work of art one that clarifies a process of internal questioning? The artworks, the great ones, are the ones that take you somewhere else, that does not shock you but instead awes you, where the like and dislike are mixed together without distinctions, and when you find yourself so astonished that your hands cannot move, so there is no clap at all. (Could this also be a sense of human completion? Is this the goal of art?) Thanks to this show, the hole at SOMArts showed us a whole range of possibilities regarding art.

-- FRIDA CANO DOMINGUEZ, Fundación/Coleccion Jumex scholar

Janus at Southern Exposure

2010-04-21T19:42:00.000-07:00

EXHIBITION TITLE: Alchemy
LOCATION: Southern Exposure 3030 20th Street San Francisco, CA 94110
DATES: March 12 - April 24, 2010

Sarah Smith, the curator of Alchemy, describes the show as "new work by artists who act on schemes of transformation and whose investigations are imbued with metaphor and poetry. By using basic and humble materials and processes, they create work that revives, transforms and restores our sense of wonder."

The piece that struck me from Alchemy was Adam Hathaway's Janus: an interactive sculpture that is playful, and very much restores my sense of wonder, as Smith intended with the show. The question with this piece is the interesting play with communication, and how one may contribute to the sculpture by talking on the phone that in turn records your voice as you can hear someone else's voice talking to you. I find interesting that you cannot communicate with the voice at the end of the line, since it is a ghost that has only left its mark on a maze-like tape that runs through the insides of the sculpture. Is it fake communication? Is it miscommunication?

Adam Hathaway Janus

To me, it was simply a special experience. As I approached the sculpture, it seemed rather curious, like an antique marvel. There was an instruction next to the sculpture that read: PLEASE PICK UP THE PHONE. TALK AND LISTEN. And so I did. I Picked up the phone, uttering the typical "Hello?", and what the ghost at the end of the line did was emit a soft laughter that made me smile. Maybe the piece attempts to have the public converse with ghosts that have left their voices and laughter behind, strangers that converse and scratch a guilty pleasure of overhearing someone's thoughts or touching intimate fibers of one's soul by simple laughter.

The final aspect of the piece is the playfulness with time, where the voice one hears lies in the past, and the one the viewer produces is in the present but will lie in the past when the next user encounters it. But, the precondition that exists with this sculpture in order for it to work is the participation of the viewer, engaging him in this exchange where if you leave nothing in return, the following viewer will have nothing to experience.

-- CLAUDIA SCHIDLOW

How The Rape of the Wild Wild West Was Not Depicted

2010-04-17T09:31:00.000-07:00

EXHIBITION TITLE: Beautiful Possibility
LOCATION: Southern Exposure 3030 20th Street San Francisco, CA 94110
DATES: March 10 - April 24, 2010

Bischoff tag reveals that the photography in question is located in the Branson Caves. It reminds me somewhat of the caves near the California shoreline some distance from Eureka.

Is there smoke? What material makes this pyramidal shape of a seemingly rainbow mystical image? Portable fan and parachute silk? Is this some sort of steam release from a chemical concoction? It does seem more like an object judging only from this photograph in the front of the gallery. It is more likely to be prompted or set up to depict motion.

In photography it is crazy what is possible, limitless; there is however an explanation we cannot know certainly.

His work is about 3’ x 4.25’, and they are C-Prints. The daylight reflection is horrid. This entrance piece would otherwise seem quite serene. The stillness of the foreground puddle suggests no wind, and a slight delay of exposure by way of a closer sight investigation of said puddle therefore makes me wonder since I see no strings, how the colorful blurriness which is otherwise to greet the viewer upon entrance to the gallery should juxtaposition the caves back entrance, which is also triangular.

Best viewed during day light hours within one meter to the left of the front entrance, I recommend Venetian blinds. Burning camping gear? Is this imagery some sort of temporal aberration warning us not to construct tunnels? Nature’s ghost warning against our raping the earth perhaps?

More cloudy and refractory in the following four frames disappearing perpendicular down the next wall. It seems to be at least a fifty year old mining shaft. I’m more in tune with the repeating triangle of the first piece, and the third on the left of the perpendicular wall from the entrance. This third from left strikes me as a super-imposed or multi-colored superimposed rainbow cloud or clouds which are shown in a side of the cave, or one of them, darkness receding to the upper-right.

He might well be using a refraction device and simply be manually burning it in, there might be dozens of possibilities, and this would seem to be the easiest. Looking at the foggy rainbow in the first from right seems more like a multi-color steam bath; again, however there is nothing solid about the images on the north facing wall. The entrance print could have been an object; this is not entirely realistic in any of the other prints. The first from the left however is without a doubt a gel process of some kind, multi-colored squares receding into the darkness of the cave mouth which touches on the top and left of the frame.

It kind of drives one mad, trying to figure out the magician’s secret, well Mr. Bischoff, what is it?

As photography is my exception I have to say the Pebworth installation at Southern Exposure will probably be my favorite for the year. Previous entitlements in my mind have gone to Bruce Conner, Trevor Paglen, and Enrique Chagoya, all previously exhibited at the University Of California Museum in Berkeley. One exception here would be the Emile Rose Garcia exhibition at the San Jose Modern.

Unlike Bruce Conner we have no sense of the counter culture other than a subtle political statement against the Bush administration. George Bush isn’t really responsible for the mass genocide in this country, although he could have been reincarnated from King George, if that were true then we really could blame George Bush. Gods save the King, the King is dead, long live the king.

With a forward and backwards by Rebecca Solnit in the illustrated book or gallery catalog of $15 plus tax we are treated with one whose words form an anti-capitalist tapestry of the formation most sublime, we can see a sense, or rather read a sense of political history into Pebworth’s body of work, albeit literally. With Pebworth, It’s already there figuratively at least, I shall address that.

Unlike Mr. Paglen (who is my sister’s age, and visited us at the Berkeley tree sit during his doctorial) there is little here to expose other than the little known fact of Americanitis which in today’s trans-nationalism seems like a combination of a sixty year late health care reform bill, opposed by half of the country, and gingivitis, in the form of latent racism, sexism, and homophobia, to say nothing of the wage slavery system and immigrant exploitation. Thank you for choosing McDonald’s King George, and please enjoy your death burger.

Of course in the Americanitis Elixer questionnaire without any doubt I cite capitalism as the most prominent figure in post-modern Amerikkkanitis. Unlike Paglen I’ve yet to receive a PhD in anything, and I’m no longer certified in first aid, yet you seem to have the gist of my diagnosis.

The paintings actually give a sense of hope and trans genesis of the ancient Americans and that of our colonial, and Victorian ancestry without revealing any actual factors about how this might be done other than perhaps a suggestion of green engineering inspired in part by the political renderings of the Obama administration. This is depicted with a greenbelt surrounding an industrial windmill, and a solar panel next to an aluminum watering hole for Bison, to suggest free range beasts of yesteryear. The depiction here suggests a return to the wilderness after our initial re-terra formation. Yet aren’t we still doomed to repeat our past? The paintings do not do so without spilling the blood of the past vis a vis the Industrial Genocide (Revolution), a depiction of the wild wild west with an oil derrick here and a factory with smoke stacks there. To Native Americans each of white man’s ages in this country was only a red man’s age of genocide, so I must relate this sad fact to you. I appreciate a message of hope, yet my integrity demands for a sharper intake of events as it were.

The paintings are so painterly in the most recent realist stylization; I hate to say there was no bloodshed, no sense of admonishment, and no sense of atonement, no demand for justice or liberty (although in all honesty these are only Christian ideologies,) more importantly no rage against the machine as it were. Why is there no realization of the Terminator in our state capital for example? Do not the tools of McCarthyism also reach beyond Reagan the actor to our own puppet regime? The outrage however is all ours, the guilt inherited by our fore fathers. It is no surprise that the paintings are cast in the bread and circus in the political circus like Barnum or Bailey, or Buffalo Bills public spectacle? Hello, remember Diane Arbus? If I had your talents, I’m sure I would depict something in a much stronger standard of political awareness. However it would seem our own political history is our own freak show. Sadly Rome was not burned in a day; if the subtlety of these paintings does not rally the left of left here in Northern California one must assume it does ratify the right of center in more conservative gallery locations. No mention of KKK rallies, lynching, deforestation, toxic residue, (one oil derrick and vague icons of industrialism not with standing,) or other demonstrative examples of our nation’s history, this is all in our mind according to this glorification of hope in the new democratic regime. Illustriously rendered, morally and politically motivating, yet Enrique Chagoya she is not.

This installation is too subtle, not shocking enough, not provocative enough, although sadly, it is more than most conservatives can handle. Why attempt to placate the new Reich? I left feeling indignant that she did not slap them squarely. I realize however that I am putting the cart before the mule, or rather the politics before the art, well forgive me Ms. Pebworth, wasn’t that your intention?

Strangely enough she is mostly like Camille Rose Garcia. Rather than expose a grotesque metaphor for the life we pretend doesn’t surround us, like Brice Bischoff she merely refracts the mirror image just slightly enough to expose our own frightening reality.

This was written with apologies to Camille Rose Garcia, Enrique Chagoya, Trevor Paglen, and Bruce Conner. I wanted to speak with Ms. Pebworth about the metaphysical aspects of her paintings today, but her entourage appointee interrupted me and I could not speak to her of her sense of her own dream scape, so I had to use my instincts based on feel, sight, and my sense of dystopianism as it is given to me by the new republic. Gods save the King, the King is dead, long live the King. Next time give the interview.

-- DARIN BAUER

Look at Kim Cook's Work at Upcoming SFAI Vernissage

2010-04-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

EXHIBITION TITLE: San Francisco Art Institute Vernissage
LOCATION: Herbst Theater 401 Van Ness San Francisco, CA 94102
DATES: Friday May 14, 2010 6pm - 8pm

Kim Cook, a second year New Genre's focus at the San Francisco Art Institute is currently working on a project entitled, Resource Exchange, a commentary on restricted access to our global water supply. Water, a natural resource that should be within reach to the global community, unfortunately is not. With more than 95% of the world's water supply owned by powerhouse corporations, business becomes the middle-man, thereby hindering our free access to water and restricting not only who the reserve reaches, but how we obtain it. In preparation for Vernissage, SFAI's final showcase of graduating MFA practices, Kim asked myself and four other volunteers to participate in modeling her take on the quite literal handicapping society faces in their struggle for water access.

Photo courtesy of Kim Cook

Kim designed a garment that serves as both a hybrid life vest and straight jacket. A harness on the back holds in place a one gallon container of water making it inaccessible for the person carrying it to drink from it themselves. Hand made and crafted with impeccable artistry, the garb had all the characteristics of both a life preserver (the polished detail of hand sewn plush materials) and a straight jacket (arm restraints and belted clasps). Both of these things working against one another dissolved the garment's individual functionality and actually hindering out mobility and ability to interact with the other participants. The garment's dichotomy between a life preserver and a restraint was a conceptually created a metaphor for the global water crisis. On one hand, water should be within reach for consumption at any point to anyone, yet corporate control of the circulation of fresh drinking water limits millions on a daily basis.

As models, we acted out this restriction first hand. Our group was challenged by Kim to situate our bodies in various ways that allowed everyone could drink from the jugs of water resting on each of our backs. No outside props could be used, and each arrangement was no a success unless everyone could drink, thus stressing the interdependence of global water access. Kim's design to implement a straight jacket impeded any movement of the arms, obstructing us as models from using our hands for anything.

The reliance we all felt on one another to gain access to the water on the backs of each other was a punctilious, meticulous commentary on the global water crisis. Having to contort our bodies in various positions and focus our energy on the whole group drinking rather than our individual parts proved to be a severe challenge with only five people, let alone that proposed on the global scale.

Photo courtesy of Kim Cook

Kim documented our efforts and plans to create sketches of some of the images, voiding each model of recognizable facial features, thereby universalizing us as representations of all those effected by the fresh water crisis. Having seen a basic sample of the drawn work, the sketches are extremely poetic in their forms and aesthetically subdued despite the intense nature of the commentary at hand.

-- PAM CAMPANARO

ODDSAC: A Visual Album by Animal Collective and Danny Perez

2010-04-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago I went to a screening of Oddsac, the visual album just released by the band Animal Collective. Following the screening there was a short question and answer session, which proved to be more confusing than the film itself (intoxicated 18 year olds don’t always ask the best questions!). Animal Collective is a band known for its experimental music and more so its presentation of said music. The band’s live shows are consistently full of color, chaos, and craziness. I went into the film knowing that I was about to view an array confusing and dizzying images and my gut feelings were correct!

The film in its entirety is fifty three minutes, however we only saw about twenty five to thirty minutes of it. While at times highly amusing, I found the portion we saw to be completely unoriginal. Every scene seemed to rip off of someone else's idea. For example, for many scenes in the movie, one of the band members is dressed up in an outfit that was screaming Matthew Barney’s Cremaster loud and clear. The films as a whole has a very dark feel to it. It starts with a woman trying desperately to stop a wall that seems to be gushing out tar from it, followed by several scenes featuring vampires, and a family camping trip gone awry when the family members mouths turn into marshmallows and all is doomed. If you like Animal Collective, like I do, I would suggest closing your eyes for the middle part of the film in which a series of unrecognizable images are mashed and mixed together for ten minutes with an after affect of nausea and confusion. There is a lot of struggle amongst the characters that gives the film some sense of cohesiveness and as Perez said in the question and answer session after in which he revealed he wanted the viewer to feel extreme discomfort, you definitely had a sense of frustration as you viewed certain scenes.

Photo courtesy of Animal Collective

The final scene of the film was my favorite and definitely the most playful and exciting portion. The music at this point moving from a slow and steady beat moved into typical Animal Collective overdrive as unrecognizable sounds shot through the theater and you could sense a jump in audience energy. The scene features a monster like creature and four girls who are baking, the baking soon turns into a massive food fight, while a new animal collective song in the background sings, “I just want you to dance”. The camera slowly pans away as the music slows down but the food fight commences and the film ends on a positive and upbeat note.

The idea of a visual album I think is an interesting one. Surely not all bands interpretation of visual album would be quite the visual explosion that animal collective produced for its fans. In terms of representing music with images it reminded me of Kandinsky’s insistence of linking colors to music and sounds. Without the music the film would just seem like an experimental flop, but the music coinciding with the film makes for an interesting experience, one I am glad I was able to be a part of.

As for the name of the film, Oddsac, the members of Animal Collective revealed the deep meaning behind it. Apparently a discussion was had in which there was no name for when you get a pack of gummy bears and the majority of bears are stuck together in a clumpy mass. So there you have it, Oddsac.

-- CASEY MOUNTON

Shanghai at an Angle

2010-04-12T20:21:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, we visited the Shanghai exhibition held at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Although some of my classmates have already written about this exhibition on the blog, I wanted to write about my own experience.

Two days before our fieldtrip I injured my back. Needless to say, I was in a lot of pain and could barely walk. So, the day we went to visit the museum I was offered to be pushed around the exhibition on a wheelchair.

It was a very interesting experience looking at an exhibition from a wheelchair, when it’s designed for people of normal stature. Most of the artwork hanging on the walls I could appreciate, but some were too high, so I had to be pushed back to be able to see them. Some pieces were on display encased over tables, where it was very difficult for me to actually see what was in there because of the angle I could look from. What was very delighting to see on a wheelchair was the section in the exhibition where the museum was showing contemporary videos. The video exhibition is designed for people to sit and watch, as I can assess by all the chairs placed in auditorium mode in front of the screen. There, I felt comfortable appreciating the exhibition that was designed to be looked at from my angle.

Although I'm aware that most exhibition designs are created with the average walking person in mind, it got me thinking about all the people who cannot walk around a show as I did that day. Can we really design exhibitions that will accommodate both the walking viewer and the public in wheelchairs? Perhaps we should reconsider alternative angles of viewing artwork that are not necessarily in an upright standing position. We build museums and gallery spaces that are wheelchair accessible, but what about the exhibitions? I hope we can integrate all public into exhibition making, no matter from which physical position they may view artworks.

-- CLAUDIA SCHIDLOW

What We Want Is Free, or is it?

2010-04-04T11:46:00.000-07:00

Published in 2005 by State University of New York Press

Five years ago, when the book What We Want is Free: Generosity and Exchange in Recent Art was published, its goal by the editor Ted Purves was to start a conversation about particular practices that began emerging in the late 90s; the act of giving, or gifting that began disrupting the cult of commodity that had dominated the art world for-almost-ever. Having come across this book now, in 2010, the material is not dated at all. The continued move by many artists to explore the ideas in this book continue to expand into even more defined practices. However, one irony that I found was that the cover price for this thin hardback was $50.

Artists have been dabbling in alternate ways to interact or engage with their audience, but the somewhat lofty notions of a roving audience that was eager for a chance to eat for free or get a free poster was in some ways a fantasy that was never realized in the same way that the artists dreamed. Not to dismiss the success or ambition by any projects like this, but there is an expectation that people will want something, and be grateful when they get it. I recall stories of one of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-1996) works that was at the American Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007; the series of stacked posters that were free to roll up and take with you. Patrons who had rolled them up and had them sticking out of backpacks and back pockets like cumbersome fishing poles were either asked to not bring them into other pavilions because they might harm the works by accident, or they simply got tired of carrying them around. People that I talked to said that it was kind of funny to see them littered around the Biennale grounds, or stuffed into garbage cans haphazardly.

I mention this because there seems to be a difference in the intention of the artists, and the outcome that is a result of a kind of naive artist ego; where they never meet expectations. This being said, there are some projects that do truly connect and fulfill the hopes that the artists had when they began to dream them up. Mary Jane Jacob, former cheif curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the MOCA in Los Angeles, starts the book off with the essay 'Reciprocal Generosity' that truly addresses many of my concerns when thinking about generosity as a mode of operating in the art world. For her starting point–once getting beyond some of the historical trend setters in the field, going as far back as the early 70s with artists like Gordon Matta-Clark–she admits, "...my engagement with this concept is a critique of the arts institution's relationship to its audience." If, as I would assume we all agree, that an arts institution–and more than that of a school, but rather that of a museum–operates from a position of privilege and power, Jacobs recognizes the essential equation that must be negotiated. If these privileged institutions,"'Charged with giving, the receiver–their audiences–is seen as being in need, lacking, or deficient," than what Jacobs so perfectly acknowledged is that for the act of generosity to perhaps be most successful, it must enter into public space and away from an institutional setting that constructs scarcity. Later in the book, what I see to be the most inventive works by the many artists that this book covers take place in the most non-art environments imaginable, giving the works the greatest chance at having an impact and living up to the concept of generosity.

Other essays really dial in a deeper critical engagement with the concepts of exchange and generosity. The idea of surplus and the construction of scarcity get addressed by Kate Fowle and Lars Bang Larsen. Tackling the notion of public space by unpacking the planning codes in San Francisco–which implement mandatory public space–is revealed to be what is described as 'institutionalized generosity.' Now, in the past few years after San Francisco re-fashioned Union Square–once an epi-center for assembly, where such legendary anarchist voices in labor and immigrant rights movements like Emma Goldman spoke to crowds–Union Square has been turned into a corporate staging grounds. On any given day if you try and cut through the square, or attempt to go have lunch and people watch, you are confronted by steel barricades at all entry points as teams of workers take down or put up massive climate controlled tents for corporate pow-wows. The 'institutionalized generosity' that is spoken of in this section of the book is directed at individual entities like the CNET building, which even though it is open to the public, it is still controlled by access and surveillance. The 'exchange' of space here is far from free. The farther we get from the urban center, we start to see that darlings of the 'relational aesthetics' brood like Rirkrit Tiravanija and his free curry lunches provided at Jack Hanley gallery back in the day get eclipsed by larger projects like THE LAND (1998-ongoing), where Tiravanija along with the collective Superflex and many local artists in Thailand initiated a project that developed artist residencies and also a kind of free open space where people could come and live, experiment and work the rice fields (this was not mentioned in the book.)

Jens Hanning Foreigners Free

In the second half of the book we are introduced to dozens of amazing artist projects that take on different facets of generosity and exchange. A favorite of mine was Danish artist Jens Haaning and his work FOREIGNERS FREE (1997-2001), where he simply placed text at the window of the museums that had invited him, reading-Foreigners Free, allowing any individual who was not a local in the country in question free admittance.

Michael Swaine Reap What You Sew

Other great projects that utilized the urban terrain were Michael Swaine's REAP WHAT YOU SEW (2002), where the artist walked the streets of San Francisco's Tenderloin district with a cart that had a sewing machine, offering to mend the clothes of anyone that needed his service. I was privileged enough to have seen Michael on many occasions doing this, and the way this work transformed the people on the streets was remarkable. Small crowds would hang out, socializing and having a moment that would brighten their day. Occasionally, I hear that Michael still rolls out his cart when he feels the need to. Jon Rubin, who is mentioned more then once in the book, has done such amazing works like The Hillman City FREEmobile in 2003, where a modified ice cream truck, of which Jon did all the modifications himself, was tricked out and offered to the community of a residential neighborhood in Seattle for the summer. Individuals, groups and families used the truck to distribute free goods and services to their fellow community members. Everything from homemade candle giveaways, free bicycle repair and line-dancing lessons were given out that summer. Jon Rubin is also the founder of the now legendary, but defunct Independent School of Art (ISA) which was a free art school started in San Francisco after an ambivalent stint as a teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute. He now teaches at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania.

Jon Rubin The Hillman City FREEmobile

New practices have emerged in the years after this book came out, and new projects have been inspired by some classic works, like Joseph Beuys 700 Oaks project at Documenta 7 in 1982, where the process or sowing oak trees continues till this day under the auspices of the FIU (Free International University). Artist Pedro Reyes developed the project PARA POR PISTOLAS (Guns for Spades) in 2007, where, through a campaign of television commercials and public outreach, had members of one of the most gun totting communities in Mexico trade in guns for credit at local businesses for food or appliances. The guns were then crushed, melted down and turned into shovels at a local fabrication site, then distributed all over the city so that school children could plant trees with them. The project was, more than just steeped in an inventive strategy of exchange, but also became a kind of artist initiated alchemy. In the post-relational aesthetics art world, almost like the art worlds own little Post-Fordist moment, many artists are now involved in what is being called 'service-aesthetics', "...at the Whitney Biennial in New York [...] artist Bert Rodriguez presented In the Beginning . . . , 2008. The piece consisted of a simulacrum of a generic psychologist’s office—complete with de rigueur stuffed leather chairs and potted plant—in which the artist (although he is not a trained therapist) held forty-five-minute personal consultations."*

Exchange is now becoming an activity that, although still largely run by gallerist bloated events like Art Basel in Miami, or by auction houses all over Europe and Asia (Hong Kong is home to a new branch of Sotheby's which is becoming a huge player in the art market in Asia of the works of artists from the west) – yet the work covered in this book, as well as the other works I have mentioned, are harder to weave into the traditional methods of economic exchange embedded in the art worlds mechanisms. There are still ways that these artists mentioned above make money, but they survive more so off of grants, and funds earned through becoming educators as well as getting involved in social concerns in a variety of locales. The idea of the artist as commodity maker is starting to fade as we move into the twenty-first century, and as far as I am concerned, this has been a long time coming.

Stay tuned to this blog for my look at the published exhibition series CHARLEY by curators Massimiliano Gioni, Ali Subotnick and artist Maurizio Cattelan.

*From the Steven Henry Madoff article on Personal Transactions in Art, September 2008 issue of ARTFORUM.

-- VIOLET MENDONÇA

Searching For Feminist Traces Within SFAI MFA Performance

2010-04-01T14:43:00.000-07:00

The artist Anna Mendieta who was born and raised in Cuba came to the United States in her early teens. Her work involved her body in ritual acts (often with the body absent) and is documented by photographs that exhibited the impression of her body on the landscape, reminiscent of ancient sculpture.

Anna Mendieta (Photo courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art)

She has said, “My art is the way I re-establish bonds that unite me to the universe. It is a return to the maternal source. Through my earth/ body sculptures I become one with the earth… I become an extension of nature and nature becomes an extension of my body.” Ana Mendieta’s Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance, 1972–1985, were rigorous projects that included tough performances, which often responded to feminist concerns. In Mexico she made the first of her Siluetas (1973–80), symbolic and strange works in which she cut, burnt, drew or otherwise shaped a human silhouette, often her own, in the outdoors. In Cuba, she produced her Rupestrian Sculptures (1981), carving anthropomorphic shapes into ancient limestone grottoes. Terming her work as Earth Body to describe her ephemeral interventions. She drew heavily on research about indigenous beliefs and later tried to distance herself from her work’s association with feminist goddess cults, but did not completely succeed.

Taking this into consideration, I present you with a work I viewed as part of the performance exhibition in the Swell Gallery a few weeks back. Our colleague, Mick Larusso performed a piece he titled Breathing Landscape. He described the piece with the following text, “I will be laying nude on the ground with three cross-sections from a felled tree covering my body for an hour…. The piece relates to Ana Mendieta, since my body becomes a landscape. At the same time I address the guilt of deforestation in the ideology of environmentalism, since I am struggling under the weight of the tree stumps. I'm calling it Breathing Landscape.” The card that was placed on the wall to the right of where Mick was performing proposed,” The reclining body has often been related to the landscape. Can the weight of a freshly felled tree be sensed ion the body as remorse for an imagined lost relationship; with an ideal of wilderness?”

Mick Larusso Breathing Landscapes (Photo taken by Frida Cano)

Taking into consideration Mick’s intentions, as well as his reference to Anna Mendieta, I ask myself can a work so deeply invested in referencing goddess culture be seen in a performance by a white male in the space of a gallery? Is the effect of these “living sculptures” the same for the observer?

Mendieta’s ritualistic emphasis and the spiritual value attached to the female body in its absence and presence is key to her work. However the ritualistic emphasis in Mendieta’s work doesn’t seem as applicable to Larusso’s performance. It may be that his spectacle of pain provides him with a purifying effect in that it exemplifies the pain he feels as a result of the destruction of nature. Instead of humans destroying nature, nature is weighing heavy on humans. Rather than the symbiotic appearance seen in Mendietta's work, Larusso’s performance is much more of a confrontation and disruption. Like Ana, his body is his material and his performance is emotive and produces a human sculptural form that is deeply referential of form in it.

Mick Larusso Breathing Landscapes (Photo taken by Frida Cano)

A concern for many performance artists is the opportunity to “re-site” art outside of standard art appreciation systems, often as a protest against the objectification and commercialization of artwork, and as a way to provide for more of an exchange between artist and viewer. The denial of hierarchy of form and acceptance of artifice can be seen in Larusso’s piece however the effect of his work is unlike that of Mendieta’s, partially because of its lack of specific ritual, its disrupting nature and the fact that he is performing within a gallery space in an academic institution with an audience that is very exclusive and makes up only a small part of the general public. Had he performed his work in a more public space with somewhat of a reference to history or culture there may be more of a link to his indented historical reference and stronger social critique. What do you think?

-- KIM SILVA

Examining The di Rosa Preserve

2010-03-31T22:20:00.000-07:00

Location: di Rosa Preserve 5200 Carneros Hwy Napa, CA 94559
Website: http://www.dirosaart.org/

Interior of gallery (Photo courtesy of http://www.dirosaart.org/)

After hearing about the di Rosa Preserve from several people since moving to the Bay Area, including my parents, I decided to make the trip out for my birthday, which coincided with spring break. I did not know what to expect, except for Bay Area contemporary art on a vineyard, it sounded like a perfect combination for me; wine and art, bring it on! We made a reservation for the “Discovery Tour”, supposedly lasting two hours (but wound up being more like three). The grounds and building upon arrival were spectacular with the 35-acre Winery Lake hugging the parking lot, it seemed the day was off to a great start. Entering the “Gatehouse Gallery” reminded me of many of the contemporary galleries in Chelsea with clean lines and poured concrete floors. The art in the gallery was a combination of works from the permanent collection and a rotating exhibition space that is currently showing, MFA Selections – A Salute to Emerging Artists from Bay Area Master’s of Fine Art Programs and will be up through June 12, 2010. The work was strong but did not indicate which programs the students were attending, which I thought was unfortunate, but maybe that is just me and my picky attention to detail.

Interior of home (Photo courtesy of http://www.dirosaart.org/)

The overbooked group (annoying) was gathered by two docents and told the ground rules, “stay together, don’t touch, don’t wander off, the lay of the land, etc” as well as some minimal background information on the collection and the di Rosa’s themselves, Rene and Veronica. It appeared that these docents as is the case in many institutions are people of a certain age who graciously donate their time but do not necessarily know much about the art they are guiding patrons through and have merely memorized a handbook and when one deviates from the questions they have memorized they become flustered and somewhat annoyed (hopefully Melina’s thesis will address these issues and set a new docent standard for US institutions.) Enough with the complaining, the group boarded the jitney and was driven onto the property which was full of breathtaking views reminiscent of Tuscany and I was itching to get off and explore the grounds.

Peacock (Photo courtesy of http://www.dirosaart.org/)

Another contemporary gallery space was welcomed and the permanent collection is housed here. The work ranged in skill, medium, size, etc as well as the presentation model. Some works were given a great deal of space and proper wall texts while others, in particular the photographs were crowded together and merely numbered, correlating to a checklist I would assume, though I found none. There were probably about 300 works in this gallery and there was much to see. There were works by Jay DeFeo, Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, Viola Frey, Robert Arneson, and David Best to name a few. I was not familiar with David Best’s car sculptures, which after researching I now realize the connection to Burning Man and the community effort to make his sculptures, but they were quite fascinating and there were two on view in the collection. I then got scolded for going outside to observe an intricate David Ireland installation with a flying angel sculpture that looked like something out of the Da Vinci Code, but was then led to my favorite aspect of the collection, the residence.

David Best Rhinocar (Photo courtesy of http://www.dirosaart.org/)

Led in through a precarious stained glass chapel like setting and made to meditate until the docent finally announced what was abundantly clear that the windows were not actually stained glass, but a computer program made to generate the illusion of futuristic stained-glass. This was the awkward part of the residence, but it quickly recovered once being led upstairs to the original house from 1855 that the di Rosa’s inhabited and hung their collection in a salon-style manner. Everything was left as the couple had intended and it was almost like visiting a natural history museum and the experience was eerie, quirky, non-thematic with over 100 works and much fun to see. I like seeing homes and being voyeuristic in general, so this was right up my ally. The architecture of the home is gorgeous as well as the land surrounding it, complete with over 6 peacocks who made themselves known by yelling and flaring their feathers, which left me in utter awe as to how such vibrant colors can actually occur in nature. To me, these were the best works in the collection. The house is surrounded by sculpture in the Courtyard and one can see from a distance the Sculpture Meadow that can be toured beginning in April and looks stunning.

Overall it was a good experience, with a lot of art to see of artists I was not familiar with and gorgeous land, a fun place to visit on a nice day in wine country.

-- MARLY HAMMER

Discussing The Fruit Fly With HP Mendoza

2010-03-31T19:28:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at http://www.fruitflylife.com:

Fruit Fly (trailer) from H.P. Mendoza on Vimeo.

A few weeks ago I attended a screening of Fruit Fly at The Berkeley Pacific Film Archives. Currently wrapping up a worldwide tour, the film is HP Mendoza's directorial debut. Well known throughout The Bay Area and beyond for his modern interpretation of the musical, Mendoza gained notoriety when he both wrote/starred/composed in the 2006 indie sensation Colma: The Musical. Documenting youth in a suburban town south of San Francisco in which - as the tag line described - "the dead outnumber the living one thousand to one," the picture instantly gained a cult following. Backed by IFC and widely shown at film festivals across the globe, Colma: The Musical helped HP Mendoza attract a loyal and diverse fan base. And with Fruit Fly, Mendoza challenges the musical to an even greater degree.

The film stars L.A. Renigen as Bethesda, a Philippine migrant performance artist who recently moved into an artist commune in The Castro. The plot quickly unfurls and the protagonist finds that San Francisco is not the safe-haven she so craved. Instead, she is road blocked by failed auditions and the constant struggle to piece together her fragmented past. Thankfully, her ostentatious male, gay roommates ensure fun and excitement with every passing day. It is through these men and their subsequent posses that she discovers the term "fruit fly." Previously not aware of such a term, she adopts the label as she finds "fag hag" derogatory and crude. Did I mention Fruit Fly is a musical? So for our San Francisco readers, you too can giggle at chorus lines set outside The Cafe and rhythmic interludes with a Valencia backdrop.

Outside the theater I chatted with HP Mendoza about the transformation of terms and whether his feature was attempting to erase gay stereotypes. Noting that he himself does not have a fruit fly, he continued by stating,

"I'm not really trying to do anything to change the term 'fruit fly,' be it through reappropriation, reclamation, or redefinition. I just want to raise the dialogue. Notice there are two sides to the argument in the movie. I just got into it with someone on-line about the usage of the word 'nigga' by non-blacks. I then went into how we can't be too dogmatic about policing people and their words because we end up looking didactic. I used to crusade against the word 'lady' because it implied that the woman was owned by a 'lord.' Then I learned to just lighten the fuck up."

Well put HP. Well put. At first, the film left me neutral. However, upon further thought and investigation, I realized the brilliance. Fruit Fly is not a film attempting to reclaim gay culture or redefine the hetero-social bonds between homosexual men and straight counterparts. Instead, Fruit Fly is a film that expresses the liveliness of such friendships and the many way such relationships need not be over analyzed. Bethesda unassumingly entered into a gay-oriented circle upon moving to The United States. Such was not intentional. Though the film could attempt to further explain the how and why of her friendships with gay men, the film instead represents the simplicity of the fruit fly - gay male bond. In other words: the "just is" attitude of the fruit fly.

Unfortunately, due to the current economic climate, the movie is not receiving the funding necessary to garnish a wide release. Furthermore, due to the nature of the picture, the audience members have been limited. HP continued,

"I'm happy with the audience I've been getting, but I do hope that more Filipino women learn about this. I shit you not, twice, at different festivals, female performance artists from the Philippines have walked up to me saying they were looking for their biological moms."

For the few fortunate to view Fruit Fly, it seems each day is a bit more lyrical and a bit more colorful. A San Francisco homage painted with synthesized solos and more-real-than-one-might-think characters, Fruit Fly is definitely worthy of a Dolores Park screening. (And you can imagine, due to the title of the movie, I am as critical as they come.)

-- COURTNEY NICHOLS

Montgomery Gallery

2010-03-31T16:08:00.000-07:00

Camille-Jacob Pissarro Upper Norwood, Londres

Location: 406 Jackson San Francisco, CA 94111
Website: http://www.montgomerygallery.com

Take of virtual tour of San Francisco’s Montgomery Gallery’s stand at TEFAF.

Founded in 1984, Montgomery Gallery deals in late 19th and early 20th century European and American paintings and sculpture. Located in Jackson Square, Montgomery Gallery currently is exhibiting Spring Selections of European and American 20th century works of art by Camille Pissarro, Albert Bierstadt, Auguste Renoir, Max Pechstein, and Norton Bush.

-- CHARLOTTE MILLER

Matisse To Malevich

2010-03-31T16:05:00.000-07:00

Henri Matisse Game of Bowls

Exhibition Title: Matisse to Malevich: Pioneers of Modern Art from the Hermitage
Location: Hermitage Amsterdam
Dates: March 6 - September, 2010

Matisse to Malevich: Pioneers of Modern Art from the Hermitage is an exhibition that is taking place as the Hermitage Amsterdam from March 6 through September 2010. Displaying 75 works selected from the permanent collection of the Hermitage St. Petersburg, Matisse to Malevich displays works by the masters of Modern art such as Matisse, Picasso, Van Dogen, De Vlaminck, and Derain, but through the lens of two collectors: Ivan Morozov and Sergej Shchukin.

The two Russian collectors, Ivan Morozov (1871-1921) and Sergeij Shchukin (1854-1936) sought out revolutionary French art in order stimulate art in Russia. Shchukin bought 51 works by Picasso and 37 by Matisse thus dominating the art world in Russia. The works were displayed in their homes enabling young Russian artists to view French works of art. The start of WWI marked the end of Morozov and Shchukin’s collecting and during the October Revolution of 1917 the collections were confiscated. A major of the works in both collections were donated to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

Morozov fell in love with Impressionists such as Cezanne, Van Gogh, Dennis and Bonnard, while Shchukin sought after works by Matisse and Picasso. Shchukin’s collection included works by Matisse such as The Red Room, Game of Bowls, and Woman on a Terrace, which expressed his desire to find the latest and more revolutionary works of the European Avant-Garde. Shcukin also commissioned Matisse to paint Dance and Music for his staircase.

The exhibition takes an interesting angle on exhibiting the art historical narrative as the show includes a discussion of the collection aspect of works of art. The exhibiting provides a refreshing view on masterpieces of Modern art by bringing in the history of ownership of famous modern masterpieces. Matisse to Malevich expresses the profound impact that collectors can have on art history.

-- CHARLOTTE MILLER

Shanghai Show

2010-03-31T16:02:00.000-07:00

Liu Jianhua Can You Tell Me?

Exhibition Title: Shanghai
Location: Asian Art Museum 200 Larkin Street San Francisco, CA 94102
Dates: February 5 - September 12, 2010

To further my review of the Asian Art Museum’s exhibition Shanghai, I would like to critic the organization of the exhibition. The overall mission of the exhibition is to portray the history and culture of Shanghai, however the division of the Shanghai exhibition into four sections: Beginnings (1850-1912), High Times (1912-1937), Revolution (1920-1976), and Shanghai Today (1980-present) provides a very limited view of Shanghai. The wall text for novice viewer of Chinese art provides little to no explanation of the work and therefore the viewer is left confused on the inclusion of each work in the exhibition. It requires background knowledge of the history of art in China to find the works interesting.

The placement of works within the exhibition detracts from the works themselves. In particular, the placement of Liu Jianhua’s Can You Tell Me? on the west end of North Court greatly from the work as the engravings on the books are barely legible as light streams down on the stainless steel books from the windows above. Can You Tell Me?, 2006, is an installation piece in which Liu Jianhua engraved two questions about the future of Shanghai in English, Mandarin, French, German, and Japanese onto stainless steel books suspended vertically from the wall. The questions range from humorous such as “Can Shanghai make the magic of David Copperfield come true, and move the Bund 100 meters backward to widen the Avenue?” to serious “Can Shanghai build the first welfare bank in the world to allow poor people to get money whenever they need?” The inclusion of Can You Tell Me? asks the viewer to contemplate the future of Shanghai and its global impact, however the message of the piece is lost as the placement of the piece underneath large windows hinders the viewers ability to read the engraved questions.

-- CHARLOTTE MILLER

Busting A Move For A Contemporary Art Gallery

2010-03-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

BOOMBOX from Ely Kim on Vimeo

Exhibition Title: QNTV
Location: Queen's Nails Projects, 3191 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
Date: Friday, March 26, 2010

The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said that, “Music is the universal language of mankind.” I entertained similar thoughts while watching the video screenings at Queen’s Nails Projects on Friday night, as the crowd’s mood was light and responsive to the music. I felt as if I could forget my tendencies to be critical in an art space and simply enjoy the narratives and sounds of the videos. Curated by Rachel Adams and Zoë Taleporo, the screenings were a part of a new installment of QNTV, “the first in a series of video screenings at Queen’s Nails Projects that showcase work blending performance, music, video and song writing.” The featured artists blended or amplified their own art practices with a form familiar to an audience raised on MTV, the music video. The music video can be understood as an entertaining and theatrical medium, which also tends to be accessible to broad audiences.

Of the videos I viewed, one in particular that favored highly with the spectators was Ely Kim’s Boom Box, 2009. The video played as a montage with 100 clips of the artist dancing in various spaces — work, home, club, outside, etc — to popular hip hop, rock, techno and dance songs. Many of the musicians included, from Paula Abdul to Joy Division to Madonna, were easily recognizable and produced excitable responses from the audience. Although the video translated as an entertainment piece, the mixture of songs provoked the viewer to be reminded of unique experiences and memories related to the music.

As I continue to absorb the visual experience, I find myself asking questions about the “artist music video.” For example, how is it different or similar to the music videos circulating on MTV or YouTube? Comments...?

-- ALLISON BLOMERTH

Global Lives Project Opening Night

2010-03-26T14:15:00.000-07:00

Exhibition Title: Global Lives Project
Location: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 701 Mission Street San Francisco, CA 94103-3138
Dates: February 26 - June 20, 2010

Opening night for the Global Lives Project at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) was an interesting experience. I walked in with two friends into the Room for Big Ideas at YBCA, which is this big high ceiling room, where the Global Lives Project was exhibited in the form of multiple screens hanging from the ceiling at different heights and depths. It was dark, the light available came from the projectors, there was a cash bar, a sushi-taco concoction stand, a DJ, and masses of people chatting, drinking, eating and gazing.

If I had to ignore the party going on – which quite frankly was hard – I could appreciate the way the Global Lives Project was being exhibited. The way the screens were hung made them have an interesting three-dimensionality, where they appeared to block one another depending on where I would stand to watch. It was difficult to maintain focus, since all ten screens where displaying 24 hours in the lives on ten different people. A screen for every person that my two eyes could not handle – at least not with the event going on.

Global Lives Project is a video installation that pretends to represent diversity by portraying a day in the lives of ten people from Lebanon, Serbia, China, India, Japan, Malawi, Indonesia, Brazil, Kazakhstan and San Francisco. It disturbs me a bit to consider that this could be representative of humankind’s diversity, since I’m from Mexico, and there is not a single person from a Spanish Speaking Latin American country – or any Spanish Speaker whatsoever. On the other hand, there is a tendency towards non-traditionally western countries except for San Francisco. I’m aware of the difficulty to effectively represent diversity with only ten people, but all in all I believe that the project fell short in that manner.

Global Lives Project was successful with their installation proposal designed by Sand Studios and FOURM design+build+educate. The way the screens were set up, the movement it generated, I found magnificent. I only wish I could have seen this exhibition without all that was going on with opening night, even though it was a great party. I’ll have to go back some other time.

-- CLAUDIA SCHIDLOW