Daddy Issues Done Right

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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