Friday, February 6th, 2009

The NEA In The Age Of Obama
Who Will Benefit From The Value Of Creativity



  • 1987 – The Endowment’s budget is $165,281,000, for two years running, admission receipts for nonprofit performing arts events exceed those for spectator sports2.
  • 1989 – John Frohnmayer becomes Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts
  • 1990 – Chairman Frohnmayer says: “We must be prepared to use creativity not as an adjunct to our education, but as its central component, because creativity will be the currency of the 21st century.”
  • 1996 – The House of Representatives announces a plan to eliminate the Endowment

by artist Nayana Glazier

New work emerges publicly by way of a daunting task. It can overwhelm even the most outspoken of artists. Whether by way of a confusing relationship between pre-existing venue and artist, or, by way of artists organizing their own venues. The goal, to have their work experienced by others in a meaningful way, from the margins of their price oriented societies, increasingly supports the necessity of a mutually reinforcing and ever present backdrop. The commercial art gallery, this, along with the more subjective questions of artistic integrity etc.

Art making takes everything you’ve got. Your studio is full and you’re ready to show your work, but then you hit the insurmountable. The success of your art making seems measured rather by who is showing your work, not by what the work is itself. You’re sinking into a suspicion that for generations your own family-of-(wo)man has been buying into a perceived exclusivity. Perhaps this sense of the apartness is a driving factor in the evolution of the exhibition space from the more traditional gallery to what was formalized in the 1980’s, by what the late Senator Helms raged against, the Artists’ Space Movement in the age of the uncensored NEA. Yet, clearly it seems to many of us that for all time, the artist-gallery relationship, or rather the perceived relationship, has spurred artists to seek alternatives, if only for the sake of integrity in the artist to artist relationship.



Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery (announcement)


I don’t often make it down to the city, however my spies do. Apparently, in the art capital of the world, while the future of art cannot be determined, the present itself is becoming increasingly unpredictable as well. On exhibition from September 6, 2008 to October 4, 2008 at the James Cohan Gallery (Chelsea, 533 West 26th Street, NYC) was the combination of the Chinese conceptualist Xu Zhen, Dutch sculptor Folkert de Jong and NYC based artist Martha Colburn. The program was presented as three separate exhibitions flowing together to create a conversation of artistic expression.


Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery, Chelsea


What follows includes quotes from Martha Colburn, Film artist and Elyse Goldberg, Director of the James Cohan Gallery. I’ll also include Stephen Cahill, multimedia artist, Turners Falls MA and Ric Sanchez, Painter and multimedia artist, Orlando Florida on the issue of the perceived relationships between artists, galleries and art making in the USA today.



Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery, Chelsea


Martha Colburn (NYC): Art can’t be In a cave to be seen by others and I think the gallery is a great place for artists which do not, for instance, show in museums or caves…I show in cinemas, music venues, lots of squats in Europe and festivals, the web, and galleries, and now I remember, I have shown in a cave in France more than once, so I guess I have to re-call the cave comments.

Stephen Cahill (Turners Falls): I’ve never shown in a gallery, I’ve submitted to a couple places, either ‘we’re not showing that kind of work’ or ‘its too big.’


Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery, Chelsea


What is the future of the artist-gallery relationship and what is this relationship now? Emerging artists often talk about galleries as they might describe the pyramid rituals of the Pharos. Few actually even know the real process of creating a relationship. Perhaps the most admirable artist is one who produces art for arts sake alone and does not care if others see or interpret their work. But there are many more artists who crave blessings for turning the pedestrian into a rarity.

Stephen Cahill: It was one of those things where it seemed unattainable. If you think about the large amount of people producing work
and the small amount of venues, it’s a game of odds almost.

Martha Colburn: They saw my film at Art Basel Statements, which is a competitive show, next to the big hall of big shots…

Elyse Goldberg (NYC): We saw her work (Martha Colburn) at Art Unlimited in Basel Switzerland.

When discovered by James Cohan Gallery, however, Colburn had the benefit of inclusion in the Basel Art Fair. By contrast, Cahill does not have the benefit of being featured in a highly respected exhibition to bring attention to himself. Take this as a sample of the often complicated way in which artists reach larger audiences. They may need to be previously established at some level and, despite exceptions, rarely do commercial galleries put the time into an artist based purely on the quality of their work. This, creating a level of perceived difficulty.

Ric Sanchez (Orlando): I think galleries are too rigid and demanding. They want you to be established before they offer you space.

Obviously galleries can’t accept every artist who sends work. Though, with the growing percentage of artists taking exhibition space into their own hands, will the artist-gallery relationship, and in turn the gallery-collector relationship, change?


Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery, Chelsea


Many artists feel that “obscurity” may be the highest level of visibility their work ever achieves. Euro-centric art history apologizes for the “cultivation” process with myths of great masters wrestling with talent arriving later at a larger more visible stage that takes an entire lifetime to achieve. Or, more frequently, occurs after death. Such is the acceptance of an invisible hand chaining a series of seemingly random events to an inevitable accomplishment of having work presented before a wider audience. In today’s click driven post Warhol media minute it has become a miniscule accomplishment. In such a paradigm an artist’s primary goal is arranged around having their work seen by the maximum number of people. Those who excel at this often do not know what they have achieved and those who have not attribute the fact to the insurmountable.

Martha Colburn: I was just so happy to have the film show in NY … I don’t think I’ve ever felt obscure. When I really got rolling, I just made lots of records and books and films. I got my more professional “art-world…” I got the ball rolling in Europe for five years before coming to NY and made installations and shows all over the world.

What does showing in a gallery setting as opposed to an improvised exhibition space present for the artist? Each day artists become more resourceful about where and to whom they present their work. Counter to the gallery paradigm, this strategic approach brings more profound meaning to the work. Yet it is the prospect of a sale that draws artists back to the gallery experience and with it the perceived status they achieve through price.

Elyse Goldberg: We have beginning collectors, collectors who have known the gallery for many years and/or come here specifically for artists that they are interested in collecting. This is quite nice, because in the process we can introduce them to other artists whose work they may not be aware of. Of course, museum curators and directors as well as art consultants frequent the gallery.

Gallery exhibitions are one way emerging artists build a collector base. Alternative venues rarely provide a draw from more established artists’ work and collectors have difficulty learning about them. While finding venues is a necessity, equally necessary is finding new ways to attract the attention of collectors, curators and museum directors to them. Though emerging artists believe that their ultimate goal is to produce a living income from their work, artists who’s work stands on its own may feel the opposite. The ultimate goal being to improve their work; to reach to a higher level of artistic expression and human understanding. Accordingly art would simply exist to present ideas and feelings to a public audience.

Stephen Cahill: I’m not truly all that interested in showing in a gallery anymore, my works sell in the venues I’m putting them in now and I don’t need to sell the work. I do it for me.

Elyse Goldberg: The goal of exhibition is always to present the viewing public with works that illuminate the artists’ ideas. Hopefully these works will raise questions. A positive or negative response is always welcome.


Stephen Cahill, Turners Falls, MA


Galleries in more obscure locations like the Nashawannuck Gallery in Easthampton MA or The Gallery In The Woods in Brattleboro Vermont use space differently than galleries in more high profile locations. In order to remain viable they present artisans and craftsman made objects which provide financial stability while reserving space to show artists with more experimental ambitions. The ability to present works based solely on feeling or expression is a luxury mainly afforded by co-presenting other objects for sale in the setting. Though these venues present art of no less quality this further perpetuates questions about the artist-gallery relationship and the work’s relative appeal to viewers and potential collectors.

Stephen Cahill, Turners Falls, MA


Martha Colburn: Taste does not matter, at the end of the day, I think the artists determine most everything. With original, motivated and innovative work taking the stage because it is just those things. For real. Not for fake.

Ultimately I think alternative venues serve as locations that hold honesty tightly in their hands. To quote Lowell Downey1. of Hatley Martin Cultural Forum, San Francisco, 1992, “Freedom of expression is probably the second most significant thing that art organizations have yet to achieve. Freedom of expression cannot be tied to financial support.” Or, Veronica Enrique1., artist organizer, San Diego, 1992, “But our greatest accomplishment has nothing to do with the material attributes of our spaces or what is done within them. Rendering a true reflection of artists in their society is how artists’ organizations have created an attitude.”

Yes, galleries like the James Cohan Gallery, Gallery In The Woods and Nashawannuck Gallery do important work and can be different, presenting challenging ideas to the public for their view, but generally commercial spaces coerce by default, because they perpetuate the accurate perception of an industrial pyramid.

Nayana Glazier: What do you think galleries’ expectations are for artists and their work?

Martha Colburn: That it be great and get better, or I guess they trade you in for someone else. I would do the same.



Ric Sanchez, Orlando, Florida


It is this that creates the fear in emerging artists. They fear the initial rejection and if they are accepted to present their work they fear possible rejection following on. I have always subscribed to the philosophy that the worst thing that can happen is the word “NO” and it is by that very word that the impression of the impossible goal of the gallery finds its vector.

Martha Colburn: I didn’t do the galleries for many years, but that’s because my scene was (that) underground, but it still is, I mean one should not exclude the other. It’s fine if people make that choice, but I don’t see why in such a big world excluding any venue makes any sense.

To quote Helen Glazer1. of The Rosenberg Gallery, Baltimore, 1992 “Here in Baltimore, 15 years ago, it seemed as if there were hardly any mid-career artists around. Unless they had teaching jobs, ambitious artists tended to flee to a larger metropolis – such as New York – at the first opportunity. I credit the artists’ spaces that came on the scene about 10 years ago with helping to change the climate for artists, encouraging them to stay and contribute to the cultural life of the community… artists in Baltimore and Washington by and large might as well have been 400 miles apart rather than 40, but as they began to exhibit together in the alternative galleries, the two communities became acquainted, to our mutual benefit.”

That really is the hit of it all. If artists are making the work, why do we in fact care what type of venue it is presented in, who sees it and if it ever sells? Should it always be at its core about the creation (of the art) above all else? Can satisfaction come from presenting ones art to an audience, or come from the recognition that others feel the same way, or have had the same experiences? Ultimately human experience is universal to humanity, art being a large carrier for the sharing of those experiences. The ‘movement’ of artists working for themselves and providing their artist run venues for presentation is hardly a new one.


Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery, Chelsea

Martha Colburn: Creativity put to the purpose of art and not industry or the exploitation of other people or for the evils of the world can be nothing but a good thing, be it for sale or not. The ‘direction’ of art, the world’s too big to figure that out.


Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery, Chelsea


By contrast I quote Edmund Cardoni1., Hallwalls, Buffalo, 1992 “Despite all the efforts of artists’ organizations and the artists we serve, we failed to change society even enough to ensure our own continued survival, to preserve our little niche. We thought the alternative spaces we had created (both literally and in the larger sense) were a permanent feature of the American landscape, but we have found out they can be closed. Those of us not burnt out, with something still left to sacrifice, and with the resourcefulness of outlaws, will have to take to the hills and carry on the fight. Allow no quarter. Don’t try to appease them. Corporations and governments will not help us now. Even the Constitution will not protect us. It’s a whole new ballgame.”

Or, Linda Burnham1. of Highways, Santa Monica,1992, “…I’m sure it is considered politically incorrect to admit this, but there is not one artists’ organization I know of that is more than two steps from disaster at all times. It is no wonder that the smallest puff of wind from Jesse Helms has sent us reeling. Organizations
that were borderline last year are now way behind and exhausted from dealing with the censorship crisis, let alone the failing economy that has reduced subscriptions, memberships, donations, and ticket sales.”

Stephen Cahill, Turners Falls, MA


While the direction of art may be unpredictable all we, as a community, are left to do is to shape our own direction. Keeping our work as integral as possible, forming our own exhibition spaces or working with the few galleries who are on the same page.

Elyse Goldberg: I believe that all artists, like musicians, writers, filmmakers, any person who creates anything, would hope that you have produced something that has ’something’ to say, that can touch another person’s awareness. That can have an effect whether it engages, lifts one’s spirits or effects profound indignation. Basically it is to communicate. Selling the work is always amazing, no matter how many times I have witnessed it. People who acquire art are to be acknowledged. They keep the fires burning, and their belief in the power of art is inspirational. This may sound naïve, as everyone is obsessed about talking about the market and high prices, low prices or no prices. I believe In the basic presumption of art which is always to try to challenge the status quo and take us on a journey.

This is perhaps the most essential part of this whole question. What is art’s purpose in the context of the artist-gallery relationship and the artists who develop alternative venues and progressive galleries? Is it along Elyse Goldberg’s suggestion to fulfill the need to present work and affect others with expression?

One might wonder what those obsessed with the desire to achieve presentation at a perceived “high level” gallery are truly after. I too have always sustained that the goal in my own work is to express and evoke a feeling in a viewer, positive or negative; for me, this effect makes the work a success, regardless of the venue or number of viewers. But, is It essentially this idea and desire that at times sees artists organizing their own venues and in essence their own directions? How did artists fail to effect the direction of the gallery system as we know it today?


Stephen Cahill, Turners Falls, MA


I quote Joshua Selman of Artist Organized Art, 2007 “Dealers say to artists, ‘We want you to think creatively. Spend all your studio time thinking, feeling, practicing as creatively as possible. We are looking for only the most creatively minded artists. Meanwhile, we (the commercial dealers) will think strategically.’ After ten years, who do you think is going to come out on top?”

1. Organizing Artists : A Document and Directory of the National Association of Artists’ Organizations by Dc National Association of Artists’ Organizations, Washington, published 1992
2. National Endowment for the Arts (2000). The National Endowment for the Arts 1965-2000: A Brief Chronology of Federal Support for the Arts. Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Arts.
Elyse Goldberg, Director James Cohan Gallery, New York, NY http://www.jamescohan.com
Martha Colburn, New York, NY, Multimedia Artist http://www.marthacolburn.com/
Stephen Cahill, Turners Falls MA, Multi Media Artist doosel9 at yahoo dot com
Richard Sanchez, Orlando FL, Multi Media Artist and Painter http://www.myspace.com/artbytherls
James Cohan Gallery 533 West 26th Street New York NY 10001 Tel 212.714.9500 Fax 212.714.9510 Hours Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 6pmhttp://www.jamescohan.com
Nashawannuck Gallery, 40 Cottage Street, Easthampton, MA 01027 http://www.nashawannuckgallery.com
Gallery in the Woods, 145 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT 05301 http://www.galleryinthewoods.com/

Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery, Chelsea




 

#permalink posted by Nayana: 2/06/09 01:06:00 PM


Saturday, January 17th, 2009

Aron Namenwirth at Vertexlist
“Made in U.S.A” Williamsburg, Brooklyn


Aron Namenwirth, Jay Davis, Kelly, Dan Kopp and “Obama”
138 Bayard Street, Brooklyn NY 11222
“Made in U.S.A” on display until February 1, 2009
http://www.vertexlist.net/


by Erika Knerr

December 14, 2008: I arrived at the gallery and spoke with Marcin Ramocki, the founder of the gallery while waiting for Aron to arrive.

Erika Knerr: Is this the old Four Walls Space?

Marcin Ramocki: Yes, it was Four Walls until 1999, then Leo Koenig’s first space in 1999, then Mike Ballou’s Film and Slide Club, then Vertex List since 2003. I did five years and I just passed the space on to a friend of mine, Charles Beronio, who’s going to do the next five years.

EK: And will it remain vertexList?

MR: Yes. We are starting our second five years. Charles is already the director and Sunday is my day to be here. For me five years of an artist running a gallery is enough.

(Phone rings) That’s Aron. What’s up? He’s coming here.

(Aron was watching his gallery artMovingProjects…) http://www.artmovingprojects.com/ (…which opened John Giglio’s thoughtful show, “Designing Heaven,” the night before.)

EK: How often did you do shows, was it a full schedule?

MR: We’re open 3 days a week and we had 8-9 shows a year. This space took off. It’s a great location because everybody knows it as Four Walls.

EK: It’s a great legacy to have especially as an artist run space. Is the new director also an artist?

MR: Yes, he’s an artist and has his studio in the back.

EK: How was the opening last night?


Mary Baronne and Tom Moody

MR: It was good. We had about 100 people. There was also a performance by Glomag. http://glomag.com/. It’s much easier for me now because there’s less pressure since I’m not in charge. I still do everything that’s online, we have a blog http://vertexlist.blogspot.com/, so I still write that. Sometimes the blog gets rolling and sometimes we’re all doing other things. This has been a nice, interesting adventure; it was five years of my life. You’re welcome to check out the back, you probably know the way.

EK: It’s been a long time since I’ve been here.

I went to the back and reveled a bit in my memory of attending Four Walls events there and was introduced to Brian Conley, who Marcin interviewed for his documentary on the Williamsburg Art scene premiering at MOMA on February 25, 2009. Aron arrives to do the interview and talk to me about his show, but we end up bull shitting in the back room for an hour with beers beforehand.

Aron Namenwirth: I came to New York in 1987. I was living in New Jersey, but half my friends were here in Williamsburg. We all left Yale in 87 and I moved to Hoboken with John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage, Matvey Levenstein, and Joe Begonia. We split up, half of us, like Jim McShea and Dik Liu and some of my other friends where here, so I would be coming out here as much as I was going to the Lower East Side, which was also what was going on then, so I’d just come over the Williamsburg Bridge. It was really fun. It freaked me out a little bit, some of the stuff that was happening on the waterfront, the movies they were showing about sex change operations and penile insertions. I was pretty green back then.

Brian Conley: There were a lot of intense characters.

AN: There was this place called the Freezer that was a little space upstairs on Grand Street. It wasn’t a gallery proper. It was a performance space. People would do performance art. Then at the gallery that I moved into, artists were coming by all the time to pick up there work, which I didn’t have and the place was just trashed and the city was coming after me because they had given them all this grant money for gear and they took the money and split.

BC: Who was that?

AN: I don’t want to name any names. They got all this money at the very end. It was a time when spaces like Brand-Name Damages and Minor Injury finally started receiving money.

BC: This was non-profit?

AN: I don’t know if they had status but they got grants and what they did was bought really expensive video recording equipment, TVs, stereo equipment and then they just split. They bought gear for themselves and they closed up shop. Then I was getting these letters? That was the early years.

I got an email this morning from Amy Sillman apologizing for not being at the opening last night.

MR: Amy, Amy’s interview was awesome. She’s the one (in the documentary) that dished some dirt.

AN: She wouldn’t be afraid to do that?

After an interesting dialogue about Brian Conley’s project in the Middle East we get back to Aron’s Show.

MR: You saw Osama Bin Laden out front in the gallery? No one can tell it’s Osama Bin Laden.


(left) “Osama Bin Laden,” (right) John Berens w/ Bin Laden

AN: I had a guy all the way at the other end of the gallery saying, “is it Santa Claus? Castro?”

BC: That’s Obama at the other end right? He’s got the George Washington curls?

AN: Yeah, it’s Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bush, Bin Laden. And there’s the Spirit Surfers.

MR: And the abstract stuff.

AN: It’s not abstract stuff. It’s imagery. “Spirit Surfers” is all these religious leaders. Jesus, from Jesus Christ superstar, which I noticed their doing again, Mohammed, Buddha, Martin Luther King and Osama again and they’re all competing in this one little painting. It becomes a blurry face.


“Spirit Surfers”

BC: What? Did you just map them all on top of each other?

AN: Each one occupies a different grid and so there are four grids.

BC: So they’re not on top of each other, they are beside each other.

AN: They’re next to each other. Each one occupies one of the four gr ids, then it repeats. So you’re just getting one fourth of the information. And then there are five images in this painting, so one is completely covered. Mohammed is completely covered by Martin Luther King? I’m particularly fond of that painting. I just can’t stand organized religion. It seemed like a nice way to deal with it.

BC: So you went to Yale? Who did you study with there?

AN: I’d say the people now that had the greatest impact on me would be Mel Bochner and Andrew Forge and Jake Berthot.

BC: That was a really divergent group.

AN: Yeah, really divergent. Everyone was in complete disagreement. William Bailey was there. That was one of the first things I noticed when I started doing studio visits, because I would line them up boom, boom, boom, one after the next and I’d take notes and I noticed how they would completely contradict each other. So I became very skeptical of any kind of criticism at that point because there was no consensus. It was really confusing to be a student there then. The sculpture department was really good and I hung out over there. Oh, and Veja Celmins was one of my favorite teachers there. She was great to have in the studio.

BC: I’m sure Mel Bochner was pretty hardcore.

AN: He was totally hardcore but he saved my ass because?

BC: This was in the 80’s right? He was doing those terrible paintings then.

AN: Yeah the 80’s. I didn’t have any work after my first semester and they did these pit crits and I just had all this crap on the floor of my studio. Everyone else had seven paintings that they put up and I didn’t have crap. I just had all these drawings and they were all crumpled and they were all over and I was freaked because it was my turn. My friends dragged all my work out of my studio and left it on the floor of the pit and the faculty was silent. No one had anything to say. And I didn’t have anything to say. It was one of those incredibly awkward silences and then Mel Bochner says, “This is the most interesting work of this class”. And then all of the sudden everyone had all these great things to say. They’d pick up one little thing and pass it around. It looked like scatter art?

EK: Do you want to talk out front, Aron, with the work… This is the piece you were talking about with the intermix of religious icons? I love this piece. The body of work is great together as a whole show. I think it’s really cool that it’s come together in this moment.


Mary Alpern, John Illig, Erika Knerr, Sakurako Shimizu
Photography: John Bailey

AN: Well I finished most of the show in 2007. I didn’t work on much of the show at all this year.

EK: When did you do Obama?

AN: I did Hillary and Obama at the same time. I did her first and then he followed. They were both finished before he won New Hampshire. I thought she was probably going to win, but I liked him better. He was my first choice. Then when he won I was disappointed that he didn’t pick Hillary for his VP.

EK: Then you thought, now I have to do a Biden? lol

AN: No, No, there isn’t going to be a Biden.

EK: It’s not going to continue, this project?

AN: I don’t know. I never know. I doubt that I would just sever it, but I’ve been working on this work for 6-7 years. I’ve done 2 other previous shows of work that led up to this. They were more like this one, North and South. They are stills from the North Pole and Antarctica, different glacial landscapes from both locations. Basically the images all occupy one of these four pixels so there are four images sitting next to each other on four separate grids and they just obliterate each other.


“Party City”

“Party City” is also four images, a Chinese stockbroker, guys with suits with golden shovels breaking ground for the Chinese version of the NASDAQ, the building is designed by Rem Koolhaus, and a group of soldiers from Darfur with shovels and guns. All these images are off the internet. The fourth image is a group of people, friends of my mom’s Cynthia Bloom at her memorial service. I planted all these flowers in the sand, so all these people where around the flowers in the sand thinking about her.

EK: When did your mom die?

AN: In July. So that was the last image, I painted that image over the last image of the stockbroker. I finished this one in the fall about a month before I knew about the show here. It was an all black painting at one point. I started it in 2006. This is one of the earliest ones but I kept working on it and it evolved. At first it was more morose and now I think of it more like the Mexican day of the dead, a celebration of death. The subject matter is death ridden, but I see it as a positive thing.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to paint anymore, because there are a lot of other things I like to do too. My media works and writing.

EK: I like your blog, I check in on it every so often.

AN: It’s sadly honest.

EK: I love it. That’s what’s great about it.

AN: I love it too, but don’t want to perseverate on it. I just write it and get it out there. It seems when there is a spelling mistake the reader loses faith so I will work on that. In terms of the paintings I’ll tell you how it all happened. After I did the first show at VertexList 2005, I was thinking that I really needed to make the subject matter of the paintings more clear. I felt like I was hiding, I was creating eye candy. I was thinking of them like Trojan horses, a way to deliver content into the world in a way that it could exist and be accepted and I began to think of that as cowardice. I wanted to bring the subject matter to the surface and see how that felt.

EK: You felt like you were obliterating the image?

AN: Yeah, the paintings that preceded these had all this really heavy content like wounded children in Israel being worked on, images from Darfur, Abu Graib etc.

EK: But they weren’t necessarily readable?

AN: They were multiple images so the images when combined disappeared. They cancelled each other out.

EK: So you could talk about what the images were or have it in a text, but it wasn’t visible.

AN: It wasn’t there. So when I would talk about it, people weren’t seeing it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_1cm8Ckr0Y So I thought what if I exposed it. My biggest fear of exposing it was the collision with Chuck Close, because I thought they’re just going to look like his paintings. But I rationalized that they were coming from a completely different place. He was coming from photorealism. I was working out of the computer and out of media and off the internet, so it was such a different place that they were really very different paintings. I like Chuck Close. I admired him when I was a student, but I didn’t want to make any kind of comment about Chuck Close. I wasn’t interested in making appropriations of Chuck, it was just that this was how they were going to look and some of the things that were happening were just as close to Seurat and pointillism as they were to Close. When you back up the image comes together. He also didn’t think of the building blocks of his paintings as pixels they were dots.

EK: That’s what I was going to ask you. I looked at Chuck Close on line before I came here since he was the first thing I thought of and they don’t talk about the pixel at all, they talk about a topographical mapping so I see that they are technically different.

AN: They don’t talk about the computer. They don’t talk about Photoshop. His work came out of the printing process, which was pre pixel. But in the end they arrive at the same place. So there was a lot of anxiety, because I didn’t want that reference to be so strong to override the content of the painting.


“George Bush”

So I did this painting. This was the first of the figurative paintings, George Bush. I picked a subject of someone a totally despised. The painting came together almost effortlessly, because I had been working with these pixels for a while. I had a figurative image, where the orientation of the painting was predetermined. Like these [the combined paintings] the images are rotated. In the landscape paintings, I would turn them.

EK: You mean the image could be upside down.

AN: Yeah, I didn’t want to have a horizon line. I didn’t want them to be recognizably landscape. I wanted them to be completely open so your mind can infinitely put together different kinds of images, like bunny hunting. Something that was really bad about abstract painting, I wanted there to be bunny hunting that could happen.

With the George Bush painting it completely came together. It was so much easier for me to make the painting, because I knew exactly what I was doing with it. But then when I got the image I was completely horrified with it, of having George Bush in my studio and he’s been there for three years, looking at me. So I wasn’t sure if this was a good move.

Perry Hoberman came over and he said, “This is a terrible idea, this is too obvious, you’ve moved your work in a terrible direction. “You are making a one liner.” “He’s like a mug shot.” I made him like a mug shot so he would look a criminal, which he is. So here I had this painting. I tried flipping it upside down, but then we have George Bazelitz. So I just made another painting Osama Bin Laden, which was much more successful, he’s another villain, but works on many different levels.

The first Paintings I used the mosaic filter. I was doing them ass backwards, some cockamamie way and Marcin said, “You know there’s a filter in Photoshop for that process, just use mosaic. I just used a really simple filter to create the pixelation. I took an image that was small and blew it up and mosaiced it so I could get the one-inch square.

EK: Did you project it?

AN: No, I laid out a coordinate map, and I numbered the pixels on the top and sides and bottom. I wanted to have a one to one correspondence with the actual source, so I took a really small picture of Bin Laden that when blown up to five by four feet, the actual pixels, are what you’d be seeing. There wouldn’t be any filter used, so it would be what it is. There would be no translation.

EK: Was it a black and white image?

AN: The color is just what it was. I did change the photo. He originally had a rifle, but when it was translated he looked like he was flipping the bird at the viewer because the rifle blended into the background. I wanted the image to be more neutral, so I erased that part of the painting. I wanted to paint a picture of Bin Laden that wasn’t blatantly antagonistic, or confrontational. I also thought this painting reminded me, with the light and the color, of El Greco, or a Byzantine painting. There’s also an ambiguity about it. People don’t really get it. It’s not like the Bush were you could see it immediately. We are also conditioned to recognize Bush’s image, but with Bin Laden there are not that many pictures of him and he’s a specter. If you do a Google search for him only a handful of images come up.

Next I did the Hillary painting. I wasn’t really sure how I felt about her. I again picked a very small picture of her from her website. I did change the color. I wanted to make her more sensual. I was thinking of Hillary/Marilyn Monroe ala Andy Warhol


“Hillary”

EK: You definitely get that from it. It’s such a hot painting. She looks like Marilyn.

AN: The quality of the surface is different. It’s the only painting in the show that’s shiny. It was the result of technical issues with the birch delaminating and having to top coat it etc. But in the end I was really satisfied with the Hillary, because she seemed like the slipperiest. I never really got a feeling for who she was. And that’s the case with all of them. That’s why I think the portraits being pixilated really suits them. They all have an out of focus ghosty feeling. The way the media projects these people we have no feeling for how they really are, which is what portraiture is all about, trying to capture the essence of the person. The media gives us a detached or disassociated state of what the person actually is. I wonder if they know who they are. If they don’t know who they are, then we’re certainly never going to know. So for me the pixelation is a perfect way to represent them? There’s this whole discussion on Rhizome called the Rematerialization of Art, by Ed Halter http://rhizome.org/editorial/287

It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot as I’ve been working on this project. People that work with computers want to take what they do and bring it into the world. It’s all about taking it off the screen and making it part of the world. So with this, it’s taking something off the screen and making it part of the world, then putting it back on the screen again on my Blog. So there is this full circle, and Tom Moody talked about that in his review.
http://www.tommoody.us/archives/2008/12/14/aron-namenwirth-at-vertexlist/

EK: Obama seems to have a bit more authenticity, somehow, in his personality.

AN: I don’t know does he? I felt his first real decision was choosing Biden. Biden is from Delaware who represents all these incredibly wealthy corporations trying to find tax loopholes. There aren’t too many people that have as many connections to special interests as Joe Biden.


“Obama”

EK: The Obama is very fuzzy. Your portrait of him, it’s not as clear as Hilary. I do really like Brian’s comment about the George Washington curls.

AN: Obama was still my first choice and he’s the best chance we have to heal all the wounds that were made.

EK: I like that there is a time factor in these. That they were made over 3 years; you didn’t just whip them off.

AN: I was making this argument and nobody was listening. I felt like I was all alone with this for a very long time.

EK: It gives some vindication. It’s now become timely.

AN: I was worried that these wouldn’t be shown. I wanted them to be shown before the election and it didn’t happen because of personal issues. Then Charles came to me and I think it’s even more timely. People can think about it now.

The way I came to the title was a great process. It came about before all this Made in USA stuff came about.

EK: What do you mean by Made in U.S.A stuff coming about?

AN: Right now they’re talking about redoing the New Deal. There’s this whole movement away from outsourcing. I think that’s what the Chinese NASDAQ was eluding to. I was thinking for weeks what I would call the show. Then I had found this half assembled model airplane made of balsa wood when I was cleaning out my Mom’s house. I had started it when I was 10 or 13 years old. I decided to finish it and I painted it. Then I looked at the box and I noticed it said, “Made in U.S.A.” and I thought that’s it! All the problems and all the solutions are here. We made Bin Laden, we made all these issues with the environment. It’s a collision of the good and the bad. And now we have to remake it. We have to recreate infrastructure. In the first New Deal, the President tried something and if it didn’t work he would try something else. But now with technology the way it is, if you try something and it doesn’t work, you’re screwed. You can do huge amounts of damage to an infrastructure with computers if you make a mistake. So it’s a different world. I don’t know if there’s as much room for trial and error. They’re gonna have to get it right the first time.

EK: That seems like such a shame because trial and error is part of the process of figuring things out.

AN: There’s a really interesting article about Yale. Yale is supposed to be such a great university having created all these great people. Now you start pointing at the people. Yale created George Bush, Yale created the Clintons. What great thinkers were these people? How many good decisions did these people make? It focused on the quality of thinking. It’s supposed to teach them how to think. Right? But they’re not doing that. I don’t think Obama went to Yale.

EK: He went to Harvard.

AN: Yeah, so we’ll see. I’m really hopeful and really skeptical at the same time.

EK: That’s good.

AN: There’s a weird thing about making political art. There’s a taboo, or stigma associated with political art. I see that as a challenge. Some of my favorite artists like Leon Golub, when we were in school, I couldn’t stand him. I thought he was exploiting these issues, using them for his own self-promotion. Something about that really pissed me off. But then when I started getting involved in it myself, it seemed like the art that I most admired like Goya’s “Disaster’s of War” and Picasso’s “Guernica,” are works that are really difficult. Sometimes it will be propaganda. The art audience is pretty tuned in. So your preaching to the choir, but at the same time, is everyone going to make polite decorative art? And that’s what’s happened.

Aron Namenwirth is a painter, media artist, curator, and co-director of artMovingProjects founded in 1995. Aron was born in Ipswich Mass. He got his M.F.A. in Painting in 1987 from Yale. He works and lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Aron’s work is involved in contemporary American politics, war and consumerist culture. He recently showed at Momenta, vertexList. and Galapagos. Namenwirth’s Video and Animations have been screened at Diva in Miami. He has written and curated for Zing Magzine. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Time Out, Italian Vogue, and Broadcast on PBS and CNN. http://aronnamenwirth.blogspot.com/


ABOUT VERTEXLIST: vertexList is an artist-run space in Williamsburg Brooklyn, founded in 2003 by Marcin Ramocki with a mission of supporting emerging media artists. Currently the gallery is directed by Charles Beronio and seeks artwork conceptually involved in exposing the codes of post-capitalist culture, both via new and traditional media. vertexList is named after the property of a vector image which holds all numerical information about the image. http://www.vertexlist.net/, http://vertexlist.blogspot.com/

 

#permalink posted by Erika Knerr: 1/17/09 01:03:00 AM


Friday, January 2nd, 2009

Meditation on Mediations— An East West Cultural Exchange: Dialogue, Misunderstanding, Growing Pains and an Evolution of Artists Before Egos



CamouFLASHED Mediations
Curators: Mariusz Soltysik, Aurelia Mandziuk, Anja Tabitha Rudolph, Roland Dolfing
Event in frame of Month of Mediations – MEDIATIONS Biennial, 3-30 of October 2008, Poznan, Poland


MEDIATIONS BIENNALE
Biennale director: Tomasz Wendland

Voyage Sentimental, curator: Lorand Hegyl
Identity and Tolerance, curator: Gu Zhenqing
Corporeal/Technoreal, curator: Yu Yeon Kim

By artist Erika Knerr




Thursday, October 2, 2008- As an artist in CamouFLASHED Mediations I had the luxury of actualizing my sound installation, Atmospirit, The Last Breath and the Big Wind on my birthday. The painted white circle on the floor was dry and I suspended the pillows from the ceiling. There were the typical problems of finding materials and tools. I needed a ladder to reach the ceiling and managed to negotiate one of the few available.

There was some mix up that evening about when exhibitions were opening so Suzy Sureck and I went to the opening of “Voyage Sentimental” at the National Museum a day early and were turned away by the guards. Luckily, Eric Binder, a Slovakian artist from Bratislva, showing in “Voyage Sentimental,” was returning with supplies. He was able to get us past the guards as his guest. This was great to get a preview before the opening. Most of the work was installed and a few of the artists were hanging and/or finishing their installations. We were struck by the contrast of the slick white Museum space to our abandoned Old Printer house with all its character. I liked the less precious approach of Eric Binder finishing his large, playful, graffiti influenced drawings suspended directly from the ceiling. We also met Barthelemy Toguo from Cameroon with some of the strongest works in this show. There were quite a few big name art stars in this venue like Anselm Kiefer, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Hermann Nitsch, Arnulf Rainer, William Kentridge and Marina Abramovic among others. I was happily pleased to see the beautiful, straw blown drawings of Roland Flexner, from New York. I was also struck by the amount of figurative and narrative works here, but made sense for this more traditional setting.


That evening at the Dragon Pub I spoke to artist Adam Klimczak about Dresden and the continuation of Camouflash there with the young group of artists who formed the UNACTO group about 2 years ago. Above all he stressed that there is something quite positive about the fact that the Dresden group of artists are trying to organized themselves, like we have done, in Lodz, and that’s a good thing. All the details are not so important in the end.
“We focus on non-commercial, experimental and alternative work….created often in unconventional spaces such as streets, shops, factories or public places” Galeria Wschodnia, Lodz
Friday, October 3, 2008. This was the longest day of the trip. I awoke early this morning at the Hotel Ryzimsky where most of the Mediations Artists were staying about a 15-20 minute walk to the Old Printer House, which housed CamouFLASHed Mediations and also one of the three feature exhibitions of Mediations Biennial, curated by YeoYeun Kim from New York, titled “Corporreal/Technoreal.” I got to the Printer House later than I had hoped. CamouFLASHed Mediations opened the next day at 12:30 PM. There was still an overwhelming amount of work to do to prepare for the opening. Reinigungsgesellschaft, an artist collaborative in the space next to me on the first floor had arrived to install their video, The Japanese Garden, 2008. We worked through a few problems with lighting and basic co-existense of two installations with sound. There’s with the sound of children and a security guard explaining behavioral rules and the cultural meaning of the garden in Berlin at the recreation park “Gardens of the World,” mine with the sound of basic meditation instruction, overlaying the sound of wind and the breath of my father, a few days before he passed away.

I was able to mostly finish my installation today and resolve some issues with the pillow heights and with the recommendation of a Viennese artist we met the day before, Clemens Fuertler, I wrapped the bases beneath the pillows with white cotton fabric. I was still unhappy about using a laptop for sound of the audio. It was not loud enough and the fact that the laptop with sound was stolen from my installation at “Disappearing in Art”, in Dresden, and was left without audio for 7 days of the installation was disconcerting. After many requests for speakers I ended the day with confidence that speakers would arrive by morning.

Friday night was the opening of the first two Mediatons shows, “Voyage Sentimental” at the National Museum and “Identity and Tolerance” at the Zamek Castle Cultural Center (Kultury Zamek). We missed the 6:00 pm opening at the National Museum still working on “Camouflash”. Luckily we saw the preview the night before with Eric. The contrast was dramatic between spaces. Ours is a gutted old unheated shell of the old Printer House (except my room actually has heat which I was given as a good space to encourage meditation). The National Museum space is a huge open atrium with many smaller, white boxed rooms. We did make it to the Zamek Castle. This was a Historic space. A favorite piece, a performance on the front steps, near the entrance, was a fallen angel by SunYuan & Peng Yu simply titled Angel, 2007. There were great videos in the lobby space of the Zamek Castle now the Cultural Center of Poznan.

Upstairs was a large hall with people waiting for speeches from the curators and organizers. The entrance of the rest of the exhibition was down another hall near the beer tap and wine table. In trying to go in I was promptly stopped and pointed back toward the direction of the speeches, so more waiting, than another attempt to pass the ladies guarding the hallway to the artwork. Once again turned away by the stern, cross-armed guards. The speeches finally came and went with movement toward the drinking hall. We ran in to Warren, a Polish writer we knew from NY and had a brilliant talk about 12 years of living cycles. Warren was a fixture at every art event in NY for 12 years and has now migrated to Warsaw as he sees more happening here than in New York.


Next we were moved to a banquet where all the artists, organizers and curators where invited for a big spread of sushi, polish dishes, fruits and drinks. Off the balcony, there was a lovely view of the Castle gardens. Being that our opening was the next day at 12:30 pm, Mariusz, Agata, Aurelia, Margaret, Henrich from the Dresden group and other artists & installers worked all night with one or two hours sleep to prepare works.

CamouFLASHed Mediations was an enormous undertaking for the curators. It was overly ambitious and chaotic to deal with this beautiful old building, the Old Printer House in Poznan, smack next to a Sheraton Hotel and a short walk from the main railway Station (Poznań Główny). Not only did art need to be installed on three floors of about 8,000 sq. ft. each, walls were built and painted, electricity run to spaces for a huge number of monitors, projectors, lights, speakers, laptops etc. to be set up and all of this in only 4 days before the opening. This is an amazing “portrait” of overcoming obstacles.

“Camouflash” was first shown in a smaller venue, an old office building connected with the Patio Art Center, in Lodz, Poland, in October 2007. Conceived by Mariusz Soltysik and co-curated with Aurelia Mandziuk, this show was tight and concise in its curatorial vision and openness toward supporting it’s artists to realize their works. At the time there were also obstacles to leap in terms of the building, wiring and cleaning an old building for a show that was almost all media based. This idea in itself is a paradox; to show so much new media in an old world building that was not at first technology friendly.

So this was a similar case in Poznan, but on a much bigger scale. The next obstacle was moving from its second incarnation, “The Disappearing in Art” that took place in Dresden in a contemporary building shell of future offices, a little more than a month earlier. A group of young artists from a group called UNOACTU in Dresden, headed up by Anja Tabitha Rudolph became interested in “Camouflash” after their first UNOACTU project in which Mariusz Soltisik, Adam Klimczak and others from Lodz were involved.

Soltysiks approach was adopted by UNOACTU. At this point, a mixed encumbrance occurred. UNOACTU took Soltysiks concepts and ideas in “Camouflash” and augmented them thematically, with the subtitle “Disappearing in Art,” expanding the ideas of hyper-reality and presenting “Camouflash” no w in Dresden. Interestingly an experiential and generational shift occurred, where a group of young, recently graduated art organizers are hosting a group of seasoned artists and organizers with a long and important history from Lodz.

Looking at the experiential differences in cultural and generational shifts is one way of understanding the different styles of organizing. This was not only a cultural exchange between artists from Poland and Germany, but also between the parallel histories of both Dresden, from GDR, and Poland, coming from the soviet bloc era ending in 1989. A new generation of artists organizing in their twenties, grew up for the most part in a Germany undivided, giving them a different perspective.

Egos are a huge part of the art world, commercial or otherwise and of the “artist” mentality. “Camouflash,” coming from a long history of Construction in Process, The International Artist Museum and Galeria Wschodnia is the anti market, anti economy driven art world, supporting social change through artistic exchange. It takes a position of artists for artists, where egos play a secondary role. This is antithetical to the commercial gallery system of the art world. This contrast of approaches is important to the continued shift of a post-communist Central Europe and for future generations of global artist organizers in general.



A third time around, this incarnation, CamouFLASHed Mediations was back in Poland for Poznan’s first international Biennial,with yet another expansion, including curator Roland Dolfing from Luxenboug, and Inner Spaces bringing in painter Soazic Guezennec, and others. CamouFLASHed is about something other than a tightly thematic Biennial exhibition and highlights it’s strong contrast to the three main shows supported by the Mediations Biennial. Tomasz Wendland brilliantly invited “Camouflash” as a large “fringe” exhibition to show a deeply multilayered, multi-cultural, inaugural Biennial presentation for Poznan.

So with unquestionable odds and little funding all involved came together with big ambition in an enormous undertaking. There was chaos, many problems much compromising, swirling egos, envy of the finished white cube for some, incredible dedication, fear, frustrations, family, dancing, laughter and drinking, very little sleep, a nice hotel, over 300 artists from around the world all convening on Poznan for the Mediations Biennial because of the efforts of Thomas Wendland & Co.

Saturday October 4, 2008

Saturday morning Suzy and I had to check out of our hotel, drop bags at the Train station and get to the Exposition before the opening at 12:30 pm. I needed to check on the sound of Atmospirit. On arrival I found boxes of brand new Creative speakers and a DVD player and 2 laptops. More than I needed. I had a very short time to set it up myself, since everyone else was still installing, cleaning on the second and third floors and perhaps rooms down the hall from me, on the first floor. A little miracle happened and I hooked it up right the first try and the sound was perfect for the room.

Breaking through our limited expectation
of the way things should be, and when
things happen spontaneously, in unexpected
ways, we learn from this.


Yu Yeon Kim’s opening of “Corporeal/Technoreal” took place in the same Printer House building as CamouFLASHed and opening at 12:00 noon, just a half hour before ours. “Corporeal-Technoreal” is part of the main program and had a different quality. It was a strongly curated new media exhibition of video work and one sculptural floor installation by Yuan Shun. His “O” Project, of a mist shrouded landscape of the Forbidden City was a stand out. The content of Yu Yeon Kim’s show was the harshest, most heavily psychological. Another favorite was Oswaldo Macia & Partrick Jolley’s, Soufle, 2008, film, sound. The room on first glance showed projections that looked like beautiful color field painting. On further investigation one realizes the color comes from “flowing surfaces of edible sauces and the audio track is of machines used in slaughterhouses. The sauce also feels like blood.

A highlight of the day was seeing Richard Wasko there. I was very happy to see him after many years and he is in good form. He was there with Marika Kuzmicz and friend, from Rempex, Galeria Sztuki Wspólczesnej in Warsaw. He joked that this photo would appear in the New York Times, only better here for AOA. The enigmatic Wasko disappeared as quick as his wit. He has a big exhibition up now at the National Museum in Lodz documenting his years there and in Berlin.

Now there w as movement upstairs for more speeches by the curators of CamouFLASHed this time. After this was a strong performance by Janusz Baldyga titled, Cheated – Rescued, 2008. At the beginning of the performance he announces, “Be Careful With Glass”. There were two pieces of glass, one wrapped with bandage with an image of a soaring hawk , the other plain, laying flat on the floor. He slowly unwrapped the glass, while at the same time wrapping himself in the bandage, letting it fall time after time and finally shattering on the floor. The second part consisted of taking the plain glass sheet, sliding it down a corner of the wall till it fixed itself there. It eventually smashed from the force of gravity some time after the performance ended.


The other performance by Gabriele Horndasch called Found Footage, 2008, became a wall installation on it’s completion. She started the dart throwing earlier that morning, before the opening and ended about a half hour into the opening. Each throw of the dart is replace with a nail where a wire hoop in hung. There is a beautiful sense of time in this work where the image on the wall is built up slowing creating a layered wall drawing. The active, almost violent action of throwing the large dart is offset by the stillness of the final piece.



Event in frame of Month of Mediations – MEDIATIONS Biennial, 3-30 of October 2008, Poznań


Artists:
Anna Adamczyk, Chrisitian Aschman, Janusz Bałdyga, Olga Bergmann, Martin Brazina, Sarah Browne & Gareth Kennedy, Henrik Busch, Agnieszka Chojnacka, Charlie Citron, Stephen Cornford, Disorientalism, Shige Fujishiro i, Sven Giessmann, Karolina Głusiec, Kristaps Gulbis, Shilpa Gupta, Soazic Guezennec, Tobias Hantmann, Eytan Heller, Jessica Higgins, Tatsuya Higuchi, Gabriele Horndasch, Eric Van Hove, Markus Huemer, Bernd Imminger, Adam Klimczak, Anna Klimczak, Erika Knerr, Patricia Lippert, Krzysztof Łukomski, Christine Mackey, Anna MacLeod, Cristina Maldonado, Tomasz Matuszak, Nadja Verena Marcin, Marina Naprushkina, Aisling O’Beirn, Łukasz Ogórek, Mariusz Olszewski, Arianne Olthaar, Pia MüllerSusana Pedrosa, Wiktor Polak, Ewa Szczyrek–Potocka, REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT, Grit Ruhland, Andreas Sachsenmaier, Mariusz Sołtysik, Suzy Sureck, Aki Tarr, Richard Thomas, Elżbieta Wysakowska – Walters, Miyuki Yokomizo

 

 

 

 

#permalink posted by Erika Knerr: 1/02/09 10:25:00 AM


Friday, December 5th, 2008

Festival- Hopping Paris
Spring, Summer 2008, Slideshow



Angie Eng

If yesterday was “spend,” today is “save.” Economize money, energy, space, time, water, food, thoughts. If I’m not watching images move, or moving images, then by default I’m roaming. A to B, equals New York to Paris. At a discreet global position, vaguely sitting in cafes for hours chatting, discussing, debating. Cartesians: “wearing the clock” not “watching the clock.” Spending vagabond days, writing, editing, reading, but do we, with one glance, have enough information to spark a sequence of ideas, feelings, inspiration?

Le Cube Festival 2008, Issy Les Moulineaux, www.cubefestival.com | Festival Nemo 2008, Élysées Biarritz, www.arcadi.fr | Festival Agora 2008, Ircam, www.ircam.fr | Exit Festival International, MAC Creteil Maisons Des Arts, www.maccreteil.com | VisionSonic, La Générale en Manufacture, www.lespixelstransversaux.net | Vision-R Festival, Mains D’Oeuvres, http://www.mainsdoeuvres.org | Scènes Ouvertes à L’insolite, Le Theatre de la Marionnette, Theatre de la Cité Internationale, www.theatredelamarionette.com

Angie Eng is a media artist who works in video, installation and time-based performance. Her current work draws inspiration from nomadic cultures. Her work has been performed and exhibited at the Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, Lincoln Center Video Festival, The Kitchen, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, Roulette Intermedium and Experimental Intermedia. Her videos have been included in digital art festivals in local and international venues in Cuba, France, Greece, Japan, Holland, Germany, Former Yugoslavia and Canada. She has received numerous grants and commissions: New Museum of Radio and Performing Arts, Harvestworks, Art In General, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York State Council on the Arts, Jerome Foundation and Experimental TV Center.

 

#permalink posted by Angie Eng: 12/05/08 08:50:00 AM


Monday, November 24th, 2008

The Art Connection
www.theartconnection.org
by Tova Speter



The Art Connection is a Boston nonprofit organization (currently celebrating its 13th anniversary) that seeks to enrich and educate under-served communities by expanding public access to original art. This distinct program places the work of donor artists on the walls of community service organizations. Within these healing environments, the art provides welcome opportunities for reflection, inspiration, comfort and hope. Sometimes, just one painting or sculpture can make a difference. This simple but powerful idea has resulted in thousands of installations into scores of organizations, giving those who often have the least access to art direct contact in their own communities.

A win-win for both artist and agency – the artwork is seen by many community members annually, often those who do not have regular access to original artwork. The artists feel good about gifting a work that has the potential to really make a difference in the life of someone in need; the agencies feel good about respecting their clients and staff by creating a warm and welcoming environment; and the community members feel good about experiencing artwork firsthand, often when they are accessing services during a difficult time in their lives.

Agencies must qualify for the program through an application process and must provide direct services to an underserved community. Common placements are homeless shelters, health clinics, community centers, and treatment facilities.

Perhaps one of the most significant components of our program, agencies create a selection committee of clients as well as staff to look through the art portfolio and choose the work that is most meaningful to them. In this way – a dialogue is created not only between staff and client, but also between staff and art, and client and art, and vice versa. The selection process is empowering for all involved and allows for a deeper look into artwork and what it means to them.

No need to take our word for it. The program has caused such a stir that it has expanded already to Washington DC and New York City. What people are saying:

Artists:
“It fulfills a lot of purposes… one of them is that there is not enough art in public spaces… and from an artist’s perspective, I want people to be looking at art as often as possible.”
-Ken Beck, artist

“Part of making art is communicating. Work sitting in a closet is not communicating with anybody.”
-Martha Jane Bradford, artist

“It is important to me that my artwork reached appreciative audiences who may have limited opportunities to view original work.”
-Marian Dioguardi, artist


Community members:
“When I walk into a room I’ve never ever been into, I look around and see what’s in it. If there’s lots of art I feel wanted. If there isn’t, I feel lonely.”
-Fifth grade student, Paige Academy

“Both times I was arrested, my mom would never come to visit me. She’d always send someone else to pay my bail and see where I was. But she came here, and she saw this painting (Difficult Decision by Fay Chandler) – and then she came back the next week. She sat at the table, and just looked at that painting. And we talked. I was shocked. I still can’t believe it.”
-Wanda, resident, McGrath House

Agencies:
“If you can’t bring the children to the museums, you need to bring the museums to the children.”
-Bill Walczak, CEO, Codman Square Health Center

“Fine art reveals creativity, imagination, beauty, emotional involvement and intellectual stimulation to all who see it. This is the kind of benefit that says to all our stakeholders, ‘We value you, we appreciate your efforts in treatment an d recovery.’ The chronically under-resourced public health sector cannot offer luxurious environments, but through donated art, we can help provide a setting that encourages healing and wellness.”
-Carolyn Ingles, Director of Support Services, Metro Boston Mental Health at Shattuck Hospital







Comments from Demetri Yannopolous, Boston Rescue Mission:

The client opens the door panting and sweating. “Man, those stairs always kick my butt,” she gasps. There are six floors in the Boston Rescue Mission, and each floor serves a purpose in helping people recover from homelessness. The halls of the Boston Rescue Mission are filled with emotions: fear, hunger, hope, joy and transformation. They are now also filled with art as The Art Connection has helped make even the walls part of the recovery process. Residents struggle every day to get their lives back in order, but with the help of generous artists, the Mission has become a warmer place.


The Boston Rescue Mission has been working on transforming the lives of the poor and homeless since 1899. Reverend John Samaan, President of the Boston Rescue Mission, commented that “We now have splendid pieces of artwork that will brighten people’s lives for years to come.” The artwork now decorates the halls of the Boston Rescue Mission, and clients have begun to take notice and talk about what it means to them emotionally and spiritually. Erica, a client living at the Mission exclaimed that “Every day I face my demons, but the artwork has brought much needed comfort and beauty into my life. It gives me hope.”


Art offers all of us an opportunity to experience emotions, thoughts, and feelings that we can’t find elsewhere. It is a chance to escape to new worlds, to engage in discussion, or to gain a spiritual breather. The art donated through The Art Connection now provides the opportunity not only to make a person feel better, but to truly be a part of a person’s life during their road to recovery.



Comments from Marian Dioguardi, donating artist:

Donating my art through The Art Connection has always been meaningful for me. It is important to me that my art work reaches appreciative audiences who may have limited opportunities to view original art work. My art’s placement with the East Boston Health Center, this summer, was especially meaningful. You see, I grew up in East Boston selling my crayon drawings door to door to my understanding neighbors on Webster Street. My neighbors were always gracious and generous with me and now it’s my turn to say thank you and give something back to the community.

As an active and clumsy child I was an all too familiar face at the EBHC, then known as “The Relief Station”. After asking my ritual question “How many stitches did I get?” I was always relieved and released once again to play, run and inevitably to fall. Now the EBHC continues to play an important part in my life as it cares for my parents Nick and Marie, life long residents of East Boston. Having my work chosen , hanging and welcoming everyone to the East Boston Health Center as me and my family have always been welcome gives me great pleasure.

Other info:
The Art Connection was established in 1995 as a vehicle for distributing original works of art to public, charitable, and educational institutions, in a manner pioneered by Fay Chandler, a painter and sculptor working in Boston since the early 1970s. As Fay began considering what would happen to her unsold inventory of work at her death or disability, she became convinced that the best result would be transferring the work, in conjunction with the work of other artists, free of charge, to interested public and nonprofit organizations in the community that have no funds for purchasing art. The program grew as founding directors recognized a demand for expanding public access to the visual arts and from their ability to build a unique program to meet that need. Since its inception 13 years ago, this unique gifting program has supported over 250 agencies in their personal selection of over 3700 pieces by 250 artists and collectors.

If you are an artist interested in donating work or an agency representative interested in receiving work, please contact us at info@theartconnection.org. Also- check out our new website at www.theartconnection.org

Tova Speter, Boston


 

#permalink posted by Erika Knerr: 11/24/08 03:49:00 PM


Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

Suzanne Fiol at ISSUE Project Room
Old American Can Factory, Brooklyn, NY




performance at ISSUE Project Room
Old American Can Factory
232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11215


An Interview with media artist, Angie Eng


If you’re projecting video on a wrinkled bed sheet, performing on a door in lieu of a table, carting your own mic and mixer, getting lost in the rain by the Gowanus Canal only to roam in circles around a cylindrical room avoiding its audio hot spots, rest assured you’ve found it. ISSUE Project Room is a place where initiates hack such a pilgrimage to meet, hear and see experimental performers. I love New York for such venues. Recently ISSUE Project Room was awarded a twenty year rent free lease on a beautiful 4800 square foot room in Downtown Brooklyn. I interviewed Suzanne Fiol, Founder and Artistic Director, who elaborates about the venue and its unique culture.


AE: Please give us a detailed profile of a typical loyal ISSUE Project Room (IPR) fan.

SF: ISSUE’s fan base is all over the map. We don’t have any one typical fan because the kind of work that happens at ISSUE ranges from every type of music from Noise to Chamber music, literature, experimental film and video. What I could say is that the type of person who comes to ISSUE is someone who has a serious connection to the work presented…a person who might be deeply touched by a performance. Possibly a student, possibly a collector, possibly an artist or filmmaker or a pianist.

AE: IPR has been able to not only survive but also thrive in Brooklyn, when just recently many venues could not afford to lose their Manhattan crowd. What are the reasons that set IPR apart from other small experimental music houses?

SF: ISSUE is an artist run organization (though so are Roulette and the Stone which are both fantastic places). Our focus has always been towards the artist, to provide an atmosphere and a safe space where their visions could be realized. Our programming features some of the most accomplished people in their fields, but also emerging artists who are finding their voice. The opportunity for conversations and an informal and warm atmosphere lends itself to new collaborations and new ideas. This kind of energy creates growth and expansion for not just ISSUE Project Room, but for everyone affected by what goes on.



crowds at ISSUE Project Room


AE: IPR was quite a special place on the Gowanus inside the silo. Sound wasn’t the best depending upon your seat, but architecture and the surreal placement inside that landscape made up for it. Then it moved to The Old Can Factory, its side-lit austere chapel-like room was also rich in character. And now… what can your faithful crowd expect for the new space?

SF: ISSUE was recently awarded a 20 year rent free lease on a beautiful 4800 square foot room in downtown Brooklyn. Easily accessible by most subways, this former Elk’s club room in the old Board of Education Building is going to be the most amazing thing you can imagine. We’ve been meeting with the acoustical engineering firm, ARUP, who designed the Sydney Opera House and the Beijing Olympic Stadium to name a few projects and they have been interested in helping us take this space and make it sound completely amazing. It’s quite an uphill battle trying to get in there and raise the funds to restore and treat the space, but trust me…it will be worth it for a generation of people who care about serious culture in New York and sustaining our artistic legacy as New Yorkers.



ISSUE Project Room’s new space at 110 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, NY


AE: Oops, I did a journalist faux pas I just read your mission statement and realized I made the generalization that you were a music club. IPR is renowned for its programming of experimental music, yet its mission statement is much broader. Please explain.

SF: ISSUE is dedicated to all forms of artistic expression, while we do tend to feature music, our programming has included many incredible filmmakers, visual artists, poets, novelists, actors and even dancers. Our Artistic Advisory Board includes the great writers Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem and Bob Holman as well as filmmakers Julian Schnabel and Jim Jarmusch. We’ve been profiled by many magazines and newspapers for our great literary series called “Littoral” which I co-curate with Tony Antoniatis. And just recently we presented a week of “Women in Experimental Cinema” which was very successful and a wonderful program. So I thnk our programming definitely crosses a number of genre boundaries.

AE: Artists are usually asked the same questions they dread posed to them. But if they were not asked of them, they are more than willing to address them voluntarily in a more organic fashion. Such as, what are your models or influences in building IPR? Better yet, what are your models to avoid so as not resorting to the bar for income?

SF: I’ve always been a big fan of Ellen Stewart at La Mama. They have a really fantastic organization and her energy and openness has been a big inspiration. Also we have a very energetic and incredibly supportive board of directors which makes it possible to achieve things that would never be possible through the efforts of one or two people on their own. They’ve helped us in ways I can’t even begin to describe.

AE: You mention collaborating with curators on your site. You have mentioned before that your calendar is based upon thematic months such as ‘vocal month’, ‘percussion month’ ‘multimedia month’. Can you explain the reason for this type of programming based upon musical instruments? Will this continue or what will a month look like in your new space.

SF: Collaborations are a huge part of ISSUE’s mission. Last month we collaborated with Meredith Drum on Women’s Experimental Cinema, with Zach Layton and Nick Hallett for a week of classic avant garde music through their “darmstadt” series. Percussion month was hosted by Billy Martin, one of my favorite percussionists. I think these collaborations yield a huge amount of exciting and fresh ideas and that is what ISSUE is all about. In the new space we will continue these programming models and expand them even further.

AE: I’m a young (25 year old) unknown composer/performer and want a gig at IPR. I just arrived in town and cannot say ‘I’m a friend of so and so’. Do you answer the email/phone still? What is the process of being invited to the new IPR?

SF: Yes, we try to listen to all of the requests that come in via email and so forth. If someone sends us mail we like to listen to the CDs that are included. We ask that people send us a proposal for what they would be interested in doing at ISSUE and if there is a way to fit them into our calendar that makes sense programmatically then we like to introduce new artists to the community. It’s very important to support emerging talent. For instance, ISSUE has an Artist-In-Residence Series that has featured Ashley Paul and Eli Keszler, young and brilliant musicians. They wanted to use their residency as an opportunity to perform with musicians in new york and build alliances. They played incredible sets with Phill Niblock, Aki Onda, David Linton and many other established musicians. Another new talent we’re excited to work with next is Duane Pitre. His work is magnificent…he just sent us a CD. I was listening to it in the car and loved it and invited him to perform…his performance just blew us all away. Now he’s our next Artist in Residence.

AE: The freefall economy is and will affect everyone for a while. You have a lot of courage to start a more ambitious performance space. Where does that courage come from, can you tell us about the magician/yourself behind it all from when you planted the seed until now?

SF: It has always been with me. Since I was in college I remember telling a friend of mine that I was going to make my life surrounded by art and I remember this feeling that I was going to open up a performance space. I was the gallery director of Brent Sikkema for a while and then came ISSUE and it seemed like destiny. It doesn’t necessarily feel like courage, it just feels right. It feels like this is what I’m here for. There’s something honest about this place that I think a lot of people feel too and are drawn to and the power and the courage doesn’t come from me, it comes from everyone. Remember, this is now the Obama generation.



watch a quicktime video of events at ISSUE Project Room


AE: I am coming from the east village to see a concert/performance. It costs me $2 on the metro, $10(maybe $12 or $15 in the new space?) for a ticket and $16 taxi ride to get home (I am 53 years old). I come home with $28-32 less. Why would I go to IPR and not The Stone, Le Poisson Rouge, Roulette, or Bowery Poetry Club?

SF: ISSUE does offer something that these other clubs don’t and they offer something we don’t. There are a lot of people living in Brooklyn, now, remember. Many people are being priced out of Manhattan and are coming over here. For many it’s actually more convenient to stay here than to go to the Village for a concert. So it’s really a balance. The great thing about 110 Livingston is that it is so accessible from Manhattan with almost every subway going right there and is really accessible from Brooklyn too. Besides this, there’s only one space in New York with a 15 channel hemispherical sound system…ISSUE.

AE: When Tonic closed many people felt they lost their second home. You have catered to a similar crowd. Does IPR see themselves as ‘family’ or ‘guest’?

SF: Family

AE: Its 12:30am in Paris, I have about 4 hours to go before I know if Obama wins. I believe in the trickle up effect. If he is elected president, how will that affect IPR?

SF: Well, it shows that this country is heading in a new and positive direction. We’ve felt at times like we were besieged trying to keep expermintal culture alive in the Bush years. Now it’s a new situation, Brooklyn was absolutely beautiful Tuesday night, people were hugging and laughing and crying tears of joy. I think ISSUE represents a place that c ultivates and sustains culture not denigrates it. The Obama Administration, we hope, will make arts funding a priority. There’s a lot of work for him to do, but we need to keep this up there on the list. Since Reagan, the government has been cutting funding for the arts…we need to change this pattern now.

AE: Better to end an interview on an even number as they say. Far-sighted analogies can be insightful. If IPR were a plant what would it be?

SF: A weeping willow tree.

Angie Eng, NYC/Paris

ISSUE Project Room has received generous support from the Annenberg Foundation, Brooklyn Arts Council, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Brooklyn Arts Council, Meet the Composer, The Golden Rule Foundation, The Edwards Foundation Arts Fund, The Puffin Foundation, mediaThe foundation, the Independence Community Foundation, and the Experimental Television Center. BOARD OF DIRECTORS: Marc Zegans, Board Chair, Jo Andres, Steve Buscemi, Suzanne Fiol, Robert Longo, Steve Wax, ART ADVISORY BOARD: Paul Auster, William Basinski, Rhys Chatham, Tony Conrad, David Grubbs, Shahzad Ismaily, Bob Holman, Jim Jarmusch, John Jesurun, Charlotta Kotik, Jonathan Lethem, Evan Lurie, John Lurie, Moby, Rick Moody, Stephan Moore, Lawrence D. Morris, Julian Schnabel, Elliott Sharp, Mark Stewart, Edwin Torres, John Turturro, Kate Valk, Anne Waldman, Hal Willner, Robert Wilson

Angie Eng is a media artist who works in video, installation and time-based performance. Her current work draws inspiration from nomadic cultures. Her work has been performed and exhibited at the Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, Lincoln Center Video Festival, The Kitchen, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, Roulette Intermedium and Experimental Intermedia. Her videos have been included in digital art festivals in local and international venues in Cuba, France, Greece, Japan, Holland, Germany, Former Yugoslavia and Canada. She has received numerous grants and commissions: New Museum of Radio and Performing Arts, Harvestworks, Art In General, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York State Council on the Arts, Jerome Foundation and Experimental TV Center.

 

#permalink posted by Angie Eng: 11/11/08 08:21:00 AM


Monday, September 29th, 2008

Conflux 08
The New Beauty: 2008 Conflux Festival
Challenges Ideas of Public Space


CutUp installation, Center for Architecture photo: Jean Pike

by Jean Pike

Now in its fifth year, the Conflux Festival (Sept 11-14), included works by over 100 artists, geographers, scientists, writers, and architects who were selected from 400 submissions. Conflux is a freewheeling and often ephemeral series of events that are organized around the idea of psychogeography or, as Conflux Co-founder and Director Christina Ray calls it, “finding beauty, surprises and wonder in city spaces.” In opening remarks artist and festival curator Sal Randolph further fleshed this out by quoting Situationist Guy Debord who said “the new beauty can only be a beauty of situations”. Keynote speaker Chris Carlsson, author of Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-lot Gardeners are Inventing the Future Today (www.nowtopia.org), put it this way: “when we do these projects it’s the moment when we’re fully engaged…City life has so much that is so possible but is so stunted as far as what could be.”

The dynamic, and sometimes changing schedule coalesced around the festival website at www.Confluxfestival.org and at the Conflux HQ, where lectures, meetings and projects took place, located this year at the Center for Architecture. While zones in the streets of New York were identified for events near the Center for Architecture, many were “off-piste” so to speak, such as those made by Artists Meeting, a group of fourteen artists who made nineteen pieces all over lower Manhattan (www.artistsmeeting.org), or Tango Intervention, organized by artist Ro Lawrence, which gave participants a chance to tango on the Brooklyn Bridge, creating an exciting and different kind of social space for the walkway (www.tangointervention.org).


Tango dancers on Brooklyn Bridge photo: Paula K. Lazsus

In fact, over the weekend lower Manhattan was deluged by a wave of both digital and analog art events, many of which would have been barely perceptible to an unsuspecting public. In a piece called The Pick Up, artists Eleanor Eichenbaum Eubanks and Heather L. Johnson collected personal stories that took place at specific NYC locations, embroidered these memories on over twenty vintage handkerchiefs, and placed the handkerchiefs at the locations where the stories had originally taken place. The idea of making an introduction by way of picking up a handkerchief was resonant in the event. Members of the public are invited to search for these site-specific works and pick them up, using the website map as a guide, but the artists warn, for example, that two handkerchiefs left near the Chelsea Hotel disappeared within a matter of minutes of the drop, making after-the-fact searches potentially futile (www.thepickup.org).


The Pick Up photo courtesy of H.L. Johnson/E.E. Eubanks

The anonymous British artists collective, CutUp, was in town and created two new works on downtown billboards at the corners of Grand and Wooster Streets, and West Broadway and Grand as well as an installation in the lobby of the Center for Architecture. Interested in reordering the urban and mediated landscape, their process for the lobby installation included removing a billboard surface whole, cutting it up into 1500 pieces, then reconfiguring to create a desolate landscape. The final image is then viewed through a television that is connected to a CCTV camera. (www.cutup.org)

Brian House, who works with database driven narratives and their intersection with public space and whose work has been incorporated into the curriculum at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, created an interactive video piece called Today is OK that could be viewed by anyone in the vicinity of the Center for Architecture with a cell phone that had Bluetooth capability.

The Federation of Students and Nominally or Unemployed Artists – $1k Giveaway, comprised of artists James Bachhuber, Angela Ferraiolo, Sam Freeman, Tamara Gubernat, Steve Lambert, Michael McCanne, Prescila Neri, Kahil Shkymba, Bob Smith, and Hal Weiss, set up a table over the weekend and gave out free artists grants to the public. Funds had been pooled together by the group from individual work activities leading up to the event. Anyone with a good idea for an art project could stand on line, describe it, put in an application and possibly receive instant funding. Soon local venders decided to join in and give things away as well.


1k Giveaway: receiving a grant application photo courtesy of Steve Lambert



1k Giveaway: a grant is awarded photo courtesy of Steve Lambert

Artist Lee Walton (www.leewalton.com) could be found on Saturday afternoon outside the Strand Bookstore where he was holding an “official” book-signing event. He had come prepared with a chair and a black Sharpie, was willing to sign anyone’s book and would stay as long as was necessary. Walton later gave a talk at the Center for Architecture where he explained how the Conflux Festival had influenced his work by introducing him to the notions of psychogeography. His work has since been commissioned by the likes of Art in General, Reykjavik Art Museum, and the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. During his Sunday talk Walton passed out about twenty Starbucks Gift Cards explaining that only one of them had money on it which incited a roar of laughter from the audience and a comment from the crowd, “that’s brilliant!” Momentary problems with the internet connection during the talk prompted director and long time friend Christina Ray to call playfully from the back of the room, “That’s part of what we’re throwing at you! It’s called, Your Internet Has Been Dropped!”

Maps and map-making played a big role at Conflux. In a panel discussion that centered around projects that were inspired by the book, Cartography of Protest and Social Change, graphic designer and activist John Emerson, explained that he uses maps to visualize and challenge power and to navigate abstract relationships. He presented the map he created in collaboration with artist/writer Trevor Paglen of the CIA’s secret international flights that transported hostages for rendition. The map was posted on a Santa Monica billboard. Questions such as, “who makes the maps?” and “how do we map ourselves?” were put forward by panel participants as a means of unraveling assumed power structures.


John Emerson presents his map of secret CIA flights
photo: Jean Pike

Artist Lucas Murgida uses the way in which he earns his living, in this case cabinet-making, to make performances and interventions that engage the public and “their notions of service, perception, liberation, and derivations of power”. For this year’s Conflux Festival, in a project called 9/10, referring to the phrase “possession is nine-tenths of the law,” Lucas constructed a cabinet that he then left on a New York City street with himself inside. On Sunday morning, during one of the talks, he was taken. Lucas’ flickr site provided a real time record of his experiences and can be viewed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucasmurgida/.


Lucas Murgida in 9/10
images courtesy of Lucas Murgida

As Christina Ray now steps away from the Conflux Festival after five years as director, participants and supporters are waiting eagerly to hear what will become of the festival. Conflux is currently in its fifth year with no corporate or public funding, running almost entirely on a grassroots, volunteer basis with only some in-kind donations.

At a time when freedom of the use of “public” space within the City is questionable due to big real estate and corporate interests and homeland security, the projects in the Conflux Festival come as a breath of fresh air, nudging at the edges of the control and ownership of communications systems, of our own habitual activities and the way we operate within the City’s systems. In these events we can see what isn’t normally seen, do what isn’t normally done, and learn about our expectations. Then, as Chris Carlsson says, we can “repopulate the technosphere and reappropriate what we do and why we do it”, a very exciting proposition indeed.

Jean Pike is an artist|architect living and working in New York City. She holds a Master of Architecture degree from the Yale School of Architecture. Her work has been shown at Viridian Artists Gallery in NYC, The California College of Arts and Crafts, The University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning Gallery, Tao Gallery in Hong Kong and Gallery 61 at The New York Institute of Technology. Her work is about translating between various forms of representation (abstract drawing, video) and three or four dimensional work (sculpture, architecture and installation). Coming from a background in dance, it is often about the physical sense of the body in space and time and how that relates to psychological and emotional states.

 

#permalink posted by Jean Pike: 9/29/08 11:22:00 AM


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