Posts archive: December 2015
Christian Viveros-Fauné penned this succinct argument indicting the current crop of "ultra high net worth" art collectors, whose conservative interests lie less in creative experimentation than in potential ROI, and whose considerable resources are now funding the presidential campaigns of the likes of Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. I'm not sure that laying full blame at the feet of these collectors for driving the high degree of artistic blandness he describes as being on display at Art Basel Miami is an entirely fair assessment, but much of the fault undeniably lies in the patronage structure of the art economy, and experimentation and risk-taking seem currently to be playing on the losing side.
Beyond
Nao Bustamante to lead USC Roski School of Art and Design’s MFA program
- Saturday, October 24th, 2015 | (0) Comments | Add comment >>
Performance artist with bay area roots Nao Bustamante will be helping reshape USC's MFA program starting in January 2016. Bustamante will have her work cut out for her - she joins USC in the wake of the recent defection of an entire MFA class over program promises broken. Stretcher wishes Bustamante the best of luck in her new position.
Two thought-provoking articles recently surfaced in the international press that lay bare the economics of the visual arts system. In a roundup of an unusually hectic summer market, Kenny Schachter names names and discusses deals gone wrong in a recent edition of Monopole. If you didn't already know how the gallery/collector ecosystem works, worth a read. And, a summary of a study recently completed by the Paying Artists campaign published by the Guardian found that more than 70% of artists who took part in public exhibitions last year worked for free. More attention should be paid to the economic systems in which artists (try to) work - encouraging participants at all levels to engage rather than remaining passive, or worse, complicit in economic systems that undermine artists.
After relocating to the space previously occupied by Rudolf Zwirner, the Priska Pasquer Gallery has launched its inagural exhibition showcasing artists' responses to the "new modernist" present - and speculative future - of the digital age. In the gallery's statement Pasquer poses several broad questions: "How do artists respond to the digital transformation? What themes define art in the digital age? How does the digital age change the way artists view the world? How does art work in the digital age and how can artists respond to the new challenges that present themselves?" In "Reset I", the first in a series of curatorial and artistic explorations of these themes, Pasquer draws together works by an international roster of twelve young artists, and includes an array of approaches - sound and video, 3D animation, performance, paintings, and sculptural objects. Among those works on display: in "Level Cleared", American artist Evan Roth presents a giant grid of tiny hand-dated, transparent fingerprint smears, suggesting both an ink-and-paper displacement of touchscreen interactions and the hasty, distracted repetition of biometric recognition. German artist Adrian Sauer takes the notion of the grid more literally in a series of photographs of humble graph paper. The transition of photography from a chemical to a digital, algorithmic process, subtle variations in the monotonous sameness of blank grids, and the camera's distortion of the very precision demanded by a grid all subtly reveal the lie of control and precision that digital media promises.
Priska Pasquer Gallery
September 5 - November 14, 2015
https://priskapasquer.com/?v=3a52f3c22ed6
It's been a little over a month since the annual art fairs all returned to San Francisco on a single weekend. This year there were just two art fairs instead of three: ArtPadSF was once again at the Phoenix Hotel, and an expanded artMRKT took over the Fort Mason exhibition center. Consolidating to two fairs at once seems more reasonable. Not only is it less overwhelming for attendees, but the shakeout has left a strong dichotomy between the two. artMRKT is an international art fair in San Francisco, while ArtPadSF is a "San Francisco Art Fair." The latter is very intimately tied to the character of the city and specifically to the surrounding neighborhood, with the exhibitors in hotel rooms around the central pool, surrounded by the buildings of San Francisco's Downtown/Tenderloin neighborhood.
One of the implied themes of ArtPadSF was art at all levels of the event, from the city setting, to the architecture and vibe of the Phoenix Hotel, the exhibitors' use of the hotel rooms, and finally to the works of art themselves. At the city level, a video installation by Andrew Benson entitled Shine Bright Plastic Diamonds projected on the wall of a nearby building, putting the art back into the surrounding neighborhood. The pool acted a centerpiece for performances, such as the Tsunami Synchro synchronized swimming team.
The hotel rooms can be challenging spaces for exhibiting art, but some galleries were quite creative in their presentations. Notably, McLoughlin Gallery turned the centerpiece of Cristobal Valecillos' recent solo exhibition American Family into a custom entrance to their hotel room. Visitors walked through the entryway, constructed entirely of cardboard, to enter the interior of the room which featured Valecillos' portraits.
Overall, ArtPadSF tends to have a higher concentration of quirkier and edgier works on display each year. Longtime presenters Marx & Zavattero introduced mix-media pieces by David Hevel that were fun and unusual in their textual coarseness for an art fair.
Non-standard materials seemed to be a focus in much of the art on display. It is not every day that one encounters artwork made entirely from trailer rubble, but this is precisely the source of Elizabeth Dorbad's pieces presented by Unspeakable Projects.
On the other end of the scale for source material and finished product, artist Andrea Patrachi repurposed old cameras to make robots in a quirky display presented by Mirus Gallery.
There were also works beyond the traditional physical materials and dimensions, such as a variety of pieces for video and multimedia. One of Oakland's more experimental galleries, Krowswork, made strong use of their space combining projected video and physical media at different angles to create a single immersive experience. Their presentation included subtle video and sculptural works by Mark Baugh-Sasaki and striking performance videos by Monet Clark.
Source materials even brought in the conceptual, as in Hughen/Starkweather's pieces based on data from architectural plans of the Bay Bridge, presented by Electric Works. Their work featuring architectural precision and analytical elements, but also more organic and liquidy elements that give the art an unexpected sense of warmth.
In keeping with the San-Francisco-centric nature of the exhibitions at ArtPadSF, Electric Works also includes a wall of amusing drawings by local luminary Dave Eggers featuring animals and snarky captions. Eggers' drawings are an "analog" version of the popular captioned internet photos, but with darker and more subtle humor.
Although a majority of the exhibitors were local, there were still a few galleries from elsewhere. Beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary came from Birmingham, Alabama, and presented an eclectic mix of two-dimensional and three-dimensional works. Susanna Starr's aptly named Magenta / Orange was among the more visually captivating in its simplicity, but also a bit perplexing in its uneven texture and shape, which invites speculation on what it is and how it was made.
The setting and tone for artMRKT were a stark contrast to ArtPadSF which took place at the Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion, a large exhibition hall along the bay. Light and airy, the space provided a blank canvas for the exhibitors and artworks.
It all seemed quite conventional. This is not to say that there wasn't unusual or compelling work to be found. Michelle Pred's trio of red conceptual pieces from Nancy Hoffman gallery stuck out for its combined composition.
A fun exhibitor that has been at artMRKT for a couple of years is New-Orleans based Red Truck Gallery. The art they display is difficult to categorize, but tends to fall into a mix of styles that blend traditional craft, found objects and contemporary urban sensibilities. Their exhibition was larger this year and featured more artists, including graffiti-inspired pieces by Laura Ortiz Vega and glass-encased objects by Jason D'Aqiuno.
The space at the larger fair also opened up opportunities to consider larger works. Joanie Lermercier's "Light Sculpture" pieces from New-York-based Muriel Guepin Gallery featured arrangements of large rectangular prisms (or cuboids) on a human scale along with light projection. Her pieces also included prints and video.
artMRKT’s international scope meant a broader geographic sampling of galleries than at ArtPadSF. In addition to several exhibitors from New York and Los Angeles, other cities and galleries were represented including Zemack Contemporary Art from Tel Aviv, Israel. Zemack presented Israeli artists in its exhibit, including Angelika Sher.
Closer to home, there were more Oakland galleries present at artMRKT, including Mercury 20 and Chandra Cerrito Contemporary. Mercury 20 featured works from member artists, including Charlie Milgrim. Chandra Cerrito featured some larger-scale works, including the captivating Ghost in the Machine by Randy Colosky. Familiar San Francisco galleries such as Stephen Wirtz and Jack Fischer, were also at the fair for the first time.
It was interesting to see that several local galleries that were at ArtPadSF last year, including Mercury 20 and Swarm, moved to artMRKT this year. It seemed to be a deliberate move to feature Oakland Art Murmur participants as a group at artMRKT, though ArtPadSF officially had this listed in their program as well (but only two galleries were in attendance).
Despite the consolidation, two fairs and over 100 galleries is still an overwhelming amount of art for anyone to take in during one weekend. Now in year three, have Bay Area art fairs established themselves as a viable platform for art-lovers looking to discover new art, as well as galleries attempting to connect with new collectors? Record crowds and decent sales suggest that ArtPad and artMRKT may have finally found their legs. This year's change to fewer fairs, each with distinct focus seems successful. We'll have a better idea if this is a lasting formula when they come around again in 2014.
Below are more photos from both art fairs.
[Photos courtesy of Maw Shein Win, David Lawrence, and Amar Chaudhary]
ArtPadSF
Narco Venus (Angie) detail (2011), Carolyn Castaño, Walter Maciel Gallery
Cloud Jars, Rodney Ewing, photos on mason jars filled with water.
Retna New Image Art Gallery.
Blackout 2 (Fruit with Burning Cigarette) (2013), Tim Sullivan, Steven Wolf Fine Arts
Burning House (July, sunset) (2011), Carrie Schneider, moniquemeloche gallery
St. Petersburg, Matthew Picton, durular, enamel paint and pins. Toomey Turell gallery.
artMRKT
Wild Grass (2013), Kirk Maxon, Eleanor Harwood Gallery
Richard Bassett, Needpoint pillows. Jack Fisher Gallery
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, Chester Arnold, Oil on Linen (78 x 94 inches). Catherine Clark Gallery.
Float (Orange), Keith W. Bentley, repurposed resin figure, plastic floats, paint, plaster, and steel.
Animalia Chordata, Gabriel Garcia-Columbo, multi-media and videos of 4 and 6 minute loops. Muriel Guepin Gallery.
Transformation Spectrum (2013), Miya Ando, K Imperial Fine Art
paintings by William Harsh, Vessel Gallery
Bottom 2, Bottom 3 (2012), Adam Parker Smith, Evergold Gallery
Rose Meridian (2011), Cordy Ryman Eli Ridgway Gallery
Obscenity - a version for brotherhood (2010-2013), Taro Hattori, presented by Swarm Gallery
Amar writes regularly about art and music in the Bay Area and blogs at catsynth.com.
The 55th Venice Biennial energetically shoulders through the ecologic and economic gloom hanging over the city, presenting art from a record number of nations. If one follows the intellectual route steered by Massimiliano Gioni, lead curator of the central international exhibition, the motley of competing shows even begins to make some sort of communal sense. By including historical artists (forty of the 158 artists in his exhibition, The Encyclopedic Palace, are dead) and extra-canonical art practices (including ceramic sculpture, voyeuristic photography, and "outsider" art) in his reading of "contemporary" art, Gioni recoups an emphasis on invention while sidestepping modernist notions of "progress."
Although curation of the national pavilions has little to do with the central show, the best work in the national exhibitions resonates with Gioni's undogmatic approach. For example, Britain's Jeremy Deller orchestrates photographs, murals, videos, and very welcome social practice (serving tea) into a view of Britishness that is simultaneously caustic and generous. And Tavares Strachan paradoxically manages to represent the Bahamas, with a sideswipe at colonialism, by planting his own hybrid flag at the North Pole. On the meta-political level, the turn away from didactic work seems hopeful. If there is a way past the climatalogical doom threatening humans and our biological cohort, it travels through the realm of things we don't know yet. On the artistic level, it means fresh art, not necessarily new art, but non-art-star work. The not-so-usual suspects hitting it out of the Giardini include sculptor Ron Nagle, whose suite of palm-sized, unnameable ceramic objects might just be the most sublime experience on the island.
The 55th Venice Biennial runs June 1 through November 24, 2013 at the Giardini and Arsenale in Venice, Italy.
Mural of William Morris pitching Roman Abramovich's yacht away from the Giardini, one of the components of Jeremy Deller's British Pavilion. Abramovich's is infamous for mooring his yacht at the entrance to the 54th Venice Biennial.
The "tea party" component of Jeremy Deller's installation at the British Pavilion
This is either ice from the North Pole or a clone of the original ice created by Tavares Strachan with the help of a physical chemist. Strachan no longer knows which piece is which.
The SOMArts Cultural Center sold over a thousand advance tickets for Saturday evening's Night Light event, a "multimedia garden party" curated by Justin Hoover (with support from Paul Baker and Ryan Wylie of the Free Form Film Festival and Dorothy Santos). That seems remarkable to a viewer who recalls when a South of Market show of new video and performance art might draw an audience of twelve. It seems even more remarkable considering the logistics of such a large and technologically demanding project. The museum-scale, tech-heavy exhibition was too expensive for the Center, whose budget barely rates as shoestring, to keep running for more than an evening. Highlights for those lucky enough to score tickets included the garden walk installation of inventive video feedback works, curated by Free Form; a live collage of film loops by Anna Geyer, and a video painting by Naomie Kremer.
Image: still from Garden of Forking Paths, Pete Belkin and Philip Benn, 2012, video projection on bamboo
The New York Times posted a concise overview of art as social practice that, though it glosses over its decades-long history, does nicely summarize the deep (perhaps irreconcilable) divide between the market and its institutions on one hand, and social practitioners on the other. Stretcher has covered many such projects over the years - some more and some less successful - and has chatted with some of the field's most important theorists. As institutions struggle to keep up with - and reframe for conventional display - these projects, however, they're still asking the same, stale questions.
Snoop Dogg and Hologram Tupac ain't got nothing on Anne McGuire's awesome performance with her video self this afternoon at SFMOMA. Anne + VideoAnne seamlessly bantered, harmonized and traded leads as they went though a selection of McGuire's greatest hits and classic covers.
Long-time collaborator Wobbly provided musical accompaniment, delighting the packed house with his sonic mutations. All part of the ongoing live performance series happening this summer and fall in conjunction with SFMOMA's Stage Presence exhibition. There's one more matinee show with Anne McGuire tomorrow afternoon, then next week Cliff Hengst takes the stage.
See the SFMOMA website for the full performance schedule. Tickets are free with museum admission, but space is limited so get your tickets early to make sure you get seats.
STAGE PRESENCE - Theatricality in Art and Media
Performance Series
SFMOMA, various dates and times, ongoing through Oct 4, 2012
Free with museum admission
It's been about a month since three major art fairs descended on San Francisco all in a single weekend. Bay Area art lovers were overloaded with the grand scale of the San Francisco Fine Art Fair at Fort Mason, the densely packed rows of ArtMRKT at the Concourse, and the quirky poolside hotel rooms of ArtPadSF. Now looking back with the perspective of a few weeks, it was ArtPadSF that stood out most as distinctive and tied to its host city.
ArtPadSF took place at the Phoenix Hotel, a retro motor lodge that feels like it was transplanted from 1960s Southern California into the middle of San Francisco's Tenderloin district, an oasis with a pool and tropical decor wedged among the neighborhood's crowded buildings.
Rather than treating this location as simply a coincidence or a novelty, ArtPadSF fully embraced it. Indeed, during the opening speeches, a major theme was "Art and the Urban Environment". There are many ways to reflect the urban environment: architecture, geometry, street art, music, lifestyle. Many of the artworks on display fit one or more of these aspects. Additionally, there was an effort to connect the show with the surrounding urban community through partnerships with the city and local organizations.
Each participating gallery or organization occupied a hotel room, turning it into an exhibition space. For the most part, this meant emptying the room of its furniture and using it as a small gallery. But many of the participants found inventive ways to make use of the hotel room's features, including closets and the bathrooms.
Perhaps the most original (and conceptual) use of the space was the special project presented by James Mitchell Perley and Elaine Lima. This site-specific piece turned the hotel room into a…hotel room, with the artists filling it with their own furniture and decor selections. But this hotel room was augmented with cameras and video. The interior featured acted scenes portraying the sexual innuendo associated with "hotel rooms" in stark realism. But the true voyeuristic aspect is found on the video screens inside the room, showing visitors interacting with the visuals inside. The piece is a tribute to George Kuchar who passed away last year and was featured in a posthumous retrospective at the San Francisco Art Institute, where Perley and Lima are MFA students.
Galleries that participated in multiple art fairs selected specific artists and works that fit with the urban vibe. For example, the McLoughlin Gallery, which was also at Fort Mason, featured work by ESK (aka Evan Wilson) that takes elements of graffiti and street art and projects them into three dimensions. His mixed-media assemblages use translucent plexiglass panels to make his urban-inspired imagery pop out from the flat surface. He also gives a sense of beauty to imagery and texture often associated with urban decay.
Another direct interpretation of the urban landscape could be found in William Swanson's pieces at Marx & Zavattero. His large and colorful acrylic panels fuse futuristic architecture with the straight lines and geometric shapes of International style and industrial construction sites with natural elements. Despite the bleakness and conflict implied in Swanson's artist statement, these images had a hopeful quality.
Some of the exhibitors geared their offerings towards the cultural rather than the architectural or visual aspects of the urban landscape. Denver-based Carmen Wiedenhoeft presented works by photography Richard Peterson who photographed San Francisco's early punk scene. Here we see images of Bruce Conner, Patti Smith, the Ramones and others.
Zackary Drucker's photographs and video pieces, presented by Los-Angeles-based Luis de Jesus Gallery explored gender and self-identity, and in particular the artist's own transgender identity. Her pieces ranged from pretty to quite provocative. And there is a sense of humor in her work, particularly the self-portrait doormat casually placed at the entrance to the room.
Oliver DiCicco’s kinetic sound sculpture was graceful and architectural in appearance, and its sound and motion was quite captivating. The controls set magnets into motion and generated low rumbly vibrations that grew in volume and intensity over time. This was a piece that required some patience to fully appreciate, but it was worth the wait.
Longtime denizens of the mid-Market neighborhood, the Luggage Store Gallery, were on hand, with samples from their STREETOPIA show along with pieces from previous exhibitions. The Black Rock Art Foundation, who are also based in the same neighborhood, returned this year with photography from Burning Man as well as sculptural and installation works.
Several of our friends from across the bay were represented as well. Mercury 20, an artist-run collective gallery in Oakland's Telegraph Avenue corridor featured works by several of its member artists, including this sculpture by Leah Markos.
Throughout the event, I was pleased to see works like this that would challenge more traditional collectors. Perley and Lima's hotel-room installation was perhaps the most conceptual and challenging for a collection, but there were other exhibitors that did not shy away from showing more conceptual pieces, such as Rose Eken's "Enter Night" at Unspeakable Projects and Willie Cole's assemblages of women's shoes presented by Beta Pictoris from Birmingham, Alabama.
My hope is that these more conceptual works can be part of the "art fair" function of the art fair, pieces seriously considered by collectors who can care for them and share them. Other galleries that did not directly feature art routed in the urban landscape nonetheless presented selections that reflected aspects of it. Toomey Tourell featured several artists including Brian Dettmer whose intricate pieces carved from books suggested complex building from another world or time. This was in sharp contrast to Elizabeth Sher's colored abstract rectangles, which suggested curving modern landscapes. At first glance, the colors dominate the pieces, but then on review and curving shapes come to the forefront.
So what is the purpose of attending an event like ArtPadSF? At its core, it is still an art fair, a business function that provides participating galleries with opportunities for exposure and sales. For visitors, it provides the experience of a large amount of art in a concentrated space. ArtPadSF was smaller than the other fairs, and its scale, inclusion of edgier artwork, poolside setting and urban theme made it a unique experience. However, this is not to say that there was not interesting and different art to see at the larger fairs as well. In the following section, we explore some of the sights of the San Francisco Fine Art Fair and ArtMRKT through images.
[Photos courtesy of Maw Shein Win, David Lawrence, and Amar Chaudhary]
ArtMKRT
Fear Culture 2, (2011) Michele Pred, 66” x 90”, Airport confiscated items, glass, resin and plexi
Untitled (Sorry) - detail, (2007), Mark Fox, Ink, watercolor, acrylic, marker, gouache, graphite pencil, color pencil, ballpoint pen, crayon, on paper, linen tape, and metal pin, 64x77x 2 inches
Trophy (2007), Scott Hove, Acrylic and Mixed Media on Polyurethane Foam, 18"x15"x16"
Jeremiah Jenkins occupies ArtMRKT
Nightwatch, Yossi Govrin; Hemp, Cement, Antique Chandelier, 85" x 15" x 15". Timothy Yarger Fine Art, Beverly Hills, CA.
Mirror Collage #1, (2011) Chul Hyun Ahn, Plywood, florescent lights, frosted glass, mirrors, 25 1/2 x 31 1/2, x 5 1/2
Bryan Cunningham. Red Truck Gallery, New Orleans, LA.
Map of Astrophysics and Cosmology I Want to Hold and be Held by One (2011), Thomas Macker, Type-C Print, 24" x 30". gallery km, Santa Monica, CA.
Jason Kirk of Axiom Contemporary in front of work by Ricardo Pelaez
Wendi Norris, co-owner of Frey Norris Gallery in front of work by Jagannath Panda
SF Fine Arts Fair
Installation View, SF Fine Arts Fair
Installation View, SF Fine Arts Fair
Charlie Milgrim standing in front of her recent work, Twin Towers
Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Farnaz Shadravan, engraving on porcelain bathtubs
Amar writes regularly about art and music in the Bay Area and blogs at catsynth.com.
After sixteen years of publication, the granddaddy of online art magazines has decided to call it quits. Yesterday, Artnet magazine shut down with a message explaining that it had always been a money-loser and it was time to move on. Read Jerry Saltz's tribute here. We'll miss you Artnet.
You have just one more day to see SmARTspace: At the Intersection of Art and Technology, the exhibition conceived by and honoring artist/educator Steven Wilson. Wilson, the author of Information Arts and Art + Science Now!, began planning the exhibition, with work by Jim Campbell, Maggie Orth, Alan Rath, and Gail Wight, before his premature death from bone cancer in January, 2010. Beloved for his generous advocacy for hundreds of artists involved with new technologies, and for his own work, Wilson created a gem of show that deftly suggests the breadth of the field he helped to create. Through Thursday, March 15 at the San Francisco State University Fine Art Gallery.
Image: Installation view, work by Gail Wight (front) and Jim Campbell (back).
Bay Area
J.D. Beltran Appointed President of San Francisco Art Commission
- Friday, March 2nd, 2012 | (0) Comments | Add comment >>
J.D. Beltran has been appointed by Mayor Ed Lee as the President of the San Francisco Arts Commission, and was sworn in yesterday, March 1, 2012, at City Hall. Beltran has served on the Arts Commission since 2009, and also served as its Interim Director from July 2011-January 2012. She has been appointed for a four-year term.
Art subscriptions are a fun, easy, and relatively cheap way to build a collection while supporting artists and art organizations. In the Bay Area, The Present Group and The Thing Quarterly are two of the better known publications regularly delighting subscribers with well curated art delivered right to their doors (or mailboxes). Joining them now are our friends at Art Practical who are launching a new, limited edition Mail Art Subscription project.
The project features art from six artists, including Bay Area locals Anthony Discenza, Alicia Escott, and Colter Jacobsen as well as artists from Sweden and Brooklyn. Starting in March, each month for six months subscribers get a letter from an artist containing something awesome. The project is in conjunction with AP's fiftieth(!) issue, Printed Matter, and supports future issues of Art Practical. Get art and support a great Bay Area art publication. Check it out!
David Ireland is in the air at Alley Cat Books in People Are a Light to Love, a pop-up exhibit curated by Veronica De Jesus... but only for one more week! Liz Walsh's piece Night Light seems from afar to be a treated scaffold, but from top to bottom there is a gradual dipping into the illusionary; when colored lights and textures subsume the lower part of the piece with a floor with footprints that seems to suggest a Muppet-sized football field. Ali Naschke-Messing's Light from Above, so from below is a space of an "invisible room" denoted by floor to ceiling wires interacting with the adjacent wall some four feet away, encrusted with gold leaf (also reminiscent of Tom Marioni). Pam Martin's Decomposing Display is literally organic, using live mushrooms colliding with print and pencil silhouettes, a little like lining a bird cage with issues of Audubon Magazine in some whacky semiotic experiment. It's displayed like a flat file in their habitat -- spaces in a pile of wooden palettes. Again, puns and a celebration of materials italicizes the spirit of Ireland... One Non-David jewel -- a hysterical sound/comedy installation by Regina Clarkinia Monopoly: The Too Big To Fail Edition gives us a scenario worthy of SNL on a good Saturday.
(Photo - Night Life (2012) Liz Wash, Installation view)
Alley Cat Books
3036 24th Street, San Francisco, CA until January 28th
Hours: 11 to 7 Mon-Sat, 11 to 5 Sunday
You have only two more weekends to see Krowswork's current exhibition – Monet Clark: California Girl - A Retrospective Debut; a remarkable show that indeed eschews the format of coming out party and survey. Representing 20 odd years - and I do mean odd, including an homage to stripper culture and the harrowing years suffering from a nearly fatal struggle with chronic Environmental Illness - it somehow seems like both those things.
The installation (Krowswork installations are ambitious as any museum) of the collection is meant to be visited from right to left, artfully chronicling the aforementioned bio and delivering the viewer in a final gallery displaying a prayer of gratitude. The medium is video, as shimmering and slick as a Union Square bus stop, but worlds more soulful and formal.
The center gallery houses a half dozen vertically-oriented flatscreens to accommodate Monet's lanky, leggy performance instrument. Collectively they tell a meta-narrative but each piece is also a free standing chapter that expertly practices a narrative minimalism worthy of Linda Montano or Cindy Sherman.
COUNTER finds Clark counting stacks of cash on a SOMA-inspired white patent leather chair against a white background. She plays with looking directly at the camera/viewer and yet not accusingly, as a lesser feminist artist might. It's more of a "better-not-tell" kind of look of collaboration. MUSE finds the artist being enveloped by winding misogynist text that she literally tries to shake and shimmy off, to no avail.
A solid show that will make you very glad you made the specific trek. That rare construct where the whole is significantly greater than the sum of its parts.
On View until December 17, Fridays 3-6, Saturdays 1-5
Krowswork
480 23rd Street-side entrance
Oakland, California
510-229-7035
info@krowswork.com
Her dulcet Muzak still resonates in the Whitney elevators from her 1984 Whitney Biennial piece and her posts vigorously delight her vast Facebook fan club. Ann Magnuson's Thursday performance at SFMOMA promises to be a charming spectacle wrestling with "dreams, Jung, human sacrifice, Aztec shamanism, and all things dark, bloody, and beautiful". But I predict she will focus heavily on her longtime fascination with Jobriath, the first openly gay rock star(even David Bowie had a beard in the 70's... poor Angie). Also, another chance to see Ann Friday Oct. 28 at 7:00PM at The Roxie where she will introduce The Hunger.
SFMOMA, Thurs, 10/27, In the Atrium, 9pm
As I crested a flight of stairs, my eyes pulled my body into Sharon Lockhart's video installation Lunch Break. Visually, I entered a long, long tunnel, its further reaches vanishing deep in the bowels of a factory. Aesthetic, claustrophobic, magnetic, the tunnel was a space in between work areas in a shipyard. At intervals along the expanse, workers could be seen eating, reading, conversing, or just staring into space. At first I thought it was a still projection, but when my attention returned to the image after a brief chat with a friend, the worker who had been in the foreground had almost disappeared. The camera crept through the tunnel at a speed just on the threshold of perception.
As a veteran of 1970s video art, I've endured my share of works attempting to stretch time. This was something else. Lockhart's lingering pace offered a chance to inspect, to soak in the sights of an intimidating place. Her camera makes strange, accessible, and even beautiful a tough world of work, the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. The formal melding of workers and shipyard could have been dehumanizing, but the effect is quite the opposite: the workers, neither romanticized nor patronized, come through as individuals.
Lunch Break, which dates to 2008, has been widely shown and discussed, but for the SFMOMA exhibition Lockhart also produced the free Lunch Break Times, a newspaper -- yes, news on newsprint -- with all kinds of stories about the Maine shipyard, labor, and lunch breaks. Contributors range from SFMOMA curator Rudolf Frieling, Lucy R. Lippard, and Yoko Ono to Jean R. Lockhart — Sharon Lockhart's mother. The exhibition also includes several still photographs, more pieces from what Frieling describes as "a long-term collaboration with the workers."
At 7 pm tonight Lockhart will appear in person as SMOMA screens another work from the Bath Iron Works series, Double Tide, described as "a meditative portrait of a woman digging for clams." General admission is $10; museum members, students, and seniors get in for $7.
Filmmaker, cyclist, and all-around inspiration George Kuchar passed away last night at the age of 69. This obituary from indieWIRE suggests the scope of his achievements. His ideas will continue to influence the film world through the work of his many students.
R.I.P. Lucian Freud
The opening party for Bay Area Now 6 (BAN6), at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, was approaching lift-off as we left the building. The line to get in stood four deep and wrapped around the corner of Mission and Third. People in the queue could start their exhibition viewing with a green neon marijuana leaf mounted by the main entrance, a component of Tony Labat's conceptual work on medical marijuana. Once inside, persistent (and, given the thickening of the crowd, maybe pushy) viewers would find a precisely curated show with work by 18 artists--a small number compared to previous versions of the triennial survey. Change is good; although we missed the daring juxtapositions that characterized BAN5, curators Betti-Sue Hertz, Julio César Morales, and Thien Lam present a clear thesis about what matters in Bay Area art now. The emphasis is on work that seamlessly incorporates both "technology" and "handiwork;" as in Suzanne Husky's Sleeper Cell Hotel, charming cocoons of scavenged wood circling a video viewing area. Every work is well-crafted although several use raw materials to make a point. Nothing is dizzy, chancy, or even particularly playful; what the show loses in energy it makes up in focus. Perhaps this direction is just what the Bay Area needs now; one thing is certain—arguing the point will be the art world's summer sport. The exhibition continues through September 25.
This is by far my favorite blog site, Princess Sparkle Pony, which is largely a searing political site but is also written anonymously by a fellow who works in some capacity for the National Gallery so there are many Art World insights. To wit, this entry about a grammatical bugaboo that has always irked me, too.
There could still be time, if you are receiving this via Stretcher’s RSS feed, to make it over to the Merchants of Reality benefit at 285 Folsom in San Francisco. You’ll know you’re in the right place if you see a man leaning on a parking meter, banging a tambourine, and a violist waiting to serenade your progress up the stairs to the old Climate Theatre space. The party, with eats from Food Not Bombs, music by Three Landlords, and a performance by The Unreal, was just kicking into gear at 7:00 and goes to 11:00 pm. Tonight’s event in the new “24hr creative work space,” slated to have a gallery, artist studios, recording and screen printing studios, multi-media theater, rehearsal space, and darkroom, is a sneak preview of things to come when the space opens officially this summer. Tonight, it’s raw, it’s grubby, and it’s energetic and full of promise. A suggested donation of $10 supports renovations in the gallery and studios. It’s so new, there’s no Web site yet — for more information, contact artcave.king@gmail.com.
An entertaining piece-about-a-piece from artist and Stretcher contributor Tucker Nichols, from his current residency in Denmark, is posted here on the Gallery 16 blog.
The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) opens its doors at 8 pm Friday, February 4 for the debut of a new contemporary art series called the Oakland Standard. Admission is free. Tag Team Talks with Mary Roach, Walter Kitundu, Novella Carpenter, Jerome Waag, Tammy Rae Carland, and Wajahat Ali start at 8 pm, Turf Feinz will perform at 9:30, leading into DJ Mia Moretti’s California dance party at 10:00.
The New York Times reports that yesterday that, in a surprise move, crews with bulldozers tore down the newly-constructed Shanghai studio of internationally-known artist Ai Weiwei. The government has been escalating persecution of Ai following his statements in support of imprisoned Nobel peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Ai, who was once regarded as the public figure who proved the Chinese government’s increasing openness to free speech, was reported as saying he must now regard the studio as a performance piece.
It is with bittersweet nostalgia that I reminisce about the first wave of culture wars unleashed by the exact same usual and deplorable suspects 22 years ago on the likes of Mapplethorpe (whose body was still warm), Frank Moore (whose physical state as a CP quadriplegic was never entered into the congressional record although his name was), Karen Finley, Annie Sprinkle, et al; and any institution that dared show them. Now a combination of Republicans flexing their newly endowed muscle and administrative cowardice has revived those horrid times with the yanking of a video and threatens to go even further in decimating free speech and public art funding in America.
Many institutions around the Bay Area have shown excerpts from the cause célèbre work and latest target of the Conservative Movement’s contempt and wrath A Fire in My Belly by the late David Wojnarowicz. SFMOMA will be screening the full 13-minute version of the video - shot on Super 8 film in 1986/87 - on January 4th, to be followed by a discussion including Rudy Lemcke (artist), SFMOMA curators Rudolf Frieling and Dominic Willsdon and others.
The piece is a thoughtful and pained meditation on manhood, sickness and being an American in a xenophobic foreign land, an unnamed Mexican boarder town. Bristling sensitivity to myth and pop culture is the main character. All of Wojnarowicz’s themes: death, nihilism, mysticism, sexual tension are represented in graphic simplicity though detached but keen photography and ingenious montage. And not a genuinely shocking or disturbing moment to be found. Just heartbreaking poetics.
Oh, to be able to ask one of these defenders of Christianity whether they would rather their child see ants on a plastic Jesus or the much lauded snuff film The Passion of The Christ?
Here we go again.
SFMOMA
January 4th, Phyllis Wattis Theater
5:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public
State-run and curated by Fan Di’An, Li Lei, Gao Shiming (for the first time, all Chinese nationals), the 2010 Shanghai Biennale’s theme is “Rehearsal.” Much of the work makes transparent the art of exhibition/performance and the creative process. At the Shanghai Art Museum, there are 52 individual artists and artists’ groups/collectives from about 21 countries, the largest group (19) predictably, from China, 18 from Europe, and 10 from other Asian countries. The remaining are from Australia, Cuba, and the United States (surprisingly only from the East Coast given the West Coast’s proximity and Shanghai’s sister city status with San Francisco). In the short time I was there, the stand-outs for me were sculptures by Mu Boyan, particularly from his Fat series (reminiscent of Lisa Yuskavage, but taken to an entirely different level), the paintings by Liu Xiaodong, along with supplemental materials of how they were created, and the painting installations, a unique way of presenting painted canvases, attempting to capture how media images absorb us, by MadeIn (CEO: Xu Zhen).
The Shanghai Biennale closes January 23, 2011 at the Shanghai Art Museum in People’s Park and includes off-site venues (at 128 West Nanjing Road and 79 & 107 South Suzhou Road) for Place – Time – Play: India-China Contemporary Art Exhibition.
Big fun this evening at the preview opening for Stephanie Syjuco’s Shadowshop. Filled with goodies from hundreds of bay area artists, Syjuco’s pop-up shop in the SFMOMA fifth floor gallery offers affordable access to a wide inventory of local creative products with 100 percent of the sales going directly back to the artists. Support local artists and get an early start on your holiday shopping! Shadowshop is presented in conjunction with the SFMOMA exhibition “The More Things Change” and is open to the public November 20, 2010 thru May 1, 2011 during regular museum hours. (above - Stephanie Syjuco shows Todd+Audrey+Owen Hido’s prints to a prospective customer.)
The crowd gathers to check out the wares.
Liz Hickok’s gelatinous landmarks.
Bay Area
No-Strings $25,000 to John Outterbridge from Artist Legacy Foundation
- Tuesday, October 12th, 2010 | (0) Comments | Add comment >>
“Artists supporting artists” is the motto Squeak Carnwath and Viola Frey chose for the Artist Legacy Foundation when they started it in 2000. At Frey’s death, her estate passed to the Foundation to jump-start no-strings-attached awards to painters or sculptors selected by their peers. Yesterday the fourth annual award went to sculptor John Outterbridge, who was chosen by a jury comprised of sculptor Mildred Howard, critic Barbara MacAdam, and sculptor and writer Robert Taplin from a pool of ten artists nominated by five anonymous invitees. The work pictured above, Ragged Bar Code, exemplifies the agile use of found objects for which Outterbridge is known. The artist’s soft voice could barely be heard as he spoke to the crowd of his colleagues gathered for the occasion in Carnwath’s Oakland loft, but his words rode a tide of good feeling that was audible enough.
Bay Area
Stretcher re-launches at Arts Publishing Now at Southern Exposure
- Sunday, October 10th, 2010 | (0) Comments | Add comment >>
Land and Sea and Bad at Sports making mojitos on the floor during a long day of networking at the Art Publisher’s Fair. They’ve got a good attitude.
Friday night Internet prophet Ted Nelson presented his new self-published autobiography, Possiplex: Movies, Intellect, Creative Control, My Computer Life and the Fight for Civilization as the first public event in the grand sanctuary of the new Internet Archive space on Funston Avenue in San Francisco. The former church, an imposing pastiche of pillars, arches, and other architectural signifiers of the establishment, made a cultural about-face with the help of one hundred or so Nelson fans, including the legendary inventor Doug Englebart. Whether or not Nelson’s life-long quest to realize Xanadu, his vision for cyberspace, is implemented, he serves all Internet users by keeping an alternative vision of its possibilities alive. He’s clearly kept his spirits up with a sense of humor, and has written a book with a tang of the unique structures he discerns in digital information. Check it out at lulu.com
Thursday night, as a sold-out crowd settled in for a performance by the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company (MJDC) at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco, a quick survey showed that the audience mixed dance aficionados, new music buffs, and art patrons. The draw for the art crowd was a video set by painter Naomie Kremer, who has been showing impressive paint/video hybrid works for the past five years. The second half of the program, Light Moves, was billed as a collaboration between MJDC, Kremer, composer Paul Dresher, and poet Michael Palmer and offered a chance to see what Kremer could do with stage space. Her work is more than a setting for the dancers; in the most successful passages lighting erases the barrier between the video and stage spaces so that dancers and projections become one. In the climactic scene, pictured here, painted-videoed-danced movements dart in and out of a particolored ground, offering the sensuous pleasure of a light show heightened with the dancers’ precise articulations of shifting emotions. This is a collaboration that makes sense. Unlike many interesting-sounding interdisciplinary collaborations that never get off the ground, Light Moves flies. Last night’s presentation was a preview of the work that will debut at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts next year…watch for the next opportunity to see it.
Rene di Rosa, founder of Di Rosa, a public museum and sculpture park, died at home at the age 91 on the evening of October 3, 2010. His legacy of support for artists in Northern California is carried on through his extensive art collection and 217 acre estate in the Carneros region of the Napa Valley. A legendary philanthropist, art collector, and vineyardist, Rene di Rosa was born May 14, 1919 in Boston. He graduated from Yale University where he served as editor of the Yale Daily News. After serving in the US Navy, Rene moved to Paris where he hoped to write the “great American novel.” The book failed to materialize, but life on the Left Bank sparked his lifelong admiration for artists, and he purchased his first painting before returning to America and settling in San Francisco, where he took a job as general assignment reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.
During the late 1950’s, Rene took a lively interest in the North Beach art community associated with “the Beats” in San Francisco, the beginning of five decades of acquiring what is now considered the most significant holding of Bay Area art in the world. During his life he served on the board of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Advisory Board of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and was the recipient of many honors and awards for his patronage, including an Honorary Doctorate from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Friends and supporters are invited to bring messages and additions to an “ofrenda” altar installation by Diane Dame Shepp in the Di Rosa’s Gatehouse Gallery open during gallery hours (Wednesday through Friday 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.) through November 2.
At Madrid’s Cristal Palace located in the Retiro Park, Jessica Stockholder’s “Peer out to See” pleasantly occupies most of the structure in a balanced and engaging way. Riffing on the the location of the Palace next to a small pond, she has constructed a wooden platform (a “pier,” the first of many puns) that extends into the building. This is flanked on one side by a color-coordinated column of plastic household goods (unfortunately not the kind found at Pier One) and on the other by a star-shaped pool of green duckweed and a circle of orange pigment. On material terms, the piece easily shows Stockholder’s long and assured practice: everything contains a confidence of proportion, color, and weight. The piece occupies and alters the space without overwhelming it, and the space of the viewer’s movement within it seems both natural and well-considered. It takes advantage of both the light and lightness of the space to to provide an engaging experiece. As successful as it is, I did have the nagging sensation that the situation of walking the plank more could have had clearer (and possibly deeper) implications than what is found here. But perhaps that doubt is a measure of the work’s success. Maybe Stockholder is gently observing that we are always in danger of falling off the edge of the platform, the beauty of its surroundings is no barrier to the proximity of the dropoff.
As I left the building I came across several children tossing pieces of bread to several large fish, turtles, ducks, and a pair of black swans (indeed it appears that the entire ecosystem of the pond now depends on the kindness of small children). It was a reminder that in contrast to all the light and possibilities of lightness in “Peer Out to See,” the implications of two black swans hard by a crystal palace is something that no stockholder would wish to explore.
At the Caixa Photo Prize exhibition at the Caixa Forum in Madrid Emilio Morenatti’s winning entry is a set of portraits of Pakistani women who have deformed faces as the result of acid attacks. Though the images (and the stories that accompany them) are horrifying, their formal portraiture portrays the women with a dignity that their attackers would wish to deny. While most of the work on view from ten photographers depicts extreme poverty or situations of institutional violence, the photos share a moderate to high-gloss aesthetic - even Walter Astrada’s images of post-election violence in Kenya share the same color balance qualities of National Geographic. Only Mikel Aristregi’s photos of life among the alcoholic vagrants of Mongolia’s capital Ulan Bator occasionally present their subjects in a flatter light.
Staff at the exhibition said that the catalog sales for this annual exhibition are normally slow. But this year, with a stoic, acid-etched face staring out from its cover and many more contained within, the catalog has proved to be a surprise hit. While aestheticized images of violence make for a wider audience and more palatable viewing, I was left wondering what gripping but graphic photos didn’t make the cut because they weren’t photographic enough.
Bay Area
“Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” Episode 10|Season Finale
- Friday, August 13th, 2010 | (0) Comments | Add comment >>
Everyone I know that watches this show is very excited about tonight’s beatification of the “Next Great Artist”. For many of us who don’t watch “Survivor” or “America’s Top Model” and similar competitions, this is our introductory experience of the cheap thrill of this brand of cultural sport. Nail biting, cliff hanging, soap-operatic suspense. Whee.
I could charitably say that the show successfully recognized, on a mass-media scale, the art making process as something legitimate and as fascinating and ignoble as modeling, sewing, or chopping wood. Heretofore, of course, art-making and artists, especially of the avant-garde stripe, have been depicted as psychotic buffoons or occasionally, with a frequent criminal pathology (films like Bucket of Blood and Lipstick - the artist a homicidal kind of fella). But in accomplishing this, the cavalcade has had to make it all a contest, which pulverizes the concept of the rugged individual and replaces it with a homogenized, vague, frequently smarmy, sometimes cute, sometimes phony, profound, and always self-delusional, self-important ideal. But that’s life and that’s art and as they say at the Brooklyn Museum - “Tough shit”.
Nobody I know wants Miles to win but many expect he will. Abdi is the most affable but that is also his deficit and his fate was somewhat sealed in the “Childhood” themed installment when he asked the judges the earnest but mortifying queries “What should I do? What do you want?” We here in SF are all rooting for the local gal, Peregrine, veteran of Project Artaud childhood and the darling of Alabama Street. I’m predicting that she has already won for no other reason that Simon may have slipped on Good Morning America last Sunday, and referred to “her” show at his gallery.
So here we go, written in real time, 10 pm PST:
The first segment finds Simon meeting each of the three finalists on their own turf on a series of long distance studio visits. The first lucky soul is Peregrine in Kansas City, Mo:
• Twin Fawn sculpture! We have winner! But maybe not yet. Her domestic situation seems to be a circle of love and support co-starring her husband, who is a musician that builds his own wind instruments. Nice. It seems as all the bothersome mischief by the adults of her bohemian upbringing has left her no worse for wear and she still feels happiest in a suitable funky creative environment.
•Next Simon sprints over to Andover, PA, to check on Abdi in his element. First we notice he has a great Mom. Doesn’t need to win! And then it begins: Simon commences to turn the screws and announced the rough version of his upcoming show at Simon’s gallery is mildly disappointing. But Abdi seems to flourish on such sadism so we’ll let them be.
• Finally Simon whisks away to Minneapolis to cheer on, or dress down Miles. Miles’ current project involves the manipulation of surveillance footage from White Castle and is adding up to one big stinking capitalized MEH. But that’s hardly the last of the misery he intends to inflict - we have to meet the parental units. Nothing really to say about this encounter except he predictably has the most comfortable home life of the three, snuggled in a glowing ruby red, christmas cheer encrusted suburban home straight out of Thomas Kinkade’s’ colonoscopy. Why I am like this? They made me this way.
On to the installation of the show at the Simon de Pury Gallery in Gotham!
• Abdi’s install is becoming a performance for the camera - a heartbreaking nightmare I actually have every week or so - where various body parts are falling away from me like rotten fruit. His plaster sculptures are shattering and disassembling themselves in front of his eyes and the panic is popping out palatable. I don’t think he should win but I hope it won’t end this way for him.
• The opening reception chunk of the show is less than illuminating - like any real life opening. The judges insist on giving routine insipid unsolicited discourse. The only one I feel like giving a pass to is the newly emerged executive producer, Sarah Jessica Parker because whatever is wrong with her clearly isn’t her fault. I certainly won’t miss these uninvited voices rattling in my head stubbornly immune to my meds.
• The hit of the show seems to be the spectacle of a splayed State Fair created by Peregrine with her discreet pieces scattered… let just say, “artfully” about her allotted space. Each piece is quite autonomous and yet the whole gets preciously close to that elusive equation where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Except sadly, there are too many parts. There they are, her whole menagerie - the florescent sparkle pony, the nestled yin/yang fawn fetuses, even a cotton candy machine. A forest of wax creatures ready to melt themselves and your heart. A delicious cocktail of the adorable, shameless sentiment and guilt-free perversion. If you ever need a PR man, Peregrine, call me!
On to the critique…
SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT - SPOILERS FROM HERE ON IN
• Miles is telling the frozen homeless man story for the third time. His piece has not evolved a jot since we first saw it back in the his mid-west studio. He is pronounced a “real artist” by the jury but is the first to lose. His slumping, rejected shuffle-exit stage left is as insincere as his work.
• And after close-up, reverse close-up, an interminable volley of sweating heads and biting lips: Its Abdi. He wins. Yes, it’s a disappointment for us Peregrinners but also it’s the problem that has variegated through the show from the first episode. The willingness to please - while seeming not to - is always a solid formula for the accolades of approval. Abdi’s work, whose melodrama was condemned a few moments earlier - by Saltz I believe - in the judge’s private confab, suddenly is as irresistible as it is desperate to gratify. They’re works depicting the pain of humanity, yes, and facilitates an empathy in the viewer, but also commodifies the Weltschmerz into a congenial and judicious souvenir. Trauma and tragedy suitable for a commercial gallery.
While Abdi deserved to win as much as Peregrine, she would have never allowed a hunger for endorsement to be so conspicuous. Her process was much more sublime and presented with elegance and ingenuity, while Abdi went for a more contrived theatrical flow that robbed the audience of any chance for discovery. His work was telegraphed which is not surprising in our culture, which apparently has better uses for irony and deference than to waste it on art.
Abdi’s winning is our loss because once again the critics, judges and mentors are the real stars in their own eyes. Because they pushed and guided him so vigorously and he was the most compliant to their suggestions and the most eager to satisfy. “You’re Nothing without us, Abdi” they say, cementing their expertise (and their egos) and their status as gatekeepers. And so the whole cycle of co-dependency, punishment and reward spins endlessly into a middling, predictable experience. Apparently it’s here to stay, at least in the broader art world.
At the end of the show solicitations for auditioning new hopefuls are promised on Bravo’s web site. So there will be a second season. Not sure I can keep up the bitch that much longer.
Dale Hoyt , 8/12/10
This is the penultimate show before the crowning of the poor slob/saint who will make it through this hazing into the ever more imaginary world called art. The solo show at the Brooklyn Art Museum becomes more and more real, a plum prize the back story of which finds a trustee of that institution, Martin Baumrind, resigning in disgust. And of course he was right. What might have been a legitimate show would have been an exhibit of artifacts, ephemera and pieces from the whole gang: Nao’s “mask of shit”, Jaclyn’s rough draft self portraits with Miles’ fingerprints all over them, Mark’s self revelatory collaboration with Peregrine that got him a one way ticket home to New Jersey, Nicole’s failed homage to Jonathan Borofsky. Models, sketches and notes from the producers. Something like the present Pixar show at the Oakland museum. But a phenomena like this is never going to allow such transparency and appraisal. For all its bogus investment in some kind of verisimilitude, reality TV is as big a slab of artifice as any trompe l’oeil trickery.
• This would seem to be the “back-to-nature” or at least “back-to-real estate” episode. They’re dumped in a Connecticut forest where they’re instructed to gather any materials from the earth itself - twigs leaves, mud, zzzzzzzzz…. oops, sorry - except “nothing with a heartbeat”. So I guess they can still use Jerry Saltz.
• But isn’t this the 21st Century? After Hurricane Katrina, global warming, and bed bugs, how can anyone still be so goofy for nature? I mean seriously, haven’t they SEEN “Deliverance”? Haven’t they SEEN reruns of the Sopranos? You NEVER go into the woods. NEVER.
• “All evil begins in nature” - Lars Van Tier
• Jaclyn has the right attitude, which is that it’s too cold to take her clothes off so fuck it. She’s now in trouble because she suggests using an image that she created on “off time” and the group, especially the usually serene Nicole, is having kittens. Besides, she does have a cold and I believe her.
• Abdi is trying to really get back to basics by creating his own pigment from mother earth which is kind of cool. Beats Flax. And speaking of Flax…
• I’m just realizing that they’re leaving out my favorite part; The trip to the stores! I have a good friend who owns a large condo on Nob Hill and yet even he can’t bring himself to spend his cash at the prices you find at most art supply stores. So even he thinks nothing of shoplifting from Utrecht and Flax and frequently leaves with a bag of Titanium White, Lamp Black, Cadmium Orange, Colbalt Green, Alizarin Crimson tubes and maybe an occasional pocket reader or laminated bookmark. Like a National Enquirer at the grocery store, he says “it just JUMPED in my bag”!
I also have to chuckle when the contestants get a HUNDRED BUCKS to shop at a midtown Manhattan Utrecht store. In my experience, that will buy you some balsa wood, a couple sheets of foamcore, a box cutter for some self mutilation later that night and maybe some rubber cement to huff and set fire to, to make for a lovely evening. The hardware store budget is a little more realistic and would inspire me to go straight to the nailgun department and start letting the nails fly.
• Just got back from Flax by the way, where I was examining a $475 easel and was reminded of Gary Shandling’s comment to a digital watch salesman who tried to sell him a $4000 piece. “But it performs 36 functions” the salesman insists to which Shandling replied “For $4000 I’ll tell you what one of the functions it better perform…”
• Also just realized something kind of baffling about this show: what exactly is the time represented by this series? How many weeks did this whole process take? Is that ever disclosed? What function is the manipulation of time and duration playing? Since it’s TV we can rest assured it’s deliberate.
•A quick scan of any TV listing on a given day reveals a surfeit of reality programs: shows about lumberjacks, truck drivers, pawn store owners and of course models, designers, housewives and now artists. With all the occupations being taken, they’ll have to start mixing and matching tantalizing combos. I recommend “Work Of Art” meets “Cat Hoarders’ on “Animal Planet”. That would be edifying.
• “The Last Show” seems to be the phrase of the moment. What will happen in the finale? Without a “challenge” what will be the criteria and the events that will fulfill that criteria? This is the part of the Reality TV arc that still remains a mystery to me.
OKAY, SPOILER ALERTS AHEAD!
• I can’t tell you how much I hate the syntactical strategy of the pauses and reaction shots of faces as they announce the winner. Its such a cheat, like double-spacing or 18 point fonts in a term paper.
• Abdi did a proto-masterpiece with his invented pigment. Happy he’s staying.
• Not so happy that Mr.Teflon, Miles, that strange boy/alpha male of some unknown species (somewhere between poodles and meerkats), and his recent opus “Fungus Study # 1” earned another week.
• Jaclyn finally did a substantial, sublime, conceptual/minimalist work (at the last minute with a cold no less) but she forgot to show her hooters. She was of course discarded.
• Nicole is out. I was hoping she’d be a dark horse.
And so we spiral onward and downward, to the last episode next week. We’ve almost lived through it.
But don’t speak to soon…
This miserable decalogue is almost done and has clearly taken its toll on the remaining six contestants. I feel compelled to go a little easier on them as their humanity becomes a little more perceptible. The judges though remain as abominable and detestable as ever. A guest judge, artist Ryan McGinness, while charming and worshiped by several of the aspirants, turns out to be something less than lucid.
• The less and less helpful Simon and China get right to the point and assign this week’s task: explore a dialectic - Order/Chaos, Male/Female, Heaven/Hell. It also is to be an exercise in collaboration pairing up the last six into three duos. It’s the toughest errand yet and is further complicated by Simon and China’s cluelessness as to what they really want. The classic profile of producer.
• Mark is my new favorite. Peregrine is painstakingly torturing the poor man, her partner, and insisting that he document his wince-worthy scar, the result of a childhood medical calamity where “his stomach exploded”.
• Miles is getting a little pervy and that seems to be OK with “saucy” Jaclyn who has oddly resigned to being objectified by the world with her help. An underachieving narcissist.
• Who’s going to break it to Abdi that he’s thinking of “Plato’s Cave” not Socrates. Another teachable moment wasted.
• A “bumper” sequence finds a very mean-spirited montage intercutting each artist talking in their earnest jargon creating a deluge of babble. At least that’s what was the supercilious intentioned producers had hoped for and yet they end up creating a kind of poetry, a rhapsody of sincerity.
• I’ve been told to avoid spoilers. Let me just say that the most generous, accommodating artist that made themselves the most vulnerable got reamed in the end. And that folks, is the over-arching lesson of this cavalcade.
• China Chow is in tears as she gives one of them the boot. An actual human emotion, emphatic no less.
• What this show needs are more sore losers.
For the last two episodes, next week and the week after, I’ll be publishing on the weekend because the potential spoilers are coming hard and fast. So don’t read unless you want the rapture of anticipation interrupted. Just watch it on-line or for you gentle cable people Bravo repeats episodes constantly.
Be strong, its almost over.
A promise is a promise.
And so here I am writing my 7th blog describing the 7th slab of “Work Of Art”. But speaking of promises, what is this spectacle promising the poor kids, young and old, who want to be artists? I wouldn’t wish being an artist on my worst enemy (cough-Sarah Jessica Parker-cough) but my God, what if that’s the only thing you can do well or the only thing you can do, period? And what if all you have in Cody, Wyoming (Jackson Pollack}, Sun Prairie Wisconsin (Georgia O’keefe), the slums of Pittsburgh, (Andy), Gallipolis, Ohio (Jenny Holzer) or Webster, Texas (Ryan Trecartin) is this sad, distorted planet promised by “World Of Art”? This is what awaits you?
You get the picture.
Other generations have suffered through cartoonish depictions of the world of culture and letters. Will the next batch of young-in’s be able to assimilate these primal scenes as well without having the inevitable heartbreak be that much more achey?
Actually forget them, what about us middle-aged people who have aged that much more faster watching this piece of shit?
Shhhh, its starting….
• The gang was just deserted at the Children’s Museum. Miles says he’s going to throw up and for once I agree with him. They are told by the grownups to use the materials there to return to their childhood memories. Of course plenty of people make art to forget their childhood but we aren’t in the running.
• We learn Peregrine was raised in “an art commune in San Francisco called ‘Project Artaud’! Her piece is a very well rendered “MY LITTLE PONY” sculpture engirdled by cigarettes made from sticks of chalk, fake joints and faux crack villas. It describes, very cleverly, a childhood populated by adults and the residuum of they’re lives and indulgences. FINALLY a decent piece of work (and a Alabama Street success story)!
• Simon just came in and told everyone that all of their childhood memories suck. What a drip. I don’t like you anymore Mr. de Pury.
• Its official, everyone hates Miles.
* I’m surfing during the commercials. And the Daily Beast reports, according to Schizotypy, Creativity, and Mating Success in Humans - Proceedings of the Royal Society artists and poets have 223% more sexual partners than people who aren’t, And thats just Jaclyn.
• Jerry Saltz just reminisced how fondly as a child he used to love to draw trolls.
• My editor has requested that I avoid spoilers. No problem. Suffice to say that it was the most trivial and yet sadistic episode yet. It seemed for a shining moment that the contestants were ready to mutiny but then their hunger for approval took charge. It’s like playing a game where the big kids change the rules at every turn during a game… until someone cries. Hey! Just like, children…
• I’ve been made sad by my best friend: television.
• And if anyone tries to take me back to my childhood, I’ll bite their lips off.
- Dale Hoyt 2:40 Am 7/22/10
1. DENIAL - Well I just skipped that one and went straight to…
2. ANGER - These ridiculous people eliminating her for the most lame, inarticulate reasons when in fact “they” (who are “they”? - more about that below) just weren’t up to the challenge. They’re a just lazy bunch, plain and simple…
3. BARGAINING - ...but China Chow and Andre Serrano loved her didn’t they? Maybe they can bring her back or appeal the judges…
4. DEPRESSION - ...but that will never happen. Art like ours will never be understood by a larger audience…
5. ACCEPTANCE - ...so I should just go on to review the 5th episode although it won’t be as fun without our girl.
Life goes on and so does this show with its inexplicable inertia. The vocabulary for these shows is so bafflingly similar (“elimination”, “Immunity”, “going home”, “challenges”) that they all seem to be covered in the same bitter tar. At this point it doesn’t seem to really matter whether this is a fashion show, design contest, dating show, achieving weight loss or “survival”. I’m tempted to apply a “medium is the message” exegesis, but that would imply that the format is an actual medium. It’s not. It’s just the latest incarnation of the heavily codified grammar of the magnificent medium of TV where content is a secondary, at best, priority. One MuLuhanism does apply though, and highlights this show’s real shortcoming. He said “Artists don’t want to be understood ... they want to believed!” and that’s the problem here: This little pageant simply does not have a whole lot of believers.*
The archetypes that the show is trying to construct would be more distinct if any of the contestants had any detectable personalities, but alas, all of them - ALL OF THEM - seem to be aiming for the star “Valley Girl” in the constellation of “Duuuude”. And as the clock ticks away, it gets more and more painful seeing these children groping and clawing for the validation from the parade of slinky, sleazy, vulgar grown-ups. Miles and Nichole have a budding romance, obviously, which is a narrative development that only manages to remind us how little appeal and empathy this crew inspires. As far as a narrative goes, I’ll quote what Roger Ebert has said in countless movie reviews: “You really don’t care what happens to these people”.
This week’s episode would seem to be a lesson in corporate sponsorship - specifically, the Audi car company, and once again, a vaguely relevant theme is steered, pardon the pun, as far afield as possible. Jaclyn** continues to explore her inner Cindy Sherman self, objectifying herself and then pretending to be horrified when it actually works. Her insufferably didactic essay wall piece on the Male Gaze is as lazy and over wrought as any undergrad student project I’ve ever seen anywhere. The judges loved it and made her the night’s winner. Sigh….
The rest of the cast of characters remained banal and dull as dishwater. Mop Top narcissist Ryan is study in wilting pertinence while Abdi doesn’t know what to do with last week’s success. The only hero in this installment is Miles who concocts an ambitious minimalistic urban utopic installation that uncharacteristically, the panel also saw as valuable and anointed him as first runner up of the evening. I will however confess to having developed affection for the “mentor”, avuncular Simon de Pury. Especially when he is discussing “photo-gwaphs”.
At show’s end, Jamie “Bible Girl”, who personally I felt a little protective of, got sent home. Not at all surprising considering the Godless, soulless process that she and her peers are being squeezed through.
And as to who the aforementioned “they” are, their identity was discovered and isolated by David Lawrence in this quote from the show’s closing credits - “Winning and elimination decisions were made by the Judges in consultation with producers. Some elimination decisions were discussed with Bravo.” Democracy? Meritocracy? No we’re all out ma’am.
*In honor of the departed Bible Girl Jamie I’ll quote St Francis of Assisi: “May I seek to understand rather than to be understood.”
**The only worth-while gossip developing in the show is that Jaclyn is developing a reputation as being an idea stealer. Not to worry Jackie; I’ve never seen any one suffer any consequence from this in the real Art World.
Here’s a good little tool to find an update on artist-run galleries and exhibition spaces in the Bay Area. It’s an ongoing project by Oakland artist Narangkar Glover that includes an interactive Google map and gallery list.
Written in real time:
• What’s with the aluminum bunny ears?
• So strange that a show that has been so cloying up to now suddenly embraces “shocking” art as if it were an institutional imperative(like making book covers..?!). But it is the first current issue that the producers. have dealt with. I’ll refer the readers to a definitive examination of the subject by Natalie Welch right here in Stretcher in Controversy As Canvas: Critiquing A Dead Horse
• What would Sister Wendy think? If she met Andre Serrano she’d say “what a nice young man”. And I’m glad that came over because he was, hands down, one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. And I loved the knowing wave that Nao imparted to the nice man.
• “Jackie has littlest feet”
• Steamboat Willie is going to be pissed.
• Self objectification? Is that a bit redundant at this point, Honey?
• What artist stops at midnight? That just when we’re getting started!
• I don’t want to let the guy down”
• Jerry Saltz is a good speller!
• The show is a little resuscitated by this episode and yet the obvious violation of the process makes it still, as the kids say, suck. It ended on such a reductionist note, especially with the conversation between the critics that was absolutely hopeless.
• 10:56 and Nao was just eliminated! FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU. Squares! Squares! L7 man.
Two quick questions:
• Where’s Carlo McCormick, apparently the only decent critic in New York City?
• And where’s David Ross? One of the few people in the art world that understands the importance of television.
• “China Chow Hoyt”. How does that sound?
Written while watching the 1 AM broadcast:
Miserable, miserable ever more miserable depiction of the world we live in and not just art. The only one that appears to be above it all is host China Chow who seems to have a particularly good heroin connection. Nao continues to brave it out despite now knowing the true meaning of pearls before swine. She continues to be as lionhearted as she is photogenic but has been reduced to the David Letterman commentator. And Mrs.Howell actually might not win because she looks as if she is going to pass away.
1:15 am - The premise of the episode is that each artist is to create a book cover for a Penguin Publishing book (a rather obscure achievement that I know of no one who would want to conquer). Each artist is given a classic book title. Reading said book is optional.
1:30 am - It all seems to, again, come down to approval by idiots. Yes the work is weak but the “critics” are weaker. And what the fuck is wrong with Jerry Saltz and why is “minimalism and “conceptualism” dirty words all of a sudden? Did the the 70s and the 80s pass the dear boy by?
1:45 am - Mrs Howell is sent to her death panel. Everybody says goodbye with hugs.
Next week may be a bit more provocative: each artist will be challenged to do something shocking. Apply quotation marks where you wish. The guest artist will be Andres Serrano who usually livens up the party.
Bay Area
“Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” Episode 2 - The worst 2nd episode ever
- Friday, June 18th, 2010 | (0) Comments | Add comment >>
“I have nothing to say, and I’m saying it now”
—John Cage
Prediction: Mrs Howell will win
Suggestion: Sararh Jessica Parker should be gelded
love,
Dale
“Reality”, Vladimir Nabokov said “is the one word that is meaningless without quotation marks”.
My friends call me Gary Gilmore because anyone can have my eyes. But I never watch reality TV because, as well as finding it sinister, cynical and sloppy, most of the shows are written by scab writers. Anyone with any pro-union and Writers Guild support should not be seduced by Reality TV’s meager mouth-breather titillations. It kills me even to use the term “Reality TV” and not only because of its obvious shortcomings. But here I go (as I suspect many Stretcher readers will) committing to watching the entire ten episodes of “Work Of Art: The Next Great Artist” and day after blogging about each of those installments, starting now:
The group of contestants are as withering and whimpering as any freshman interdisciplinary class I’ve ever taught. If they were my class I’d kill them. The tight focus of on the power grid is a little blinding. The one thing that they got is attention to the fact WE HARDLY NEED TO be reminded of—a small, powerful (not to be mention arbitrary) group tells us what pictures we’ll look at. The art world is all about approval. Life and art isn’t fair.
But it’s going to be a great show. And not only because Nao Bustamante is the star (or “villain” as Vanity Fair says). It’s television which means it never ends. Tune again next week. Same Bat channel…
Christopher Knight writes in the LA Times about the legendary Guiseppe Panza di Biumo (1923-2010,) “the Milanese businessman who was the first great international collector of postwar American art.”
I thought the paper Rigo used for his new unmanned aircraft ink drawings was unusual, but I was too involved with the power of the text and imagery to pursue that tip. As always, Rigo’s work in the current show at Gallery Paule Anglim is timely, relevant, and important in that it addresses issues avoided by the mainstream in a manner that is accessible while managing to be fresh. Through May 1, 2010.
Rigo 23
Predator / Avenger / 10,000 Feet, 2010
ink on recycled elephant dung paper
31” x 22”
Artforum’s current San Francisco Critic’s Picks hit the sweet spot with four strong entries. Glen Helfand’s writing on Libby Black at Marx and Zavaterro touches on the shift in Black’s work with her recent move to Berkeley that reflects the neighborhood, and further personal exploration in her work. His piece on the last show at Jack Hanley Gallery fittingly focuses on Hanley’s important contribution to the art world, both here and internationally, with a special focus on Bay Area artists. Helfand’s choice of Ewan Gibbs at SFMOMA is also well placed, as he deconstructs the mysterious drawings played out with our standard tourist locales. Finally, Franklin Melendez writes about Miriam Böhm’s photography at Ratio 3, a lovely show of works that he says "evoke the doldrums of office cubicles…" and are "like Dutch still lifes reimagined in a UPS store." Böhm’s show at Ratio 3 ends April 24.
When he met David Lynch after a screening of Eraserhead (in anticipation of producing The Elephant Man), Mel Brooks was shocked to come face to face with the then baby-faced efant terrible. He recalled “I could swear I was going meet some stooped over Bavarian coot with Borsch dribbling from his mouth.” You might expect the same after watching the fiercely misanthropic minimalist animation of Don Hertzfeldt but you’d encounter not only the youngest maker to be given the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Persistence of Vision Award, but an artist whose work has been in commercial distribution since he was he was in film school at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Real pencil drawings (not the pseudo-“squiggle vision” that you see applied as an after effect in many cartoons) distinguish Hertzfeldt from what is likely the last generation of animators to bother to take pencil to paper. The Academy Award nominated short filmmaker uses a cast of characters of near stick figures with a Charles Addams/Edward Gory inspired morbidity, peppered with visual non-sequiturs and screeching, nonsensical dialog to create sucker punch, hit and run one-liners that have been shown all over American cable, International film festivals and beyond.
His onstage interview and screening of his new absurdist film Life, Death and Very Large Utensils will take place at 7:30 pm, Friday, April 23 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas.
After having read Calvin Tompkins’s article in the March 29 New Yorker on Julie Mehretu’s recent commission for Goldman Sachs in NYC, I was gratified to see two posts on SFMOMA’s Open Space that responded to several things that occurred to me while reading it that were completely elided in the piece. Interestingly, Anne Walsh’s post began as a comment to the Rebar post, and takes the conversation further while describing her mixed feelings.
LOBBIES, and their varieties Posted on March 29, 2010 by Anne Walsh
Once upon a time, long ago, before artists had much use of the internet, Jack Hanley Gallery was one of the only places we could go in San Francisco to see cutting edge contemporary art made by our colleagues in other parts of the world… well, in europe, mostly. Although I am sorry to see the gallery close, I am so grateful for the 20 years of Jack Hanley’s work both in bringing wonderful artwork to us and in exposing a handful of San Francisco artists to a wider audience. The last opening reception will be April 3, 2010, from 6-9. The final show features Tauba Auerbach, Carter, Ajit Chauhan, Chris Johanson, Ed Loftus, Alicia McCarthy, Shaun O’Dell, Leslie Shows, and Kal Spelletich.
Wall Drawing, which opened at the Hosfelt Gallery Saturday, is a winner, and a confluence of several improbable events. Improbable event # 1: Gerhard Mayer, known for his small ink drawings, scaled one up and executed it as a large-scale, commercially fabricated vinyl transfer applied directly to the wall. The allure of the drawing not only survived this translation, it dialed up, too. Improbability # 2: Marietta Hoferer, who generally works with soft, neutral colors decided to experiment and turned in an eye-popping wall of red and blue stripes. And Improbability # 3, the most unlikely of all, unknown Wendy Hough showed up at the gallery as the show was being installed asserting that her work should be included—and to the gallery’s credit, they took a look and agreed. Hough’s disturbingly restless waves counterbalance the cool, delicate structure of Sol Lewitt’s composition and an evanescent contribution by Jim Campbell. While you’re at Hosfelt, check out Richard Shaw|New Works at the Braunstein/Quay Gallery across the way. The solid crush of well-wishers at Shaw’s opening made contemplation of the works challenging, but all those well-wishers were there for good reason. Shaw continues to deliver assemblages that have tender feelings for everyday life shining through the witty surfaces.
Wallace Berman, the quintessential “Beat” artist, conducted his career by never getting his work out, according to his son Tosh Berman. Speaking to the L@ te Friday Night partiers at Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archives (BAMPFA), Tosh told stories about his father and screened his movie Aleph twice, once silent as it was made, and once with a soundtrack by John Zorn. During his lifetime Berman showed the funky 8mm movie to only a few friends, projecting it on the refrigerator. The footage is rhythmically punctuated by Berman’s most famous image: a hand holding a transistor radio, infilled with an image from popular culture. The moving image infilling the refrigerator door surely echoed in the minds of the people who saw it. Last night’s screening was part of Issue 4 of the Skank Bloc Bologna series organized by Anne Colvin.
Superb curation energized the program of short films at SFMOMA’s first “Now Playing” event last night. Even viewers familiar with the works, which were drawn from the museum’s collection, found fresh excitement in viewing them together. A trio of experiments with scrambled signals set the pace, sparks flying as Bruce Conner’s Breakaway (1966) rubbed up against Pipilotti Rist’s I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much (1986), which segued into the Vasulka’s Violin Power (1970-78). Smart juxtapositions kept the program moving right up to the climactic debut of a new work by Kota Ezawa, Beatles Ŭber California (2010), in which Ezawa made the Beatles play the Dead Kennedy’s anthem California Ŭber Alles.
David Ross discusses art of the Olympics with Stephen Colbert.
Cliff Hengst’s new work at 2nd Floor Projects looks great and operates well in the intimate space. A powerful performer, at the opening reception Hengst engaged the audience in quietly singing “This Land is Your Land”, Woody Guthrie’s folk song.
Gouache paintings on newsprint, posters, and found paper reference a concern with the infamous CA Proposition 8 which amended the California Constitution to read, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Protest signs figure prominently in the work and their text highlights the passion, wit, and intelligence of the anti-Prop 8 protesters. With faces and bodies painted out in black in the artworks, the status of invisibility for same sex couples who would like to marry insisted upon by the pro-Prop 8 faction is made visible. Other pieces evince a concern with budget cuts and the safety net, mirroring growing dissent during a time of economic collapse. The exhibition runs through Sunday 21 February.
Through Sunday 21 February. Hours: 12noon - 5pm
Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure Round III 2009 Grant Recipients have been announced, awarding $60,000 to 17 projects. The 2009 Alternative Exposure grant recipients are:
Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
Alula Editions
AoRTa Magazine
Art Practical
Average magazine
Chris Fitzpatrick & Post Brothers
Critter
Destructibles.org
Happenstand
iiiahh
Pueblo Nuevo Gallery
Ribbons
SMITHS
Stop & Go Rides Again
THE THING Quarterly
The Upper Left Ethnography Project
VOLUME and Kadet Kuhne
MOCA board confirms Jeffrey Deitch’s appointment as new director today per Art Review.
How can we possibly do without Larry Sultan? Amazing artist, photographer, teacher, wonderful man, gone too soon.
“Unfortunately, the data reveal that artist unemployment is increasing at more rapid rates than for the total workforce, and could have more of an effect over time.” This quote from the NEA’s report reminded me of Joseph del Pesco’s posters, at a time when we are still wondering if we have hit the bottom of the unemployment curve.
Here’s a video interview on the Guardian UK website.
Carter pushes the artistic envelope by collaborating in one of the most popular international television formats ever: daytime soap opera. See this interview about Carter’s work with James Franco for the General Hospital project, and their new film.
Visitors to the Alameda Towne Centre Mall are in for a treat this early holiday season. For a limited time, Super Pop-Up Shop brings art to mart with an array of smart, fun projects to delight and engage young and old. Curated by CCA faculty members Rebeca Bollinger and Glen Helfand, Super Pop-Up Shop features new work in a variety of media by CCA MFA students who have transformed a vacant storefront into a bustling outlet of hands-on activity and given the “Pop-Up Retail” trend a new creative spin. The grand opening last Sunday afternoon was big fun. Some highlights—a canned food for art exchange (be sure to bring a can for the Alameda Food Bank to participate), a mall-wide scavenger hunt that focuses on personal interaction rather than collecting stuff, a dance move exchange, and lots more. The store is located in a prime spot directly across from the mall Santa house. They’ll be open two more weekends including Black Friday this week which should make for some interesting crowds. Get some art and ideas in with your holiday shopping and check it out!
Super Pop-Up Shop
Open: November 27-29, and December 5-6, noon to 5pm
Alameda Towne Centre: 523 South Shore Center West, Alameda, CA 94501
(Near Trader Joe’s and Applebee’s)
http://superpopupshop.com/
And his article, What Art Is and Where it Belongs,
on e-flux, does a lot to address the gap between art and life that interests so many of us so strangely.
Cory Arcangel’s recreation of Arnold Schoenberg’s 1909 op. 11 Drei Klavierstücke (aka Three Piano Pieces) made by editing together videos of cats playing pianos downloaded from Youtube:
Much more info from Arcangel’s site here, including technical specs:
about her work “Copystand: an autonomous manufacturing zone” shot at Frieze Art Fair in London - Video from VernissageTV on Rhizome:
A jubilant mood reigned at the opening of Southern Exposure‘s new gallery this past Friday and Saturday. The space debuted with the exhibition Bellwether, featuring work by Ant Farm, Renee Gertler, Liz Glynn, Jonn Herschend, Whitney Lynn, Jay Nelson, Nonchalance, Lordy Rodriguez, Christine Wong Yap and SoEx’s Youth Advisory Board. But the buzz was all about the miracle performed by the SoEx Board of Directors and Executive Director Courtney Fink, obtaining a beautiful, purpose-designed new home for the venerable alternative space. In the recessionary gloom, the lights coming on at 3030-20th Street, San Francisco gleamed extra brightly.
Southern Exposure Executive Director Courtney Fink (left) with Board Vice-President Amy Charles
Artist and SF Gate blogger J.D. Beltran dances on the corner with her son Sebastian. Beltran posted a great history of SoEx’s search for a new space.
Artist (and former Stretcher crew member) Megan Wilson
Executive Director of the DiRosa Kathryn Reasoner
Art historian Whitney Chadwick and artist Robert Bechtle
Revelers Rodney Ewing and Nicole Lattuca
The imminence of death is said to concentrate the mind; perhaps the aura of mortality that hangs around the Slaughterhouse Space (which features floor drains marked “blood” and “water”) infuses artists with the courage to do the things they’d like to do that they haven’t done yet. At least two of the artists in The Seduction of Duchamp: Bay Area Artists’ Response, which opened last night, showed firsts. Richard Berger, a sculptor who first came to prominence in the 1960s, contributed his first video piece, and Rebecca Goldfarb, a new generation sculptor, showed her first outdoor work. Of course, the inspiration might be that this Healdsburg space, a former abbatoir, is just offbeat and off-the-beaten-track enough to make artists feel experimental, while close enough to the central Bay Area to attract a rich mix of established and emerging artists. The exhibition, which was curated by Hanna Regev, continues through November 8. November 7 will find the gallery hosting another first, a performance auction conducted by Rodney Austin and Justin Hoover.
Disintegrations, at Johansson Projects has another highlight of October’s exhibitions. Andrew Benson shows two videos in which the original footage is reprocessed by a system he calls “Slorp.” The result is remarkably like watching a fire or a waterfall, with constant movement forming and reforming images that flicker out before the eye can rest on them.
A beautiful collection of written material and images in memory of David Ireland by artists, put together by Scott Hewicker for SFMOMA Open Space.
The Artadia Awards 2009 San Francisco Bay Area application cycle is now open through October 15, 2009. Go here to find guidelines and on-line application.
Aaaarg, I wish I had time to read all of the pieces posted on AAARG.org! It would be my dream to do so.
An interesting piece on the SFMOMA blog includes an interview with Sean Dockery, the principle of AAARG. The piece is by Julian Myers and the interviewer is Joseph Del Pesco.
A nice little slide show of “female artists in the post-YBA generation” from and the accompanying article from Flavorwire.
Art historian and artist Jeannene Przyblyski has been appointed as the new Dean of Academic Affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), replacing Okwui Enwezor who has been on leave from SFAI this summer working on a new book as a scholar in residence at the Getty. Enwezor will remain on the faculty of the school, working with the Museum and Exhibition Studies and History and Theory of Contemporary Art programs that he instigated at the school.
Only one more week left to see Larry Rinder’s exhibition Galaxy at the Berkeley Art Museum, a potent curatorial statement that brings together works from the collection with several well-articulated strands of aesthetic interest.
You have never seen the BAM permanent collection like this, and that is the magic of Rinder’s work here. As Director of the Berkeley Art Museum and the Pacific Film Archive, doing this exhibition surely gave him a chance to get to know the collection even better than he already does and to make if his own. Artworks lovingly and assiduously ornamented with detail include European old master prints and modernist drawings, like the well chosen new acquisition by Barry McGee inscribed with very fine ballpoint pen and a fluorescent pink DFW. Down for Whatever are works evincing a cosmic view of multiplicity as in the night sky or in a swarming beehive convening with pieces that celebrate blue and black, like those by John Zurier, Sam Francis, Jay DeFeo, and Ara Peterson. Eroticism makes itself felt, with romantic pastorals and modernist works including a small realistic relief of a breast by Duchamp, and with horizontally framed endurance performance videos by Bruce Nauman, closeted up by the ceiling & hiding in the stairwell.
The show is more deep and varied than even the love I felt for the pieces I’ve touched on above, and you can see some of this in a walk through video with Larry Rinder and with a piece by Johnny Ray Huston, another by Claudine Ise, and the piece on the Berkeleyan by Wendy Edelstein of Public Affairs, where I got the great photograph of Larry Rinder.
At the Berkeley Art Museum through August 30, 2009.
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Climb down into the wonderfully creepy hole-like basement at Triple Base. There in the dark you will find an installation by Christine Wong Yap that creates a palpably embodied visual and poetic experience. This contrasts nicely with the multiplicity of small 2D pieces and objects by several artists in the main gallery. Wong Yap’s work could be a comment on the genre of work in the show which is titled “Involved, Socially.” Together with the welcome mat by Amanda Curreri, reading “ME” one way, and “YOU” the other, the two works bookend the exhibition with a satisfying physicality.
The International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) are in collaboration with Artadia to create
a new residency program at the ISCP in Brooklyn. Chosen from among past Artadia Awardees, San Francisco artist Josh Greene will be one of the first artists in residence.
Evolving news in the New Langton Arts crisis:
Watch and engage in the excellent ongoing comments posted on Julian Myer’s piece @ SFMOMA Open Space for developments in the effort to save and/or determine whether New Langton Arts can be snatched from the jaws of death. Those in the know appear to be holding cards close to the chest, while the community tries to understand the extent of the damage to the life system of arguably the most historically important alternative exhibition space in SF history.
New Langton Arts is in crisis. Perhaps there is opportunity at this pivotal point. See Julian Myer’s thoughtful piece about this on the SFMOMA blog. Langton has set up a virtual town hall, but Myer’s piece already has more comments, including an incisive one by Leigh Markopoulos.
Icon, Goddess and Artist Farrah Leni Fawcett has died. Method acting as an angel will now sadly be put to good practice as she ascends having shuffled off her foxy mortal coil. In addition to a major in biology at the University of Texas at Austin (ever the hipster), she also minored in art/sculpture and proved to be a great devotee of Yves Klein, recreating his body to canvas “Anthropométries”, dutifully documented in Playboy’s Farrah Fawcett: All of Me (1997). No specific reference to Klein is mentioned in the narration but I dare say Farrah knew where the idea came from (even if “Hef” didn’t).
Also worth noting was the collaboration with sculptor Keith Edmier titled appropriately Keith Edmier and Farrah Fawcett, which enjoyed a run at the Warhol Museum in the Summer of 2003. In the piece, each artist rendered the other in idealized life size depictions; respectively Ms. Fawcett in white marble and Mr. Edmier in bronze - an amazing exercise in reversal of image control.
She had a wonderful sense of humor and was reportedly flattered by Steve Martin’s 1977 comments on Saturday Night Live: “Boy oh boy, I am so mad at Farrah Fawcett-Majors. She is so conceited. She has never called me once. And after the hours I’ve spent holding up her poster with one hand!”. She will be wholeheartedly missed and venerated, right up there with Marilyn and Mae West, whose geniuses are memorialized along with their splendor.
(thanks to Tony Labat and Robin Winters for additional research)
Bill Berkson writes about the 53rd Venice Biennale for artcritical here.
Erased James Franco is now on the road and will be screened in its UK premiere at Tate Modern on June 27. If you’re in London you can hear a conversation between Carter and James Franco after the screening, and if not, check Carter’s site for the touring schedule and images and press to contextualize the work.
In a wonderful piece posted to the SFMOMA blog, Julian Myers and Joseph Del Pesco http://blog.sfmoma.org/2009/06/08/call-for-art-historical-knowledge ">critique the recent initiative by e-flux and Artforum announced to the Art & Education list: the launch of the Art & Education Papers archive, a free online platform for the publication and exchange of texts on modern and contemporary art.
It was with great sadness that the Stretcher crew learned that the artist David Ireland died early this morning. For us, as for many other people around the world, Ireland was an exemplar of a well-lived life as an artist. He will be greatly missed. There are two articles on Ireland and his work in our archives: D.I./I.D and David Ireland.
Berin Golonu’s article in Art in America takes a thoughtful look at Adel Abdessemed’s solo exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery, Rio. It’s interesting to compare it with the recent New York Times piece by Roberta Smith.
The glitterati and art world powerful were in evidence Wednesday night at the SECA (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art) reception at SFMOMA, celebrating the biennial award for local talent. The museum honored this year’s choices with a more high profile exhibition presentation than usual, and the artwork was correspondingly slicker, more framed up, and made a great first impression. The artists chosen are among our best and brightest: Trevor Paglen, Tauba Auerbach, Jordan Kantor, and Desiree Holman. As someone who has been especially interested in Paglen’s work, I was pleased to find that I can delve into more about what interests me most about it, as he has a new book that expands on some of what inspires his visual art: “Blank Spots on the Map, the Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World”
As one gallerist at the SECA reception said, there was nothing on the floor, no mess, nothing to sweep up, and nothing to make anybody upset. In what is almost an alternative universe, at the same time, over in Oakland at Mills College we were missing a lecture by Keith Bowdwee, who may be an example of an artist not quite “safe” enough for SECA. I like his blog a lot, and you can get a good idea of his interests and find a link to his artwork there. He and his practice remind me of this quote attributed to Marcel Duchamp: “I don’t believe in art. I believe in artists.”
Stretcher will be back this spring with a new site design, including RSS feeds. In the meantime, please enjoy articles from our archives. If you would like to receive notice of the new site debut, please use the “Mailing List” link in the list at the upper left.
Stretcher will be back this spring with a new site design, including RSS feeds. In the meantime, please enjoy articles from our archives. If you would like to receive notice of the new site debut, please use the “Mailing List” link in the list at the upper left.
Systems of Exchange, the final pavilion of the Garage Biennale 2008, opens tonight at 7:00 pm. Don’t be misled by the “canceled” notice on the image, it refers to the November event which ran afoul of the neighbors in the fine tradition of art outrages. Do check out the opening. The Garage Biennale is a sparkler of art energy in San Francisco’s alternative scene.
Carla Kihlstedt, Fred Frith, Matthias Bossi, and The Norman Conquest are playing a benefit tonight for The Meridian Gallery, a nonprofit alternative space that has helped out many artists and performers, including Stretcher. Rumor has it Blixa Bargeld will also be making an appearance. The time is 7:00, the place is Meridian Gallery, and tickets range from special student price of $20 to $50.
It’s hard times for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The museum’s financial troubles made the front page of the New York Times this week.
As journalists spread out through the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) galleries, previewing the The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now, a uniformed man led a group of guards through the exhibition. Stopping before a rubber net flopped open on the floor, he told them,“It’s okay if they touch this, pick it up, wrap it around themselves, roll around in it, whatever.” One young guard gave a quick coughing laugh, clearly picturing a besuited matron doing a spontaneous wrap and roll. Their guide continued his spiel, moving on to the participatory intricacies of works such as Ant Farm’s Media Van v.08 (Time Capsule) and Janet Cardiff’s The Telephone Call.. If the notion of guards watching carefully to make sure everyone participates in an approved way seems to contradict the spirit of the works, it also demonstrates the important questions that animate the show. Not everyone will like it, but everyone who cares about contemporary art and/or museum culture will be talking about it.
Image Credit: Lygia Clark, Rede de elastico [Elastic Net] (film still), 1973; rubber, dimensions variable; Clark Family Collection, Rio de Janeiro; photo: Eduardo Clark, courtesy “The World of Lygia Clark” Cultural Association; Copyright 2008 “The World of Lygia Clark” Cultural Association
Performance artist Terry Fox died in Cologne last week at the age of sixty-five. Der Standard called Fox one of the most influential members of the Fluxus movement; San Francisco Bay area artists recall his contribution to the area’s distinctive brand of conceptual art in the 1970s.
On October 15, two Margaret Kilgallen pieces were stolen from Gallery 16. These paintings were included in the current Fifteenth Anniversary exhibition. The works were not for sale, but belonged to Griff Williams, owner and director of Gallery 16, and were given to him by Margaret back in the mid 90’s. Needless to say they are of deep personal significance to him.
“Easy” was approximately 7” x 12”, and the Untitled (profile) was approximately 17” x 12”, both enamel on wood panel. There is very little of Margaret’s original work out there for sale, if any, and so the gallery is asking that everyone please keep their eyes and ears open with respect to these two works. Should they resurface for sale, or should you see them in a private residence, they ask that you please contact them immediately 415.626.7495 or vanessa@gallery16.com. Any information would be much appreciated.
Yes Virginia, the art world is no better than the dumbest reality TV which you sought to conquer. You taught me that. A student like you is the only reason a teacher bothers to get out of bed in morning.
Yes Virginia, I’ve been cataloging/archiving every micro-second that I was honored to work with you and I ache that I hadn’t heard the extent of your misery.
Yes Virginia, your keen perception and examination of the vulgarities of pop life and the nonsense of the hopelessly inadequate alternatives still rings like a silver bell in our hearts. Your devilish, dark, mischievous sense of humor still hangs in the air like night blooming jasmine.
Could any of us saved you from your horrible intention?
Yes Virginia, I know you’re in a better world because nothing could be worse than a world without you.
Please come back.
As the ship of state lurches from crisis to crisis, if you watch the markets & listen to Paulson and Bernanke, you may feel we’re about to go under. Or a vague sense of nausea might be flowing over you, as a giant wave of it must be flowing over those in congress as they get yet another heaping load of spin spiked with hysterical urgency, making it hard for them to keep or maintain their sense of balance.
“We’ve approached the edge of the cliff,” Leon Cooperman,65, who manages $6 billion at hedge fund Omega Advisors Inc., said at the Value Investing Congress in New York. “Do we go over the cliff or begin to recede? History says we recede, but there’s no guarantee. This is the most difficult financial environment I’ve lived through.“1
Things are out of kilter and Luther Thie’s Tilted Pole at Art Engine Gallery seems to mirror aspects of the situation. Old technology we still depend on has been eclipsed by new, and the infrastructure is left to decay. New untested security products turn out to be more hazardous than those created for safety after the depression, then jettisoned as if so much excess balast. An out of balance condition makes things more dangerous, as it brings hazards close to us, too close to be safe.
Walk around Tilted Pole and see if you agree with me. But don’t touch the transformer. Don’t those contain PCBs?
1 Elizabeth Stanton and Eric Martin, Bloomberg.com, October 7, 2008, U.S. Stocks Drop; S&P 500, Dow Post Worst Retreats Since 1937
Installation at
Art Engine Gallery by Luther Thie
San Francisco, September 5 - October 18, 2008
You think you’ve seen everything don’t you? Well you haven’t seen Euphoria!, Oddball Films’ contribution to the film section of Bay Area Now 5. Steve Parr belongs to a breed of auteur/archvist/artists like Rick Prelinger, Craig Baldwin, Janice Allen and of course St. Bruce Conner, that find the sublime in the strangest archival footage. I recommend this in the strongest possible terms. A great date movie, especially if your date is Squeaky Fromme. Oddball Films: Euphoria! at YBCA Sept. 25th.
From the editors
Authors from Posts
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