Banu Cennetoglu, "CATALOG" and "iheartphotograph," installation view, 2011. Courtesy the artist.
Banu Cennetoglu’s website has read “meşgul/busy” since the summer. And even after four months of emails, having never meet in person, Banu Cennetgolu is still a source of fascinating mystery to me. Sources report that she’s shy; a mutual acquaintance leaning over a freezer stuffed with a pre-biblical stalagmite raved about how lovely she is; my best guess is that she’s damn independent. Born in 1970, Cennetoglu left Turkey in 1994 after receiving a BA in Psychology to study photography in Paris. What came next was a whirlwind of travel dates and photographic assignments, before trading in New York for the Rijksademie in 2002 to do “something more concrete.” Returning to Istanbul in 2006, she founded BAS, Turkey’s first archive dedicated to contemporary artist’s books, and Bent, the country’s first artist book publishing house with Dutch artist Philippine Hoegen. Her early works articulate a desire to document, chronicles which bare traces of her photo assignments for mags like Purple, while her recent works circulate documents, or witnesses, rendered fragile and whisked with an ardor for saving and making material public. But check it out for yourself at Guilty feet have got no rhythm, now on view at Kunsthalle Basel through March 31.
Banu Cennetoglu, "Sample Sale 2010 BC," 2010. Courtesy the artist.
Alex Freedman: Last fall you had your first commercial solo exhibition, Sample Sale 2010 BC, at Rodeo Gallery in Istanbul. This is pretty unusual for an artist who has already shown at the Venice Biennale.
Banu Cennetoglu: For a long time, I was doubtful about showing work in this context, so the only interesting way was for me to do this show was to deal with the subject of selling. Each “sample” was conceived individually, but is simultaneously expected to coexist with CATALOG.
Banu Cennetoglu, "CATALOG," installation view, The Pavilion of Turkey 53rd International Biennale, 2009.
CATALOG was originally conceived to function as a mail order catalog for 6 months in the Turkish Pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale. The piece contains 450 of my photographs dated between 1994-2010, classified under 15 categories, varying from personal photographs to iconic images such as 9/11, documentation of the Turkish Parliament, and of the UN zones between North and South Korea. They are all framed the same way, questioning the hierarchy among them, embedding a bit part of their content into the thickly bound book, while somehow trying to co-exist with the others in keeping their self-referentiality. The categories are defined by subjective parameters, each holding a different number of images. During the Biennial, viewers could download any of the photographs for free from the catalog by taking a form home and imputing the photograph’s code.
The Cave of the Mind
Inhale. As you exhale your body relaxes. Exhale moving into a deep quiet place inside you… You can see off in the distance what appears to be a cave. As you approach the cave you see that there is a large opening. Enter the cave…
About 32,000 years ago, humans inhabited the Chauvet Cave in what is now southern France and covered the walls with art. Predatory animals like lions, bears, rhinos, and hyenas are etched into the smoothed wall surfaces next to a chimerical half-human-half-animal figure, abstract lines and dots, and a few unidentifiable winged things. Experts believe that the paintings had some kind of shamanistic purpose for those Aurignacian cave people. Some of what they were painting clearly came from within the mind, rather than what was running around, pouncing, and attacking cave people in the physical world.
32,000 year old painting in Chauvet Cave. Photo by Jean Clottes/Chauvet Cave Scientific Team.
A distinctly separate inhabitation of the Chauvet Cave occurred during the Gravettian era about 3,000 years later. Most of the paintings covering the cave walls were made during the earlier Aurignacian period, so these later cave dwellers would have been confronted with the physical marks of memory, the traces of an earlier people. Perhaps the Gravettian cave people were not of artistic and ritualistic inclination, or did not value the act of mark-making for posterity, since they left only charred remains, smoke residue, and a single child’s footprints. That cavechild was likely the last human to look upon the paintings until three speleologists rediscovered the cave in 1994. For about 25,000 years, a cave full of pictures sat unnoticed in France, a country with a rich history in painting, but those pictures afford a glimpse into the imagination of the prehistoric mind.
Looking at Los Angeles: Killed Posterity
William E. Jones, "Killed," 2010, video still.
Roy Stryker, the man who ran the Historical Section of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and sent some of the best-known 20th century photographers out on their first assignments, “didn’t give a damn about a picture at the time it was made.” According to aerial photographer Charles Rotkin, he began archiving before the photos had even been made, “saving pictures for a record of the past.” An economist at Columbia University before his appointment to the FSA, Stryker knew next to nothing about the mechanics of photography, but he knew what he wanted the present to look like in the future. And what he didn’t want it to look like.
Stryker adopted a habit of “killing” images he didn’t approve of, punching a hole, often right in the center, in a negative, and, since FSA photographers didn’t own rights to their images and sent negatives to DC to be processed, these holes really did “kill,” rendering images effectively useless (Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans likely protested the practice–both took vehement issue with Styker’s treatment of their work during their FSA tenure).
Not long ago, L.A. artist and filmmaker William E. Jones came across Stryker’s holes while digging through the Library of Congress’s archive. He became intrigued, both by the power Stryker exerted over his photographers and by the holes themselves. Decisive, efficient, and yet often totally nonsensical given the context of the images, the holes themselves become the focal point in Jones’s two recent videos, Killed and Punctured, both of which cycle through a series of would-be canonical, now-damaged FSA images.
What I Learned at the Armory Show
David Kramer, "Untitled (Stop Me)", 2007 Image: artnet.com
A long stroll and purposefully slow visit to the Armory Show last week opened my eyes to quite a bit.
In addition to being exposed to new artists (my main reason for attending) and a futile attempt at spotting gallery exhibition trends (Lots of neon? Painting is back? And besides large C-prints, could fine art actually be getting smaller?), it was also a chance to see how my own work with students is informed, or can be informed, by work being made by artists today. In some ways mega art fairs like this allow contemporary art educators an opportunity to check out how the curricula we teach stacks up against what is happening in the present- at least in the galleries (for some of what’s happening on the street, see the February 23rd post Graffiti in the Classroom with an excellent series of comments between Nettrice Gaskins and Ben Street!).
Curtis Mann, "Sieve", 2011 Image: Kavi Gupta Gallery
Looking at Curtis Mann’s work, Sieve, featured in the Kavi Gupta booth, I started to reflect on teaching students about collage and mixed-media. Similar to Mann’s work included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, the piece contained fragments of scenes that were erased or hidden through a process where he protected some parts of the photos with varnish and whitewashed others with bleach. I thought about how we, as art educators, often get kids to do visually captivating things through collage but often it simply stops there: pleasurable surrealistic tricks. Here I was faced with Mann reflecting the destructive and manipulative nature of our current world climate through doing some of the very same to the images he has chosen for his work- and yet it all comes together, even compositionally. The work featured at the 2010 Whitney Biennial, After the Dust, Second View (Beirut), was an arranged a grid of snapshots of the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. While the final work gives the viewer the essence of an explosion that just took place, the piece is as much about not knowing what’s next in that few seconds of calm.
Open Enrollment | On Hierarchies: Thoughts after Sarah Thornton
Sarah Thornton, the author of Seven Days in the Art World — a book that made me book laugh, giggle, and weep — spoke last night at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Chicago. The talk was titled, “Artists at Work,” an intriguing idea to me since I have found that all too often the words “Artists” and “Work” are rarely said in the same sentence with a straight face. This is a sad reality, but one I too often see among my talented art school colleagues and a reality I live myself after seemingly endless years of higher education.
Thornton’s talk discussed the unmentionables of the art world, which she refers to as a “squabbling subculture.” She spoke about the speed of the sale of art in her book chapter “The Auction” and compared it to the next chapter, “The Crit” (taking place at CalArts, where it would take fifteen hours or more to discuss three works of art). The speed of the auction and the slow considerations in a crit speak to these hierarchies. Digested, respected artworks speed by for millions while the work by art students must be dissected and considered for hours.
Center Field | Fielding Practice: Episode #2
We’re back with our second edition of “Fielding Practice,” a podcast produced exclusively for Art21′s listeners and readers. On today’s episode, Duncan MacKenzie, Dan Gunn, and I are joined by art critic, blogger, and ArtSlant’s Chicago editor Abraham Ritchie to talk about the rise of CSAs (Community Supported Art), which are art subscription programs that foster new collectors while supporting local artists; we dish about the art writers “strike” at the Huffington Post (will Arianna even notice?), and we review Mindy Rose Schwartz’s solo exhibition at ThreeWalls, which recently closed. Plus: previews of the most anticipated Chicago exhibitions and events happening over the next few weeks. Sit it on our gabfest, and thanks for listening!
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Click to listen to the podcast.
Open Enrollment: The BHQFU takes on the USA
The Bruces are going on the road, out of the echo-chamber of New York, to take on America.
image from CreativeTime.org
It’s been hard for me to take a definitive stance on the Bruce High Quality Foundation (or the Bruces, as they are called) and their university (BHQFU). They talk a big, erudite game of alternatives to the current art world system, which one presumes to be radical and revolutionary in a way that could make Joseph Beuys proud – but they do it all with the very traditional support of galleries and funding from Creative Time, validation from inclusion in the Whitney Biennial, and BFAs from the Cooper Union. It’s hard to tell if they’re enacting change from the inside out, or just satirizing art collectives who aim to enact radical change. I feel like the results are still in the wash.
BHQFU is an interesting component to the Bruces’ practice. Previous Art21 blog posts have done well to describe the context for their proposed alternative to the conventional education system – situated in collaboration, unconcerned with hierarchy – and it’s easy to read into how such a system with its horizontal decision making and imaginative, subversive class topics is a radical alternative. However, BHQFU’s sustainability and effectiveness remain to be seen. It’s difficult to tell if the classes are meant to be the means to an end, or the end destination itself. We’ve seen some of the products of the courses, but I’d like to see more than gallery exhibitions to understand any larger or long-term effects.
Turkish and Other Delights: Nazım Hikmet Richard Dikbaş
Nazım Hikmet Richard Dikbaş, "Beni Çok İyi Tanıyor... / She Knows Me Very Well...," ink on paper. 2011.
In talking to dozens of artists, curators, and critics over the past few months, over and over I have heard the same term used by those located within the community to criticize Turkish art: didactic. Merriam-Webster defines didactic as “intended to convey instruction and information as well as pleasure and entertainment;” synonyms include “sermonic,” “moralizing” and, “preachy.” Undoubtedly this sentiment is in part a reaction against much of the work produced in Turkey during the 1990s that dealt explicitly with issues related to the intersection of Turkish identity, culture, and politics. If in retrospect the manner in which some work addressed these topics seems heavy-handed, it could be argued that this practice mirrored the heavy-handed way in which the Turkish government was combating dissident elements of society during this period, particularly in regards to its armed conflict with Kurdish nationalist groups in the southeastern region of the country during the early and mid-1990s.
In 2011 there is no longer an open military conflict within Turkey’s borders, but Turkish culture and politics remain as complex and indecipherable as ever. This is a country fraught by shadow governments (both real and imagined), conspiracies, and hidden agendas. Turks never seem to take anything the government does at face value; there is always the assumption of incomplete information. Like an underwater oil leak, this opacity in Turkish political life filters out into the wider society, impacting not only the way individuals view and treat each other, but the way they think about themselves.
Nazım Hikmet Richard Dikbaş, "İzin Verirseniz Size İlk Merak Ettiğim Şeyi Anlatarak Başlamak İsterim / If You Allow Me I Would Like To Begin By Telling You About The First Thing I Was Curious About," ink on paper on plexiglass, 2011.
The task of making sense of the daily experience of living within such a convoluted political culture has been taken up by a new generation of artists who are exploring these topics on a more micro level and in a more personal way. This new approach is exemplified in Yeni Eğlenme ve Dinlenme Biçimleri/New Forms of Rest and Entertainment, the current exhibition of drawings by Nazım Hikmet Richard Dikbaş, on display at Istanbul’s Galeri NON through the end of this week. Dikbaş specializes in finely etched, comic-like portraits that capture the thoughts of anonymous characters in medias res as they meditate on moments of conflict, vulnerability, defeat, and alienation. Alternatively sympathetic and satirical, he shows a deep sensitivity to his characters’ basic humanity even as he pokes fun at their shallow insecurities and petty, self-centered obsessions.
Weekly Roundup
Kerry James Marshall, "Untitled," 2011. Courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery's show "Embodied: Black Identities in Amercan Art." (Tony De Camillo, Yale University Art Gallery / February 24, 2011)
In this week’s roundup, Kerry James Marshall and others explore black identity, Mark Dion has a ship in a bottle, Barbara Kruger makes art from chess, and more.
- Martin Puryear, Julie Mehretu and Kerry James Marshall are part of Embodied: Black Identities in American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery. Works were chosen by students from New Haven and from the University of Maryland, College Park, where the exhibit was on view at the David C. Driskell Center last fall. The show features work that addresses, questions, and complicates the paradigms that have mapped meanings onto African American bodies throughout history. The exhibition closes on June 26.
- Kerry James Marshall is also featured in 30 Americans at the North Carolina Museum of Art, along with Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems and Mark Bradford. The exhibition focuses on artists who explore similar themes and subject matter in their work, primarily issues of race, gender, identity, history, and popular culture.
- Mark Dion‘s Ship in a Bottle, a new public art sculpture, was unveiled at The Port of Los Angeles last Tuesday. Dion created an eight-foot scale model of a container ship inside a 12-foot clear glass bottle. Sitting on a grassy mound in the midst of the Marina, the ship rests on a bed of crushed glass, and both the bottle and container ship appear to be floating out over the waters of the Port’s outer harbor. It is permanently installed at the South end of a newly completed 1,200 linear foot section of Cabrillo Way Marina Phase II.
- Barbara Kruger is part of The Art of Chess exhibition organized by The University of Queensland Art Museum (Australia). This exhibition is an ongoing project featuring chess sets designed by some of the world’s leading contemporary artists in a celebration of the game of chess and its continued relevance to the creative arts. The show closes on April 24.
Letter from London: Trip Advisor
Marcus Coates, "The Trip," 2010. Documentary photograph. Courtesy the artist.
All travel is retrospective. We don’t travel for the experience – most traveling time is spent waiting, after all – but in order to have something to remember. The easy editing abilities of digital photography have transformed utterly the modern idea of travel. It’s all peaks, no troughs: the past perfect. Journeys only really exist once they’ve finished, and every story starts at the end.
The Trip is a 35-minute film by the artist Marcus Coates that consists of two long, still shots of the same thing: the interior of a room in a hospice in north west London. You see a flat-screen TV, a wall-lamp, and a window giving onto a quiet suburban road. In one of the shots, the day’s color drains, barely perceptibly, from the sky. In the other, the morning’s light is still, steady, the sky windless. Unseen between the two shots, each one lasting the duration of a dialogue heard on the soundtrack, is the event of the title: a trip to the Amazonian rainforest, which is discussed in voiceover in both parts of the film. The disparity — both comic and poignant — of what’s seen and heard is part of the point. The trip, undertaken by the artist, is plotted in the first section and recounted in the second. Nothing of the trip itself is shown: it happens in the two men’s dialogue and in the mind of the viewer. The trip was proposed by one of the men, a terminally ill man named Alex H., and was carried out and described by the artist.
Film is a proxy medium: I went here so you didn’t have to. The appetite for seamy subject matter in everything from Caravaggio to Nan Goldin to The Wire is part of what we want from art: a vicarious trawl through experiences we ourselves would never deign or dare to have. Coates’s film extends the idea further: I went here because you couldn’t. In The Trip, Coates repositions the artist as a shamanic figure, someone able to transmit information from another world for the benefit of this one. It’s a theme in much of his work: in Journey to the Lower World, he “channeled” animal spirits to the residents of a block of flats in Liverpool by dressing himself in a deer skin and imitating animal calls. The Plover’s Wing, similarly, had the artist cooing his impression of the bird to an unimpressed Israeli mayor, while wearing a dead badger on his head. Coates’s art flirts with the ridiculous – is ridiculous, at times – but it’s through his ability to exploit the liberating power of embarrassment that his art attains its uncanny beauty. His film Dawn Chorus – viewable more or less in its entirety on YouTube, and worth five minutes and forty seconds of your time – shows sped-up footage of humans imitating birdsong, while sitting in various working and domestic environments, having learned slowed-down imitations of different calls. It’s funny, and Coates’s art is genuinely funny, but the laughter it provokes is what Tom Stoppard calls “the sound of comprehension.” We recognize something.
