Thursday, May 3, 2012
My Trip To New York By Mimi Annette Mayer
Thursday, April 26, 2012
The “supplement”. Draft for a performance.
Dia:Beacon, as a start.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
-Off Schedule, On the Trend- Armory Show
When I walked into the Armory Show, I did suspect I would be as interested in the art presented as repulsed by the food court like experience. I was right. As I was discovering the different galleries and the artists they represent, I felt like I was in an all you can eat buffet where the caviar and bananas were presented alongside each other for the consumer to consume. At times hard to digest, the sequencing of everything was processed in a gluttonous way.
Progressing through the Armory Show, loaded with the art that was present, much of it was surpassed by the next booth. I wouldn’t say that everything was of the same interest, but moving with a certain speed, with the flow of the quickly increasing crowd, at times I could not remember what I had just seen. To the question ‘what did you like’, I would simply answer, ‘I will take a nap after I digest it all and will get back to you later’. Yes, more than a week after the visit to my first Armory Show, I am still digesting the information with random visual notes about what struck me, either the classical or the ‘new’ art pieces, as the words to describe the experience are slowly trying to emerge.
How is art informed in art fairs? Is the art actually important? Who comes to see the art work if not with the intention of looking at what sells and for how much? Walking in a museum or gallery space surely brings a different feeling than an art fair does. Do we think about the content of the art piece? What it invokes? Or, simply how much its value can increase? When the art is validated by the art world, simply by being present in art fairs, is it still time to be thinking about what it represents or even being moved by it?
I do remember some of my favorite pieces now! I always enjoy seeing Kiki Smith’s work. Its complex simplicity, its inherent beauty, brings me back to my childhood dreams with vivid imagination.
Another piece was a newly discovered artist whose retrospective I had the opportunity and pleasure to see last month at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles: Alina Szapocznikow. Her work was love at first sight.
At Volta art fair, I was delighted to see the work of a Montreal-based artist, Sophie Jodoin, whom I have been following for few years. . Battat Contemporary Gallery’s booth displayed Jodoin’s work. www.sophiejodoin.com. The Independent was also on my path that weekend in beautiful Chelsea. All these art fairs had the intention of selling art, but they were also a gigantic platform for artists.
The intensity of viewing art was at its paroxysm last week in New York City with 7 days in a row of major art fairs and exhibitions in prominent museums. It actually finished in my case by exhibiting in the International Juried Photography Exhibition at Viridian Artist in Chelsea, curated by Jennifer Blessing (Guggenheim Photography Curator) from March 13th to the 31st. I must admit to the incredible cliché : I love New York (and all it has to offer for the arts.) I did see amazing and inspiring art and was very happy to have my part in it.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
New York March 2012
Our class trip with Hanru to New York City was overwhelming. We packed in on average two to three museums per day, which included meeting with most of the curators as well. The museums that stood out high above the rest were the Guggenheim and the Dia Beacon. Of all the speakers, the two from these museums were also the most interesting and inspiring to listen to. Both places presented art in a totally unique way that moved me.
I had never been to the Dia Beacon before and was very impressed by the architecture of the museum and the way the art was displayed. The entire museum is naturally lit with skylights and windows. I don’t think I have ever seen art shown in that way before. It completely changes the viewing experience. The way the light hits the objects changes throughout the day and so the pieces look different depending on the time of day and quality of light. I have to say I think I was more impressed with the actual building itself than the art inside, but I was incredibly drawn to Richard Serra’s circular maze sculptures. While walking through Serra’s Union of the Torus and the Sphere (2001) I felt the quieting of my mind and a heightening of my senses. I became aware of the temperature drop, the way the sound differed, the way the texture of the walls felt, and the patterns of light and shadow that formed on the walls. The way the walls curved in an uneven way altered my sense of balance as well, however I still felt a sense of calm and peace while inside the mazes. I returned to the Serra sculptures later in the afternoon and was pleased to see how the light had changed and how that created a whole new experience inside the structures. I really enjoyed the talk by Dia Beacon’s curator Philippe Vergne. I loved what he said about “art is now, it is in the present”. It was interesting that he mentioned the Rothko Chapel in Houston, and discussed how different ways of viewing art, enhance and change the viewer’s experience. I had been home the weekend before and was telling my father about our trip to L.A. and my response to seeing some of Rothko’s large, subtle paintings. He told me about the chapel and his experience of how viewing the paintings within such an amazing space affected him deeply. After viewing the work at the Dia Beacon, listening to my father describe the experience of the Rothko Chapel, and hearing Philippe talk about theses two spaces and different ways of viewing art it made me think of all the possibilities of how art could be shown and viewed.
The Guggenheim also has a very unique way of displaying art. I had been to the Guggenheim before about 17 years ago when I was in high school. I remember it making a huge impression on me at the time, this time even more so. I really enjoyed how curator Sandini Podnar personally took us around and spoke about all of the exhibitions in the museum. Her passion and enthusiasm enhanced the whole viewing experience for me. I enjoyed the way John Chamberlain’s jumbled metal sculptures were displayed throughout the museum going up the ramp. You go off into separate rooms filled with different exhibitions. The one’s I enjoyed the most were Being Singular Plural and the Francesca Woodman retrospective.
Within the first room of Being Singular Plural Amar Kanwar’s short films of Burma were displayed in a beautiful way. The presentation in this room was a brilliant. The room was dark and small sheets of paper hung down from the ceiling and video clips were projected onto the pages. Off to one side there were books on display that had the first pages torn out by the Burmese bookshop owner Ko Than Hay in 1994. These pages had contained ideological slogans inserted by the county’s military regime. It was an ode to the thousands engaged in the ongoing struggle for democracy in Burma. It reminded me of the film Burma VJ, which captured this struggle of the fight for people’s freedom under a violent oppressive military regime. My absolute favorite part of Being Singular Plural was the film Residue 2011 by Sonal Jain and Miganka Mahukaillya. You enter into a small dark room with the film playing in a loop with surround sound. The visual imagery in this film was stunning and subtle. It had the texture of the works of Aaron Siskind, the color palate of Richard Misrach, and the mechanical structures and machines were reminiscent of Lewis Hine and Bernd and Hilla Becher. I was mesmerized by the images and the sounds. There were pressure gauges that looked like eyes that morphed into moths and flies. There were sounds of monks chanting over steel machinery inside an abandoned factory. Rust colored oil drums in an over grown field with static noise. Certain times ambient noise from the surrounding scene with rumbling noises in the background would get really loud for a split second. The sounds and music were very effective at hinting a presence other than the viewer. The colors, light, textures, and the slow panning of the camera were visually seductive. I went into the room and sat and watched several parts of the film at different points. Although the order of viewing did not seem to matter I still wish I could have watched it from start to finish.
-Celia Lara
New York
The last time I was in New York I was with a class visiting a wide range of museums and galleries. We saw the Whitney Biennial, went to MOMA, the New Museum, and many more. The most unique show I saw was Testimonials: 100 Years of Popular Expression at El Museo del Barrio. Our host was Deborah Cullen, the curator of the show, who had been part of the museum since 1997. During our visit, she walked my group through the show and explained that the work was all pulled from the museums permanent collection or on loan from private collectors. Testimonials set itself apart from other shows we observed on our trip because the majority of the artists were not traditionally trained makers.
This temporary show began with an artist named Ejlat Fewer who documented New York’s Puerto Rican community and nooks between neighborhoods. He photographed what these communities chose to do with the empty spaces between New York skyscrapers. These images capture personal shrines, gardens and gathering spaces. The photographs gave us a unique view into this private community that has a lot of vibrant personality. It was special to see what is behind the large buildings that make up what most people know as New York.
Our tour then led to a series of sculptures that Gregorio Marzán, a NewYork based Puerto Rican sculptor, created for his grandchildren as toys. He made animals and other items out of any found materials he had such as foil, cloth and household items. The sculptures were donated to the museum after he passed away by his family. It was wonderful to see that these sculptures were actually used by his grandchildren from the wear and tear that was visible. It’s refreshing that the museum is displaying someone’s natural talent made from fascination, imagination and pure love.
Further into the show was a grid of pano drawings that are made from ink on handkerchiefs. These particular drawings were made by inmates from a San Antonio, Texas prison. Mostly black ink on white handkerchief, the drawings were very detailed and animated. Some of the pieces seem to relay their history and dreams out to there loved ones where others appear to be telling a story of a past life or experience. Being from Texas and having a cousin that has been in and out of jail, this series was significant to me. The drawings resembled the tattoos that my cousin has covered his body from head to toe. Looking at the pano drawings, I kept thinking about how people create their own artistic expression through the materials that they have and say so much.
The final section of the show displayed cloth cacti in clay pots made from southern states border patrol uniforms. The work dealt with the Mexico border and the crossing of immigrants into the United States. Since I have also spent a lot of my life visiting South Texas where the patrols do make their presence known, there are numerous checkpoints and the landscape becomes denser with desert like plants, the work was significant to me. Margarita Cabrera is the woman that holds the workshops for female immigrants to share there stories and makes these cacti.
The unique array of mediums presented in the show was inspiring to see. As a curator, Deborah Cullen was very thoughtful in her choices and display of the show. The intent of the show that art is all around us was a necessary reminder for me as we saw a multitude of contemporary art, well known artists and exhibitions, and many museums.
-Kelly Nettles