Saturday, May 03, 2008
Lance Fung Interviewed
Creating Community at Lucky Number 7
Lance Fung in interview with Artist Organized Art, March 30 '08
Here are two excerpts from the full interview:
Lance Fung runs Fung Collaboratives, LLC
Lucky Number Seven Curatorial Team and Partner Institutions:
1. Ferran Barenblit, Centro de Arte Santa Mónica (CASM), Barcelona, Spain, www.centredartsantamonica.net
2. Iara Boubnova, Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia, Bulgaria, www.ica.cult.bg
3. Gregory Burke, The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada, www.thepowerplant.org
4. Colin Chinnery, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China, www.ullenscenterforthearts. org (Partnering with Centre for International Cultural Exchange, China, www.seechina.com.cn)
5. Alexie Glass, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, www.gertrude.org.au
6. Lukasz Gorczyca and Michal Kaczynski, Stowarzyszenie Integracji Kultury (Association of Cultural Integration), Warsaw, Poland, www.raster.art.pl
7. Laura Steward Heon, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States, www.sitesantafe.org
8. Barbara Holub, Secession, Vienna, Austria, www.secession.at
9. Vasif Kortun, Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul, Turkey, www.platformgaranti.blogspot.com 10. Chus Martinez, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany, www.fkv.de
11. Martina Mazzotta, Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta, Milan, Italy, www.mazzotta.it
12. Tsukasa Mori and Yuu Takehisa, Art Tower Mito, Japan, www.arttowermito.or.jp
13. Joseph Sanchez, Institute of American Indian Arts Museum (IAIA), Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States, www.iaia.edu
14. Patrizia Sandretto, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy www.fondsrr.org
15. Guillermo Santamarina, El Museo Experimental, Mexico City, Mexico
16. Hyunjin Shin, SSamzie Space, Seoul, South Korea, www.ssamziespace.com
17. Alessandro Vincentelli, BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England www.balticmill.com
18. Marc-Olivier Wahler, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, www.palaisdetokyo.com
19. William Wells, The Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt, www.thetownhousegallery.com
Special thanks to SITE’s local residency partner,the Santa Fe Art Institute
Artists
1. Martí Anson Born in 1967 in Mataró, Spain Lives and works in Barcelona
2. Studio Azzurro: Fabio Cirifino (born in Milan), Paolo Rosa (born in Rimini), Stefano Roveda (born in Milan) and Leonardo Sangiorgi (born in Parma), Located in Milan, Italy
3. Erick Beltrán Born in 1974 in Mexico City Lives and works in Barcelona and Mexico City
4. Luchezar Boyadjiev Born in 1957 in Sofia, Bulgaria Lives and works in Worpswede, Germany
5. Michal Budny Born in 1976 in Leszno, Poland Lives and works in Warsaw
6. Ricarda Denzer Born in 1967 in Kirn, Germany Lives and works in Vienna
7. Hiroshi Fuji Born in 1960 in Kagoshima, Japan Lives and works in Fukuoka, Japan
8. Fabien Giraud Born in 1980 in France Lives and works in Paris
9. Piero Golia Born in 1974 in Naples, Italy Lives and works in Los Angeles
10. Soun Myung Hong Born in 1959 in Seoul, Korea Lives and works in Seoul
11. Scott Lyall Born in 1964 in Toronto, Ontario Lives and works in Toronto
12. Nick Mangan Born in 1979 in Geelong, Victoria Lives and works in Berlin
13. Eliza Naranjo-Morse Born in 1980 in Espanola, New Mexico Lives and works in Santa Fe
14. Nora Naranjo-Morse Born in1953 in Espanola, New Mexico Lives and works in Espanola
15. Ahmet Ögüt Born in 1981 in Diyarbakir, Turkey Lives and works in Amsterdam
16. Mandla Reuter Born in 1975 in Nqutu, South Africa Lives and works in Berlin
17. Nadine Robinson Born in 1968 in London, England Lives and works in New York City
18. Zbigniew Rogalski Born in 1974 in D_browa Bia_ostocka Lives and works in Warsaw
19. Wael Shawky Born in 1971 in Alexandria, Egypt Lives and works in Alexandria
20. Raphaël Siboni Born in 1981 in France Lives and works in Paris
21. Rose B. Simpson Born in 1983 in Santa Fe, New Mexico Lives and works at Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico
22. Shi Qing Born in 1969 in Inner Mongolia, China Lives and works in Beijing
Biennial Leadership
Lead Underwriter
Jeanne & Michael L. Klein
Curator's Patron
Marlene Nathan Meyerson
Honorary Chairs
Anne & John Marion, The Burnett Foundation Margarita & Albert Waxman
Exhibition Patrons
Exhibition Supporters
Artists' Patrons
Miguel Abreu Gallery, Susan Hobbs Gallery
Exhibition Friends
Corporate Sponsors
UBS Financial Services, Houston Sotheby's
Special Events Sponsors
Gebert Contemporary & Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art, Landfall Press, James Kelly and SITE Unseen 5
Supporting Cultural Organizations
Biennial Weekend Event Chairs
Cornelia Bryer & Herman Siegelaar
Residency Partner
Santa Fe Art Institute
Honorary Committee
Co-Chairs, The Honorable Bill Richardson Governor, New Mexico, The Honorable David Coss Mayor, Santa Fe
Committee Members
Off-SITE Location Partners
Additional Support
www.santafelucky7.com
Student documentation team
Creating Community at Lucky Number 7
Lance Fung in interview with Artist Organized Art, March 30 '08
Artist Organized Art
This Artist Organized Art interview with curator Lance Fung is conducted by Joshua Selman and Erika Knerr, on March 30, 2008 at Lance's SOHO loft in Manhattan. It weaves together formative influences behind his first International Biennial, Lucky Number 7, at Site Santa Fe, opening June 20-22, 2008. The interview precedes a pot luck dinner at his loft attended by his core community of friends and family. Gathering at the space several times a year, most among them are former Lance Fung Gallery artists.
Here are two excerpts from the full interview:
AOA: The question was if your way of curating is considered to be a reverse engineering of the normal curatorial process, and where the curatorial function of the institutional partners fits in?
LF: I wouldn't say it's a reverse procedure, because that would mean there would have to be strategy to my work, there's no method to my madness, I am who I am. I act, say, speak, think, write, dress, the way I do, you couldn't, and I'm forty five now, so I don't actually give a damn what people think of me, I get it when Holly Solomon said she didn't care --“I'm Holly Solomon,” -- well finally now I'm Lance Fung, you like it, you don't, can it be improved? Yes. Will I change it your way? Maybe, maybe not, and this is the point of being free as an artist and curator, as an individual, its not that you're like “oh everyone doesn't know what they're talking about…” but it's just that you're not concerned about pleasing someone, and by not trying to please someone you have a greater chance of pleasing someone, because you're grounded, you're satisfied, you have something to give, so I don't think so, now surely that most people would look at it that way, because it isn't the way most people would curate a show, I do see, however, a trend in people, a trend with younger curators trying to curate. In approaching their new practices in the way that I live my life, so I'm not necessarily saying they're copying me, but collaboration is coming up quite often now, but in a very different way and typically in a very superficial way, but what's nice is I think that my work has somehow seeped into the way people are looking at things, including some of the seasoned curators. Because, you can't work in an antiquated mode, and that's why people are trying, the art speak is becoming less and people are doing more common speak when they're talking about a show. Or, they're having a greater awareness of the general public in appreciating the work where, in fact, after the fact, I realized that was the main audience for The Snow Show, and that's what made it so profound, so I don't know, that's not for me to answer.
AOA: In terms of the process of Lucky Number 7, of course, there are ancestors, for example, The Snow Show, Lance Fung Gallery, Construction In Process, Ryszard Wasko and The International Artists Museum, Charlotte Moorman and the Avant Guard Intermedia Festivals, Allan Kaprow, Billy Klüver, George Maciunas, Nam June Paik, etc. This brings up the comparison of “curating” to “organizing.” How do you see the comparison?
LF: I almost had Construction In Process in my essay, but when I showed it to international curators. most of them had not heard of it. So I just linked to a very general subject of something that was much less interesting to me until much later in my Lance Fung Gallery time period and that was Fluxus. Okay, Nam June, yes, but I don't think of him as Fluxus even though he is Mr. Fluxus. So, it does parallel to a lot of what Fluxus was about, this impromptu happening sans curator, it's artist inspired, it's “artist organized art” and Construction In Process is a little bit like that, because it did have, from what I know in the books and what I've heard from you guys, less of a curatorial roll and more of an energy and synergy that came about. So, definitely aspects of Lucky Number 7 are coming from Fluxus, Construction In Process, Lance Fung Gallery and a ton of other references.
It's interesting. Everyone will call this biennial so many different things. “The anti-biennial,” because they can either be talking in response to other biennials and what they stand for, marketing, branding, PR, or they can even talk about anti-market, because the works are ephemeral. It could be anti in many ways. Again, there's none of that strategy involved with Lucky Number 7. Essentially, in Lucky Number 7, I, as curator, have digested everything I've learned, seen and heard of in the art world that I like. Which has made me the curator that I am, because then I work in that mode as opposed to in a very commercial glitzy way. Which parallels Construction In Process, but the big difference there is that organization or production vs. curation are apples and oranges, and often as you well know with The Snow Show, I've had to wear all 3 hats, where I would most prefer wearing only the curator's hat. Not worrying about fund raising and legal and administrative issues, not worrying about promoting it, but just dealing with the curatorial end, would be great and that's what a curator “was.” But, in the new decade or millennium it shifted where almost every curator is out there “shakin' a tin can.” Whether you're working for a big proper museum or you're doing a freelance show you're out there with the Press, because that's another way to get visibility, so that when you're “shakin' the tin can” people are dropping a quarter in yours vs. someone else's. All of a sudden I kept feeling rather inadequate with The Snow Show, having to do all of this stuff. And, I felt slighted, like, “why am I having to do this as a curator?” Well guess what? The world caught up to me in a negative way when it was much better for the curator just to curate, someone else to write the check, and someone else to go out and talk about it. Another thing I've always been a little embarrassed about is my commercial background. In fact, I pulled it out from all of my bios and website and really eliminated Holly Solomon Gallery and Lance Fung Gallery, because very few, if any, curators made the transition from the commercial world to the not-for-profit world. Some went the other way because then by being an important curator, or with a museum, you can be paid more by working in a gallery, but going in the reverse direction, from “money” to “no money,” is “crazy.”
Lance Fung runs Fung Collaboratives, LLC
Also, the credibility is weak, because curator as dealer or dealer as curator has a lot of conflict of interest. We talked about it with The Snow Show. How many artists, that I'd worked with in the past, could I put in The Snow Show without it looking like there was favoritism, or commercial gain. Particularly when Finland was up, so was my gallery. I asked - people said “oh three to five artists based on your group.” In the end I only did two, John Roloff and Top, otherwise I would have put more, not because I was trying to promote the gallery, but because I believed in them. So it's interesting, but I was speaking at this conference on public art with all these other curators Jan Debbaut (formerly of The Tate) organized and they said “but, weren't you at Holly's?” I said “yes, but I don't talk about that,” and they said “why?” I said “well…” they said, “you're' wrong because right now that commercial background you have is so needed and most curators don't have that information.” A) They don't know how to buy a work of art for the institution. B) They don't know how to talk about discounts etc. So it's very funny, curatorial work is evolving and it is including someone odd like me, because normally I wouldn't fit into that category, but I actually don't think it's for the better to be quite honest.
Lance Fung is an independent curator based in New York City. One of Fung’s most well known projects was The Snow Show exhibition, realized in 2004 in Lapland, and in 2006 in Torino, Italy for XX Olympic Winter Games. Prior to his independent curatorial endeavors worldwide, he had an eponymous gallery in New York, and was the director of Holly Solomon Gallery.
Lance Fung curates International Biennial, Lucky Number 7, at Site Santa Fe, June '08
Lance Fung curates International Biennial, Lucky Number 7, at Site Santa Fe, June '08
Since its opening in 1995, SITE‘s mission has been to bring the global contemporary art dialogue to the Southwest region of the US. SITE’s Biennial, organized by a guest curator of international reputation, always attempts a paradigm shift in the field of visual arts. SITE’s Biennial is known worldwide for its innovation and for showcasing great curators ahead of the rest of the art world. In fact, three of SITE’s six curators have subsequently served as Directors of the Venice Biennale, including this year’s Robert Storr, and a fourth won a MacArthur “Genius” Award.
Lucky Number Seven Curatorial Team and Partner Institutions:
1. Ferran Barenblit, Centro de Arte Santa Mónica (CASM), Barcelona, Spain, www.centredartsantamonica.net
2. Iara Boubnova, Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia, Bulgaria, www.ica.cult.bg
3. Gregory Burke, The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada, www.thepowerplant.org
4. Colin Chinnery, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China, www.ullenscenterforthearts. org (Partnering with Centre for International Cultural Exchange, China, www.seechina.com.cn)
5. Alexie Glass, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, www.gertrude.org.au
6. Lukasz Gorczyca and Michal Kaczynski, Stowarzyszenie Integracji Kultury (Association of Cultural Integration), Warsaw, Poland, www.raster.art.pl
7. Laura Steward Heon, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States, www.sitesantafe.org
8. Barbara Holub, Secession, Vienna, Austria, www.secession.at
9. Vasif Kortun, Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul, Turkey, www.platformgaranti.blogspot.com 10. Chus Martinez, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany, www.fkv.de
11. Martina Mazzotta, Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta, Milan, Italy, www.mazzotta.it
12. Tsukasa Mori and Yuu Takehisa, Art Tower Mito, Japan, www.arttowermito.or.jp
13. Joseph Sanchez, Institute of American Indian Arts Museum (IAIA), Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States, www.iaia.edu
14. Patrizia Sandretto, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy www.fondsrr.org
15. Guillermo Santamarina, El Museo Experimental, Mexico City, Mexico
16. Hyunjin Shin, SSamzie Space, Seoul, South Korea, www.ssamziespace.com
17. Alessandro Vincentelli, BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England www.balticmill.com
18. Marc-Olivier Wahler, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, www.palaisdetokyo.com
19. William Wells, The Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt, www.thetownhousegallery.com
Special thanks to SITE’s local residency partner,the Santa Fe Art Institute
Artists
1. Martí Anson Born in 1967 in Mataró, Spain Lives and works in Barcelona
2. Studio Azzurro: Fabio Cirifino (born in Milan), Paolo Rosa (born in Rimini), Stefano Roveda (born in Milan) and Leonardo Sangiorgi (born in Parma), Located in Milan, Italy
3. Erick Beltrán Born in 1974 in Mexico City Lives and works in Barcelona and Mexico City
4. Luchezar Boyadjiev Born in 1957 in Sofia, Bulgaria Lives and works in Worpswede, Germany
5. Michal Budny Born in 1976 in Leszno, Poland Lives and works in Warsaw
6. Ricarda Denzer Born in 1967 in Kirn, Germany Lives and works in Vienna
7. Hiroshi Fuji Born in 1960 in Kagoshima, Japan Lives and works in Fukuoka, Japan
8. Fabien Giraud Born in 1980 in France Lives and works in Paris
9. Piero Golia Born in 1974 in Naples, Italy Lives and works in Los Angeles
10. Soun Myung Hong Born in 1959 in Seoul, Korea Lives and works in Seoul
11. Scott Lyall Born in 1964 in Toronto, Ontario Lives and works in Toronto
12. Nick Mangan Born in 1979 in Geelong, Victoria Lives and works in Berlin
13. Eliza Naranjo-Morse Born in 1980 in Espanola, New Mexico Lives and works in Santa Fe
14. Nora Naranjo-Morse Born in1953 in Espanola, New Mexico Lives and works in Espanola
15. Ahmet Ögüt Born in 1981 in Diyarbakir, Turkey Lives and works in Amsterdam
16. Mandla Reuter Born in 1975 in Nqutu, South Africa Lives and works in Berlin
17. Nadine Robinson Born in 1968 in London, England Lives and works in New York City
18. Zbigniew Rogalski Born in 1974 in D_browa Bia_ostocka Lives and works in Warsaw
19. Wael Shawky Born in 1971 in Alexandria, Egypt Lives and works in Alexandria
20. Raphaël Siboni Born in 1981 in France Lives and works in Paris
21. Rose B. Simpson Born in 1983 in Santa Fe, New Mexico Lives and works at Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico
22. Shi Qing Born in 1969 in Inner Mongolia, China Lives and works in Beijing
Biennial Leadership
Lead Underwriter
Jeanne & Michael L. Klein
Curator's Patron
Marlene Nathan Meyerson
Honorary Chairs
Anne & John Marion, The Burnett Foundation Margarita & Albert Waxman
Exhibition Patrons
Anonymous, Karen & Steve Berkowitz, Virginia Dwan, Agnes Gund & Daniel Shapiro, Jeanne & Jim Manning, Millstream Fund, Mary Lawrence Porter, Margaret Robson, Alice C. Simkins, Ann Tenenbaum & Thomas H. Lee
Exhibition Supporters
Dottie & Dick Barrett, Cornelia Bryer & Herman Siegelaar, Bobbie Foshay, Marian T. Fung & Family, Katherine & James Gentry, Mari & Peter Kooi, Mihail S. Lari & Scott E. Murray, Rosina Lee Yue & Dr. Bert Lies, Toby D. Lewis, Joanne N. McCarthy, Alicia & Bill Miller, Cindy Miscikowski & Doug Ring, Rita & Kent Norton, Lorlee & Arnold Tenenbaum, Kathy & Charles Webster, Nancy Ziegler Nodelman & Dwight Strong
Artists' Patrons
Miguel Abreu Gallery, Susan Hobbs Gallery
Exhibition Friends
Anonymous, Gay Block & Rabbi Malka Drucker, Tina & Robert J. Denison, Sally & Thomas Dunning, Judith & Richard Greer, Pat T. Hall, Amanda & Keith Innes, Jeri Berger Hertzman & Dr. Philip Hertzman, Mary Kahlenberg & Rob Coffland, Carol Prins & John H. Hart, Crennan & David K. Ray, Courtney F. & Scott Taylor, Susan Steinhauser & Daniel Greenberg, David Teiger, Bebe Woolley & Daniel Gorski, Sandy Zane & Ned Bennett
Corporate Sponsors
UBS Financial Services, Houston Sotheby's
Special Events Sponsors
Gebert Contemporary & Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art, Landfall Press, James Kelly and SITE Unseen 5
Supporting Cultural Organizations
Arts Council Korea, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York Canadian Council of the Arts, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, Goethe-Institut, Los Angeles Institut, Ramon Llull Italian Cultural Institute, Los Angeles, The Japan Foundation, Polish Cultural Institute, Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior (SEACEX),
Biennial Weekend Event Chairs
Cornelia Bryer & Herman Siegelaar
Residency Partner
Santa Fe Art Institute
Honorary Committee
Co-Chairs, The Honorable Bill Richardson Governor, New Mexico, The Honorable David Coss Mayor, Santa Fe
Committee Members
Dr. Indrasen Vencatachellum Chief of Section for Arts, Crafts & Design, UNESCO, Ambassador Dennis Richardson Embassy of Australia, Ambassador Eva Nowotny Embassy of Austria, Consul General Alain Dudoit Embassy of Canada, Ambassador Pierre Vimont Embassy of France, Ambassador Klaus Scharioth Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, Mariusz M. Brymora Culture & Public Affairs Counselor Embassy of the Republic of Poland
Off-SITE Location Partners
1005-G Alto Street Center for Contemporary Arts, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Institute of American Indian Arts, Museum of Indian Arts & Culture Museum of International Folk Art, National Dance Institute, New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, Palace of the Governors Santa Fe Opera School for Advanced Research
Additional Support
New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs' Office of Media Initiatives & students from the College of Santa Fe, NM Highlands University & Institute of American Indian Arts Santa Fe Art Institute, Warehouse 21,
www.santafelucky7.com
SITE Santa Fe is fortunate to partner with an extraordinary student documentary team, which is hard at work not only to document Lucky Number Seven, but also to incorporate the show's guiding principles-experimentation, collaboration, process, and community-into its final product. The documentary component of the project aims to convey the spirit of the exhibition and to serve as a lasting record long after the artists have gone and the exhibition is over. The finished product will be presented at SITE in the exhibition and online at www.santafelucky7.com.
The filmmakers wish to thank biennial curator Lance Fung, the artists, and SITE Santa Fe for allowing the access and the opportunity to create this project. Thanks to the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs and the academic programs: the Media Arts Program at New Mexico Highlands University, the Documentary Studies Program at the College of Santa Fe, and the New Media Arts Program at the Institute of American Indian Art, and for funding from the Mandelman-Ribak Foundation. SITE wishes to thank HD Solutions for its support of this project.
The filmmakers wish to thank biennial curator Lance Fung, the artists, and SITE Santa Fe for allowing the access and the opportunity to create this project. Thanks to the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs and the academic programs: the Media Arts Program at New Mexico Highlands University, the Documentary Studies Program at the College of Santa Fe, and the New Media Arts Program at the Institute of American Indian Art, and for funding from the Mandelman-Ribak Foundation. SITE wishes to thank HD Solutions for its support of this project.
Student documentation team
Kenneth Bachicha, Veronica Black, Jeana Francis, Jason Jaacks, Carlo Martinez, Megan Fisher McHugh, Marni Samuels, and Paul Conley. The project is coordinated by Eliot Fisher from the College of Santa Fe under the overall direction of Mimi Roberts, DCA Director of Media Projects. Faculty advisors are Professors Robert Drummond and Miriam Langer from the NMHU Media Arts Program, Tony O'Brien from the CSF Documentary Studies Program, and Carlos Peinado from the IAIA New Media Arts Program
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Alison Knowles Tate Modern
London Times: Make A Salad
From: Alison Knowles
To: Joshua Selman
Subject: Tate rated
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:15:11 –0400
#2-Proposition (October, 1962)
Make a Salad
London Times: Make A Salad
From: Alison Knowles
To: Joshua Selman
Subject: Tate rated
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:15:11 –0400
Josh: The event score to be performed at the Tate in London on May 24th at four o'clock in the afternoon is from the Great Bear Pamphlet By Alison Knowles published in 1964. The proposals for performance are labeled "propositions."
#2-Proposition (October, 1962)
Make a Salad
Premiered October 21st, 1962 at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London, I made and served up salad for perhaps 20 people.
Visiting the Turbine Hall is like standing in Grand Central Station at rush hour. Around 1900 people each day will attend what is titled the Fluxus Long Weekend. My friend Larry Miller and I are the arrangers of the event. He will do the Fluxsports and I the Salad. The other days will include collaborative pieces with performers they provide from Goldsmith college and I will also do a sound work called Newspaper Music. I am very honored by the invitation.
The Tate has been very cooperative with me in my structure for the performance and I in turn have yielded to their demands. They are both large and prestigious and have certainly made salad for special guests over the years, however the differences are significant. My audience must see and hear the salad in production before they can eat it. The first roadblock we surmounted was the actual performance site. I chose the bridge overlooking the entire space. The bridge is about twelve feet wide and approximately four metres from the floor below.
The salad will be selected by the head chef, that's me. The five other chefs they are providing will arrive with their own knives and implements for cutting and shaving vegetables. Chefs, I learned, never share their knives. They will all accompany me the day before to the Borough Market (nearby and the best in London they say) and help select the vegetables flowers and fruits to make a salad for around 500 people. Five hundred people is the figure that was printed in the London Sunday Times Ad this week at any rate. There will be no limit or selection of the people invited to eat. We will eat until it is gone. The table of preparation will be contact mic'd beneath, and the sound spread through the space with a PA system.
All the ingredients will be clean and bagged before we begin. Beneath the bridge a tarpaulin twelve meters square will be spread. It will receive the radishes, olives, violets, rose petals, carrots, tomatoes, at least three types of lettuce for sure. These ingredients will float down, thumping and bouncing and raining down from the bridge to the tarp below . The tarp will be held up at the sides and corners by only the most gifted students from Goldsmith college! The dressing will be dribbled over from the bridge. They promise canoe paddles and a sterilized garden rake for the mixing process, the tarp by now being too heavy to lift. I wished my grand daughters to do the raking in sterilized rubber boots, but this did not pass.
A Mozart quartet will initiate the chopping and when the salad is complete the quartet will finish the selection signaling the serving operation. The music of Mozart and the music of chopping have found a place together at last in contemporary sound art thanks to Proposition #2 and Lucy Railton who heads the quartet.
I have bowed to the hygienic demands of the institution, which has gone through hard territory with the English health department to have a legal salad. We have agreed to wear net hats and gloves but not mouth masks. They (five curators) have "adjusted" the small restrictions and we do have the approval of the Bank of England (really) who will be funding the Fluxus Long Weekend. I am confidant we will not be arrested. I wish the salad to be stupendous not sensational. We know that if we could get this world together there would be enough salad to feed everyone and that's the metaphor.
So, if you find yourself in London in May come to the Tate at four o'clock on the 24th and we can all pitch in, pitch it over and pull it off.
Alison Knowles for Artist Organized Art April 27 03
Friday, April 25, 2008
Jeremy Boyle
at Hudson Franklin Gallery, Chelsea
Mar 20 - Apr 26 2008
Born in Pittsburgh in 1975, artist/musician Jeremy Boyle received his BFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and MFA from the Ohio State University. He was a founding member of the Chicago group Joan of Arc and has performed music (both solo and collaborative) extensively throughout the United States, Canada, and Japan and his recordings are internationally distributed. He has exhibited artwork, most of which is sound and technology based, in major cities across the U.S. including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Sacramento, Seattle,Miami, and Pittsburgh. he was awarded the PA Council on the Arts Fellowship in 2003, received the Heinz Creative Heights Award and completed a residency at the Mattress Factory in 2004, and received a Sprout Fund Seed Award in 2005-6. Recent projects include the completion of a public artwork commissioned by the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership and the Heinz Endowment in collaboration with architect Gerard Damiani and a solo exhibition at the Hudson Franklin Gallery in New York City. he is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His work has been most recently seen at Deadtech in Chicago, IL, and at a mini-tour of performances last fall featuring his (self- playing) guitar and drums. Also in 2007, Boyle created the score for Jennifer Reeder's first feature film, "Accidents at Home and How They Happen," which premiered at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, OH, on March 1. This is his third solo show with Hudson Franklin.
Nicholas Sullivan is an emerging artist completing a degree at UMASS Amherst where he has studied closely with and worked as assistant to artist Jeremy Boyle.
Hudson Franklin Gallery, 508 W 26th St., NYC, was established by Nicole Francis, a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's MA program in Art History. Artists at Hudson Franklin includ Michael Bernstein, Jeremy Boyle, Jesse Chapman, Martin Esteves, Peter Fagundo, Alice Konitz, Elizabeth Saveri, Genevieve Walshe
at Hudson Franklin Gallery, Chelsea
Mar 20 - Apr 26 2008
correspondent: artist Nicholas Sullivan
Jeremy Boyle's ingenuity ranges from everyday three-word emails to his students, to solo art shows, like the one now at the Hudson Franklin Gallery in Chelsea, New York. As a student of Jeremy's, I found his approach to instruction deeply refreshing. Coming from a high school where the emphasis and concentration was either on drawing a tree outside the classroom on a piece of paper with oil pastel (in, gasp, unrealistic colors) or churning through the ridiculous number of still life requirements for the AP art portfolio (I got a 3), Jeremy's take on the foundations program at UMass made me realize the limitless possibilities within the realm of "art." No longer would I slave at a charcoal self-portrait, nor would I even take a gander at a set of oil pastels. A new world had been opened up, and I was sailor-diving into it.
I have taken four different classes with Jeremy. It is always quite an unusual comparison between the classes I take with other professors and the ones I take with Jeremy. Where some instructors concentrate overwhelmingly on technique, and what I deem as replication, Jeremy instead pushes concept. We have talked a number of times about the power and value of teaching conceptually strong art earlier in an artist's formal training. An artist with a strong concept, and the will to achieve it, will take those steps to make it happen. Thus the technique follows the concept. Creative freedom is exactly what Jeremy gave me. It is then when art really became exciting, when those doors were open and the vast expanse of everything lay open before me. It was wonderful.
I have taken four different classes with Jeremy. It is always quite an unusual comparison between the classes I take with other professors and the ones I take with Jeremy. Where some instructors concentrate overwhelmingly on technique, and what I deem as replication, Jeremy instead pushes concept. We have talked a number of times about the power and value of teaching conceptually strong art earlier in an artist's formal training. An artist with a strong concept, and the will to achieve it, will take those steps to make it happen. Thus the technique follows the concept. Creative freedom is exactly what Jeremy gave me. It is then when art really became exciting, when those doors were open and the vast expanse of everything lay open before me. It was wonderful.
From that point on I was brimming with ideas, some rather outlandish, and some a bit more conventional. Regardless of the idea, Jeremy's expertise and general knowledge on just about everything constantly came to the rescue. At one point, for instance, I attempted to make a Jell-O mold for a project. I was never able to complete the project, but I brought up my failed Jell-O attempts to Jeremy and off the top of his head he gave me a list of ways that Jell-O could solidify faster as well as hold its shape better. How he knew this was something I ponder quite frequently. Instances such as this occur on a daily basis with Jeremy. His capacity to help, and to provide information is boundless.
During this current semester I had the opportunity to work with Jeremy as his assistant preparing for his show at the Hudson Franklin Gallery. Every Saturday for about a month or so, I was over at the Boyle residence ready to rock and roll ... or sand and paint. The first day we spent the entire day cleaning an astonishingly thick layer of sawdust off everything in his studio. The rest of my days were usually spent working and reworking the exterior of the small wooden boxes involved in his White Noise piece. We deduced at the end of the entire process that each box (there were approximately 250) took around an hour of labor. But, might I say, dear god they looked good. I loved sanding, spackling, and painting. Jeremy's ipod provided a plethora of new musical discoveries, and I routinely encountered bands I had never heard before (my first day on the job I played 5 straight hours of Morrissey--something that I believe now may have been slowly driving Jeremy insane). The process was exciting to be a part of, and I know that many of my other professors, sadly, would have no art to need help on. Having a professor who is a successful working artist is something that I feel is invaluable. Jeremy's dedication spanned out of the classroom and into his own studio space, where he spent hours going over every meticulous detail of his pieces, exemplifying a practiced and precise level of craftsmanship.
During this current semester I had the opportunity to work with Jeremy as his assistant preparing for his show at the Hudson Franklin Gallery. Every Saturday for about a month or so, I was over at the Boyle residence ready to rock and roll ... or sand and paint. The first day we spent the entire day cleaning an astonishingly thick layer of sawdust off everything in his studio. The rest of my days were usually spent working and reworking the exterior of the small wooden boxes involved in his White Noise piece. We deduced at the end of the entire process that each box (there were approximately 250) took around an hour of labor. But, might I say, dear god they looked good. I loved sanding, spackling, and painting. Jeremy's ipod provided a plethora of new musical discoveries, and I routinely encountered bands I had never heard before (my first day on the job I played 5 straight hours of Morrissey--something that I believe now may have been slowly driving Jeremy insane). The process was exciting to be a part of, and I know that many of my other professors, sadly, would have no art to need help on. Having a professor who is a successful working artist is something that I feel is invaluable. Jeremy's dedication spanned out of the classroom and into his own studio space, where he spent hours going over every meticulous detail of his pieces, exemplifying a practiced and precise level of craftsmanship.
As the show neared, we packaged up the stuff and Jeremy made the long voyage to New York for his installation (which was apparently quite grueling). A few days later a few classmates and myself made the journey to New York for the opening. As we approached the gallery we saw approximately thirty people waiting for the elevator just to get up. I thought to myself, "This is like a godamn Kiss concert." I hadn't expected to see such a huge turnout.
Jeremy's work in the show, I think, can be viewed on a number of levels. But, for the most part I view it as an explanation of the ironies and idiosyncrasies of human behavior, as well as exploring the close relationship of process and creation. For example, his piece involving the large circular screen with the rotating projection, and the video on a rotating pedestal, both deal with similar ideas. The dichotomy that existed between the two pieces I thought was one of the most important of the show, and really embodied ideas reflected in a lot of the other pieces (more on these works below). It is these minute observations that Jeremy is able to delicately bring to the forefront and make obvious. Our human experience is under close scrutiny by Jeremy Boyle, and I think his art will tell you that. Jeremy's sound pieces also seem to illustrate a certain form of dissection and re-contextualization. Since the gallery was so packed, it was hard to hear the white and brown noise pieces, but I felt that their relationship existed similarly to that of the two video pieces. The machine drawings on the walls were something that I never was able to see the actual construction of, nor had I seen the devices that created them. It seemed unimportant to me because I have seen how Jeremy works, and the work around the drawings explains them completely. The self-playing guitar (I think all of UMass has talked about his self playing guitar) was a manifestation of what Jeremy had been teaching our small independent study class about electronics. It is just so visually complex, and so actually complex, it nearly exists in another realm of understanding. It becomes for me something very different than a guitar.
Jeremy's work in the show, I think, can be viewed on a number of levels. But, for the most part I view it as an explanation of the ironies and idiosyncrasies of human behavior, as well as exploring the close relationship of process and creation. For example, his piece involving the large circular screen with the rotating projection, and the video on a rotating pedestal, both deal with similar ideas. The dichotomy that existed between the two pieces I thought was one of the most important of the show, and really embodied ideas reflected in a lot of the other pieces (more on these works below). It is these minute observations that Jeremy is able to delicately bring to the forefront and make obvious. Our human experience is under close scrutiny by Jeremy Boyle, and I think his art will tell you that. Jeremy's sound pieces also seem to illustrate a certain form of dissection and re-contextualization. Since the gallery was so packed, it was hard to hear the white and brown noise pieces, but I felt that their relationship existed similarly to that of the two video pieces. The machine drawings on the walls were something that I never was able to see the actual construction of, nor had I seen the devices that created them. It seemed unimportant to me because I have seen how Jeremy works, and the work around the drawings explains them completely. The self-playing guitar (I think all of UMass has talked about his self playing guitar) was a manifestation of what Jeremy had been teaching our small independent study class about electronics. It is just so visually complex, and so actually complex, it nearly exists in another realm of understanding. It becomes for me something very different than a guitar.
Jeremy was able to show a lot of brand new, and newly refurbished work in this show, and individual pieces are situated in ways that help individual pieces complement each other in interesting ways. For instance, as viewers enter the gallery space, they immediately encounter a large circular construction that is hung from the ceiling screen (one layer of Spackle, one layer of primer, two top coats) at eye level. Projected on the inside of this circle is a digital image of Jeremy's head. The image of Jeremy's head rotates around the inside of the circle. Similarly, nearby, there is another video piece involving rotation. In this case it is a video that stands on a rotating pedestal, with again another rotating image.
In two corners of the room were some of Jeremy's sound pieces, one being White Noise, and the other Brown Noise. The white noise boxes (which I worked on) were approximately 3" x 3" inch white cubes, some with speakers in them and some without, all stacked on top of each other in a pile. The piece emits a soft hum of "white noise." Nearby was the similar Brown Noise piece, made of brown boxes a little bit larger (about 6" x 6") arranged in the same manner and form as White Noise. Finally, Jeremy's self-playing guitar, a complex electronically based instrument made to play without any help of the human hand, and instead running off a micro computer, electronics, hydraulics, and a lot of highly advanced programming.
In two corners of the room were some of Jeremy's sound pieces, one being White Noise, and the other Brown Noise. The white noise boxes (which I worked on) were approximately 3" x 3" inch white cubes, some with speakers in them and some without, all stacked on top of each other in a pile. The piece emits a soft hum of "white noise." Nearby was the similar Brown Noise piece, made of brown boxes a little bit larger (about 6" x 6") arranged in the same manner and form as White Noise. Finally, Jeremy's self-playing guitar, a complex electronically based instrument made to play without any help of the human hand, and instead running off a micro computer, electronics, hydraulics, and a lot of highly advanced programming.
The machine drawings were one of the pieces that I was most excited about. Although I played no role in their construction, nor did I actually ever see them being made, I found them to be deeply compelling images. The complex images rendered by Jeremy's hand-made machines seemed to fit perfectly with his other pieces that showed some of his elaborate electronic handiwork, such as the self-playing guitar. I find the idea of removing the artist's hand almost completely from the final product, and really having the artist's role exist behind the scenes a compelling idea. Upon closer inspection these machine drawings, done in a surprisingly simple ballpoint pen, have their imperfections. The process did not produce perfect drawings, but it was these mistakes that really drew me to them. Seeing the areas where the pen began to run out of ink were the most aesthetically pleasing, and the most interesting, as the flaws in even a mechanical design are exposed.
Jeremy's large wall Spirograph seems to play off of Jeremy's use of machines as well, although in this case the artist's hand is visible, and the machine is instead just a facilitator. Rather than in the machine drawings, this Spirograph just literally guides Jeremy's hand to make the pattern. In this case, there is a closer connection between the artist and his materials and final product. On another level, the Spirograph hints at a certain youthful vigor that Jeremy seems to occasionally play off of within his work. This can also be seen in his use of the ballpoint pen, often in my case associated with school-book scribbles and haphazard note taking. But, upon closer inspection of what the Spirograph really is (a series of gears within gears that creates mathematical curves in a very specific manner) you are able to see where the connections in Jeremy's work begin to be made.
Jeremy's large wall Spirograph seems to play off of Jeremy's use of machines as well, although in this case the artist's hand is visible, and the machine is instead just a facilitator. Rather than in the machine drawings, this Spirograph just literally guides Jeremy's hand to make the pattern. In this case, there is a closer connection between the artist and his materials and final product. On another level, the Spirograph hints at a certain youthful vigor that Jeremy seems to occasionally play off of within his work. This can also be seen in his use of the ballpoint pen, often in my case associated with school-book scribbles and haphazard note taking. But, upon closer inspection of what the Spirograph really is (a series of gears within gears that creates mathematical curves in a very specific manner) you are able to see where the connections in Jeremy's work begin to be made.
Finally, a piece that I have grown to know and love, whether it be because of my role in its production or its simple genius, is White Noise. I have found a place in my heart for this piece. "White noise" by definition is a signal with equal power across all frequencies. Jeremy's piece was approximately 250 small boxes stacked on top of each other, some with speaker playing a level of white noise out of them. In this piece Jeremy actually provides a physical representation of sound, while including the sound that is being represented. Although during the opening the white noise was hard to hear coming out of the speakers (unless your ear was directly against them), I had heard them previously and the actual white noise that emits is quite interesting. It is a short of high hiss sound. This piece is accompanied almost directly across the room by the Brown Noise piece, and this created an interesting relationship within the gallery. The two pieces were speaking to each other in their different pure forms of sound, carrying on a kind of conversation. The literal stacking of the boxes creates an almost post minimalism take on sound. The White Noise and Brown Noise pieces both literally and figuratively converse with each other, describing an arena where audio landscapes are transcribed into physical realizations, thus providing. Similarly, the Spirograph wall drawing, and the machine made drawing also hold a dialog which suggests a distinct relationship between creator and creation, as well as the imperfections of not only the human hand, but also the machines.
After the show I felt a bit of remorse, knowing there would be no more topcoats to put on, no more boxes to sand, and no more Morrissey playing in a dusty studio. But from those days I spent in Jeremy's studio, and from the time I spent with him in the classroom, I have learned a great deal not only about art, the art world outside of college, but also life itself. Jeremy Boyle works hard, he works very hard, and it shows not only in his show at Hudson Franklin Gallery (which I think was a tremendous success), but also in his students' loyalty and dedication to his teaching. Jeremy does not gain respect from his students by being loud, or by enforcing rules and deadlines. Jeremy gains a students' respect by being a teacher, by being kind and generous, and by doing what he does best: creating amazing art.
After the show I felt a bit of remorse, knowing there would be no more topcoats to put on, no more boxes to sand, and no more Morrissey playing in a dusty studio. But from those days I spent in Jeremy's studio, and from the time I spent with him in the classroom, I have learned a great deal not only about art, the art world outside of college, but also life itself. Jeremy Boyle works hard, he works very hard, and it shows not only in his show at Hudson Franklin Gallery (which I think was a tremendous success), but also in his students' loyalty and dedication to his teaching. Jeremy does not gain respect from his students by being loud, or by enforcing rules and deadlines. Jeremy gains a students' respect by being a teacher, by being kind and generous, and by doing what he does best: creating amazing art.
In the end I am constantly left questioning whether my college experience, and my parents hard-earned dollars, are worth a BFA, which in my mind really means nothing. I think often of a philosophy student. A philosophy student is taught philosophy, only in most cases to become a philosophy teacher, thus creating a static cycle. But there is always that one Nietzsche, or that one Marx. Similarly, this is true for the art world. It is not really about the diploma, or AP portfolio, but instead it is about working hard for what you want. College is merely a way to facilitate that. Jeremy's show at Hudson Franklin is a manifestation of what I am working for during these four years, and I will be eternally grateful to him for showing me that.
-Nicholas Sullivan
Born in Pittsburgh in 1975, artist/musician Jeremy Boyle received his BFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and MFA from the Ohio State University. He was a founding member of the Chicago group Joan of Arc and has performed music (both solo and collaborative) extensively throughout the United States, Canada, and Japan and his recordings are internationally distributed. He has exhibited artwork, most of which is sound and technology based, in major cities across the U.S. including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Sacramento, Seattle,Miami, and Pittsburgh. he was awarded the PA Council on the Arts Fellowship in 2003, received the Heinz Creative Heights Award and completed a residency at the Mattress Factory in 2004, and received a Sprout Fund Seed Award in 2005-6. Recent projects include the completion of a public artwork commissioned by the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership and the Heinz Endowment in collaboration with architect Gerard Damiani and a solo exhibition at the Hudson Franklin Gallery in New York City. he is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His work has been most recently seen at Deadtech in Chicago, IL, and at a mini-tour of performances last fall featuring his (self- playing) guitar and drums. Also in 2007, Boyle created the score for Jennifer Reeder's first feature film, "Accidents at Home and How They Happen," which premiered at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, OH, on March 1. This is his third solo show with Hudson Franklin.
Nicholas Sullivan is an emerging artist completing a degree at UMASS Amherst where he has studied closely with and worked as assistant to artist Jeremy Boyle.
Hudson Franklin Gallery, 508 W 26th St., NYC, was established by Nicole Francis, a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's MA program in Art History. Artists at Hudson Franklin includ Michael Bernstein, Jeremy Boyle, Jesse Chapman, Martin Esteves, Peter Fagundo, Alice Konitz, Elizabeth Saveri, Genevieve Walshe
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Dennis Oppenheim. Theme for a Major Hit, 1974. “The Puppet Show.” Installation view.
Institute of Contemporary Art. University of Pennsylvania. Photo: Aaron Igler
Institute of Contemporary Art. University of Pennsylvania. Photo: Aaron Igler
Puppets, Mortality, Humor and Suffering;
Three States, Three Venues Explored
AOA correspondent: Artist Eva Mantell
The Puppet Show, Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Pa, from January 18 to March 30, 2008; traveling to the Santa Monica Museum of Art; the Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Frye Art Museum, Seattle.
Bianca Neve, Teatro del Carretto, LaMama E.T.C., NY, NY,
January 10 - 27, 2008; Teatro Araldo, Torino, Italy, April 18-19 2008
Argonautika, The Voyage of Jason and the Argonauts,
directed by Mary Zimmerman, McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ,
March 20 - April 6, 2008
Puppets look easy, child-like and direct. They are obviously about the body, about power, about imagination, about the self, about comedy and about mortality.
Any artist can drop in on this art form and give it a try. A puppet could be made from anything: your hands (Cindy Loehr gives us a video with talking fists which quickly reminds me of "The In-Laws" with Alan Arkin); your genitals (Guy Ben-Ner's video gives a sometimes shy body part a star singing role); your whole body as you act like a puppet (Paul McCarthy, scary clown slopping paint around for us).
Puppets are about drawing and about sculpting too. Film, video, computer animation too. Robotics (Survival Research Laboratory lavishly blows up robots, which is certainly one approach). I think the thing vacuuming my neighbor's home right now is a puppet. I'm pretty sure some of my children's pets are puppets, that "live and die" by various digital reenactments of nurturing. And this month I had my first sighting of a Baby Think It Over Doll at, where else, the mall! A teenage girl, right out of an after-school special, is dutifully carrying her puppet baby, waiting for its electronic wail, her cue to turn a key in its back while it digitally records her mothering skills. Looking at her a little more closely: does she or doesn't she? Is she also wearing a strap-on empathy belly?
http://www.enasco.com/product/SB43113G
Where, America, can you get a brain to strap on?
Memories can be strapped on or strung up: by Kiki Smith, Louise Bourgeois, or by Dennis Oppenheim with his mini-me's. Playing with dolls can transport you to the realm of fear. Natalie Djurberg's romps in a cardboard world are kinda sick, kinda cruel, kinda cool. Kara Walker's shadows time-travel into a conflicted, messed-up American history. Her elegant lines are an ironic pleasure, a facade for the crude sadism that is the real story.
“The Puppet Show.” Installation view. Left to right: Anne Chu, Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith,
Annette Messager and Maurizio Cattelan in the background. Institute of Contemporary Art.
University of Pennsylvania. Photo: Aaron Igler
Annette Messager and Maurizio Cattelan in the background. Institute of Contemporary Art.
University of Pennsylvania. Photo: Aaron Igler
Take a break with someone else's problems: Bruce Nauman's dinner date gone yucky. Doug Skinner and Michael Smith's potty mouths. The body and the world are about failure. Things regress then fall apart. Chaos was a greek proto-god who got in at the ground floor. Ubu Roi, an early expression of things gone ape-shit almost gives a classical feeling to stuff going beserk.
Ubu Roi and the Truth Commission, a play from South Africa, with William Kentridge on visuals, riffs on this little archaic psycho-policeman. The brutality of the regime, the document-shredding, the erasing of crimes, create, warp and envelop the testimony of the citizens' suffering. This stuff is real and the art is just mediating the experience. Being good or bad art doesn't matter so much as that it just is art, and art helps me be human in the face of unbearable absences of humanity.
Just do art, and keep it coming. Teatro del Carretto's Bianca Neve (Snow White) at LaMaMa E.T.C. feels Medieval, distilled, sorrowful. A velvet lined box opens up in different ways to reveal shifts of scale, humor and suffering...from the miniature 7 dwarves to the terrifying full-scale actress portraying the witch/queen with an unmoving mask.
The mask that doesn't move and the strings that don't work are the stuff of nightmares. What we most need is agency in the world, connection, love, action and reaction. In the play Argonautika at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, early on, a marionette puppet of a baby wiggles its arms and legs making eager clicking sounds. I laugh at the repetitive, silly motions, but laugh too soon because now the king's henchmen cut the strings, and leave it dead, noiseless, still on the stage.
Any fool knows that plaster, wood, screws and glue don't add up to life, but puppet that I am, my heartstrings are pulled and here come the waterworks.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Gema Alava: "Tell Me the Truth"
at Messineo / Wyman
! Extended to May 2 !
March 20 -April 26, 2008
Messineo Art Projects and Wyman Contemporary
227 West 29th Street, 4th Floor (# 111)
New York, New York
at Messineo / Wyman
! Extended to May 2 !
March 20 -
Messineo Art Projects and Wyman Contemporary
227 West 29th Street, 4th Floor (# 111)
New York, New York
by Ted Mooney
The truth is a hard apple, whether thrown or caught, as this young Spanish artist clearly knows. She tends, at her best, to think three or four moves ahead of her work's viewers-not out of disdain for them or out of personal elusiveness, but simply to allow herself room to adjust her own thinking in relation to the effect her imagery has on her (rapidly growing) audience. One even gets the sense that these adjustments are what she's most interested in. And that, if correct, is promising news indeed.
Alava's most recent show, thoughtfully installed in Messineo / Wyman's tiny 29th Street space, is breathtakingly elegant, deftly using the gallery's space limitations to the works' advantage. On exhibition are nine black-and-white silver gelatin digital photographs, printed on fiber paper and individually framed in white maple. Each work depicts, toward the left side of the print, a nail of indeterminate size-no scale is established in these works-protruding from a light gray, almost bluish ground that subsumes both foreground and background. Meanwhile, toward the right side of each print, emerging from a hole in this same placeless gray-blue void, are a few black threads, which seem to have ventured out along the ground to wrap themselves around the nail at midpoint or higher in what appears to be an attempt to uproot it from the security of its hole. A struggle, then-and so, inevitably, the appearance of a narrative. Each print shows the two elements-nail and thread-in a different state of dominance or submission relative to one another. At times the nail leans rigidly away from the threads, drawing them so taut they seem to fray almost to the breaking point. At others, the threads, exerting no less force, bend the nail savagely toward them, flexing it and nearly extracting it from its stubbornly held position. Occasionally, the two forces reach an equilibrium, though whether in exhaustion, momentary truce or even a hard-won peace, it's hard to say.
At least on first encounter, it would be all but impossible for the viewer not to see in this struggle, which is presented to us as if on a completely featureless proscenium stage, the successive seasons in an emotional, probably romantic, human relationship. It could even, if the "time" interval between prints is imagined to be much shorter, be thought of as depicting various moments in a single act of lovemaking. The nail is undeniably phallic, the threads undeniably tactical in their approach and adaptive in their manner of struggle, almost certainly feminine. But no sooner has the viewer hit upon this fairly obvious thought-one even the most completely unreconstructed, frankly fanatical formalist would be hard-pressed to deny-than other, totally different questions begin to bubble up, one after another, in almost alarming profusion.
These questions begin with purely pragmatic speculations as to how these scenarios were physically created. The background suggests a space that is either infinite or non-existent, and, like someone who has just witnessed a magic trick, the viewer is seduced into trying to figure out how this effect was accomplished. Whether one arrives at a satisfactory answer or not, these speculations segue very quickly into the oddly threatening realization that there are absolutely no clues as to what the scale here might be. The force of the depicted struggle (as well as the size of the rather large, horizontally formatted prints) makes it hard not to succumb to the illusion that the stature of the protagonists-nail and thread-is equally epic. And yet when was the last time you saw a ten-foot nail? By now the sense that you are being manipulated is so strong that you begin to question everything. Where exactly can the physical tableaux that appear in the photographs be found? Why aren't you being shown them, instead of what suddenly seems like photo-documentation of the real works, which are being denied you? Did the "true" art work somehow slip away between its physical embodiment and the trace of it preserved in the photograph? Or is the photo itself the art work?
And if these simple physical matters cannot be pinned down, then what about your earlier snap-judgment-strongly reinforced by the linear, apparently sequential installation of the photographs-that together they constitute a definite narrative, from image one to image nine ("The End," as it were). Could the photos be resequenced so as to make a different "story"? Is the story you take from the photos really there, or is it a story you make from them because that's the story you know: your story. Naturally, you then try looking at the prints in different orders to determine the possibilities. And so, by degrees, and quite unexpectedly, you find yourself stranded on a sparsely populated plain in the land of Beckett-or, more befittingly, given the artist's Spanish background, that of Salvador Dali. (Note the Dali-esque shadows cast by the nail.) The seamlessness with which you have been transported from an almost cartoonishly amusing allegory of human relations to a place where some of the darkest fears and needs of the human heart are enacted-enacted and reenacted over and over again unto death-suggests that the artist's intentions were, just possibly, not quite as innocent as you may have assumed. What you still have left to go on, however, is the title of the show: "Tell Me the Truth."
To ask someone to tell you the truth-not a truth but the truth-is to instantly vaporize for good the very object of your request, the one that was so comfortably within your reach until you opened your mouth. Now the possibility of knowing the truth you asked for is forever denied you, because it died the moment you expressed your desire to hear it. This is something all unfaithful lovers know. And, however much we might wish it otherwise, when it comes to the truth, we are all of us unfaithful lovers.
Gema Alava's work carries an uncanny power whose source lies precisely in how lightly she offers it. Often made from the humblest of materials, her art nevertheless gives off just the faintest trace of intense and prolonged concentration. Modest in scale, frequently fragile, it makes you think not of modesty or fragility but of resistance and struggle, life and death, the largest matters. Alava has a gift for effortless reversals that she does not hesitate to use in making her mortal point. And that point, more often than not, has to do with the universality of human suffering-cast by her, at times, in a Spanish key, for Spain's suffering at the hands of history is well known. But the artist is under no illusion: such suffering is a condition of life, not of nationality.
Alava's show remains open until April 26. See it now, before she becomes too well known for her work to be shown again in such intimate quarters.
Author: Ted Mooney is a senior editor at Art in America and the author of four award-winning novels. His most recent, forthcoming in early 2009, is titled The Same River Twice.
copyright (c) 2008 by Ted Mooney
Artist: Gema Alava born Madrid, 1973. MFA San Francisco Art Institute, 2000. Her work has been shown at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Queens Museum of Art and, thanks to the generous collaboration of Cai Guo-Quiang, her latest art project took place at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, February 21st 2008.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Rough and Ready at Pier 94
The Armory Show
The Armory Show
Jonathan Meese detail at Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin
by artist Alison Knowles
photography: Erika Knerr
For AOA
Convinced by a friend that I should see more art that is almost next door I ventured out with Bonnie Marranca of Performance Art Journal to the Armory show at 12th Avenue and 55th Street. Commenting that this is hardly next door on a cold March day she smilingly retorted. "There will be coffee. "Once inside there in my immediate sites was Leah Fried of the Lombard Fried gallery. She had the best show at the fair for my vote. His name is Michael Rakovitch, a third generation Iraqui American who started out by putting his sculptures in his fathers Import Export store on Atlantic Avenue. The work was so compelling one had to pick it up and look closely. About twenty small sculpture filled the table: dogs, shoes, lamps, perhaps all rejects from his father's store I imagined. Each piece wrapped in a daily newspaper, impeccably glued and adhered smoothly so the Arabic or Turkish or English could be read. One had to guess the object that supported the newspaper accounts.
Leah was one of many friends that had shown up for this fair and she pointed the way to another series of works by Emily Jacir. These were clearly Fluxus like event accounts, suggesting to walk a certain street in Gaza and find one corner to observe. I decline to take the Gaza walk at this time, but the pieces were evocative of what this young Palestinian was going about to make art from her torn homeland. Then turning around there in my sites was artist/student from Cal Arts, Aviva Rahmani now in Maine. She is an artist doing a PHD as part of her "art practice". Her field is ecology and she has repaired a huge pond water-site in Maine. Today she said "we have to think of knowledge particularly science as the material of art". It is up to artists to start thinking and make their own archives available she said, as loose theoretical writing and reportage have made it necessary for artists themselves to communicate what they are about. I mentioned AOA to her: "It was great getting in with AOA. They said 'we don't care if you're an artist, you have to be a writer to get in here.' Fortunately, my Shoreline had my name attached as writer."
Around another corner I found a work by Idris Khan titled "Hearing Voices". A large spread of grayish notes based on a Schumann concerto had been transferred as a digital c-print onto aluminum, a glowing beautiful work. Finally with coffee in hand I could sit for a moment with Dominique de Menil, a strong and generous contributor to the work of John Cage for decades. She is the remarkable person who bought and island in the Caribbean and built a college there.
Julie Harrison informed me that Steve Clay at Granary of Granary books was not present but caring for the kids. She was sipping tea on a huge cushion.
"At The Armory Show an air of orderly professionalism pervades..."
On the news just now I see that artists in Brooklyn have rented a dumpster and are showing digital tapes inside for free entry. Because I am a member of Artists Organized Art I was able to bypass the line and get free entry by showing a work Shoreline on the Internet. It worked. They gave me a badge and let me through. The line was more than a half hour long and the fee $30. I disagree with this situation of large fees for museums and fairs. Clearly I better stick with those enterprising artists renting a dumpster in Brooklyn.
Leah was one of many friends that had shown up for this fair and she pointed the way to another series of works by Emily Jacir. These were clearly Fluxus like event accounts, suggesting to walk a certain street in Gaza and find one corner to observe. I decline to take the Gaza walk at this time, but the pieces were evocative of what this young Palestinian was going about to make art from her torn homeland. Then turning around there in my sites was artist/student from Cal Arts, Aviva Rahmani now in Maine. She is an artist doing a PHD as part of her "art practice". Her field is ecology and she has repaired a huge pond water-site in Maine. Today she said "we have to think of knowledge particularly science as the material of art". It is up to artists to start thinking and make their own archives available she said, as loose theoretical writing and reportage have made it necessary for artists themselves to communicate what they are about. I mentioned AOA to her: "It was great getting in with AOA. They said 'we don't care if you're an artist, you have to be a writer to get in here.' Fortunately, my Shoreline had my name attached as writer."
Around another corner I found a work by Idris Khan titled "Hearing Voices". A large spread of grayish notes based on a Schumann concerto had been transferred as a digital c-print onto aluminum, a glowing beautiful work. Finally with coffee in hand I could sit for a moment with Dominique de Menil, a strong and generous contributor to the work of John Cage for decades. She is the remarkable person who bought and island in the Caribbean and built a college there.
Julie Harrison informed me that Steve Clay at Granary of Granary books was not present but caring for the kids. She was sipping tea on a huge cushion.
"At The Armory Show an air of orderly professionalism pervades..."
On the news just now I see that artists in Brooklyn have rented a dumpster and are showing digital tapes inside for free entry. Because I am a member of Artists Organized Art I was able to bypass the line and get free entry by showing a work Shoreline on the Internet. It worked. They gave me a badge and let me through. The line was more than a half hour long and the fee $30. I disagree with this situation of large fees for museums and fairs. Clearly I better stick with those enterprising artists renting a dumpster in Brooklyn.
Alison Knowles
photography: Erika Knerr
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Armory Show, NYC 2008
The "Business As Usual" Slideshow
The "Business As Usual" Slideshow
Monday, March 10, 2008
Modern Native American Artists
Artistic Expression: Modern Perspectives of a
Modern People
Dan Loudfoot, Everyone Wants To Be An Indian, participants, backdrop and photo document
A Native American Heritage Series Event
February 8-28, 2008
John Nickolas Brown Center
Brown University, Providence RI
by participating artist, Nayana Glazier
I experienced apprehension in the days leading up to the event. This came from the original reasons why Loudfoot, Echo-hawk and I had been planning the very same type of event previously. I wondered what the backgrounds were like for the other artists whom I was not familiar with. Did they have these same feelings? Did their work express the same ideas? Being of mixed blood would that affect their view of me or my work? These are all questions that I think all of the artists involved in this show probably thought in the days leading up to the reception.
Winifred Bessie Jumbo, site specific placement of ritual objects
Chloris Lowe, object, wood, steel, bronze and fabric
"Please check these at the door ...Please forget to retrieve them when you leave"
Nayana Glazier and Dan Loudfoot
Upon leaving to make the drive home I said goodbye to Dan Loudfoot, who I had only just met in person that night, we both expressed a desire to take this concept and the one we had begun before and have the show travel. We will now be looking for venues around the country where we can have this same sort of event.
Artistic Expression: Modern Perspectives of a
Modern People
Dan Loudfoot, Everyone Wants To Be An Indian, participants, backdrop and photo document
A Native American Heritage Series Event
February 8-28, 2008
John Nickolas Brown Center
Brown University, Providence RI
by participating artist, Nayana Glazier
Friday February 8th was a day that I was apprehensive would ever come. I also never imagined it would happen with out my hands-on involvement. But a little over a month previous I received an email from Mikel Brown co-programmers of Native Americans at Brown (NAB) I was surprised. She explained to me their plans for an exhibition at the John Nicholas Brown Center at Brown University.
I experienced apprehension in the days leading up to the event. This came from the original reasons why Loudfoot, Echo-hawk and I had been planning the very same type of event previously. I wondered what the backgrounds were like for the other artists whom I was not familiar with. Did they have these same feelings? Did their work express the same ideas? Being of mixed blood would that affect their view of me or my work? These are all questions that I think all of the artists involved in this show probably thought in the days leading up to the reception.
Then it came, reception day, large white building with pillars and a stonewall with gate. We found our way in through the carriage house to what resembled a small parlor converted into the style of gallery you would see in most higher end New England colleges. Almost a cliché considering the subject matter of the exhibition. After hanging coats I found my way into the gallery to explore the works. Armed with my name tag and the knowledge that others were looking at me the same as I was looking at them. "There is another artist, I wonder what work they did, I wonder if they know I am one of the other artists, I wonder what they truthfully think of this exhibition."
Upon entering the space I was immediately greeted by the over all composition of the room. The work was positioned clockwise around the chamber surrounding a large sculptural piece in the center. Pieces were numbered with an accompanying booklet filled with the names, tribal affiliation, and explanation of their work. I immediately grabbed my packet and made my way around the room. The space was filling up with other artists doing the same as the time approached for the general public to arrive.
One, was a piece by Courtney M. Leonard, with the tribal affiliation of Shinnecock. Leonard is a grad student at RISD and presented a piece entitled "I want a golden goose egg too..." for which she listed the materials as "earth" Upon further exploration of the room I found she had a total of 3 pieces in the exhibit all of which had the same aesthetic and appeal to them. They resembled vessels and the first an egg with sculpted detailing and unique glazing. The thing that struck me most about them was the content of the imagery included on them. Stamps of strawberry shortcake and drawings of buildings adorn these traditional shapes as if to suggest the Americanization of her lifestyle and ideals. Almost caught between the two worlds of the traditional and modern. "Would this definition consider me as one (a traditional potter) if I admitted I began with play dough?" Leonard states in her explanation of her work. www.courtneymleonard.com
Two as a cut origami paper and Rives BFK collage by Donna Charging of the Wind River Indian Reservation. This piece alluded to more but through her explanation I was unable to see the full truth behind it. The figure out of cut paper was suspended from the top right with what appeared to be hair, or a "scaling" falling away to the left. The legs on the figure seemed lifeless and dangling and I could not help but wonder what it was specifically about. I am unable to ask the artist this however and am still left wondering. www.donnacharging.worldecho.com
Three was a piece by Bunky Echo-Hawk, The piece featured had been produced as a "Live Painting" at Brown's previous event in which he had set up to paint and did so by the suggestions of those in the room at the time. He asked everyone to write down suggestions of what to include in the painting, one based on issues facing Native Americans and another for words that describes modern mainstream America. People threw up ideas such as "domestic violence", "Identity", "mascots" and "fast food", "Immigration" and "Britney Spears". Ultimately it ended as a piece with a blue sky, almost annoyingly happy blue, with an "uncle Sam wants you" post to a man with a top hat and preachers uniform with blood trickling from the corners of his mouth and the words "Mc. Believe" across his chest. The piece as a whole is dynamic and impactful. The story of its creation just as much a part of the piece as the finished product itself. For a full article on this project visit this Brown-Daily-Herald-Link or www.bunkyechohawk.com
Five was a stunningly constructed regalia by Elizabeth Hoover, Mohawk/Mi'kmaq tribal affiliation. This piece held onto its tradition wile incorporating the colors and ideas of the modern generations. I spoke with Ms. Hoover about her method and reasoning behind her work and found that she works much as a painter or other artist would. There are no patterns or even plans when it comes to sewing her pieces. All is decided upon in the moment, the works that result are as individual and intriguing as any other art form.
Five was a stunningly constructed regalia by Elizabeth Hoover, Mohawk/Mi'kmaq tribal affiliation. This piece held onto its tradition wile incorporating the colors and ideas of the modern generations. I spoke with Ms. Hoover about her method and reasoning behind her work and found that she works much as a painter or other artist would. There are no patterns or even plans when it comes to sewing her pieces. All is decided upon in the moment, the works that result are as individual and intriguing as any other art form.
Six was my piece, I had submitted "Time to Leave" a large acrylic on canvas which depicts women in brightly colored regalia boarding a black and white bus in a black and white cityscape. This piece was meant to represent the idea of being in a modern city and feeling out of place, remembering what was once there in its place. www.picturetrail.com/nayanag
Dan Loudfoot, print enlargement with hand
Dan Loudfoot, print enlargement
Dan Loudfoot, print enlargement with hand
Dan Loudfoot, print enlargement
Seven was Dan Loudfoot's "Grandmother Simonds", he also had piece Thirteen "Everyone wants to be an Indian" and several pieces in the temporary room where the refreshments were held. Both pieces incorporate the use of bingo paint blotters to create traditional designs around a concept. In "Grandmother Simonds" he chose to put an image of his grandmother with that of a stereotypical Indian doll incorporating the bingo paint to form an almost mary-esque halo around his grandmothers head. "Everyone wants to be Indian" is an interactive piece in which visitors to the show sit in a chair positioning themselves to have their heads in the center of a circle of bingo paint with feathers at the top. These images will comprise a book when the exhibition is complete. www.danloudfoot.com
Four, a digital photograph series by Chloris Lowe of Ho-Chunk affiliation. This piece struck me because of its honesty and provocative ideas on identity related to being Native American. His piece spoke to me as a mixed blood native. Its title "searching for 1/4" said it all for me. The series of three digital photographs, close ups on his face with small alterations such as glasses on or off reminded me of the experience of looking in the mirror searching for identity in what is easily seen. His physical appearance did not directly lead me to think he was of native ancestry and that is what made this piece the most interesting for me. There is always this feeling of non-acceptance for being or not being enough native and he tackled that issue in a 'head on' method. lowespaceartplace.blogspot.com
Winifred Bessie Jumbo, site specific placement of ritual objects
Eight and Nine are two dolls dressed in the traditional fashion by Winifred Bessie Jumbo of Navajo affiliation. Each element of the dolls outerwear means something about them and tells a story of where her life will go. These dolls are strangely generic in appearance as dolls themselves, it is what Jumbo does to them that make them unique and speak to the combining of ancient ideas and new ways. Her work speaks softly in its statement but has a deeper meaning that seems just within sight.
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Eleven were digital photographs by Jamie Spears of the RI Wampanoag who displayed images of her mother, cousin and cousin's daughter at powwows. The thing that intrigued me about this work was the presence of such modern objects as head set microphones in otherwise traditional imagery.
Chloris Lowe, object, wood, steel, bronze and fabric
Fourteen I almost did not see at all, which is strange considering it is the largest piece in the show and positioned in the very center of the room. I rounded the room and on my way out realized that there were two pieces remaining. The last I soon found just outside the doorway but this number fourteen I had almost not seen. But when my eye finally fixated on it the whole perception of the room changed and it became impossible to enter the room with out seeing it. The piece is by Chloris Lowe, the same person who did the photographs that I found so poignant. This sculpture incorporates wood, steel, bronze and fabric to make an intimidating but organic feeling structure resembling a box pulled open at the center to reveal the remaining elements. Lowe says this piece stems from ideas on the medicine bundle. The objects inside came from personal stories and experiences of Lowe's.
(picture unavailable)
Fifteen is a digital image created in Adobe Photoshop by Donovan Pete of Navajo affiliation. Entitled "Withered" this piece incorporated elements of the modern and ideas on the traditional to form a graphically strong composition which makes us wonder about what might come next. Kind of a perfect ending for the whole event.
"Please check these at the door ...Please forget to retrieve them when you leave"
On my way out I saw a sign at the door that I had missed on the way in asking us to leave our preconceived ideas on Native Americans at the door.
The turn out was fantastic for the space and the feeling in the room was an over all welcoming experience. Rather than the usual awkward interactions with other artists we found ourselves talking about our work and the ideas behind it. The overall feeling in the room was appreciation for the event-taking place. Each artist I spoke with expressed their experience of being surprised and excited that the topics handled in the show were being addressed and presented in such a public forum. Every person involved seemed to be genuinely excited and honored to be participating and have the opportunity to present these issues and ideas to the public.
Conversations on everything from art to history and pop culture were passed around as each of us found a small piece of the connectedness that so many of our works expressed the absence of.
Nayana Glazier and Dan Loudfoot
Upon leaving to make the drive home I said goodbye to Dan Loudfoot, who I had only just met in person that night, we both expressed a desire to take this concept and the one we had begun before and have the show travel. We will now be looking for venues around the country where we can have this same sort of event.
The perspectives of the artist on art are rarely altered, except when faced with something that achieves what they themselves have tried to achieve but could not. Then I think the artist must look at things differently. This show did that for me.
-- Nayana
Friday, March 07, 2008
Embarrassment and Address
Mina Cheon's Addressing Dolls at the C.Grimaldis Gallery
Mina Cheon's Addressing Dolls at the C.Grimaldis Gallery
Baltimore, Maryland
by Brian Willems
Dollhouses first became popular in 17th century Western Europe. One of the most famous patrons of dollhouses at the time was Petronella Oortman of Amsterdam. If you go to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam you can see some of her collection. Painted large upon the wall of the exhibition room, in English and Dutch, you learn that Oortman spent from 20,000 to 30,000 guilders at a time on the houses and their furniture, a price which could have purchased a real house on one of Amsterdam's canals. This information is presented as shocking, and Oortman as wasteful. This is because dolls are not real, so they cannot appreciate or be comforted by their houses. Such devotion and extravagance lavished by the living on the non-living, however beautiful the outcome may be, is embarrassing. Embarrassing because care is given to that which is considered not to deserve it -- the empty husks of dolls.
While embarrassment is usually thought of as a negative concept, in the artwork(s) of Mina Cheon's exhibition Addressing Dolls it is a positive, strong and emancipating emotion. This is because embarrassment comes from being on unfamiliar ground. It comes from being subversively open to what is usually considered unimportant or impossible. Addressing Dolls foregrounds this unfamiliar ground by shining light on familiar tropes which have been manipulated within the thrust for Westernization in South Korean culture. In this sense the artwork functions in two ways: to focus our attention on the ways different kinds of dolls have been manipulated in Korean culture, and to highlight our own relationship to what is considered other than ourselves.
The focus of this exhibition is the trope of the doll. Its use is foregrounded firstly through repetition in 99 Miss Kim(s), which features 99 handmade female military dolls which were used to spread the propaganda of an oppressive North Korea, and secondly in the manipulation of scale in ten types of Dresses for Different Events, where frilly paper doll dresses are enlarged, becoming life-sized. These works call attention to the conflict present within Western and colonizing cultures in both Koreas and the way in which that has led to a conflicted relationship, and Cheon has worked on this cultural distortion by subverting the images and objects themselves. The repeated dolls of North Korean military femme bots and the blown-up Victorianized paper dresses of 70s South Korea do not let the viewer walk by, they do not let the viewer forget. Such a call-to-attention is embarrassing because it puts the viewer on unfamiliar ground by taking given and familiar tropes and putting them out there, exposed and open to scrutiny.
So where does that leave the viewer? Again, putting a positive spin on a term that is usually seen as negative, the viewer is left in a state of stupidity. In a sense, you can say that it is stupid to address dolls, to dress them, to cover them with wealth or ideas or to look towards dolls for answers, since they do not give anything back. However, it is in this state of a removal from what is usually considered intelligence that something new can come about. This removal can be considered a form of address because it is an openness to response, a turning towards and opening to. In this manner it is an address in the sense of location, of where you are dwelling. Such a thinking of the address of stupidity has been developed by philosopher Avital Ronell who argues that stupidity "tends to sever with the illusion of depth and the marked withdrawal, staying with the shallow imprint. Unreserved, stupidity exposes while intelligence hides." This is what was meant above regarding embarrassment. What Addressing Dolls does is to expose through distortion. In this sense stupidity is that which is left when a positive answer is denied and instead what is held open is the moment of questioning, of the pencil poised above the answer sheet. As Ronell states, "Stupidity makes stronger claims for knowing and for the presencing of knowledge than rigorous intelligence would ever permit itself to make." Cheon takes the manipulative and damaging tropes of the women as dolls in Korean culture and positivizes it by allowing an interaction with such tropes to become an action of embarrassing us out of ourselves, and allowing something else to become present, a knowledge more rigorous than intelligence would ever allow. Such a positivization is also a part of bringing the exhibition to the US from its showing in South Korea: by bringing Westernization back into the West, a sense of defamiliarization is lodged into the heart of the familiar.
So we become embarrassed addressing something that cannot respond, doubly embarrassed because assumed tropes of how the desire of South Korean female beauty is mimicked by Western standards and shaped by Korean expectations and imitation are exposed and such an exposure enacts a removal from intelligence, from what we know or accept, and thus we are put on unknown or at least unstable ground. The result of this exposure is that there is room kept open for the possible, for new thought. However, in order for such openness to exist, the other that is addressed must be allowed to remain in a position of strength. What is meant here is that it is precisely the other that has the strength to do work that we are not able to do, meaning, to bring us into a presencing of ourselves. In order for this presencing to take place, a relationship of what can be called embarrassment, stupidity or perhaps groundlessness needs to happen. Such a relationship to the other is denied these recent Korean artifacts for girls. However, when these manipulations are exposed and reworked, which is at the heart of Cheon's work, a space for openness happens.
So in a sense in the 17th century Oortman could be said to have had the correct attitude after all. To lavish the non-responsive other with extravagance and surplus is a way of keeping its strength alive, of honoring its unknown. As Cheon wrote in a recent piece on the hand, "The dolls are interesting non-beings and a gift of my childhood when my hands were not big enough, strong enough, firm enough to hold scissors." Perhaps it is only a risky, embarrassing and open relationship with a strong other that might allow us to have the ability to approach ourselves.
Brian Willems is an American assistant professor of literature at the University of Split, Croatia. His essays have appeared in or are forthcoming in artUS, A Tribute to Jean Baudrillard, Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy, From A to : Keywords in HTML and Writing and others. His poems and prose have appeared in Antioch Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Hotel St George Press and others. He has a book forthcoming on Martin Heidegger and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
This text Embarrassment and Address is written for Addressing Dolls, Mina Cheon's solo exhibition at the C.Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland, which is on display until March 29, 2008.
Monday, March 03, 2008
In Conversation With Jeffrey Perkins
an interview by Chiara Vecchiarelli
Jeffrey Perkins is a visual artist and filmmaker who recently resurfaced at The Emily Harvey Foundation in Brain Damage on Broadway, an evening of hypnosis, experimentation and psychedelia organized by artist Taketo Shimada of Messages. Years ago Jeff co-founded Single Wing Turquoise Bird, who provided light shows to Velvet Underground, Grateful Dead and Dr. John to name a few and on October 25’ 07, through Shimada’s initiative, resurrected his first light show in thirty years to the sounds of Shimada’s own collaborative project Messages. But there is far more to know about Perkins, a decades long associate of Yoko Ono, John Lennon, George Maciunas and Nam June Paik among many others. While serving in the U.S. Air Force stationed in Tokyo in the early 1960’s, he met Yoko Ono and her husband Anthony Cox. Through them he was exposed to the works of Cage, Duchamp, LaMonte Young and others and began participating in events, performances and concerts. Jeff currently exhibits at the Emily Harvey Gallery and is now finishing up his new film 'The Painter Sam Francis'.
The following is a preview of my full interview with Jeffrey Perkins available at the links below:
an interview by Chiara Vecchiarelli
Jeffrey Perkins is a visual artist and filmmaker who recently resurfaced at The Emily Harvey Foundation in Brain Damage on Broadway, an evening of hypnosis, experimentation and psychedelia organized by artist Taketo Shimada of Messages. Years ago Jeff co-founded Single Wing Turquoise Bird, who provided light shows to Velvet Underground, Grateful Dead and Dr. John to name a few and on October 25’ 07, through Shimada’s initiative, resurrected his first light show in thirty years to the sounds of Shimada’s own collaborative project Messages. But there is far more to know about Perkins, a decades long associate of Yoko Ono, John Lennon, George Maciunas and Nam June Paik among many others. While serving in the U.S. Air Force stationed in Tokyo in the early 1960’s, he met Yoko Ono and her husband Anthony Cox. Through them he was exposed to the works of Cage, Duchamp, LaMonte Young and others and began participating in events, performances and concerts. Jeff currently exhibits at the Emily Harvey Gallery and is now finishing up his new film 'The Painter Sam Francis'.
The following is a preview of my full interview with Jeffrey Perkins available at the links below:
IN CONVERSATION WITH JEFFREY PERKINS
ART AND USE, WITHOUT INSTRUCTIONS
ART AND USE, WITHOUT INSTRUCTIONS
The following interview took place on a day in December 2007 in Jeffrey Perkins’ loft, in New York. We had just seen his last documentary film The Painter Sam Francis. The catalogue of the Venice Biennial historic exhibition Ubi Fluxus Ibi Motus, of which he took part, was among his books, together with a program of the experimental Cinematheque Theater 16 that he directed in Hollywood, and his personal copy of the Fluxfax Portfolio. On the floor, two suitcases fostering hours of interviews with passengers Perkins used to record in his cab, following Nam June Paik’s advice.
Jeffrey Perkins is the author of original performances, the discreet story teller of Sam Francis’ work, the friendly camera operator of Yoko Ono’s Film #4. Above all he is the witness of the fact that art is the place where the singularity of one’s own practice coexists with the sharing of ideas. Concepts that animate his practice are the source of his artistic and personal charm and one of the most interesting issues I really would like to deal with, in thinking and organizing art.
…
Chiara Vecchiarelli (CV): I like the idea that the material was nothing but the medium for your practice ....
Jeffrey Perkins (JP): … Fourier felt that the direct channel from the producer to the consumer was the most ideal thing, because when the broker gets involved the broker doubles the price … A talisman! Exactly, a talisman! This Fluxus publication bears the title: "How communists must give revolutionary leadership in culture." I chose my rent. I rented out for very cheap, no profit …
CV: What is interesting is that Fluxus proposed an economic alternative system and that you are still proposing it in your everyday practice, in your small economic world…
JP: … I’m also thinking of the artist George Brecht's ideas … Flynt used to say to me … “this place is more important than any art museum in New York City.”
CV: Joseph Beuys associated himself with Fluxus in the beginning … Can we speak of a social sculpture in your work, or rather of a social sculpture that presents itself in the collateral effects of your work …
JP: I read an interview with Beuys … he probably became aware of the Fluxus avant guard art, where art could really expand, which happened to me when I met Yoko Ono in Tokyo and I read John Cage's book on silence. We saw the work in Anthology, and suddenly I was exposed to a new universe, a new doorway to what I thought art was … When I first saw Beuys' work, his pictures and magazines, I immediately understood what he was doing … Why is there a room in the Pompidou with a piano wrapped in felt … I guess this is what the French situationist, Guy Debord, wrote about. I think I'm a situational artist …
Taketo Shimada is an artist organizer, visual artist and musician from Tokyo. He has lived and worked in NYC since the mid 80s. He has worked with a variety of figures such as Henry Flynt, Alison Knowles and Rammellzee to name a few.
Tres Warren is an artist and musician living and working in New York City. He’s involved in various music collaborations including Messages and has performed as part of Damo Suzuki’s Network, in addition to recording and touring internationally