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Artblog Art Safari tickets are going fast–only six seats remain on the June 1 tour. The other three safaris are sold out. But the good news is we’ve got a special guest coming along on that June 1 tour, Philadelphia Chief Cultural Officer Gary Steuer. Here’s his blog. To reserve your seat, contact us quick at libbyandroberta@gmail.com. Put SAFARI TICKETS in the subject line to insure prompt attention to your request. Only $20/ticket.
People have said to us they like the flow of the new artblog. We like it too! Here are some of the great, useful new features of our new redesign in a tick list to help you go with the flow so to speak:
Dear all, if you visited us yesterday you know we were not around. Our hosting service had a big crash that took 18 hours to fix. But hooray, they fixed it and we are back. It was a very frustrating day but onward!
[This post was scheduled to go up yesterday but couldn't because of our hosting outage. Hope you got to see the show-yesterday was its last day.] The four featured artists at Vox Populi this month present four discrete bodies of work in each of Vox’s four gallery spaces. If there is a commonality it’s that the artists all seem to be seekers, after some truth–psychological or cosmic. That, and they all have MFAs from high powered institutions (Yale, Columbia, VCU).
Perhaps the most engaging, because of its accessible narrative edge and cartoonish style, is Guy Ben-Ari‘s mostly grizaille paintings. With a clunky awkwardness that is endearing and a surreal sensibility enhanced by the use of mirrors, windows, long corridors and the suggestion of endless interior space, the works feature characters, in pairs, (some may be twins, or friends, or because this is dream-like, a single person represented twice) who look at each other bemusedly, lovingly, anxiously, judgeingly or lustfully.
Guy Ben-Ari, a series of small paintings
Other things are twinned too, like a table with lamp and small standing picture frame that appears, double, in one of the works. There’s no action to speak of except looking, which gives a slight sense of unease. If there is a punchline — and there isn’t — these would be pretty perfect on the cover of the New Yorker. As it is, they’re a good look and bespeak a quest to understand the nature of relationships and self.
Catharine Maloney, a photo-sculptural work that evokes a class or team picture
Wilmington artist Catharine Maloney‘s series of photo-collages and photo-constructions also seem to be looking — at gender. Not only does she focus on young men who mostly seem to be wearing Star Trek-like mock turtlenecks and posing in what amount to class or team pictures, but a number of the men are quite gender ambiguous. The seeming amateurish presentation of the works makes it seem like an obsessive scrap-booker or self-taught artist put this together. I found the work intriguing, both for the obsessive, closed-circuit point of view and for the eschewing of a sophisticated presentation.
Leah Beeferman's cosmic tabletop array
Leah Beeferman‘s two tables with colored plexiglas shapes of different sized geometric forms is situated in a gallery with black walls. The dramatic presentation and accessibility of the shapes made me immediately want to move things around on the table tops. But I was told no dice — it’s not an interactive piece. Too bad. The piece evokes two science fair tables awaiting the scientist to come and explain it all to you. There is apparently an audio component to the piece which I didn’t hear. When I went to Beeferman’s website to get some elucidation I found some delightful animations with sound, including the sound for this piece (a nice mix of what could be sounds of breathing magnified or sounds of car passing by on nearby highway and some bright percussive, almost tap-dance tapping). Clued in by the additional work on the website, it seems the artist is investigating the harmony of the spheres, and in that light, the table tops become mutable descriptions of what might be, what could be tomorrow and what might have been. Poignant, somehow.
Brie Ruais, video of St. Theresa sculpture on a raft, like Huck Finn going down river
Brie Ruais‘ “Unfolding/Performing Sculpture” includes a couple of large, fired, clay starbursts on the walls; a freestanding sculpture that is appears to have the face and hands of Bernini’s St.Theresa only here she is struggling to be free of the mound of clay she’s in. Elsewhere in the room, a river of what looks like unfired clay crosses the floor ala Lynda Benglis’ rivers of latex; and a video shows a slightly different St. Theresa piece on a raft in the middle of a river with some attendants.
Brie Ruais, floor piece showing a different St. Theresa, mired in a mound of clay
The suggestion is of some kind of Huck Finnish journey to come. The idea of transporting the clay piece downstream is highly appealing, while I don’t find the works in the room as appealing. Ruais’ work feels less like its questing for something (you don’t feel the struggle) than that it has arrived at an hypothesis and is experimenting with material and art history to perhaps knock some art history icons down a peg or two.
All in all, the art world reflected in these four rooms looks pretty much as you’d expect these days – hydra-headed and conceptual, albeit with lots of traditional materials being thrown around in a traditional manner.
In early December Tim Belknap set up a small, pretend space station inside Temple Gallery that was an almost-convincing replica of the real thing. He called the set piece Destiny Module, a reference to the US Space Station’s Science Lab. Destiny Module was part of Belknap’s project to beam himself as Astronaut Tim into a Philadelphia 4th grade classroom for a science talk. All this would be done via the magic of a live Skype video feed. Tim — who is not an astronaut but an artist and Fleisher Challenge winner with a mischievous sense of play and a self-created mission to educate kids about space — harnessed himself to a cable attached to heavy metal beams in the piece (in his day job he does custom steel fabrication) and hung suspended in front of a video camera as if he was floating in zero gravity. The students were wowed and believed the ruse, at least at first, and asked him questions like Is the moon a cookie? and When will the earth explode?
Here’s our 32-second sample of the interview with Tim.
Download audio file (timbelknappromo.mp3)
Right click to download Tim Belknap 32 second clip
Also, check out the recent story by Peter Crimmins and the video by Lindsay Lazarski on WHYY’s NewsWorks!
And here’s the full podcast interview:
Download audio file (timbelknapfinal.mp3)
Right click to download full 14:27-min. interview with Tim Belknap
Coming soon, please return to this post to watch the YouTube slide version of this podcast.
This episode is edited by Peter Crimmins. The music is by Eric Biondo. The slide show is edited by artblog Intern Alison McMenamin. Thanks to the Knight Foundation for helping us get the ball rolling on this project. Thanks also to J-Lab?s Enterprise Reporting Fund and William Penn Foundation for additional support and to our partner WHYY NewsWorks for their ongoing support and for sharing artblog radio episodes on the arts & culture page of their community news site NewsWorks.org. You can subscribe to artblog radio on iTunes.
FiberPhiladelphia gets underway
March is fast approaching, and so are a number of events as part of FiberPhiladelphia, the annual Philadelphia textile and fiber arts festival. In fact, Mayor Nutter will kick off the March 2 ceremony at Moore College of Art and Design by proclaiming March 2012 as Fiber Arts Month. The first event is the opening of In Material: Fiber 2012 on Friday, January 27 at Arthur Ross Gallery.
Mi-Kyoung Lee, "Untitled", 2011 (detail) Twist ties, wire
New curator at Woodmere
Matthew U. Palczynski is the new curator at the Woodmere Art Museum. Palczynski was most recently the Staff Lecturer for Western Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and specializes in 20th and 21st Century art, which he continues to teach at Temple’s Tyler School of Art.
In the Media
Details.com has an intriguing article entitled “How the Art Scene Replaced the Nightclub” which recounts how art locales in NYC are replacing clubs as the new nightlife destination.
Curbed Philly just launched as a go to hub for all things urban and Philadelphian. The editor is Liz Spikol, the long time Philly Weekly blogger who runs a page about mental health issues.
Title Magazine put out its latest issue, and artblog is also pleased to announce we are running their RSS feed on our front page.
Temple Gallery silence
The sound of silence this month at the Temple Gallery is that of tape 342 from the White House office complex under Richard Nixon. Occurring on June 20, 1972 – just days after the Watergate break-in – the discussion in Nixon’s office is suddenly and dubiously replaced by electronic clicks and hissing. Nixon’s secretary took the blame for apparently pressing the wrong button at the most convenient of times.
Fourth Friday on South Street
Arts on South does Fourth Friday from 5 – 8 PM on January 27 (via Flying Kite). Most of the action takes place between the 500 – 700 blocks where a number of unrented retail storefronts have been turned into spaces for art.
Student show season
Tis the season for MFA and BFA shows, starting with the opening of Safeword at UPenn. The show highlights work from PennDesign MFA Class of 2013.
Ceramics Monthly plans to feature the works of emerging clay artists. Submit up to (no more than) five 300 ppi images, a color print of each image, descriptions of the work, and contact info to: Emerging Artists, Ceramics Monthly, 600 N. Cleveland Ave., Ste. 210, Westerville, OH 43082. E-mail materials or questions to: epfeifer@ceramics.org. The deadline is February 21.
Triple Canopy has an open call for artists in six project areas (which are detailed on the proposals page). The staff will work closely with contributors as they develop the best approach to realizing their projects on the Web. The deadline is February 13.
Xanadu Gallery has a virtual book club–why not? Everything else is online. Registration is free. The next book up is the Pulitzer Prize-winning de Kooning: An American Master. Visit the registration page to become a part of the book club.
Artist News
Bruce Wilhelm
Bruce Wilhelm, one of the Grizzly Grizzly founders currently completing his MFA at RISD is having a February 3 opening at Mulherin and Pollard in NYC.
Mark Price
Mark Price, a member of Space 1026, has an upcoming show at Kesting/Ray in New York entitled “Hyper 20XX”. The opening is February 9.
Celia Reisman will teach landscape painting for two sessions of the summer program at the International School of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture in Umbria, Italy.
Stuart Lorimer, Tyler MFA 2011 graduate now living in Brooklyn has been working to install art for collectors and contribute paintings to a show in Paris. Most recently he helped decorate Tommy Hilfiger’s mansion in Connecticut.
Hey, check out our new pages of great content, now in a fantastic streamlined form. Our tech guru, Samantha Slade, and her design partner Angela Miles, of Two Scarves did a fantastic job with the design. And we are looking for your feedback. See anything that’s wobbly, or a link that’s broken, send us a note or put it in comments. Comments are now working! Your friends, Libby and Roberta
Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other opened at the New Museum, New York in June, 2010 and I caught up with it at its final stop, the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA, on through January 29, 2012). Organized by the two museums, the exhibition was also seen in in St. Louis, Scottsdale and Miami. Neuenschwander is from the first generation of Brazilian artists to come to international attention early in their careers, but she inevitably stands on the shoulders of the Frente and Neo-Concret artists of the late 1950s-1960s (Helio Oticica, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape and others). Some of her references may be lost in translation, but the work has enough energy, generosity and sensitivity to the world at large that it holds up well in alien environments. Neuenschwander deals with subjects of time, death, social responsibility and environmental awareness in a poetic manner that sometimes teeters on the edge of sentimentality, but falls in the right side.
Rivane Neuenschwander 'I Wish Your Wish' (2003) installation detail
The exhibition was held in the domestically-scaled rooms of the IMMA’S New Galleries, the area open during the renovation of the primary spaces in the Royal Military Hospital, Kilmainham. The initial room held At a Discrete Distance, a series of precisely-painted and rather cheerful landscapes which emphasized patterning of floor tiles, roof beams and stairs; they were painted on small panels which the label related to Brazilian devotional paintings, although they gave no clue to wished-for desires.
Rivane Neuenschwander 'The Tenant' (2010) video still
A room full of Involuntary Sculptures (Speech Acts) (2001-10) held vitrines full of of small, hand-made objects that Neuenschwander had found, abandoned, in various bars and restaurants. These small sculptures, three-dimensional doodles really, had been fashioned from corks, plastic straws, matches, toothpicks, paper napkins, chop-stick wrappers, pop-tops and champagne cork wires that had been twisted, folded, shredded, crimped and burnt. They were by-products of social activities whose excess energy had been channeled through manual activity. While they bore signs of varying degrees of craftsmanship and imagination, Neuenschwander’s interest was in their association with sociability, hence the second part of their title, Speech Acts. Intriguing as they were, it struck me that almost anything laid out carefully in vitrines comes to resemble art.
The protagonist of the video, The Tenant (2010) is a large soap bubble which meanders through the rooms of an empty house, and the conceit is so charming that it doesn’t matter how it was effected. I was willing to accept the agency of the wobbly sphere, always a moment away from bursting, that magically refracts light at its periphery. The wonder at soap bubbles does not diminish with age.
The widely-appealing, interactive installation, I Wish Your Wish (2003) is again based upon vernacular, devotional practice, where the faithful bind their wrists with ribbons which they then leave tied to the church gates. Neuenschwander’s adaptation had visitors leave a wish in exchange for a ribbon printed with a previous visitor’s desire, which ranged from the individual to the universal, the selfish to the profound: wishes for a dog, to get into grad school, for family’s understanding, for respect for native people’s sovereignty, peace in the Middle East, not to die completely alone. Participants were forced not only to declare their own wishes, but to choose among those offered by their predecessors, and while the process was something of an exercise in ethics, it was surprisingly effective. I left with my wrist wrapped in a turquoise ribbon inscribed I wish to find pleasure in things as much as I used to as a child; it struck me as particularly appropriate to Neuenschwander’s art.
Rivane Neuenschwander 'A Thousand and One Possible Nights' (2008)
A Thousand and One Possible Nights are collaged images of constellations, created from confetti punched from an edition of Scherehazade’s tales, A Thousand and One Nights. Images of the stars are always beautiful, as are these; the printing on the tiny dots only becomes visible at close range. Yet a second thought reminds us that Sherehazade told her stories to forestall death, something behind much art, perhaps, but the connection is rarely so literal and immediate.
Lygia Pape installation view of 'Ttéia 1 (The Web)'
I had hoped to get more context for Neuenschwander’s work in London, where the Serpentine Gallery is showing Lygia Pape: Magnetized Space, organized by the Reina Sophia (through Feb. 19, 2012). Pape’s two and three-dimensional work obviously derives formally from Constructivism, and some of it resembles Bauhaus pedagogical exercises. The large installation, ‘Ttéia 1 (The Web)’, whose illuminated wire shafts create an otherworldly atmosphere, looks like a stage set for a play about heavenly revelation.
Lygia Pape detail of 'Livro do Tempo (Book of Time)' (1961-63)
The 365 small wooden reliefs of Livro do Tempo (Book of Time), that covered a large wall, formed an irresistibly-fascinating grid of variations on a square; small sections had been excised from each and displaced on top of the original, with varying colors emphasizing the variations in forms. It and a room of black and white prints and drawings combined seductive elegance of both formal interest and execution. Yet the connection between this work and the interactive, communal performances for which she is known was unclear, nor did labels to several filmed performances provide much help. This was disappointing, since with many recent artists working communally and sociability an ongoing topic, the comparison should have been illuminating.
Lygia Pape 'Divisor' (1968), still from a filmed performance
For understanding the social and political implications of working in a repressive state for Pape and her fellow Brazilians, it was very useful to read the recent publication: Subversive Practices; Art under Conditions of Political Repression: 60s-80s / South America / Europe, Edited by Hans D. Christ, Iris Dressler (Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2010, ISBN 978-3-7757-2755-6 ). The catalog to an internationally-curated exhibition held in Stuttgart in 2009, it illustrates work by some 80 artists working in Latin America, Spain and Eastern Europe. Much of their surviving work consists of publications, documentary photographs and ephemera printed in connection with communal events, so reading the book might be almost as illuminating as seeing the exhibition.
Collective Actions Group's performance 'The Appearance,' one of their 'Trips Out of Town' in the countryside outside Moscow (1976)
The catalog is an extremely valuable complement to a number of recent publications addressing conceptual practices beyond the U.S. and Western Europe (such as Global Conceptualism; Points of Origin 1950s-1980s, the Queens Museum, 1999, and anthologies by Camnitzer, Albero and Stimpson, Breitwieser, Katzenstein and others). It includes essays by the editors and their 13 co-curators, and provides the first translations (into English and German) of numerous artists’ statements and manifestos. They give valuable context for a range of art practices and activities in public spaces that were inherent affronts to state power, despite seeming tame and unobjectionable in a Western European and North American context. Examples are Collective Actions Group’s Trips out of Town (above), which were nothing more than organized outings to the countryside, and the gathering organized by Edgardo Antonio Vigo in La Plata (Argentina) in 1968. Vigo advertised in the newspaper and on radio for people to meet at a specific time at the corner of a major intersection in the city; the object of their assembly: to contemplate the traffic light as an aesthetic object.
The gigantic first floor space at Locks Gallery is occupied this month by the massive, multi-channel video installation 1967 by Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib. The collaborative project by the husband and wife team uses appropriated footage from cinema and protest videos to raise questions about political dissent, utopian movements and the role of mass media in driving protest movements in general.
Photo courtesy of Locks Gallery.
Across all the walls are floor-to-ceiling projections and interspersed amongst the few round columns in the big room are projectors, speakers, wires, headphones, and some small seats. A few flat HD monitors lie between the larger projections. Smaller, brighter, and higher resolution than their larger projected counterparts, the little monitors offer a welcomed degree of variance to the flow of moving pictures.
Some of the most immediately apparent images are those of Chinese parades and Communist regalia, some of which are glitchy and crisscrossed by rotating 3D cubes. The title 1967 is a reference to Jean-Luc Godard?s film La Chinoise which deals with a group of French students planning to change the world in a Communist revolution while studying Mao. Hironaka and Suib?s installation is a looped montage of clips from Godard?s film, original video, archival footage of the 1967 World Exposition in Montreal paired with Shanghai?s 2010 Expo, protest scenes past and present, and of course images from China?s cultural revolution.
In the wake of the Arab Spring, Occupy, and similar protest movements worldwide, the themes of this show are aptly timed to say the least. The installation acts as an intrigue into the roles of the artist and the revolutionary in society. Ideas of social orthodoxy, equality, and belief systems all come to mind. At times political upheaval is warranted, at other times dissent is quashed; sometimes revolution is widely supported, other times it happens by coup d’état. Regardless of the means for or reaction to social shifts, their inevitability looms outside the realms of political affiliation. In a universe where entropy rules, the only real guarantee is change.
The yin and yang of protest as illustrated by Ram Dass in Be Here Now.
As the images break down, the prevailing power structures emerge as targets of ridicule in much the same way as the protests themselves. This inherent yin-yang image of action and reaction has been similarly noted by Ram Dass in his ?hippies create police/police create hippies? musing from 1971?s Be Here Now. In situations as diverse and interrelated as governing a country, it would appear that neither side has a monopoly on truth.
The characters in La Chinoise are dilettantes in a way, as young people romanticizing the concept of revolt. Much can be said about the need for economic equality or restructured government in the United States, but one also wonders how many supporters of either Ron Paul or Occupy Wall Street are on their respective bandwagons for questionable or superficial reasons. Thinking back to the beginnings of revolution in Tahrir Square, it is not hard to believe that the cinematic broadcasts on news and infotainment channels the world over helped to spur similar protests, in part, because of their excitement and danger. The mundane ennui of middle-class American youth can at least not be ruled out as a cause, in any case.
Photo courtesy of Locks Gallery.
When the silly, almost childish images of roosters and other animal ?comrades? are displayed on the cover of Mao?s Little Red Book in place of his idealized face, the absurdity crests and begins to give way to other relevant questions. The phrase ?Is it important to take action?? appears as the game-changing caption. Of course the artists provide no concrete answers, and pose only the question. However this is arguably one of the more important responsibilities of artists: to test the waters of antithesis and throw wrenches into the gears of established social mechanisms. Artists and revolutionaries ? sometimes one in the same ? have quite regularly shared many similar goals such as exposing outdated concepts, offering new ways of viewing surroundings, and often subscribing to a brand of humanism with a thirst for justice and equality.
Locks Gallery?s exhibition of 1967 dissects the topic of protest in a way that only artists can. With revolution being, by its very existence, bound to its intended target, an absurd presentation seems fitting ? perhaps necessary. Protest is distorted through media channels and personal interpretations, and it is certainly no science. Dogma is dogmatic regardless of political preferences. Hironaka and Suib demonstrate that, no matter what side you?re on, the complex schisms of human argument and opposition are not quite as objective and clear cut as they seem.
There will be a live performance in the installation on January 28 at 5 PM by contributing artists C. Spencer Yeh and Aaron Moore; and another reception on Feb 3. Check the website for more information and events.
Dear readers, we are excited to announce we’ve done a redesign and are going to debut it very soon! The artblog will continue to serve up great content by our wonderful team. And soon the content will be packaged in a cool, new format. We will be transitioning the blog to the new design today–so we won’t be accepting comments for the next 24-36 hours. Come back tomorrow for delicious content in our brand, spanking-new design! And thanks for reading artblog. Your friends, Libby and Roberta
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