Rejuvenation

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.