news
March 15, 2010
POSSIBLEPROJECTS launches POSSIBLEPRESS // A quarterly periodical of artists' writings.
March 4, 2010
Trevor Reese at PULSE NYC March 4-7.
Julia Dault at Blackston Gallery in LES, opening Thurs March 4 6-8pm.
January 4, 2010
My installation at the Islip Art Museum Carriage House in Treemendous closes this week.
Trevor's show at PS122 Gallery in the East Village opens on Saturday January 16th, 5-7 pm.
March 26, 2009
Material Reciprocity at Possible Projects
Opens Friday April 3, 6-9 pm
We started a new project space in DUMBO.
The first show is very solid - please stop by at the opening!
Possible Projects:
68 Jay Street #510 Brooklyn, NY
info@possibleprojects.com
www.possibleprojects.com
Press Release:
Material Reciprocity
April 3 - 27, 2009
Opening Reception Friday April 3 from 6-9 pm
Possible Projects is pleased to announce its inaugural show, Material Reciprocity, featuring the work of Julia Dault, Thor Sigurthorsson, and Jeff Thompson.
This show concentrates on work that is honest in both its materials and presentation. Through meeting their materials halfway, these artists create informal ‘agreements’ by utilizing the inherent properties of store bought, mundane objects. Thompson’s captivating use of dust as sound, Sigurthorsson’s selections and sly combinations, and Dault’s tenuous chance on a site-specific balance exemplify the possibilities. They avoid representation yet hope that new meanings are created through each relationship. By focusing attention on simple changes, a transformation occurs that produces unexpected and exciting results.
Julia Dault’s work has been exhibited at Gallery MC and the Pulse Art Fair, NYC, and Harbourfront Centre and Gallery 44 in Toronto. She received her MFA from Parsons the New School for Design in 2008, where she won the Dean’s Scholarship in both 2006 and 2007. She currently lives and works in New York City.
Thor Sigurthorsson’s work has appeared at Jack the Pelican, the DUMBO Art Fair, Massimo Audiello, NYC and the Living Art Museum in Reykjavik, Iceland. He received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2008. He now lives and works in Reykjavik.
Jeff Thompson recently performed in Dis-echo-nance at Hunter College’s Time Square Gallery, NYC. His work has been shown at White Box Gallery, Hogar Collection, NYC and BV Gallery in Austria. He was recently awarded the Van Lier Fellowship from Harvestworks, NYC. He received his MFA from Rutgers University in 2006. He lives and works in New York City.
Possible Projects is open on Mondays from 11-6 pm or by appointment.
February 26, 2009
Personal Effects: An Inventory of Tomb Life
Noble Tombs at Mawangdui: Art and Life in the Changsha Kingdom, Third Century BCE – First Century CE
By Rachel Reese
Currently on view at the China Institute is a sampling of the excavated finds from the three noble tombs at Mawangdui, located in modern day Changsha, Hunan Province, China.
The tombs were built for the the Marquis of Dai, Li Cang, (d. 186 BCE), his wife, Xinzhui, known as Lady Dai (d. ca. 163 BCE), and a third person who is thought to be their son. The exhibition centers around the personal effects found in the tomb of Lady Dai, whose saponified body was discovered undisturbed and in most excellent
condition in 1973.
(Lady Dai is permanently located at the Hunan Provincial Museum, China)
The ancient Chinese were increasingly anxious of successful passage into the afterlife, and an “inventory of burial objects” became standard documentation for the journey. In this sense, “Noble Tombs at Mawangdui” serves as a curio of visual inventory for viewers to transport themselves back in time, rising like the phoenix
over the auspicious and sinewy clouds into the heavens. Included are artifacts which read like Guiness Book of World Records entries – the first documented physical exercise chart (delicate ink drawings on bamboo), the first text on impotence (text on bamboo), and the first teased fabrics ever discovered.
The exhibition space at the China Institute is divided between two rooms, both painted symbolically in a vibrant deep red and tomb-like in their dark and climate-controlled environment. The left exhibition space focuses primarily on precious silks, garments, and bamboo texts, all periphery to a replica of Lady Dai’s inner stacking coffin, while the right exhibition space focuses on personal effects and objects (of food, drink, and leisure).
Notable highlights are the Tshaped painting on silk, which was discovered draped over Lady Dai’s coffin. The silk’s mythical quality is evident; Lady Dai is depicted traveling to the afterlife amidst dragons and serpents, under the watchful crow-sun and toad-moon. The colors are so vibrant and paint so fresh that one wouldn’t guess it was created over 2100 years ago. It is obvious that Han Dynasty Chinese had mastery with color pigmentation, from the cinnabar-dyed Red Luo fabric, to the tiny painted bright red lips of the playful Five Musicians, which show no signs of fade. The frail, ephemeral fabrics and lifelike figurines help to facilitate the ideology of life in death as a mirror of life on earth.
Detail from the T-shaped painting on silk from Mawangdui Tomb. No. 1.
Along with the immaculately preserved body of Lady Dai, the tomb also revealed lacquer-wear vessels still containing food and drink dregs. A pair of fingerless gloves and booties appear to be stained by Dai’s human flesh, evidence to the two-millennia of wear. Other curious personal effects of Lady Dai on display include a perfume sachet and a cosmetic case containing tweezers, fine tooth combs, and a dagger.
One thing is evident, Lady Dai was well equipped for her departure, as documented in the 312 bamboo slip tomb inventory (20 of which are on view), and was even more well preserved for historians to uncover her (helped in part by the kaolin and charcoal packing the tombs to naturally filter impurities).
While the exhibition does provide great insight into royal ancient Chinese life, one can’t help but wonder if historians walk the line between educating others at the cost of disturbing cultural burial practices in exhibiting such artifacts. While it may be essential for history to learn and grow from those who came before, I personally can’t help but wonder...has Lady Dai been aimlessly wondering around Mawangdui for the past 35 years, searching for her misplaced padded gown and booties?
The exhibition is on view until June 7, 2009.
China Institute is located at 125 East 65th Street, NYC.
www.chinainstitute.org
November 7, 2008
Degrees of Remove: Sculpture Center
In Review
On view until November 30, 2008
The Changing Landscape
On view in the basement space of the Sculpture Center currently is Degrees of Remove - Landscape and Affect co-curated by Sarina Basta and Fionn Meade.
The show highlights artists who create work at a degree of removal from the subject of landscape, whether through appropriation or reinterpretation, all fed through a mediated source. The choices of mediation directly impact the way this form of landscape is read, modifying and even confusing the relationship between source and viewer. Accompanying the works is a stapled packet of text, provided on a basement bench by the curators. Included are nineteen separate pages of writing from critics, authors, historians, and artists (ex: from Kerouac to Kraus) all on the subject of landscape – diaristic, documentary, poetry, and literary fiction. This packet of text provides an integral backdrop to the works on display, and provides a (mediated) reference point for the exhibition. Individual pages from this packet were tacked up around the exhibition as to keep the viewer flowing from one point of departure to the next. Affect refers to the experience of emotion. In this way, Degrees of Remove is investigating the relationship of landscape and visual culture through mediation, and how this affects the viewer as emotional witness. The development in the discussion of ‘landscape’ throughout art history has shifted in several ways: 1. From the necessity of studying directly from/working in nature into allowing technology/mediated sources to act as the artist’s hand (landscape as first hand to landscape as twice removed.) 2. From landscape viewed as sublime to landscape as tangible, calculated and measured. 3. From landscape as a visual to landscape as mental imagery as well. 4. From landscape as picturesque to landscape as backdrop for experience of viewing (how people shape the landscape).
Marie Jager uses landscape as surrounding environment to create the constructed landscape painting. An artist living and working in Los Angeles, Jager plays off the car-culture loving, smog inducing city of LA to her advantage, and highlights the disparity between the idyllic scenery and industrialization. In LA Painting (a month in L.A.), 2008, Jager placed a white canvas on street level and came back to retrieve it one month later. The result was an experiment in air quality, revealing all of the impurities, acid rain, and perhaps smog that became adhered to the surface of the canvas, marring the pure white monolith. Another painting, titled LA Painting (starter), 2007-2008, was placed directly behind a car’s exhaust pipe, resulting in a blast of diesel onto the canvas. Jager’s work heightens our awareness to our individual contributions in the changing natural environment, for better or worse, and if our role in transforming the societal landscape is progress or regression. Jager uses the canvas to make visible the invisible, and tangible the abstract ways in which humans affect and alter their environments in modern, industrialized societies.
Tim Hyde is an artist working through the mediation of a camera lens to operate as the eye of the author. Hyde outlines the limits of vision via technology. For example, The Keeper, 2006, exemplifies how humans can (literally and symbolically) obstruct views of the landscape, as seen through a camera lens, and questions the authorship of the view. The Keeper, six minutes long, records a silent and delicate negotiation between the artist and an anonymous elderly woman in the courtyard of a former KGB building in Kiev, Ukraine. The video is a single shot of a woman who approached and stood directly in front of Hyde's camera while he was filming, intentionally blocking his view of the building. The work can be seen as an inverted portrait — the woman's intention was not to be filmed, but to prevent a filmed view from occurring. Also included in Degrees of Remove, Video panorama of New York City in March 2006 during which the camera failed to distinguish the city from a snowstorm, 2006-2007, was filmed with one camera from the top floor of a Brooklyn apartment building throughout a seven hour snowstorm. Each monitor of the seven-screen panorama represents one hour of the storm. Hyde utilized only the periods in which the storm became so dense that it seemed to merge with the surrounding buildings. Like a nineteenth-century panorama, the work is invested in dissolving a perceptual boundary between viewer and object, as well as in dissolving a psychological boundary between viewer and medium. The technology of the camera serves against its purpose to obstruct the view of the landscape; the auto focus shifts back and forth rhythmically between the snow and the buildings, perhaps pointing out the flaws in progress and industrialization. The work has been compared to J.M.W. Turner's painting Snowstorm (1842) and reinterprets the visual language of the sublime in the context of the camera’s failed attempts to decipher the disappearing city.
Rosa Barba’s It's gonna happen, 2005, is a 16-mm film made up of subtitles describing a nocturnal scenario in a fictitious city. The only visual images on the black TV screen are white subtitles, which pop up with every line of dialogue. The audio track to this imageless cinema is composed of a phone conversation between two fictive presidents (Barba mentions a conversation involving Watergate), a mysterious plot that somehow rhymes with the dialogue in the film's subtitles, however the audible conversation and the visual text do not match. Originally, the viewer starts to mentally imagine the landscape as described by the subtitles, such as “windows rattle in their frames,” or “close-up CAT,” ignoring the audio, but later a game between the two layers of conversation starts to play with the viewer’s mental imagery. In an interview with Jan St.Werner from Villa Romana on May 16, 2008, Barba stated, "I have always been interested in cinema but sometimes there's too much information for me and I started to minimalize things and make abstraction to the point when I started to let no images get in and I just started using text and to make film with only sound..." Barba asserts that the landscape can equally exist only in the viewer’s mind, and the layered way in which it is mediated allows for multiple interpretations, allowing the viewer to take authority as the editor of their own imagination.
Contrary to previous belief that to study and render nature one had to physically be present in nature learning from it first hand, the artists in Degrees of Remove are comfortable in using mediated sources to process the image first, giving the viewer a second hand version of the landscape for interpretation. Cezanne was such an artist placing first authority of landscape interpretation into the artist’s hand. In his letters to friend and fellow painter and writer Emile Bernard from 1904-1906, Cezanne mentions that “in order to make progress, there is only nature, and the eye is trained through contact with her. It becomes concentric through looking and working.” He also mentions that “nature reveals herself to me in very complex ways, and the progress needed is endless. One must look at the model and feel very exactly; and also express oneself distinctly and with force.” Cezanne’s view of the landscape was that man was a separate entity from nature, and man must study from nature to achieve a higher level of awareness. However the artists in Degrees of Remove allow landscape to be reinterpreted as a human made condition, constantly changing according to societal shifts, and allowing the creation of the view to originate from secondary sources.
Thus, artistic development in ‘landscape’ has moved from the necessity of artists working directly in nature to an opening of the conversation into allowing technology and mediated sources to speak as the authority, under the supervision and manipulation of the artist. Landscape used to be sublime, possessing a greatness with which nothing else can be compared and which is beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation. As with his 1842 painting titled Snowstorm, JMW Turner said, "I painted it because I wished to show what such a scene was like; I got the sailors to lash me to the mast to observe it; I was lashed for four hours and did not expect to escape, but I felt bound to record it if I did.” Turner, lashed to the mast and in danger of his life, had been able to look at the Snowstorm with aesthetic detachment. When it was over he remembered not only how the waves broke over the stern, but how the light from the engine room had taken on a peculiar delicacy when modified by the blinding snow. At every point the visual data had adjusted themselves to his pre-established understanding of color harmony, so that this somewhat drastic look at nature was adding a refinement to art. Today’s artists can calculate and measure the landscape without physically having to do so themselves, such as in the case of Tim Hyde using his camera to record the snowstorm. We have created a new way of seeing, and accepting this mediated view as first person, thus shifting the relationship of author to viewer and viewer to witness.
Included in the curator-supplied packet for Degrees of Remove is a text written by Lucy Lippard (The Lure of the Local, 1997) that smartly describes the recent climate surrounding the discussion of landscape. She writes about the shifts over time in the definition of landscape as a term, originating from Germanic fifteenth-century landschaft meaning a shaped land, a cluster of temporary dwellings and more permanent houses, the antithesis of the wilderness surrounding it, to the Dutch seventeenth-century term landschap, transforming the physical space into a painting of the dwelling sites, and into today’s accepted view that landscape equates with nature, a view, or scenery in general, but overall something picturesque. However Lippard personally interjects that in moving forward, landscape can be everything you see when you go outdoors, a backdrop for the experience of viewing. Thus, finding connections between land and people and what people do there becomes the subject. Places are the records of hybrid culture, hybrid histories that must be woven into the new mainstream. They are our background in every sense. This is a far cry from Cezanne’s nature as sublime call to arms, and into the new discussion of constructed landscape as interpreted by aperture in the case of Degrees of Removal. The new landscape is humanly constructed, manipulated, self-destructing and twice removed; it is ever changing, always open for reinterpretation.
Rachel Reese, 2008
November 4, 2008
Roe Ethridge: Rockaway Redux
In Review
Andrew Kreps Gallery, Sept 4th - Oct 4th , 2008
Imagine Bach, hunched over his sheet music with a fountain pen, furiously scrawling and writing out his newest composition. Now take that image of Bach, and replace his fountain pen with a camera, and his sheet music with a photograph. This is Roe Ethridge; this is what he wants you to see. Ethridge’s new show at Andrew Kreps Gallery titled Rockaway Redux, is a visual document in the experiements of “re:” to redux, revisit, recompose, reinstate, reject, rearrange and restore, in that the boundaries between document and construct become removed.
Roe Ethridge is an image composer, creating new permutations of portfolios from reused photographs. In a sense, he really ‘gets his money’s worth’ out of his images. Ethridge seems more comfortable in the publication format, giving him the freedom to remix his images into new contexts over and over again. Some images exhibited at Kreps were originally part of Ethridge’s book also titled Rockaway Redux. However, for the Rockaway Redux exhibition, Ethridge wanted to continue the themes and motifs from the book but with the exhibition in mind rather than the publication.
Ethridge recently was interviewed by Emma Reeves for The Journal about this new series of images, some exclusively included in the book, and some recycled for the exhibition. In his discussion with Reeves, Ethridge speaks about his working process in terms of a fugue, a type of composition normally reserved for musical rhetoric. He mentions that to him it’s very formal and feels a bit like an exercise, but actually it’s extremely improvisational. This analogy of a fugue composer actually seems fitting to Ethridge’s practice; since the 17th century, the term fugue has described what is commonly regarded as the most fully developed procedure of imitative counterpoint. A fugue opens with one main theme, the subject (ex: Rockaway), which then ‘sounds’ successively in each voice in imitation; when each voice has entered (the entire sequence of photographs), the exposition is complete. In this sense, fugue is a style of composition, rather than a fixed structure. So the fugue may be considered a compositional practice rather than a compositional form.
Other artists have worked in this practice before; Ethridge is not unique to this “process before product” working method, yet Ethridge feels that this controlling of his layouts, or perhaps the manipulation of his portfolios, has become an important process for him – its another kind of composition. He mentions to Reeves that when things get sequenced, they gain purpose. Either in his actual sequencing of still shots, or in the reconstructions of new photographs from his old photographs, Ethridge uses a cyclical process, so that in some shape or form he stays self-referential.
Having experience working in the commercial photographic realm and his father an amateur photographer, Ethridge somehow pulls all of this into creating his own voice, something he claims is inundated in his life from growing up in the South. An evolution, partly influenced by his memory of images and partly an investigation of clichés, guides Ethridge’s work towards his fugue state of internal infiniteness. This is the beauty of his photographs, that elastic element allowing them to slip somewhere between commercial, amateur, and fine art forms. In an 2003 interview with Christine McQuade from Seeing & Writing, Ethridge commented that the ability of photographs to function in different contexts becomes almost like a little bit of the burden of photography. “It's great that it can do that, but sometimes it's hard to make judgments about images because they're so contextual. It's a nebulous area.”
The exhibition at Kreps is composed in a such a way to create micro-dialogues on each wall. By juxtaposing images next to one another he recontextualizes the individual photographs on a parts-to-whole scale. Ethridge’s images are large scale, juicy color-soaked (whether monochromatic or not) moments that play off of one another, so that again, the end result is a document where the whole is more important than the sum of its parts. However in this way it seems as if his photographs cannot stand alone, but must be grouped successfully to serve his point; he shoots dependent photography. Yet Ethridge finds a way to photograph the mundane (and blow it up in your face) in such a way to monumentalize these micro-moments from his greater theme. He mentions to McQuade how the nature of large format photography lends itself to these still objects:
“The scrutiny that is able to happen with that size lens and that much information is irresistible in terms of making and reading the image. It has a seductive power to transform something like a Kleenex box — an object that you'd walk pass a hundred times and wouldn't notice. Somehow with light bouncing off the object [and] recorded onto film, it turns into this other kind of thing. Recording the ordinary is also a documentary record of what things look like. That's important.”
So where is the viewer entrance into Ethridge’s self-cylcling, fugue photography? Perhaps it is in the notion of the everyday, caught somewhere between the amateur and the glossy magazine editorial aesthetic. Ethridge explains that photography ultimately never stops moving along the spectrum between the specialist and the dilettante. On one hand, everyone knows how to take a picture. You don't even need to know how to take a picture to take a picture. At the same time, it can be the most overwrought, specialized technical form. There's something about that conflict there in my own work. The dilettante is there, and the specialist is there, too. He mentions that he started to think of Rockaway as a place that would disappear, in a sense, become a relic. Given that Rockaway has the word “away” in it, it made sense to him to broaden his image scope. Ethridge sums it up best by writing that one of the reasons he became so interested in this displaced, broad scope approach is an effort to embrace the arbitrariness of the image and image making itself. “Another reason for the wild style is the dread of conclusiveness. The dread of finitude. This work is against death and finality. No that’s too hyperbolic, let’s say it’s about working in the service of the image and getting my kicks too.”
Rachel Reese, 2008
G. M. Tucker, Andrew V. Jones "fugue" The Oxford Companion to Music. Ed. Alison Latham. Oxford University Press, 2002. King's College London. Accessed via wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugue#cite_note-4
Seeing & Writing is a teaching aide publication that was the first 4-color composition reader to truly reflect the visual in our culture and in composition.
Christine McQuade. “Artist Interview: Roe Ethridge.” Seeing & Writing 2. January, 2003.
http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/seeingandwriting2e/interviews/interview1.html
November 3, 2008
Seen in Philly
Get out the vote tomorrow for Obama!!
October 18, 2008
And I'm back! I had a very busy summer, but hope to be back blogging regularly.
I recently reviewed a great show in Philadelphia at Space 1026, Our Intentions Are Honorable, by the amazing Trevor Reese and Sighn. Enjoy...
Their Intentions Are Honorable
During October, Space 1026 in Philadelphia hosts a two person show titled Our Intentions Are Honorable, by artists Trevor Reese and Sighn. Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with both artists in depth about the show.
Space 1026 is an artist run space that has been a staple in the Philadelphia art scene for the past 7 years. Climbing the stairs to the second floor gallery, one feels like they are entering a home, and it is home to 20+ artists’ studios and community space. The space was lively with someone always crossing your path, giving the place its young creative energy. I was greeted into the gallery by Sighn’s giant wooden ITSOK installation and the sound of drumming. Sighn’s exhibited ITSOK is only part of his edition of 1 million ITSOKs, estimated to be completed in the next 30-60 years. A la Roman Opalka, Sighn has committed his life to individually cutting out each piece until the edition is complete; remember, these are his intentions.
Sighn, which is one of the many personalities of artist Matthew Hoffman, draws on his raw emotions and expresses them via text-based work. He told me that everyday he writes down diaristic notes and phrases on post-its, and at the end of each day culls through them and uses the most powerful messages in his work. With a background in carpentry, much of Sighn’s work is cut out of wood using a scroll saw, however a very poignant work in the show was saying the same thing over and over again helps keep me sane, cut out of various book binding cloth and placed in a neat yet colorful stack on a pedestal. The delicate cloth spoke nicely to the emotional content of the text, which reads “saying the same thing over and over again helps keep me sane,” (same as the title) and was cut out in his signature “ITSOK font.”
His phrases are melancholic and elegiac, while simultaneously leaving the viewers feeling therapeutically better about themselves. Sighn stated that he saw these works as “small gestures, small momentos for people,” optimistically implying that these poetic works can make a difference for positive change.
A pervading sense of optimism also runs deep in Trevor Reese’s work. In there was this one time…i was going to use the door but i got lost on the way, viewers are confronted by a perfectly sealed wooden cube with only a viewing window allowing a glimpse inside. The room is otherworldly, a moment frozen in time. Reese takes you to a time when intentions were honorable, back to the beginnings. Looking inside one finds the room covered in wood paneled walls, reminiscent of an outdated living room, becoming a metaphor for childhood itself. A small black TV is plays a video of Reese playing drums in his room as a child, while simultaneously celebratory flags (mysteriously) wave in a breeze. There is a shelf with speakers on one wall, and a convincing door on the other. Most viewers found themselves walking to the side of the room with the door looking for the entrance to no avail.
But trickery doesn’t seem to be a part of either Reese’s or Sighn’s work; they both take an honest approach to conveying the complexities of raw human emotions: integrity, vulnerability, and intent, all the while caring to keep their work accessible to their audience.
Opposite Reese’s room is an unabashedly honest, constructed steel drum set titled drums/trees, housing a vintage TV in the bass drum and live plants in the others. Reese’s physical hand truly shows in this piece, perhaps making up for the (purposeful) lack of it in his room. The drum set and the room play nicely off of one another. A video, the source of the audible drumming, portrays Reese in the present day, playing on a drum set mounted in trees. Reese stated, “I could have become a drummer, but I didn’t. It’s about all the paths, decisions, good and bad, that got me to where I am today.” And his works aren’t about drumming, but instead starting with the innocent intent of a child and using it to link back to his childhood video, his earliest intentions, and moving forward to an idealized present day. The live plants then are raw potential, and the care received personifies the human condition. Do we feed or neglect our ambitions?
Either way, the show’s title runs true. I left the show questioning the validity of artist intent, if an honest artist makes for wholesome work, and if this becomes a judge for success. In the case of Trevor Reese and Sighn, it is.
Our Intentions Are Honorable is on view until October 31, 2008 at Space 1026, located at 1026 Arch Street in Philadelphia.
For more information: www.space1026.com, trevor-reese.com, and sighn.net
May 17, 2008
Tulsarama!
I have been meaning to write this post for a while now. And maybe it will give some insight into my blog title "Rusted and Fifty Years too late."
In 1957, the town of Tulsa, Oklahoma buried a time capsule containing a pristine 1957 Plymouth Belvedere Sport Coupe, along with gasoline, a typical woman's purse with items from 1957 - $2.73 in change, 14 hair grips, a bottle of tranquilisers, a plastic rain cap, lipstick, cigarettes and matches, a pack of gum, and an unpaid parking ticket.
The time capsule was to be opened 50 years later, in the summer of 2007. So last summer, all went as planned and it was opened...Only to find that water had been leaking into the vault - for who knows how long. The town was so excited that this car was going to be in pristine condition, and speculation about who was going to get the car was buzzing. But alas, the big Tulsarama! show was a let-down of sorts...
Apparently the car is now undergoing rust removal and stablization, to bring her back to life! Enjoy the videos!
May 11, 2008
Super Size David Altmejd at Andrea Rosen Gallery
I personally loved this show. I know the consensus among others is varied...
They're all sold out, so I guess I'll have to spend my $125,000 on something else. Bummer!
May 9, 2008
Graduate Symposium at City College
Last night I participated in the first annual Graduate Student Symposium at City College. Graduate students from all disciplines had work on display which was open to the public, to spread the word about City's different Graduate degree offerings. I was the token 'visual art' Grad Student.
For my table, I chose to create a slideshow from found slides. The show was projected using the automatic timer. "Viewers" then could take a piece of paper I provided on the table, and write anything they wanted in response to the images. I then took their writing and typed it up using my typewriter, and am putting all the writings together into some sort of publication/zine, etc. I want this slide show to become a traveling piece, with the written contributions always growing. The images will always remain the same.
As for the responses, they were awesome and the turnout was great. Thanks everyone!
Here are some images:
April 22, 2008
On the road again: Chi Town
We went to Chicago this past weekend. I'll hit the highlights:
1. Good young FRIENDLY art scene. Everyone was nice! Definitely a small art scene though, lacking in standout work (at least the shows I saw.) One noteworthy contender: Old Gold Gallery. Run by an artist couple, Katie and Caleb, in their building's basement - literally has that underground feel:) The space has loads of potential, however I didn't feel like they were necessarily capitalizing on that for their current show... hopefully in the future.
2. Museum of Science and Industry: Originally built as the Palace of Fine Arts for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, and now home to the one of the largest science museums in the world, having more than 35,000 artifacts and nearly 14 acres of hands-on exhibits. All under one roof we experienced: watching glass blowers at work for their current title exhibition, The Glass Experience, witnessing a baby chick hatch from its egg, walking around an entire U-505 submarine from WWII - the only German submarine in the United States, and on...I wish we had more time, and that the sub tours weren't sold out for the day so we could have actually walked onto the sub. Also the coal mine shaft tour was sold out...Complaint - Why would a museum only open itself to the public for 5 hours during a weekend day?! Anyways, it was worth it.
3. Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate: Never gets old!
4. We started calling Chicago "Chi-fog-o":
5. Chicago Public Library: They had an exhibition up called "Fun for all Ages!" about the history of Chicago's Amusement Parks. On display were these playful scale models:
6. Out and about: We seem to have the most fun just walking around without purpose.
April 21, 2008
Can I have my two weeks back?
I have been seriously busy lately, resulting in a large blog absence. Here are a couple of items I have been meaning to share:
1. Trevor Reese in Athens, GA - Trevor has an installation in Adventures in Mysticism at ATHICA. I flew down to suprise him for the opening, and as it turns out, he needed a helping hand. Several actually! (Thanks Ty, Motoko, Rusty, Joe, Euni, Mike and Rebecca!) It ended up taking us until 4 am the night before the opening to finish the piece, but it was worth it. Based on the legend of Mt. Rotui in Tahiti, this piece is considered to be the second half of his Mount Rotui he built in Philadelphia last fall. Legend has it that the peak of the mountain was stolen by theiving gods, resulting in Mt. Rotui's u-shaped peak, seen here:
Trevor's Mount Rotui, created for The Steve Keene Trevor Reese Project at Copy Gallery in Philadelphia last September, focused on the missing peak of the mountain. Trevor plays on the viewers sense of curiousity and good faith by hiding secret images inside the mountains via small peepholes, while never outright revealing or leading viewers to look into them. Here are some images from Copy:
above: Mount Rotui, 2008, looking into peepholes of Mount Rotui
below: inside peephole of Mount Rotui
For his installation at ATHICA, Reese chose to focus on 'part two' of the Mount Rotui series, the celebration of the peak. This work is playfully colorful and hopeful. From the press release:
Importantly, in the legend of Mt. Rotui, there is the notion of an unseeable part of the mountain existing illogically inside of the mountain, and it becomes the artist’s role to unveil the hidden form. Punctuating the façade of Reese’s hollow, constructed peaks are holes through which viewers can peer and view objects and images, including a living plant and an image of Mt. Rotui itself. Reese translates a monumental feature of the landscape into an interactive gallery encounter, playing the secret spaces of the mountain’s interior off of its carnivalesque façade.
Here are some installation views from we will go together (peak of Mt. Rotui) (2008) at ATHICA:
views from the inside of the peak
2. MFA show for University of Georgia students at the Georgia Museum of Art: Since I received my BFA from UGA, I like to keep up with the MFA students as they cycle through. This year's graduating MFA students included 2 friends and great fabric artists: Motoko Inoue and Euni Figi. Luckily I was in town for Trevor's show and we caught the MFA show in person this year.
Motoko created a whimsical yet slightly macabre installation:
From her statement:
I utilize fabric to create soft sculpture.
In dealing with my work,fabric is synonymous
with both skin and emotions, metaphorically
akin to a Moebius strip.
My work explores the relationships between
reality and fantasy, within their ambiguous
and uncertain borderlines. Although I discover
duality everywhere, I believe what is significant
is the searching that lies amid two opposite ideas
or different worlds.
I am seeking myself through life and reality in
between the world(s) of internal eternities and
external limitations
Euni exhibited 3 "Rice Apron" Garments:
"Rice Apron" is both a functional and non-functional garment that utilizes dress as a metaphor for expression. The piece is filled with over one hundred and ten pounds of white rice, which spills out of the bottom of the apron. Visually, the work references a bridal train that is backwards, making forward motion for the wearer nearly impossible. Moreover, the weight of the apron makes the garment twice as restrictive. Yet, the apron also serves as a protective armor. The work is symbolic manifestation of worry.
More information: Georgia Museum of Art or UGA MFA
April 6, 2008
Bird's the Word!
My friend (and workmate:) Colby Bird, who is represented by CRG Gallery here in New York, recently had a great showing at the Armory Fair. Colby juxtaposes his photographs with his sculptures, and almost sees them as necessary diptychs. Using disparate yet seductive materials such as flourescent lights, crib mattresses, banker's boxes, cheap gold wrapping and, of course, alcohol, you can't help but fall under the sleazy 'sexiness' spell Bird seeks to lay on you.
From CRG: The subjects of Colby Bird's work--among them pornography, hip-hop culture, the suburban middle class--are all structures marked by projections of longing and desire. What makes the work an original formulation of identity in these potential fields of anonymity, is Bird's privileging of and respect for reality in the form of the object--fetish object, art object, art object as fetish object, fetish object as art object. In these objects is his translation of and compassion for one of the most difficult and complex aspects of human reality: the constant discrepancy between our perception of and hope for reality, and our experience of it.
I kept noticing all of the young hipsters carrying around Bird's pamphlet published just for the Armory at the fair. Included in the pamphlet is an essay by Joao Ribas (the curator at the Drawing Center) which you can read here. Colby - congrats!
(L-R) Traphouse, 2007, Andre Cold Duck, 2007
March 28, 2008
Here's a quick post to share two shows I really found enjoyable in Chelsea recently: Mark Dion and Keith Edmier.
Mark Dion shows at Tonya Bonakdar Gallery on 21st Street. From the press release of The Octagon Room:
In The Octagon Room, which takes the form of an architecturally scaled installation, Dion furthers his investigation into the blurred boundaries between art, society, and history, as well as the homogenized methods of their presentation and consumption. Confronting the inherent contradictions between the artifact and the context in which it is displayed, The Octagon Room takes the appearance of a brutalist styled bunker. However, within the installation the viewer is invited to browse though an abandoned office, the contents of which represent the artist’s own labyrinthine history of the past eight years.
Dion’s decision to utilize this octagon structure was inspired by the 19th century mania for octagon buildings, popularized by the American phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler. Fowler championed the merits of octagonal homes over rectangular and square structures in his widely publicized book, The Octagon House: A Home for All. In the end, octagon houses never took hold and, rather, these eight-sided homes seemed to be the choice of the individualists, standing defiant among their four-sided neighbors.
The imagined provenance of each of the objects in Dion’s arrangement adds up to a staggering sum of experiences. As each speaks of an individual past, collectively they present a complex mosaic, informing our understanding of the overall subject matter and material. A wunderkammer both autobiographical and sociological, The Octagon Room takes the nation’s relationship with its own people and its neighbors, and the artist’s status and position within this framework as its foundation.
(L-R) outside view of the Octagon room, inside view, and detailed shot.
This show came down on March 15th.
On another note, Keith Edmier's solo show at Petzel is still up until April 12, 2008. This show features a full scale replica of Edmier's childhood kitchen, and is a perfect example of great fabrication. Again, from the release:
The kitchen, with its Harvest Gold palette, walnut laminated cabinets, "Kitchen Psychadelia" wallpaper, and stone patterned tile are fabricated in detail rather than refurbished. The work was first installed as Bremen Towne, connected with the home's other communal spaces--those shared with the family-at Keith Edmier 1991 - 2007, Edmier's comprehensive survey exhibition at CCS Bard.
"Bremen Towne is a full-scale sculptural reproduction of the interior spaces from the ranch house where I grew up in the southwest Chicago suburb, Tinley Park. It is made to resemble what it would have looked like when I first moved there with my parents in 1971. Essentially, it is a brand new home," explains Edmier. The installation "functions as a curated space. An exhibition of those things, which influenced my early aesthetic development, in the surroundings that helped shape who I am."
Bremen Towne is the largest physical manifestation of the artist's fascination with reclaiming, or at least rethinking, the past through sculpture and installation. This extraordinary installation represents the culmination of Edmier's psychological archeology.
I like to think that my work has a lot in common with Edmier's, and I'm excited to have a studio visit with him in the next week. Here are some kitchen images, go see it for yourself!
March 22, 2008
Bert Rodriguez and the Whitney at Park Avenue Armory
Yesterday I participated in Bert Rodriguez's performative/interactive piece for the Whitney at the Park Avenue Armory. I will admit I was a little nervous, not knowing what to expect. Rodriguez had set up a white 'minimalist' cube inside the Colonel's room of the Armory. Inside the cube, Rodriguez was giving 45 minute therapy sessions (appointment only, I made mine weeks ago) with himself as therapist. From the Whitney release:
Rodriguez strives to alleviate the concerns of Armory passersby for the 2008 Whitney Biennial, conducting free therapeutic sessions inside a large white cube installed in the middle of an ornate room and assigning “patients” artwork projects as remedies for their problems. A muffled version of these discussions audible outside his “office” suggests a ghostlike presence that reflects and intensifies the Armory’s haunting ambience. Operating largely outside traditional commercial art practices, and with shrewd yet playful wit, Rodriguez’s multifarious practice educates, amuses, perplexes, and enriches his audience while quietly commenting on the contemporary art world.
Maybe I was expecting a little more structure to our 'session,' but I am glad our conversation was ackward and a little forced. Meeting people in New York is like this to me in many ways, we feel the need to create a structure upon which to socialize, and this rationally validates the exchange. While we did have some moments of silence.....most of the conversation was engaging and quite charming. Its interesting to create this moment of intimacy between two people in the greater context of a large art biennial exhibition. Inside his cubed office were two large leather chairs, facing each other from opposing corners. In the middle was a coffee table with 2 bottles of water on it, one for me and one for him. The ceiling was a drop ceiling with faux lights (or were they on?) Also in the room were some consciously placed house plants in one corner, and on a small table a lamp, a box of kleenex, and a tabletop cactus.
Bert mentioned to me that this experience has made him actually more skeptical of the structure of therapy itself, how one feels so dependent on someone else to 'cure' or 'heal' yourself, all the while paying a high price for it. He admitted that talking over your problems with someone else is healthy/natural/therapeutic, patients can become too dependent, and actually forego advancing their own life simply for the sake of attending an appointment on time.
My appointment ended with the promise of an art project in a future email. I told him I would do it as long as it would be collaborative, so as to continue this exchange created in his 'office.'
The rest of the show at the Park Avenue Armory was fresh and engaging. Partly due to the deteroriating aesthetic of the Armory itself, encoded with so much history, the work seemed much less pretentious and safe than the work at the Whitney. Here are some photos I took:
March 11, 2008
Crypt of Civilization
I am really into time capsules. I was researching (ok - google searching) information about them some time ago and came across the International Time Capsule Society, or ITCS, at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, GA. Being that I am from the Atlanta area, I was super excited to find this organization.
The ITCS was founded officially in 1990 to "promote the careful study of time capsules."
The Crypt of Civilization was first proposed by Oglethorpe's president, Thornwell Jacobs, the "father of the modern time capsule," in an article in the November 1936 issue of Scientific American. The Crypt was sealed on May 28,1940, and it is not to be opened until May 28, 8113 A.D. Dr. Jacobs calculated this date from the first fixed date in history, 4241 B.C. when most historians believe the Egyptian calendar was established. Exactly 6177 years had passed between 4241 B.C. and 1936 A.D. Jacobs projected the same period of time forward from 1936, arriving at the year 8113 A.D. for the Crypt's opening.
The encyclopedic inventory of items in the Crypt includes, in a swimming pool size chamber, over 640,000 pages of micro-filmed material, hundreds of newsreels and recordings, a set of Lincoln logs, a Donald Duck doll and thousands of other items, many from ordinary daily life. There also is a device designed to teach the English language to the Crypt's finders.
You can visit the crypt (aka a sealed metal door with a plaque) anytime you wish. Here are some photos:
(L-R) Thornwell Jacobs combs over his goods for sealing, Dr. Hudson stands outside the Crypt door, image of inside the Crypt, detail of some items in the Crypt.
Jacob's idea in 1936 created tremendous interest. Soon afterward the Westinghouse Company, which was building a pavilion for the 1938-39 New York World's Fair, buried a project, which was not to be opened until 6938 A.D. It was called a "Time Capsule" and our language gained a new term almost overnight.
The ITCS is currently developing their ongoing project to have everyone around the world register their time capsules. Interestingly enough, there is a 'most wanted list' of time capsules. Drumroll please...
In 1991, a list of the "10 Most Wanted Time Capsules" was released. To date, only one, the Kingsley Dam Time Capsule, has been found. The remaining are:
Bicentennial Wagon Train Time Capsule
This capsule was supposed to hold the signatures of 22 million Americans. But on July 4, 1976, when President Gerald Ford arrived for the sealing ceremony in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, someone stole the capsule from an unattended van in the bicentennial wagon train. The capsule's maker, the Reynolds Company, had broken the mold. The thief’s identity and the whereabouts of the capsule are unsolved mysteries.
MIT Cyclotron Time Capsule
In 1939 a group of MIT engineers placed a brass capsule beneath an 18-ton -magnet used in a brand new, state-of-the-art cyclotron. The capsule was to be opened in 50 years but was not. No one remembered the time capsule was there (the cyclotron had long since been deactivated). But when reminded of its existence, MIT was faced with another problem: how do you get a time capsule out from under a 36,000-pound lid?
Corona, California, Time Capsules
The City of Corona seems to have misplaced a series of 17 time capsules dating back to the 1930s. Efforts to recover the capsules in 1986 were in vain. "We just tore up a lot of concrete around the civic center, "said the chairman of the town's centennial committee. A Los Angeles Times reporter has called Corona "the individual record holder in the fumbled time capsule category."
The M*A*S*H Time Capsule
Buried by cast members of the hit TV show in a secret ceremony, the capsule contained props and costumes of the show. It was buried in January 1983 -- somewhere, no one will say -- in the 20th Century Fox parking lot in Hollywood. The lot has shrunk in size, so the time capsule may be under a Marriott Hotel now. Update: According to CNN, Alan Alda recounts in his book, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, that the M*A*S*H time capsule was found by a construction worker shortly after the show ended. When the worker tried to return the capsule to Alda and the rest of the M*A*S*H cast, Alda told him to keep it.
George Washington's Cornerstone
Today's custom of burying time capsules is in part an outgrowth of Masonic cornerstone-laying ceremonies. Through the centuries, Masons have officiated at rituals which often include placing memorabilia inside building cornerstones for later recovery. In 1793, George Washington, a Mason, performed the Masonic ritual upon the laying of the original cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol. Over the years, the Capitol has undergone extensive expansion, remodeling and reconstruction, but the original George Washington cornerstone has never been found. It is unknown whether there is anything inside of it.
The Gramophone Company Time Capsule
In 1907, Hayes, Middlesex, England, sound recordings on disc were deposited behind the foundation stone of the new Gramophone Company factory (later HMV, later EMI) by the opera singer (later Dame) Nellie Melba. During reconstruction work in the 1960s, the container was officially removed, but before it could be reburied, someone ran off with it. The whereabouts of these priceless master-pressings of Melba and other stars remains a mystery.
Washington Territorial Centennial Time Capsule
In 1953 Washington state celebrated its territorial centennial by burying a two-ton time capsule on the state capitol campus in Olympia. The legislature failed to approve funds to mark the site, and the capsule was lost until 1959. However, records indicate that a supplementary time capsule was prepared in 1953 for burial alongside the main capsule. The location and contents of the second capsule are unknown. The capsule may have been interred as planned; its reported location was a closet at the capitol. Update: it appears that this capsule was found in 2002.
Blackpool Tower
In Blackpool, Lancashire, England, a foundation deposit was interred in the late 19th century with the customary ceremony. When a search was organized recently in preparation for new building work, not even remote sensing equipment or a clairvoyant could locate the time capsule.
The Lyndon, Vermont, Time Capsule
First mentioned in an 1891 Vermont newspaper, the capsule is an iron box containing proceedings of the town's centennial celebration. It was scheduled to be opened on July 4, 1991. Citizens have looked in the town vault, the bank and the library but have not found the box. The time capsule may not have been buried at all, since some ceremonies were canceled due to rain. Lyndon residents have vowed not to lose their new time capsule which is set to be sealed July 4.
P.S. Who else thinks the Crypt's contents will just vaporize when someone (if anyone) finally opens the Crypt in 8113?
March 4, 2008
Stuttering at Carroll Musuem: Baltimore
Last Friday night was the opening for the group show Stuttering at the old Carroll Mansion, now Carroll Museum, in Baltimore. Famously known as the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Carrollton lived in this home until his death at age 95 in 1832!
The mansion was absolutely stunning! The group show sought artists looking to intermix the building's history with their own. There were three live performances on opening night, and the show was packed. Here are some photos:
My plexi clock was hard to see from certain angles. The chandelier was made of pasta by Baltimore artist Alia Diaz.
(L) Beautiful chandelier in the mansion. (R) Pre-performance by a MICA group of students.
(L) Outside of Carroll Museum - artists Todd Rennie and Mary Dixie Anderson turned a scaffolding into a wonderful tent for $2 vegan and meat pies! (R) Photo of mid performance by Mark P. Hensel aka Miizzzard
The show is up until April 27th. So if you find yourself in the Baltimore area - GO SEE THIS SHOW:)
Info: www.carrollmuseums.org or www.currentspace.com
February 27, 2008
Analyze Me Please
Today I choose to write about a venue I have become slightly obsessed with over the past months - The Freud Museum in London. This is partly due to the fact that two of my favorite femme artists, Susan Hiller and Sophie Calle, have had amazing shows there. The rest of my fascination comes from Sigmund Freud himself. The Freuds moved into the home in 1938 while escaping the Nazi's annexation of Austria. It remained the family home until Anna, the youngest daughter, died in 1982, and the home was since turned into the museum as it is today. The centerpiece of the museum is Freud's study and library, preserved today just as it was during his lifetime. The house is also filled with memories of his daughter, Anna, who lived there for 44 years and continued to develop her pioneering psychoanalytic work, especially with children. It was her wish that the house become a museum to honor her father.
Undoubtedly the most famous piece of furniture in all the collection is Freud's psychoanalytic couch, on which all of Freud's patients reclined. The couch looks remarkably comfortable and is covered with a richly coloured Iranian rug with chenille cushions piled on top.
Freud's couch, upon which his patients would comfortably recline during psychoanalytic sessions, was normally covered by an oriental rug throw. Underneath the throw, it is a plain and simple structure, raised by a scroll and pad at one end, though fully upholstered with springs and horse hair stuffing.
The couch is rather short, so that the patient would not lie horizontally, but with the head quite high, supported by several cushions and pillows.
According to Freud's wife Martha, in an interview with Princess Marie Bonaparte in 1938, the couch was given to Freud by a grateful patient, a Madame Benvenisti, in about 1890.
Here is the couch without the rug throw:
and with the rug throw:
(seriously bourgeois!)
and here is the couch with Sophie Calle's wedding dress draped over it:
Here is a pretty good article giving a description of Calle's show at the Freud Museum in 1999.
More info on the Freud Museum.
February 23, 2008
Just a quick thought...I have found it harder to stay awake on the subway these days, and I was seriously pondering why yesterday, as I tried to keep my eyes open. I think one reason is that I live off the A/C line now, and these trains seem darker than the other lines. Probably every 1/3 person is asleep. I remember when I first moved to New York and rode the train I would wonder how anyone can sleep on the subway, and I always felt very alert. I used to be more productive - like read books! Maybe after riding the trains for so long it happens to you too - the trains lull you into a sleepy rhythm. Either way, I am always amused by the deep sleepers, and it seems like this Flickr group is as well!
completely unrelated...
I am really upset every time I see an image from this show - still really bitter I missed it, by one day! Did anyone see it in person? I bet it was amazing. (Mike Nelson, A Psychic Vaccum, for Creative Time). It ran last September 8 - October 28, 2007 at the Old Essex Street Market.
February 22, 2008
Ingest @ Athica
I am currenlty in a show at the Athens Institute for Contemporary Art (ATHICA) in Athens, GA titled Ingest:
Ingest explores the role of food in our personal lives as well as the impact of food choices and production methods on our environment. Many of the [artworks] employ humor and wit to address the serious issues along the road food travels to get from field to mouth.
I was asked to give a statement about my work so I have pasted it here for you all:
I have been collecting and saving every receipt I received since
January 1, 2005, in hopes to better see my spending patterns and keep
a detailed record of my life. Receipts to me are a document of
exchange. Money is a topic usually hushed in my family, which has
always boggled me. So in this way I wanted to make public what is
merely a socially acceptable exchange, or trade. After a year I
noticed most of my money was going towards food (similarly for a
majority of the population). It started to fascinate me becuase I was
literally eating away most of my money (albeit, to keep me alive:)
Eating, with others, in itself is an exchange between people, an
opportunity for conversation and socializing. The drawings (yearly
expenditure totals by month) started as a way to make public what was
my private expenditure. I noticed immediately that others could
easily relate to them (via the store names, etc) being that
consumerism is such a universal issue. Also these expenditures
brought up memories of old experiences that had been forgotten over
the past year - A mere receipt from a store/restaurant/gas station,
etc could recall a personal memory forgotten, which I thought was
fascinating! A lot of my work involves treasured memories juxtaposed
with daily experiences to create an 'essence' of a person, or
identity. So I was glad to find that in this project as well, which
seemed so exacting, my identity was still unique from others' spending
patterns - this was just another way to classify myself as an
individual. As for the chocolates - I wanted something edible that
viewers could eat away my 'money' as I did, and in this way become
part of the exchange, literally and symbolically. Felix
Gonzalez-Torres does influence me, but I hope this work will set me a
part from his 'take away' works as well. To me the eating of the
chocolates is about giving and receiving and hopefully has a more
direct connection to the money spent. Also this work is interesting
to me because it is ongoing and I have already started saving my 2008
receipts; this project has taken over my mindset. So in this way if
it were to ever be exhibited again, the object can always change and
the pile is never-ending.
I found this video from the opening last night on You Tube! See if you can spot my work (hint: gold chocolate coins!)
The show is open until March 22, 2008.
For more information on Athica: www.athica.org
February 19, 2008
Ape Genius
Watching Channel 13 tonite at dinner I came across this amazing show via NOVA called Ape Genius. It seeks to answer the age old questions about what separates us from our closest relatives - the apes. Something I found particularly amazing was the concept of 'teaching' they seemed to focus in on. The act of teaching may be one trademark characteristic that is uniquely human. The reason why ape culture never truely evolves, and human cultures does, it that we teach younger generations, building on itself with time. When an ape generation dies, some 'inventions' may live on, but most will taper off. However, humans will take our history and learn how to build on it, increasing in strength and complexity over time.
Another interesting idea was the differences in perception created in apes and humans over the simple act of pointing. When we point at something (with another person present), we create a triangle between the person pointing, the object being pointed at, and the second person engaging in the action.
In order to teach, two people must coordinate their attention on a single object or task, creating a "magic triangle." (Note here how it is the child who is eager to point out something to the adult.) (image courtesy PBS)
Apes didn't seem to understand the concept of pointing and showing. It is possible that perhaps apes lack the initial impetus to deliberately pass on a new skill, thus sharing and teaching each other. Also, humans seem to be motivated to encourage others while teaching (to cheer each other on), while apes have no innate drive to see other apes succeed. Every ape for himself....
On the PBS website there is a very interesting interview with Rebecca Saxe of MIT. Rebecca Saxe is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Science at MIT. Her lab studies the neural and psychological basis of social cognition.
Any thoughts? rachel@racheljobe.com
February 17, 2008
I always find myself reading several books at once. One I am currently caught up in is The Archive: Documents in Contemporary Art, edited by Charles Merewether. Composed of several short essays, The Archive constructs a dialogue around artists, philosophers, writers, etc. interested in the notions of collecting and documenting. One particular essay I found particularly helpful for my own practice was Iyla Kabakov's The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away. It sets up a man who feels we can be defined individually by our garbage, and collectively via our dumps. Kabakov's work is so inspiring to me, combining participation with installation, often times involving elaborate stories and audio. His website: Ilya Kabakov
Here is a video of a work created in Egypt titled "The Ship of Siwa," in collaboration with the local area school children:
February 16, 2008
This weekend I went to visit Trevor at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT where he is doing a one month artist residency. I got to see a lot about how residencies run, the good and the bad. The Center is beautiful; all residents get a room in a house, a seperate studio, three meals a day, and the amazing scenery of the Vermont country-side. I think I might feel a little stir crazy after a while, but it seems like a great way to clear your mind and focus on your work for a month. Here are some pictures:
Above: (L) The Sculpture Studios are in the old Johnson Fire House. (R) Trevor's studio in the early phases.
Above: (L) Looking at the Red Mill (dining hall/gallery/lounge/administrative offices) of the Vermont Studio Center. (R) Trevor in his studio - banners!
If you are interested in learing more about the Vermont Studio Center: www.vermontstudiocenter.org
They host about 40 artists and writers per month.
comments? questions? rachel@racheljobe.com
February 8, 2008
I will be in a group show titled Stuttering: In a new light, at the Caroll Museum in conjunction with Current Gallery in Baltimore, MD, opening Feb 29th. Below is the information:
STUTTERING: IN A NEW LIGHT
FEBRUARY 29 - APRIL 27
OPENING RECEPTION FEBRUARY 29, 7-10PM
8PM LIVE PERFORMANCES WITH HANK SHEDD, MIIZZZARD, LAURE DROGOUL, PERGA, TODD RENNIE+MARY ANDERSON, ANDREW SHENKER'S PREPARATION FOR UNTUNED PIANO WITH LAFAYETTE GILCHRIST ON KEYS, AND MORE
/////////////////////////////////////////////////
Featuring:
Andrea Bocchio/Elizabeth McTernan
Jennifer Carinci/Adam Montegut
Monique Crabb/C. Ryan Patterson
Stephen Dewyer/Stephen Pauley
Alia Diaz/PERGA
Laure Drogoul/Hans Petrich
Liz Ensz/Todd Rennie + Mary Dixie Anderson
Elke Graalfs/Will Rockel + Kendra Atkin
Mark P. Hensel aka Miizzzard/Hank Shedd
Megan Hildebrandt/Andrew Shenker
Rachel Jobe/Christine Buckton Tillman
Nick Karvounis/Vishwam Velandy
Eric Leshinsky
*This exhibition is in collaboration with the Carroll Museums and will be hosted at the Carroll Mansion,
800 E. Lombard Street, Baltimore, MD 21202
February 6, 2008
I have been organizing an MFA group show that will open next Wednesday eve from 6-8 pm at City College Art Gallery. Below is information, hope to see you there!
For Immediate Release
NEW YORK - The Graduate Art Society of City College is pleased to announce an MFA group show titled Informants, opening Wednesday February 13th from 6-8 pm at the City College Art Gallery.
Informants is an exploration in the symbiotic relationship that exists between source material and artistic ‘objects.’ This exhibition chooses to focus on revealing the source imagery, or informants, and in essence, hiding the artwork. Artists used their own discretion in what to share with the public, that which is normally considered to be private.
Comprising of two parts, books and objects, this exhibition can be considered an interactive display. Viewers are encouraged to sit in the desks provided and read through the books available as well as observe the objects on the display tables.
A special email has been created for this show, informants@gmail.com, in hopes to further continue the conversation created by this exhibition. Your dialogue is invited.
MFA students participating are: Dennis Delgado, Filipa Farraia, Glenda Hydler, Jang Soon Im, Rachel Jobe, Seung Ae Kim, Sun Kim, Anthony Miler, Nancy Palubniak, Shani Peters, Tricia Riebesehl, Arthur Skowron, Elena Stojanova, Priska Wenger, and Yu Zhang.
Informants will be open to the public from 12 – 4 pm, Monday February 11th through Friday February 22nd at the City College Art Gallery, located in the ground floor of the Compton-Goethals Building, 1619 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY.
A limited edition catalogue with opening essay by Anthony Miler and design by Rachel Jobe will be available.
rachel@racheljobe.com for more info.
February 3, 2008
Has anyone been to Sculpture Center lately? I hadn't been over there in a couple of months so I was itching to go again; I always enjoy their shows. Last weekend I saw the Tom Burr Addict-Love show in the main gallery and their In Practice Projects group show downstairs. Burr's work references the theatre pretty heavily and is (sometimes) weighted down by its formal qualities, but I really appreciated the finished craftsmanship to the work.
Tom Burr
Light Cavalry, 2008
Plywood, aluminum powder coated speedrail, dyed flag, chair
80" x 64" x 72"
Photo: Jason Mandella
Image c. 2008 SculptureCenter and the artist
This was my favorite work of his. Black American flag, red theater gels over a spotlight shining down from 20 feet high or so. It seemed less sterile than the others - more drama.
Their basement downstairs always creeps me out, in a good way. In Practice Projects Winter '08 was a group show utilizing the unique spaces below. One work of notable interest to me was Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova's Two Gates Externally Locked from 2008. Upon entering Sculpture Center we were given a key on a yellow lanyard, with no further instructions. I love a good mystery. Obviously as soon as you are confronted with her gate you know what to do. You enter into a space between two gates, locked in, but not locked out. You were able to take the key home with you if you liked!
Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova
Two Gates Externally Locked, 2008
Powder coated aluminum, lanyards, keys
Dimensions variable
Image c. 2008 SculptureCenter and the artist
Photo: Jason Mandella
More info? Go to www.sculpture-center.org
Did anyone see: Christian Tomaszewski's On Chapels, Caves and Erotic Misery there last summer? An amazing space transformation, hard to beat.
Questions/comments: rachel@racheljobe.com
January 30, 2008
New blog! I have started a blog in attempts to exchange. I am not sure all it will encompass as of yet: I can write about what new art I have seen and liked/disliked, or simply tell you whats going on with me. If you happen to ever read this blog and want to comment, just send me an email to: rachel@racheljobe.com
I will write my first official post this weekend. In the meantime I have a lot of cakes to be baking for Friday night! In case you don't know, I will be serving cake (Grandmama's Fudge Chocolate Cake) to anyone who would like to come to the Sixth Street Community Center (east village - 6th st between ave's B/C). Its going to be a good time, so see you there! 7-9 pm.