Positive Innovation

Performance art

2011-11-12T13:27:00.000-08:00

http://vimeo.com/31158841

Venice Illuminated

2011-06-08T21:49:00.001-07:00

Amalia Pica
Venn Diagrams (under the spotlight), 2011

Fabulous!

Influence...or anxiety?

2011-04-22T14:01:00.000-07:00

I keep coming across wonderful light work I didn't know about. When I first saw Eliasson's work in 2007 I was crushed. I was finally moving from representing light to using light as medium and I wondered how I would continue when this fabulous work was already out there. Just thinking about all the differences possible in the use of paint or pencil ought to have set me straight, but it took a moment to absorb and fine tune.

Diane Landry Flying School, 2005 (on show at the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, NC 2005 - 2006)
This photo quality is not good, but you can just see the real effect is up on the ceiling above.

Alexander Gutke, Shattered, 2001 - 2007 (Sies + Hoke Gallery, Dusseldorf)
Simple and beautiful.

In this respect it was enlightening to visit "SLASH : Paper under the knife" in NYC last year. To see all the work being made of paper - a lot of it cut paper - highlighted the multiple approaches possible within the same medium.

There was some beautiful work in the Paper exhibition, but to me the pieces with a strong conceptual approach really shone. I'm including this image as it is similar to one she had in that show.

More Light work

2011-04-05T20:50:00.000-07:00

Julieta Aranda "There is a heppy lend - fur, fur awa-a-ay", 2011

This would be great to see in the flesh. Luminous paint is quite magical - and elusive. National Geographic shop had a luminous paint and flash gun set that made shadow "paintings" at home ... so luscious but never lasting long enough. Like fireworks, you can watch the magic over and over again. Good that this installation gives viewers the chance to experience that, presumably (there's a timer included in the materials list). Haven't had time to investigate Aranda's work but do remember seeing this one a couple of years ago and being very intrigued.

Julieta Aranda, Partially untitled (tell me if I am wrong), 2009 at the Guggenheim, NY

Wonderfully mysterious and dark, a feeling of Magritte's Black Flag in a sort of a way, though not a danger from machines but the unknowable qualities of time, the inexorable end point. And the beautiful if temporary experience meantime.

And, exactly the same, only different... the magical bedtime story. They've been around for a few years now. There is a better image out there b/c I have seen it. Can't find it right now.

Heather Zschock Whoo's there? 2005

light stuff

2010-07-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

Diane Landry, Mandala, 2002
at SECCA re-opening exhibition
Look Again earlier this month
(image posted by SECCA on Flickr)

Saw this hugely powerful light work by Diane Landry at SECCA in Winston Salem recently (great show all round btw). The laundry basket (with clear plastic water bottles strapped round the top) and moving light source create a shadow that expands and contracts, dominating the space magnificently, like a sort of moving Rose window... It was AWESOME.

Peter Kogler, Untitled, 2010,
Multiprojection, sound, loop
at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
(news on E-Flux)

Press release says it is a 360 degree multiprojection from 12 projectors, creating a "space of illusion that completely envelops the observer". The sound vibrations by sonic artist Franz Pomassl from home made devices and technological instruments helps dissolve the space, as "the ground disappears from under our feet." It looks seamless, love to be there!

Jim Campbell, Scattered Light (2010),
Madison Square Park, NY
(art news daily)

Almost 2000 LED lights in a 3D matrix, going on and off to animate shapes of figures walking across the space. The images (which obviously are conceived in 2D it seems) break up as you move away from the initial viewing point and "blurring the boundaries between image and object". Like to see this in the flesh. I loved the more luscious quality of his tiny Ambiguous Icon #1 (running falling) from 2000 - LEDs embedded in 12 x 15 inch plexiglass.

Well, ending outside the remit of art but in the spirit of this website and the right direction for the planet... This is an amazing book so far. Ray demonstrates that big business (the kind with US$700 million dollar worldwide sales each year) CAN completely embrace green technology, and that Industrialists can be activists with enormous power and influence. He's a relentless salesman which can get a little grating but his actions are worth it, and the idea that green equals profits might just get other industries off their butts...

I have the stirrings of ideas for art installations in this direction but they'll have to incubate for a while.

Vestiges of civilization

2010-06-24T05:20:00.000-07:00

I'm a long time admirer of Richard Slee - back when I had a production pottery even, or... especially... that's why I'm now a fine artist : production pottery is more slog than creativity when your body is the machinery. Italian dinnerware designers were having more fun designing new "rustic" lines for their factories. But back to the matter in hand...

Here Slee shows some interesting objects ... Hales Gallery press release says "Slee renders the possibility of function as a distant memory, rather like the evolutionary remains of a tail."

A pun on the Bauhaus "form follows function" right enough. A wry comment that in the age of mass production crafts have become merely decorative products. Trinkets to be embellished and displayed rather than used. The practice reminds me of something. Oh yeah. People hanging old guns and swords over the fireplace. Or trophy antelope heads or indeed nostalgic items, antiques of any kind. Relics of activities that used to be vital.

Slee's references are bringing up a lot of thoughts for me about contemporary culture.

Landscape paintings appeal because they show us fertile and productive land that our primitive brain sees as necessary to survival (or words to this effect). Crafts seem to appeal to people because of the mark of the hand, human input, and skill, somehow associated with "the good old days"... but it is all more complicated than that.

In "The Meanings of Modern Design" Peter Dormer describes Marx describing a woman making bricks for a living (p 151) - craft industry at its most brutal (activities we are happy machines have taken over). Antelope hunting and guns above the fireplace refer to days we'd all rather not replicate in reality - having to catch and butcher our own dinners, or fight off our enemies personally. But there is something in there about human- ness that we cling to. Perhaps it is the idea of our power to accomplish all these things... when sometimes it might seem that we do nothing anymore, that we are not powerful. That's not true, of course, but if you watch the news you might start thinking that way.

Hales' press release notes that Slee's work recognizes these issues. It challenges conventional notions of ceramics and transcends "its utilitarian roots whilst also sidestepping the self indulgent aspects of the studio tradition which became ubiquitous in the late twentieth century".

Craft becomes art when it is aware of its own references and contradictions. Cool! Please explain that to the folk who are probably still painting bluebirds on the hand-polished agates they then make into clocks.

My further thoughts about culture run on ... more appropriate on the blog about my own work, or explored in the sketch/note/book. They go hand in hand with reading "The Invention of Capitalism" et al and curiosity about what we can learn about ourselves by the interpretation of contemporary cultural artifacts. I feel there's a mother lode buried under these premises ... but I'm still nibbling at the edges.

Richard Slee at Hales Gallery, London, 4 Jun - 17 July, 2010

Seizure

2010-05-16T07:17:00.000-07:00

Artist Roger Hiorns is installing two aircraft engines (infused with brand name depression medications) on a terrace at the Art Institute of Chicago - I found this interesting...but not nearly as interesting as a previous work in London. In 2008 Hiorns filled a bed-sit (studio apartment to some of you) with boiling copper sulphate solution, let it cool and crystallize, then drained off the remaining liquid. Those modernist apartment blocks due for demolition may have been awful to live in but they are a boon to artists, right enough. The results are awesomely beautiful and unsettling.

The result looks like pictures of the Titanic with its decades of decay and colonization visible in the softening and blurring - but you can walk into it in the middle of a city. It looks like the work of ages but it happened in a few days. It seems dirty and ruinous but it is breathtakingly spectacular at the same time. I wonder if its poisonous, and how on earth they'll clean it up... or will it go to the landfill with the demolished building. Surely not... what could all that copper sulphate have cost???

Hiorns puts it well, saying something like it involved a lot of science but it wasn't a scientific project. I venture to say it is a microcosmic view of industry and technology laid bare for our consideration. Are there not parallels? The speed of it, the beauty and magic, the dirt and concern, the cost... the wondering what it is all FOR. Yet if we hear about a new advance in silicon chip manufacturing or evolution of factory processes it seems hardly noteworthy. Here, Hiorns the philosophical questions are encapsulated within the visible and factual.

Fellow exhibitor

2010-03-04T08:31:00.001-08:00

this is an installation by Hanna Von Goeler in the room next to mine at the Hunter College/Times Square gallery. Its great!

Nina Canell

2010-01-26T06:53:00.000-08:00

Nina Canell, "Temporary Encampment (Five Blue Solids)" (Detail), 2009. Showing in "The Inner Life of Things" at Frankfurter Kunstverein, Germany

Powerful image! A suggestion of craft (the multiple plinths) and industry (the plinths look like wooden crates) with constructivist and modernist overlay in the lush abstraction and the whole thing's sort of idealistic glow.

Canell's work apparently "stems from a basic interest in the convertibility of materials and conditions". She "combines everyday items and found objects - objects shaped by everyday processes, features and nature and transformed into carriers of new information - into walk-in, spatial installations with visually, audibly and intellectually experienceable, process-oriented arrangements". (that's from "Projects in Art and Theory" space, Cologne).

Whew. Well, that may be translated from German, as she is Swedish, and based in Berlin. The installation materials are "Elektromagnetische Gerate, Gipsplatte, Plastik" .... hm. Figured it had to be some kind of magnetism keeping those balls in the air. Interesting avenue to explore!

The other work of hers that I found was less visually powerful, more minimalist conceptual. Sound works, boiling things, cement sacks and neon tubes seemingly draped over rods or branches. I kind of like the new look with the floating balls.

Here is another image from the show. Egill Saebjornsson, "Grey Still Life II", 2009.

Fascinating, but the site was only in German so couldn't really get the gist. Want to know if the diagonal is out of paint only, or if there's a board sticking out towards us. Either way - I like it. Reminds me of Dada mixed with foundation course work, but it hangs together and makes me curious.

Fabulous news photo

2010-01-05T09:25:00.000-08:00

This is a press photo, by Ana Marin, c/o Reuters. Popped up on ArtDaily Newsletter. Shows fireworks exploding round the Burj Dubai, the world's tallest tower, at its opening ceremony.

Fabulous photo! Great to see the rich darks and the intimate feeling given by the leaves attaching us to earth, while ahead there is this astounding fuzzy, ethereal pillar - like something from an undersea plankton documentary or a fiber optic fashion show - lighting up the sky above. What a moment, the old, the natural, and the new!

I'm not entirely convinced of the value of the tower, nor care that it is the tallest. I haven't dwelled on the philosophical ramifications of the whole event - it may not be tied to positive change in any way - but as a documentation of human ingenuity and the ongoing aspirations of humankind, the photo does a pretty good job. Well, maybe the fact that we are using fireworks for show instead of destruction is a step in the right direction. What of the fact that oil has created new cities and extravagant expansion out of nothing? Commerce and material underpin the origin of all our cities so this follows the pattern of centuries. It is however interesting to see one that zooms through its evolution quite so quickly and flamboyantly.

plus ca change

2009-11-01T08:53:00.000-08:00

Ella minutia series # 1, 2009 (ambrotype, 19 x 24 cm) Bart Dorsa

On show at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMoMA?) is an exhibition of some strangely beautiful photographs by Bart Dorsa called Deep Inside My Dollhouse...more interesting because they are not perfect. Dorsa uses wet plates, homemade, chancy. Funny, the early days of photography had artists being able to leave realist art behind because the camera captured it so wonderfully - with a struggle, in those days. That struggle became interesting in itself. Now we have effortless digital photography for all there has been a growing move to explore inexact or imperfect processes (old and new) of capturing images photographically - we can say mechanically - an interest of mine of course. I can think of many over the last 10 years at least - light sensitive emulsion on eggs, bricks, fabric etc. Catherine Yass, Walead Beshty, and Pinky Bass spring to mind.

Rather like the way that Chris Markham's film La Jetee (made in black and white on a shoestring) captures some exciting drama to me as an artist (in a way that the Twelve Monkeys, however interesting an extrapolation, did not), so these primitive-feeling photographs do something that large scale perfection does not.

Its not necessarily the content of many of the Deep Inside My Dollhouse images - that seems a little cliched in fact. The mysterious girl child of dark fantasy... um. But the visual presentation makes that unimportant - or part of it, or something. The story line of the Cabinet of Dr Caligari or Eraserhead isn't really the point, in a similar way. In fact they are two of the most fascinatingly boring films I have watched...closely followed by Zabriskie Point (but that was just boring, seen for the first time in the early 21st century). But they stick in my mind, they thrill me with their suggested potential, the thinking behind their artistic circumstances. Their simplicity, their home-made-ness, their willingness to play around with some imperfections and capture an idea. Pinky Bass's camera hidden in a bible at mountain ceremonies does the same thing. We see the hidden-ness, the distance.

Julia Marionette # 3, 2009, (ferrotype, 19 x 24 cm) Bart Dorsa

The Minutia series on the other hand (top image) has no cliche in sight. It seems to have the most impact with its small image of a woman against a large black background. The image becomes archetypal, like an Indian temple sculpture, an Aztec drawing, a company logo...without surroundings to identify the era, the naked woman could be from any time in history. The black flattens. The fingerprints round the edges add to the idea of the image being seen, handled, an object of some intensity and accessibility. Interesting little gems.

Art and change

2009-10-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

This is one of a series of photographs taken by Sue Johnson in the township of Khayelitsha, outside Cape Town in South Africa. I met Sue as she was teaching at a recent Creative Capital Professional Development Program Workshop.

Following on from her work in Cape Town between 2004 -06, sales of Sue's photographs went on to fund a small not-for-profit photography group of township residents called Iliso Labantu, which means the eye of the people. Please do visit this site and see the work of people living on the edge, "marginalized by apartheid and its legacy of poverty and unemployment" (Sue Johnson) as they photograph their world. It is a wonderful site!

What it actually means is that within the townships it is now possible in some small way to achieve individual empowerment, and a valuing/sharing of self and culture that is very new. The photographic exhibitions that are put on act as a catalyst for this, and a mixing of the so far fairly separate ethnic/economic populations in South Africa.

Over 10 years ago I visited cousins living in Cape Town, who saw the townships as dangerous slums from their viewpoint behind all the"Armed Response" notices on the walls. So it feels like something pretty special to start changing that situation.

chronicling change

2009-08-26T06:27:00.000-07:00

Wilhelm Sasnal
Krakow, 2007
oil on canvas
40 x 40 cm

at the K21 Kunstammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Germany

Here's a guy I'd noticed recently for his style of painting elsewhere. Thought this image was Luc Tuymans at first - the casual insipidness - but see that it makes sense as Sasnal. I love it, and it comes as no surprise that, according to the press release...

He "conceives of the painted image as reflecting themes and aspects of the present moment...... he rebelled against Krakow's academic tradition... his artistic activities are conditioned by an awareness that by virtue of the retarding effects of the Communist period in his country, he himself is a witness to a still unconcluded postwar era..."

Interesting for him to be aware of this - "a consciousness that forms the subtle substrate of many images"

His paintings are mostly based on photographs, and the "presentation is configured freely around the classical themes of portrait, landscape, still life, genre, and history painting, thereby exploring the larger historical context of the art of Wilhelm Sasnal".

History in the making. History acute enough and different enough to be noticed maybe? Luckily, Sasnal's is an academic debate, a contemplative reflection on dark days of strife.

What of the same considerations in America? I'm not feeling so positive after seeing the disinformation and hate, the polarization of opinions and the lack of openness stirred up by the current health reform debate. (Debate!?? Debate involves sensible discussion, not calling everyone jerks!) We thought the election was hard won! My instinct is to go for the positive... but based on the opinions put forward in this last year I wonder, could the largest, richest country in the world have an even bleaker, more backward and more malnourished culture than we can currently comprehend?

Rejuvenation

2009-07-31T05:16:00.000-07:00

Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK

Concrete evidence of valuing the debate of contemporary art enough to fund it and nurture it ... seen here in the Baltic Center, a converted flour mill near Newcastle, England. Similar to the rejuvenation of areas of London and the Battersea Power Station that became the New Tate in London, Baltic is notable in that it is NOT in the capital. Newcastle/Gateshead was not too long ago considered to be a culturally barren area sinking deeper into the post industrial era without much hope. What has been done here - funded and encouraged by the city and government - is inspiring.

This next picture shows an exhibition at BALTIC of a collaboration between Slovenian born and New York based artist Thomas Putrih and American architect and design company MOS.

This installation shows styrofoam blocks and temporary materials such as cardboard, stacked to produce light weight structures that appear to be "on the verge of collapse".

"Putrih's work exists between science, sculpture and architecture, his projects informed by improviation and often collaboration with others. [...] Embedded in his work are ideas that undermine and question the fixity of things we know."

"This exhibition is presented at a time when a well-known modernist edifice in the center of Gateshead is in the process of being dismantled, piece by piece."

freakin fabulous

2009-06-19T06:28:00.000-07:00

see more work by this artist DJ Simpson

this is laminate or mirror laminate on plywood with trails cut by a router. It looks like rope (or sausages...) floating in space. It could come off as a gimmick, but he seems to be exploring its possibilities in interesting ways and aware of its brilliance. Brilliant idea - art historically, spatially, illusionistically speaking. Mechanically created imagery, and what's front is back. In the mirror one, what's front is back in several senses...

The scale of those large ones is amazing. Read somewhere that showing these in the purist gallery setting is like organizing a rave in a church. Awesome!

Fearing fear itself?

2009-05-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

Regina Jose Galindo - above Lipieza Social, below Who can erase the traces? 2003 (Bloody footprints from the supreme court to the National Palace in Guatemala City).

Despite a feeling that success with such weighted subject matter is rather like shooting fish in a barrel, and a personal unwillingness to dwell on fear, I am intrigued. It is powerful work.

The Fear Society is host to Galindo and others at the Venice Biennale...doesn't seem constructive to re-live fearmongers' propaganda and results, but it makes it compelling viewing, as we know. Isn't part of the problem with fear-based propaganda (separate from the horror of the things really happening) the result that it spreads disempowerment? A disbelief that we can alter things? I'd be REALLY interested in work that addressed that aspect of the news content, and how to counteract it. I have still to check out the other artists in that show.

Anyway, more of Galindo's work at http://www.artvehicle.com/postcard/30, and artipedia

She's recently spent time with her husband and daughter in a jail cell/container rented for $6000 and transported to Artpace in San Antonio to protest at incarceration of immigrant families at the T. Don Hutto Detention Center. Info at artpace on that.

Alex Hubbard

2009-05-08T05:59:00.000-07:00

Untitled (SOP # 3), 2008
One shot sign paint and enamel on aluminum panel
62 x 47 x 1.125 inches

This layering of opposites may be reminiscent of the table tops from so many of his earlier video works, but is more specifically conditioned by an interest in the opposition between fictive depth ("optical") and factual depth ("thickness") in painting and how this will allow for a collapse of the relationship between fore- and background. It also exposes a greater concern with Hubbard's production: the aim at constructing an index or the appearance of empirical research, while also clearly exposing his aim at tension through the construction of a structure of oppositions.

That's an extract from Standard Oslo's website.

Not sure what this does for positive change on a wider scale, but in terms of painting it is very interesting. His other work adds a different dimension to painting - the videos, C prints and altered screenprints take the paintings from academic dryness to irreverent and exciting new territory.

Light wall

2009-03-03T06:38:00.000-08:00

This is pretty cool. Its a model for the front of a building in Spain, that acts as a low res, pixellated screen.

Check out more images here

Review of Village in ART PAPERS

2009-02-01T11:59:00.001-08:00

Came across a review of Village in the latest ART PAPERS magazine. Interestingly the reviewer (Mari Dumett) mentions the emptiness of the dollhouses. What you see inside is untended dilapidation - peeling wallpaper, carpets curling up, dust and spider webs, highlighting this emptiness. After initially appearing to indicate human presence (my interest in electric lights) the lights in this installation emphasize abandonment which introduces "a subtle foreboding of collective trauma and loss". Dumett lists some of the stories that the artwork suggests - "rural exodus, urban migration, social class and industry-dependent communities" - all reasons for homes being empty, or, in fact, not functioning as homes. Dumett also links this absence with the negative space usually described by Whiteread's work. Great insight into an installation for those of us who didn't see it.

Though I resolutely focus on the positive there's an experience of absence in the USA that I haven't yet come to terms with. On the road between Newark Airport and NYC, for example, and a recent night trip to Tennessee I have felt a chill desolation. In the 80's I used to hitch-hike at night in the UK and I didn't feel this emptiness. Though I was in places that could be defined as similarly empty, I thrived on it. Perhaps I am different now.

Rachel Whiteread

2009-01-28T11:29:00.000-08:00

Pairing up nicely with my own interests in light and human activity, this is an installation that was recently at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It is called Place (Village), from 2006/8 and consists of 200 vintage hand-made dollhouses lit from inside. It also included 6 additional sculptures and 15 drawings by the artist, Rachel Whiteread. I've seen her cast works in various places and enjoyed them but have not seen this kind of work from her before. Electric light is definitely an indication of human presence...! I read the book "Devil in the White City" recently, to learn that the first time most ordinary people had ever seen (or heard of) incandescent electric light was at the world fair in Chicago in 1933. Now we take it utterly for granted - I'm glad about that but it makes you think. Wonder when these dollhouses were made... some of them constructed possibly by gaslight, or candle light.

kitty kraus

2008-12-06T17:18:00.000-08:00

This Berlin-based artist is doing a kind of Eliasson, making things happen mechanically (also an interest of my own). These installations aren't providing second hand experiences - in other words, illusions of what someone saw or imagined - but exist as immediately experienced reality. Its a sort of abstract painter's version of performance art perhaps, or installation - genres which obviously provide numerous precedents for the idea, but not quite the form these two artists' work is taking.

The upper picture shows the puddle left when a fluorescent light bulb (previously carefully frozen in a block of inky ice) has been activated in the gallery space, heating up the bulb and at some point exploding it.

The lower picture shows panes of glass constructed into light boxes with simple tape joins, and light escaping from it in a kind of perspective/hall of mirrors pattern. (Some of them have 500 watt bulbs in them that get too hot and also explode).

The wonderfully baroque puddle made itself, the light comes out from behind the glass to stupendous effect. It appears to be the ultimate "anti-aesthetic" decision, as far away from traditional art process as possible...but entirely linked in content. I like it.

I've just read a critique of Eliasson's work in Art Papers that seems to question his lack of ethical direction, real belief in anything, noting his lack of alignment with "social polemics" that, in contrast, accompanied many of those powerful art movements of the 20th Century. I thought we'd given up on the master plan for utopia...

My thoughts are that perhaps just setting out the possibility of something is enough. Let's get to the meaning slowly, individually. Maybe the fact that this art connects with the past but is achieved differently is message enough.

inflatable street art

2008-11-28T19:06:00.000-08:00

this is just magical. Such a cool idea! It looks like trash, its animated into something curious, endearing, enjoyable by something that happens anyway. It is free, it surprises, delights. It is shared. Its positive and innovative - it brings a smile to people, like a gift. A reminder that good things are possible? To me, it seems that way. No matter it is not rocket science, and we understand how it works - it shows us a new way of using the materials and the situation. For friendly fun. Fab.

something completely different

2008-11-20T19:18:00.001-08:00

Esther Pearl Watson
Before the landlord finds us
Acrylic, enamel & silver leaf on panel 48 x 48 inches

This is a large painting, given its outsider flavor. It has blown me away. Why?

It seems to connect with real life, and has a freedom about its expression that touches a chord in me. Esther Pearl has lived (apparently) life with an oddball family (Daddy built spaceships in the garage) and does not hesitate, riddled with doubt about her worthiness or worry about it being ridiculous to tell her story. There it is, in glorious home-made detail...but connecting a real sense of atmosphere and beauty (the sky is lavish, the fields stretch into the distant evening, and the dirt yard meltingly soft and beautiful) with the quirky childishness of folk art. Yet its about serious shit going on. I mean, running out on the rent...there is an urgency and a terribleness about it. Its not cosy, not safe, not pretty. We all understand the implications, and that is what gives this work its strength somehow. It is real, it connects to humans. On that note, I have to post another painting here...

Out of gas
acrylic on panel
8 x 10 inches

Here's (Dad?) racing across the highway with the (tiny) pint of gas that'll get them all out of there. The kids stand with their hair blowing as the cars whip by. Grit on the shoulder, exhaust, slip roads... and then that wonderful skyline and cloudscape. While all that is going on, someone (the artist - the artist in all of us) is looking around, seeing the world in all its fullness. It has the attention to seemingly irrelevant but telling detail that folk art has, and a lack of theorizing and paring down that in its directness, enriches the image.

Way to go Esther.

chuck ramirez

2008-11-05T15:30:00.000-08:00

Chuck Ramirez
Godiva 2, 2003
Photograph
inkjet print 30 x 38 inches

Not exactly recent work, but interesting in the context of presentation. Trash that we usually throw away photographed and presented as an art object. Beautiful.

Footnotes to Duchamp, still? In a way. But I think there is more going on here. The urinal brought the pissoir into the gallery - low end brought high. Here we recognize that this object, though trash, exists/existed, was created, designed and manufactured to showcase a valuable product. Its golden rays suggesting a relationship to icons and religious paintings can't be coincidental. But it is trash. Why? Because we throw it away? Because it has no use? Because it is made of plastic? Because there are so many of them?

The reality is that this could be called beautiful. Because of what we know (all of the above comments) we do not value it. What other things are we dismissing?

thoughts on craft

2008-10-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

Romanesco pendant, polyester resin, fiberclass, LEDs, 30 x 30 cm, made to commission. Ulrika Jarl www.ulrikajarl.com (lights)

I've mentioned craft a few times now in unflattering terms. What's my problem with craft? And what does this have to do with the "change in a wider sense" I mention on the header of this blog?

I'll share my history. My first art qualification was a 3 year diploma in studio ceramics obtained in 1984. After that I had a designer/maker ceramics business that did very well. I immersed myself in this particular section of the craft industry, the intersections of craft and industry, and all the reasons why craft survived in the age of factory production - along with how craft becomes a version of factory production. I saw a lot of craft work in all kinds of guises and situations. I enjoyed it, I bought it, I thought it often beautiful and intriguing but at some point it ceased to have much to offer me. I wanted more - what, I didn't know.

Ultimately I closed down my business and went back to university to learn more about fine art, getting a BFA and an MFA in painting. I never wanted to see another piece of clay again... My interest in craft ran out. Though I was disillusioned in various ways that may color some of my comments, the main point is that I feel craft (in the strictest sense) to be limited by certain parameters, and to function mainly within arenas that I would rather question. So when I say William Pye's bronze wave deserves a booth at the local craft fair I mean that he is showing a lack of awareness of wider issues. He is not addressing concerns that I consider important.

"Craft" refers to a skill, and craftwork often centers around these skills. A well-crafted novel MAY be rather dull conceptually. The craft of painting refers to how the painting is made, whether the layers will adhere, or the brushstrokes are well made or the face on the portrait is ... what? Neat? Suitable? Skilled? Professional? This has nothing to do with what art can accomplish by altering assumptions, opening up visions and ideas of things we hadn't thought of before. The visionary, intangible aspects that live on beyond the layers of varnish and nicely turned handles. My previous interest in craft and industry has become more conceptual, involving a contemplation of the cultural contexts and implications.

My current manifesto is that technology (or "skill") is just a tool, and that re-defining the criteria used to direct technology (or skills) opens up the possibility of new outcomes. This process is the basis of human ingenuity and development, at the core of progress, responsible for all the technological innovations we currently enjoy, for better or for worse. And as such can be seen at the cutting edge of contemporary concerns, part of the way forward. This is where I see artists contributing to contemporary debate, imagining the unimagined - as opposed to providing palliative products, soothing and reassuring us... which is what the Kinkade cottages are all about, no? Pleasure and fun and reassurance are fine and worthy, but ART is one of the few cultural ...what, institutions?... that is able to deeply question the fabric of society and its assumptions, and propose incredible, fantastic, unimaginable alternatives. As such, my definition of art is that which engages that potential.

Above is pictured an object for sale on an artist/designer's website, falling between craft, art, design and industry perhaps. Open for debate? There are huge crossovers between these areas - its not clear-cut, and all objects can function in different ways. That's my point about Alice Ballard's ceramics. It is a question of definition more than it is a value judgment. What is called craft can function as art, there is no doubt, but for an artwork (whatever other qualities it may have) to fall into the craft category is to conclude, for me, that it has not reached its full potential.

presentation and perception

2008-10-22T11:57:00.000-07:00

Leaf with Small Magnolia Pod, Large Magnolia Pod, 2004 white earthenware, white terra sigillata. Alice Ballard (photo by Luis Quiles, 2007)

Comparison of two presentations of this artist's work illustrate (to me) the move from craft fair to museum. Craft to art (or craft that also functions as art). Why? Its not a style thing, but about attention to the qualities of the item and what it signifies. The black and white (color) photo focuses on intricate form and pregnant lushness contrasting with the smooth, luscious but lifeless material the items are made of. There is balance, contrast, rhythm and a variety of descriptions of form. Black and white, magnolia pod... color issues of the south. Tender white... vulva-like forms... supported by encompassing blackness... well, yeah, it weaves some interesting ideas back and forth! There's a tenderness, a brokenness, a mystery and darkness about the beauty we are shown despite the hard and permanent, pristine reality. The image offers the possibility of discovery, of different understandings.

This color photo is downloaded from the artist's website http://aliceballardmunn.com and may be her own.

Maybe this collection of work doesn't function as well together as the previous selection but its presentation also positions Ballard's work as craft. It does not encourage me to linger on philosophical concerns, it doesn't particularly highlight the qualities of the objects. They become decorative products with a focus on the homespun and rigid layout. Serried rows might suggest factory anonymity, military overtones, or even informal markets (that may be the rattan...) but industrial hardness and logic seems at odds with the objects' lush, full roundness and textured additions, their feminine nature. Lying on a mat at a country market might work but isn't quite coming off. It also suggests casual and affordable - objects "unremarkable" in the daily round that gain cultural significance largely through acknowledgment of cultural context or removal from the market setting.

However, they are obviously for sale, and offers a handy way to display your purchase(s) for those without any better ideas.... What else would you do with one if you bought it? It would be harder (but not impossible) to display it in a special situation laid out permanently like the items in the first image. Or have it in a simple stand near a window where you could pick it up, or just observe the change of light over its shape. Then again, it might be easier to buy a Luis Quiles photograph of Alice Ballard's work with the presentation all worked out.

What am I saying? Last post mentioned the benefits of professional documentation. These images of Ballard's reveal that making the item is only part of the process of making art (or craft with benefits), given that the definition of "art" relies on a consensus of opinion regarding cultural significance.

Top photo from ArtDaily.com, publicising Tradition/Innovation : American Masterpieces of Southern Craft and Traditional Art, which will be at Knoxville Museum of Art, TN October 4, 2008 to January 18, 2009.

Eliasson again...

2008-10-16T10:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, its true, I really like Eliasson's work. His (visually) simple installations, at least. ArtDaily shows the new work in Vienna (lower image) and I found the above image by googling it.

Interestingly, Yellow Fog was first shown in NY in 1998, I think in a group show. I might have to search for a picture of that... Shows that sometimes developments take a while to reach their full potential, something that may get forgotten in the feverish demand for "new work".

Article mentions creating a new perception of urban space. I like it, a lot. Love the place you live! We are not robots and respond to our environment. The press release also talks about the effect of the inside reaching towards the outside, and connecting the two spaces. Apparently the electricity company (Verbund) has an art collection inside the building. Hmm, electricity, mysterious fog and Vienna kind of...spark... some possibly misguided Mary Shelley Frankenstein associations. Not a bad thing.

Interesting thought about the effect of presentation and professional photography on the perception of an artist's work. I found an amateur clip on YouTube which is good to see but maybe made me think of this. It won't let me post the link but it is easily found. (I'll also post an example of another artist's work illustrating the contrast, next time). Eliasson can now afford the best photographers, the costliest help, advice and materials, which adds an exponential curve to success, when it comes.

Yellowfog, on the facade of an Austrian electricity company HQ, Vienna. (They paid 75,000 euro - good move! Cheap at the price for great publicity and warm fuzzies for them.)
(above) photo by Rupert Steiner
(below) photo by EFE/ Hans Klaus Techt.

photography, asako narahashi

2008-10-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

I came across this photographer today and am blown away. She showed for the first time in Paris recently, having come to NY for the first time in the summer. (Must feel great!)

Its a situation that most of us are familiar with...being in the water, looking back at land... but I'm trying to think of other photographers who achieve what she does with this series.

She has gone further than anyone I've seen (I'm not encyclopaedic in my references, so tell me if I'm wrong) in removing the dislocation between viewer and image that photography is famous for. I seem to recall images of football fields with large blades of grass in the foreground, but the physicality of being in the water engages me on a bodily level beyond knowledge of proximity. I so strongly relate to the image can almost smell the water. At the same time as my senses absorb this setting and the freshness of the day, my mind considers the meanings along with the beauty of the graphic image itself.

She apparently holds the camera at chest level and just takes pictures by judging the waves and swells. Wonder how many she takes, and how exciting it is to open them up later! This could account for some of the different visuals - her own visual approach was overridden and it relates more to the body experience. I like to wonder about this stuff. Anyway

more at http://www.yossimilo.com/exhibitions/2008_07-asak_nara

I read a blog referring to these images with someone complaining about the lack of "fine craft" and "artistic merit" in photography nowadays... reminding me how valuable it is to examine one's assumptions and definitions occasionally.

text.... message

2008-10-07T08:12:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about the internet is that you can get to see contemporary work - by known AND emerging artists - around the country relatively quickly (if you are willing to spend the time looking...that's the catch). In the old days you'd have to wait for the catalogue or magazine article, or the book.

I like Holzer's large text pieces and this strikes me as a delicious image of one of her latest, created specially for the Guggenheim (wasn't it their re-opening?). It transforms the space, and we all know the shape of the building so well that it connects powerfully. To me. I found it at the ArtDaily newsletter. Bear in mind that (I think) you'd only be able to read this text so clearly from a vantage point close to the projector... the circular shape of the building means that the lettering would be displayed rather differently from an acute side view. I like that about it. Its not fixed, both in the medium, and in its accessibility. Interesting connection with speech, words, etc.

This is a quote from existing texts, quite apt for the current political situation, as we would expect. I have a yearning to see her project positive messages about hope rather than the gloomy words she prefers. Humans do survive incredible things, and it is usually because of hope and faith in the value of life. Positive is powerful.

IMAGE : For the Guggenheim, 2008. Light projection. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Text (pictured) : "Tortures", from View with a Grain of Sand, by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. Copyright 1003 by Wislawa Szymborska. English translation copyright 1995 by Harcourt, Inc. Used/reprinted with permission of the author. copyright 2008 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

COPYRIGHT ISSUES:

This reminds me, I hear of a bill they have passed in the senate that will effectively change copyright law (if adopted as they are pressing for) - to the detriment of the artist. Check out http://www.owoh.org/index.php to help prevent this from becoming the rule.

olafur eliasson

2008-09-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

Ok, here he is. I'm showing a couple of images from the works using water, as a contrast to the sculptor mentioned in the last post. Eliasson does many other things with light - and water - which can be seen at his website, link below.

The images here are two of my favorite of Eliasson's works. Totally simple but at the same time enlarging spectacularly on a phenomenon that we utterly understand. That he has brought it directly into a gallery/museum setting on such an impactful scale is quite an achievement.

We've had renderings, or versions of the effects of light, in all paintings and photographs since we moved beyond the middle ages, most inventively perhaps, with the impressionists. But a photograph, or a painting of an event is not the event itself, its paint or metal oxides creating the illusion of a real thing.

Here, if we go to the museum we have the event without mediation - we experience it for ourselves. Even looking at these images now, we understand the scale of the real event and that it would be experienced first-hand. (The scale of the installation below is the same as the above with the people - the reflection covers a wall-sized area.)

I saw a You Tube video of him discussing his work which was fascinating. In it he says that he is after engagement. He doesn't want the look of the work to be too "perfumed" and pretty. For him, the beautiful visuals are secondary - he believes that beauty and pleasure catch people's attention and suggest that it is worth getting more involved with, more engaged with the artwork.

The brochure for the NY waterfalls says "... at the root of his artworks... is his keen interest in the way we perceive the world around us. Eliasson's work encourages us to consider what we see, and more importantly how we see and experience our surroundings. With the New York City Waterfalls our attention is called to the riverfront and the addition of something seemingly natural - waterfalls - that have been artificially constructed".

Well, the NY river interface has been there our whole lives so we feel that IT IS natural, when lots of it really isn't. The waterfalls draw attention to the whole idea of man-made, and what it is for, what it does, what it might be for.

Not everyone has liked the waterfalls, perhaps because of the distance most people see the installation from but the photographs are interesting. It is quite a scale, even compared to the urban landscape that dwarfs it. The images (I couldn't download them) can be seen via this link to the brochure.

http://www.nycwaterfalls.org/#/about_the_waterfalls/Waterfall_Images

here you can read someone else's blog that discusses the waterfalls and some of its detractors
http://www.greatwhatsit.com/archives/2826

So William, though it may be very lovely to sit next to your fountains and beautiful ripples, Olafur appears to be infinitely more interesting.

Images shown above are from Notion Motion, 2005, at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands. See it at Eliasson's website here www.olafureliasson.net

looks cool but ...does it follow through?

2008-09-23T06:43:00.000-07:00

William Pye, Aquabar, Gatwick Airport, North Terminal. 2003
This piece is in the departure lounge. The water rises and falls in programmed cycles, creating an air-core vortex . The water finally reaches the top and ripples down the sides (as with vessels on right).

Looking at different approaches to making art, following my recent posts. Well, here's an artist - I didn't know him - described by a press release as "arguably Britain's most distinguished water sculptor". He is well known, has many, many public works but to me is hugely less interesting than Eliasson. (I'll post his work next time). Why does Pye's work generally fall into the merely decorative category?

The work IS decorative - its pretty, its showy. Its spectacular in some instances, he has water walls and long, stepped tanks spilling ripples in public plazas, luscious reflections, jets etc. He has figured out the vortex and the meniscus and some interesting qualities of water. It is fabulous that those fountains and vortices make it to public places. Good for Pye, getting out there and sharing, revitalizing, gettin it done. They look interesting, beautiful, and curious. But, as a serious artist with something to say... Makes you look, makes you stare... but he doesn't ultimately go on to make you think. There is more that he could do in this direction but he chooses not to. Each to their own.

William Pye, Pole, 2001
(the central pole is just water pouring out of the tank)

Pole has a wonderful stream of water but is cluttered and distracting with its utilitarian welded steel. I know its meant to be, but it hasn't pulled it off, it still seems clumsy. The mechanisms and practicalities intrude too much, without sufficient contribution. The point is, they don't contribute - they detract. He hasn't thought that through.

I'm not sure I want to post the next two pics... they reveal Pye's feet of clay and are outside the remit of my blog. However, I think they are needed to hammer the point home.

Little Plateau, 1984

Well, this IS from years ago, but still tethered to post-war British form. Abstracted geometrics artfully arranged. It is an endearing little thing to have in your garden, I might even like to see more of them in my neighbors' gardens. But its not part of a serious artistic dialogue.

Kanagawa, 2000, currently exhibited at Sculpture at Goodwood (UK).

This one is Hokusai's wave... Ok, I know Pye means well but this deserves a craft booth at the local flower show. Sorry, Pye, but it is clumsy, turgid, and labored. And not the least bit conscious and aware of its associations and restrictions. Even THEY could have been capitalized upon at a pinch.

Make up your own mind at www.williampye.com.

ecology of techno mind, Linz

2008-09-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

Image and text from an article at artdaily.org newsletter. I want to see more... Searching led me to various sites where art is particularly defined not as a commodity but an exploration of ideas. Totally the most interesting part, after I've paid my mortgage, of course. More later.

Linz - Ecology of Techno Mind presents a selection of works by Slovenian artists who are deploying technology and science as a means of delving into social reality today. ...These projects do not address the notional gallery visitor in the sense of traditional consumption of art, they place him in a similar situation than a visitor to the theatre or a concert, where the entire artistic event is performed on location and the artistic object cannot be bought or taken home. ... We are as consistent as possible in being serious about artistic exploration, for we perceive contemporary art as privileged, non-linear and multisensory production of meanings that, along with theoretical and philosophical practice, makes an essential contribution to understanding the world of change.

Jurij Krpan, Curator

More Fred Tomaselli

2008-08-28T05:56:00.000-07:00

Been thinking about something Fred Tomaselli said in an interview. Author Siri Hustvedt talks about there being two aspects of perception - expectation and attention, and how we usually see what we expect to see.

Tomaselli replies : "Back when I was a high school philistine, skateboarding around California's Venice Beach, some friends and I happened to go into a gallery that was showing the work of James Turrell. The entire exhibition appeared to consist of a single, large black rectangle painted on the wall of a dimly-lit space. We all thought it was the stupidest thing we'd ever seen and began lauging at it. I reached out to touch it, and to my surprise, my hand passed through the wall and into a limitless void. Solidity literally vanished into thin air. My laughter disappeared into awestruck silence. Turrell taught me to pay attention. he taught me that what you see isn't always what you get. ... I think great art involves a little magic on the road to altering perception.... I personally like to create a fictive premise for the work that breaks down on closer reading."

(Another Magazine, "Magic Realism" by Siri Hustvedt, Autumn/Winter 2007)
http://www.jamescohan.com/artists/fred-tomaselli/articles-and-reviews
(image below is the cover of a publication, also seen at James Cohan website)

Cut paper

2008-08-23T10:31:00.000-07:00

Jen Stark, http://www.jenstark.com . Paper again. Something in common with Tomaselli in the jewel-like color, detail and patterning. Interesting sculptural qualities for a flexible material we use every day for more ordinary things.

jewel-like richness

2008-08-21T05:56:00.000-07:00

A change back to more conventional work - well, sorta. Paintings that combine folk art, Russian lacquer work and fairy tales all updated with pills and leaves and resin. Beautiful - I want to rush out and stick stuff on black shiny surfaces! There's a need for magic in all of us - isn't it about the wonder of it all? Clear nights under the starry dome etc.

FRED TOMASELLI
Migrant Fruit Thugs, 2006
Photocollage, leaves, acrylic, gouache and resin on wood panel
78 X 96 inches

FRED TOMASELLI
Hang Over, 2005
Leaves, pills, acrylic, resin on wood panel
84 X 120 inches

http://www.jamescohan.com/artists/fred-tomaselli/#

Again no image - but we can imagine the sound

2008-08-14T20:30:00.000-07:00

"The story of human kind could be narrated strictly through the history of musical instruments. Questions as to the when, where, how and why of their development amounts to the study of the rites and rituals that, taken as a whole, define human culture.

Reveille, the bugle call which signals the start of the military day, is the subject of Wake Up, a sound and light installation by the San Juan-based artist collaborative Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. ... their ongoing investigation into Vieques, an island formerly used as a bombing test site by the U.S. military... [is] ... a critique of socio-political agency in the face of increasingly remote authority.

In focusing on the trumpet, however, Wake Up has its genesis in Returning A Sound, a video in which the artists attached a trumpet to the exhaust pipe of a moped that was driven around Vieques by one of the island’s residents. A military call was replaced by the trumpet’s steady, shrill vibrato, its pitch changing with the moped’s speed. Returning A Sound was one amongst several works done and shown in Vieques. Some of the works were didactic, others involved Vieques residents."

Excerpts from Hamza Walker's article "Good Morning" :
http://www.renaissancesociety.org/site/Exhibitions/Essay.Allora-and-Calzadilla-Wake-Up.148.html

(Figured out the link idea, finally!)

I'd love to have heard the trumpet on the moped exhaust - and the other sound explorations mentioned in Walker's article. Totally fascinating.

Staged Situation

2008-08-13T05:40:00.000-07:00

Now here's an artwork that has no picture but conjures up a beaut.... Excerpts from:

You Can’t Hold It, but You Can Own It

By ANNE MIDGETTE

Published: November 25, 2007 (NEW YORK TIMES)

Mr. Sehgal, 31, who lives in Berlin, creates what he calls “staged situations”: interactive experiences that may not even initially declare themselves as works of art.

...Yasmil Raymond, the curator of the Walker show, described a recent visit to the Biennial in Lyon, France, where she did not realize that a piece by Mr. Sehgal was on display. “He had a Dan Flavin, a Larry Bell and a Dan Graham in the corner,” she said. “The minute I entered the space, the guard came in and started stripping. I slowly crawled behind the Dan Graham. I was so embarrassed I didn’t know what to do with myself. I wanted to know the title of the piece, and I had to wait. At the end, when he takes off all this clothing, he says the title and then puts his clothes back on. It was called ‘Selling Out.’”

I'm smiling already!

read the article (sorry, its cut and paste right now - can't figure out why these links aren't live)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/arts/design/25midg.html

styrofoam cups

2008-08-12T18:33:00.000-07:00

Untitled, 2003
Tara Donovan
Styrofoam Cups, Hot Glue
Dimensions Variable
Ace Gallery Los Angeles, 2005
http://www.acegallery.net/artistmenu.php?Artist=8#

Isn't this fab? Has kinda romantic (as in sublime) overtones - storm clouds and awesome power.

Which reminds me, a friend told me the Terpsicorps dance company had performed here in Asheville the other night, a dance that was a hurricane. She said it was incredible. Couldn't find an image of it. :-(
www.terpsicorps.org

Virtual columns

2008-08-10T14:24:00.000-07:00

Like the majestic columns in the Parthenon - only see-thru. Magical! Made of videotape and nails.

"... 'Columns' continues the artist's startling and evocative employment of the unusual medium of unspooled videotape. Thirteen floor-to-ceiling columns of stretched tape will transform walking through the space into a dramatic physical and optical experience. The tape is stretched lengthways so that its thin edge and wide edge are seen alternately, creating a vibrant and disorienting effect as one moves around the columns. Masterfully manipulating the unusual physical properties of tape - lightweight yet strong and flexible - 'Columns' also extends its sense of confounding materiality to the gallery itself, subverting the common load-bearing association we expect of such an architectural feature."

Zilvinas Kempinas, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, NY (Jan - Feb 2006)
(note - I know this isn't exactly current news but if you haven't already seen it... dates don't matter for good stuff.)

Shadow and light

2008-08-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

Mary Temple, Mixed Greens, NY.

"These are trompe l'oeil paintings of light on walls, giving the appearance of sunlight streaming through a window.The painted outlines of windowpanes and plant life trick the eye as they appear to animate walls with the presence of light."

also www.marytemple.com

Paper folding

2008-08-10T13:19:00.000-07:00

I'm obviously into paper just now - here is a curious piece by Alyson Shotz. Did she take origami at college level, or what? I love it.

My Living Room Rug in Hyperbolic Space, 2007
double-sided inkjet print on folded paper
12 x 81 x 105 inches

http://www.derekeller.com/alysonshotz_work.html

Paper Bags

2008-08-10T12:42:00.000-07:00

To the other end of the scale - I love these, so simple but very cool. We recognize the object but it speaks of absence, purchasing, bland commodifying and lets face it, cheapness. Brown bags are the most humble of consumer goods. The shopping cart looks bigger, the tree looks sickly and vulnerable. Suggests all kinds of tangled values and realizations.

This is just my reaction, check out the work itself at www.benroosevelt.com

paper mechanics

2008-08-10T11:21:00.000-07:00

check this out - they look like solid things but they are not...

http://www.janesouth.com/HTML/Pages/06yellowcon_1.html