In a special series of posts, Wesley Miller watches Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, frame by frame, and attempts to uncover what it all means through the medium of animated GIFs. This is his journey. — Ed.

GIF wall after the jump (images will take time to load). Continue reading »

Cai Guo-Qiang, "Peasants—Making a Better City, A Better Life," 2010. Photo Credit: Lin Yi. Courtesy Cai Studio.

In this week’s roundup, Alfredo Jaar and Andrea Zittell go natural, Bruce Nauman tries to get off the ground, Cai Guo-Qiang answers questions about the impact of social visibility in China, and Walton Ford shows his “humanimal.”

• The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park exhibition is now on view at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Visitors can walk the 100-acre site surrounding the museum and see amazing art installations that focus on the “relationship between contemporary art and the natural world.” Artists featured include Alfredo Jaar and Andrea Zittell, to name a few.

• Magic Show at Chapter (Wales) features Failing to Levitate, which documents attempts by artist Bruce Nauman to get off the ground. The exhibition demonstrates “how art and magic both flourish in the grey area between fact and fiction, where the audience is not sure whether to believe their own eyes, and considers the potential of trickery and illusion to undermine logical thought.” The show closes on September 12.

• The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today at MoMA presents a “critical examination of the intersections between photography and sculpture, exploring how one medium informs the analysis and creative redefinition of the other.” The exhibition art work from the “dawn of modernism to the present, to look at the ways in which photography at once informs and challenges the meaning of what sculpture is.” This show features the work of Bruce Nauman and Barbara Kruger, among others. The Original Copy closes on November 1. Continue reading »

The closest I'm ever going to come to my 15 minutes of fame … here I am being interviewed last weekend by James Kalm of the Kalm Report. (Photo by Veken Gueyikian)

Starting today, and running through to August 25, I will be filling in for Kelly Shindler as guest editor of the Art21 blog.

Kelly, who has taken a much needed vacation, has entrusted me to guide the Art21 blog through the dog days of August … thanks, Kelly!

I’m probably no stranger to many of you — some of you may remember me for my past contributions to this blog or my brief stint as editor last summer — while others may know me as the editor of Brooklyn-based art blogazine Hyperallergic or my personal blog, but all you really need to know is that I’m passionate about art and online media … which makes the Art21 blog a natural fit. Continue reading »

"Some people say modern art is pretentious, but if you look at it like this..." Photo by the author at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. July 2009.

I am not an “art critic.” I can tell you how I feel about a given work of art, but I may feel differently over time or if I see the same work in another space. Mood is a powerful factor, and it usually takes several interactions to develop a meaningful relationship.  It is indeed rare that I fall for an artwork at first sight.

I (mostly unconsciously) employ three metrics for deciding if, how, and how much I’m enjoying a work of art. The shorthand I’ve adopted to describe them is “head,” “heart,” and “gut.” Here’s a quick explanation of what they each mean to me.

Head. Is a work intellectually stimulating to me? Perhaps I’m making connections to other works of art or to knowledge I have of the time and circumstances in which the work was created. Maybe the work cleverly embodies a joke to which I know the punchline. Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917) is a seminal example in modern art. If you know the story of how challenging it was to those who had to decide if it was art or not, and whether it could be included in an exhibition that claimed it would include all submitted artworks, you laugh with Duchamp and his pals. Not getting the joke is frustrating, but it doesn’t preclude an eventual appreciation of that same piece. I just still need someone to tell me the joke. I enjoy humor in art a great deal, but I’m also aware that my sense of humor is particular to me, which is one of the reasons I am not willing to call myself an art critic.  However, I will happily own up to being an avid art appreciator. In this realm, as in criticism, we carry context with us. This is especially true in the following two metrics.

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Siena's Campo dei Miracoli at Mini-Europe, Brussels

My favorite things in Pallant House, the excellent gallery of modern British art in Chichester on the south coast of England, are a couple of small models made before its reopening in 2006. Each model is a dramatically scaled-down version of one of the principal rooms of the gallery, about the scale of a train set or civil war diorama. Inevitably, one model is of the room you’re standing in as you stoop down to look, and hung on the mini-walls are mini-versions of the works of art around you (by artists like Peter Blake, Anthony Caro, and Patrick Caulfield). Sadly, there’s no succession of mini-yous and mini-models telescoping into infinity. But here’s the great thing: all of the works are mini-versions by the artists themselves! So, peering through the Plexiglass fourth wall, you get that God-looking-down-on-His-creation satisfaction that all curators must feel when they’ve finished shuffling the pieces around with long rods, Churchill-style, in low-lit backrooms thick with cigar smoke (note to self: may need to meet an actual curator one of these days). I’ve always loved the picture — Google Images doesn’t sympathize — of Bill Rubin in his curatorial wheelchair, jabbing at little images of Picassos as his minions scamper to rearrange their placement according to his magisterial will and booming baritone (see note to self, again). Curating as an idea is a kind of intellectual board game: metonymic tokens are pushed around an artificially sequential space. Think of the similarity between the Cluedo (Clue) board and the standard museum layout. See? Like a game (and like a mix-tape, now I think of it), curating imbues its players with an inflamed sense of personal agency usually denied in social settings (I should know).

The 1965 Cluedo board

The English art critic David Sylvester used to create fantasy cricket teams composed of famous artists – Vermeer in the slips, Michelangelo at the wicket – which draws a pretty convincing parallel between the world of curatorship and that of the fantasy sports leaguer. And although my dream museum pairing, Poussin’s The Seven Sacraments placed alongside a row of Judd’s aluminum boxes, won’t happen unless a serious clerical error occurs in the HR department of a major art museum, capricious artistic pairings occur naturally anyway, in the way that we experience and process works of art. Two recent shows in London are a case in point: the two artists have never (as far as I know) been shown alongside each other, but their conceptual and aesthetic similarities, compounded by a mulched and misfiring memory for what I saw where, have created for me a kind of ideal model of curatorial strategy. So let’s assume that the two shows, Mark Wallinger at Anthony Reynolds and Rodney Graham at Lisson Gallery, were in fact just one, as I shuffle the pieces around from the comfort of my wheelchair.

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Architect N. Bernard Viljoen

N. Bernard Viljoen is a South African architect based in Johannesburg. He was raised on a farm in the Free State outside the quaint South African town, Parys. He graduated as an architect from the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein in 2001, and won the Corobrik National Student of the Year award that same year for his final year thesis project entitled: “…’N[9.]museum?…” This project consisted of a museum in the Karoo and questioned the “traditional” museum/exhibition space and the interaction of the spectator and the works on display therein. Furthermore, his project celebrated and acknowledged the Karoo (semi desert), with its subtle layering and vast emptiness.  Since then, Bernard has accomplished a lot in his field and he continues to be recognized for his achievements and ethos.

Today though, I’m talking to Bernard about his involvement with the Twilight Children shelter for street kids in Hillbrow, Johannesburg.  It was only a few months ago when I met with him in Rosebank for Savannas, where he showed me the website and project he was working on entitled, I was shot in Jo’burg. This was the evolution of  his initial community service program, jo’burg on monday afternoons, which consisted of a photography course where 15 children had the opportunity  to participate and document their surroundings, as well as exhibit the fruits of their labor at the Arts on Main in downtown Johannesburg in late 2009.  The second stage of his community-based endeavor was I was shot in Joburg — a project that implemented the newly developed skills of the children by offering them a platform to generate income. I was shot in Joburg shoots portraits of people in public spaces or special events, which can then be purchased online and be printed on a T-shirt.

I had been looking for a community-based project that was sustainable – with potential for growth and inspiring those involved. Bernard is invested in the life, culture, and politics of South Africa and I was shot in Joburg is the ultimate manifestation of that very investment.  His drive, passion, and professionalism have significantly elevated the conscious and lives of 15 street kids.

It is an absolute honor to present to you today N. Bernard  Viljoen and Mojalefa, Tony, Ezekiel, Thulani, Sibusiso M., Sibusiso I., Anele, Siphiwe M., Sinethemba, Sandile, Tent, Mehluli N., Siphiwe [Skroef], Mehluli S., and Solani — who are part of the I was shot in Joburg team in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Sibusiso Mlaudzi (16 y.o.), "ponte+clouds+trees": “My favorite subject at school is mathematics because I want to become a pilot and I need to start working for it now.”

Georgia Kotretsos: Bernard, what has taken you from sustainable architecture to sustainable community work?

N. Bernard Viljoen: It all started on a horse carriage in Central Park, NY, with my friend, the fabulous Suzette Main. We drove past this beautiful building and Sue commented that that is what Camps Bay should look like.  It turned out she had bought a building on the strip in Camps Bay and asked me to do a proposal for the design thereof. One thing led to another and in a few months, I found myself in Camps Bay working on this project with her. The Grand Café on Camps Bay soon opened its doors and many happy evenings were spent on the balcony sipping sparkling wine overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. One of those particular nights, on my way home I found myself in the midst of a roadblock. I won’t go into detail, but I spent a night in jail and appeared in front of the local magistrate soonafter.  It was a bit of a “gedoente.” With the help of a good attorney and a magistrate with a vision, I was summonsed to community service.  My attorney and I somehow managed to convince the magistrate that instead of washing buses or cleaning public toilets, I should rather do community service that would make a positive contribution to people’s lives. I suggested that I wanted to do a photography program with street kids — a project I always wanted to do but maybe just needed a little motivation for…

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Installation shot of "Effervescent Condition" at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2010.

Effervescent Condition, curated by Fang-Tze Hsu (MA 2010) was the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s (SAIC) contribution to The Power of Copying, a large-scale, international group exhibition held at the Xuzhou Museum of Art in Xuzhou, China. With The Power of Copying, curator Qin Jian wished to explore the theme of copying, and how the context of an image or concept, when duplicated, is not steadfast. Jian wished to initiate a debate about the copy and how one’s nationality or ethnic identity informs image and object reproduction, and therefore invited various international pedagogical art institutions to participate.

Fang-Tze Hsu chose a group of artists working with and researching new media, as well as an instructor who is well-versed on the subject matter, to participate in the two concurrent iterations that were her vision for Effervescent Condition; one exhibition was held in Xuzhou Art Museum and the other at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The five artists chosen were Nadav Assor, Florian Graf, Adelheid Mers, Joshua Sampson and Wang Yefeng.  The exhibition is, for Hsu, a reaction “to the effervescent condition of globalization… [and] the metamorphosis of citizenship under globalization, in which highly skilled, creative individuals are enticed to move freely from one metropolis to the other.”

Walking into SAIC’s Gallery X for the reception, I was immediately struck by Joshua Sampson’s (MFA 2011) Dodgedraw set-up. Utilizing readily available digital technology was highly important to the artist. He constructed real-time, interactive, and simultaneous electronic situations that incorporated the same elements: Skype, a webcam, a projector, markers, and white seamless paper. The digital components were wired so that the web camera recorded the actions and fed it over the Internet in real time via Skype. The Skype video was then translated into life-sized projections onto the seamless paper at both institutions.

The participant in China would frantically work to draw the digital outline of the person in Chicago onto the paper, and vice versa. Both people worked to dodge their counterpart’s attempts to draw them while working to complete their rendering. The result was a time-based, performative, participant-dependent artwork.

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Episode #117: Mike Kelley sets the record straight about being called a “bad boy” throughout his career, describing the shifting tastes of critics and artists towards abject art in recent years.

Mike Kelley’s work ranges from highly symbolic and ritualistic performance pieces, to arrangements of stuffed-animal sculptures, to wall-sized drawings, to multi-room installations that restage institutional environments (schools, offices, zoos), to extended collaborations with artists such as Paul McCarthy, Tony Oursler, and the band Sonic Youth. His work questions the legitimacy of ‘normative’ values and systems of authority, and attacks the sanctity of cultural attitudes toward family, religion, sexuality, art history, and education. He also comments on and undermines the legitimacy of the concept of victim or trauma culture, which posits that almost all behavior results from some form of repressed abuse. Kelley’s aesthetic mines the rich and often overlooked history of vernacular art in America, and his practice borrows heavily from the confrontational, politically conscious “by all means necessary” attitude of punk music.

Mike Kelley is featured in the Season 3 (2005) episode Memory of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS. Watch the video online via Hulu.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Norbert Arnsteiner & Nancy Schreiber. Sound: Stacy Hruby & Ullrich Vlasak. Editor: Paulo Padilha. Artwork Courtesy: Mike Kelley. Special Thanks: MUMOK, Vienna

Bruce Nauman, "Days" (installation view), 2009. One audio source consisting of seven stereo audio files, fourteen speakers, two amplifiers, and additional equipment. Dimensions variable. Audio (fourteen channels). Continuous play. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. © 2010 Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Having written my dissertation on the art of Bruce Nauman, I often find myself fielding questions from confused, even perturbed friends or acquaintances seeking to make sense of his art.  By way of consolation, I usually preface my remarks to them by mentioning that since the 1960s, Nauman has produced a dizzyingly eclectic body of work that continues to defy easy categorization or definition.  He is an artist who, while broadly acknowledged to be one of the most important living artists, adheres to neither a consistent medium nor style.  Despite this, I offer reassuringly, Nauman’s oeuvre can nevertheless be viewed as a sustained, if wide-ranging, meditation on the human condition and an examination of the social and cultural conventions that define our lives.

Depending on the artwork or works that prompt such an inquiry, I might also add that, at its most successful, Nauman’s art not only explores the intersection of the individual and the social, but also effects an intervention into that dynamic — the result of which is often a viewing experience that has, over the years, been variably described by art critics and visitors alike as disorienting, anxiety inducing, and even excruciating and jarring.  Indeed, we often find ourselves in a zone of discomfort— psychological, physical, and sometimes both — when standing before or situated in Nauman’s art. It is an experience, I would argue, that proves resistant to our conventional understanding of the world around us and incites, if but for a moment, a sensation of radical difference and estrangement at a moment that should otherwise be an occasion of most intimate familiarity.

By way of providing a concrete example, I would take my inquisitive friend to see Nauman’s sound installation, Days (2009), currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Days was first exhibited at the 2009 Venice Biennale (where Nauman represented the United States — a long overdue honor) and was recently acquired by MoMA.  At first blush, Nauman’s latest installation is a beguilingly simple work, consisting of fourteen slender audio speakers suspended from the ceiling by wires.  Arranged in two rows of seven in the middle of the museum gallery, these almost impossibly flat speakers form a minimalist aisle, down which visitors are invited to walk. As one approaches the speaker array from across the room, a cacophony of sound begins to emerge which, as one slips into the middle of the installation, transforms into an immersive sound field of chanting voices.

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… and put your car on cruise and lay back cause this is summertime

— Will Smith

Berlin summers never fail to deliver their own magical moments, the kind that make you remember why you’re here, why you chose this place. Perhaps these moments are more pronounced because the memory of Berlin winters (and this previous one in particular) make one soak up all the sun, the heat, the colors, the grass, the night-swimming, the sunrises by the canal, the sunsets in the park, the days by the lake and the impromptu studio barbeques with an urgency that can only exist in places where these things are luxuries, and fleeting ones.

Berlin summers never fall short of art tourists either, and this year is no exception — the city is full with internationals stopping in anywhere from a weekend to three months to enjoy what’s best about it — the perks of being simultaneously an art world hub and the so-called “slacker capital of the world.” There are, however, some visitors who have gather no moss. During the three weeks of programming that New York’s Triple Canopy put together this month in collaboration with Program Gallery and Nine Eglantine Yamamoto-Masson, there was simply no time for lazy summer activities. Triple Canopy facilitated six evenings, most consisting of multiple events such as podium discussions, artist’s performances, dinners, workshops and topics, reflecting their collaborative organizational approach.

On July 22, “Print and Demand” — one of the events in the series — brought together editors and representatives of four publications for a podium discussion on the changing nature of print and online publishing. Participants included the Norway-based XYM ,whose content is solely downloadable in pdf form, Berlin-based bi-annual publication 032c, the Canadian art magazine/journal Fillip and Triple Canopy’ s several associated web-based publications. Given the diverse nature of the participants, formats, readership, and funding models (including “no” budget, public grants, and traditional ad-based financing), the discussion was lively and fortunately not heading towards a print vs. digital polemic (which would have been really boring). The panel members offered a unified response to a question from the audience about missing comment functions or ways that readers could respond to the content of the publications; interestingly, none of the participants encourage this type of anonymous feedback. Panel members agreed that their readership and contributors often overlap – instead of writing comments or letters to the editor, readers with ideas should think about contributing. They also pointed out that they all thought of their respective projects as curating spaces which can affect “community building”– no matter whether these communities coagulate through websites, downloadable pdfs or within a magazine format purchased in art bookstores or newsstands.

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