Dan Phillips: Not Merely Vernacular, Pt. 2
Dan Phillips, "Chateau," 2008. Courtesy Phoenix Commotion.
In my estimation, Phoenix Commotion’s ongoing project (founded around 1998 by Dan Phillips) does much more than simply supply a university town with a rich dose of local color. While Phillips and his crew are building upon traditions of southern vernacular art, which have made significant and often under-acknowledged contributions to the evolution of American art—perhaps most-recognizably through the work of Texas-native Robert Rauschenberg—their project simultaneously engages with issues enjoying currency in contemporary art discourse. Most notably, this involves the impetus to devote one’s art, including one’s artistic process and not just the finished project, to the goal of raising an ethical awareness of our interconnectedness to each other and to the natural world.
Phillips’s project, which decades ago may have simply been understood as an example of “outsider” art and the product of some “place apart” (psychologically, culturally, and geographically), is today implicated in an ongoing and evolving international debate. The members of the Commotion do not simply belong to a cultural group entirely removed from the reach of influences acting on other contemporary artists whose similarly-minded, if aesthetically-divergent projects, have received critical attention, such as Rirkrit Tiravanija’s The Land Foundation (begun 1998), Andrea Zittel’s A-Z West and A-Z East (West begun 1999 and East begun 1994), or Tyree Guyton’s The Heidelberg Project (begun 1987). The Phoenix Commotion shares with these projects an exploration of eco-friendly, low-cost solutions to design problems, and the commitment of one’s art to transforming local social conditions. But while Phillips has and continues to spread the philosophy of the Phoenix Commotion near and far, and while his project resonates with these other contemporary examples, the end products of his creative labors remain rooted in his homes of Huntsville. The Commotion’s ideas and methods may circulate in regional, national, and international circuits, but their final artworks stay resolutely put in a place that, in the end, is somewhat removed yet also intimately connected.
The Island in 100 Acres: An Interview with Andrea Zittel
Andrea Zittel is building a floating island in Indiana. And early next summer, a college student from the nearby Herron School of Art & Design will climb aboard and take up full-time residency as it floats on the lake that is in the heart of soon-to-be-open 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
As part of this site’s Flash Points series, I invited Ms. Zittel to talk about this project and the way it responds to the natural world, as well as to discuss some of its conservation issues.
Andrea Zittel's island at 100 Acres. Photo: Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Richard McCoy: Will you describe where you were and what you were thinking about when you when you first thought of making a floating island for 100 Acres?
Andrea Zittel: I’ve been working on various ideas for habitable islands for over ten years, but it isn’t so often that you find an institution with a protected body of water willing to take on the challenge of maintaining a floating work of art. The idea of an island appeals to me as representation of many of the values that we strive for in our 21st-century culture: individualism, independence, autonomy, and self-sufficiency. Yet at the same time, these are the same desires that isolate us and lessen collective social and political power. I am fascinated at how the things that set us free are also the same things that oppress us; you could say that the concept of the deserted island is both our greatest fantasy and our greatest fear.
But regardless (and probably even because) of these complicated readings, I’m drawn to structures that generate a kind of personal autonomy for their inhabitants. In 1998, I made a very large habitable island in Scandinavia that eventually had to be destroyed because it was too large to be maintained. Fortunately, the project for 100 Acres is hopefully in for the long haul, and better yet, the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) will allow a series of residents to live on the island over successive summers. The fact that the Indianapolis island will be a living and evolving project with multiple occupant/collaborators makes it particularly exciting.
Small-scale model for Andrea Zittel's island at 100 Acres. Photo: Indianapolis Museum of Art.
RM: How did you first represent your ideas for this project (with drawings, sculpture forms, digital images)?
AZ: I had been working on a series of models for quite some time, so by the time that I received an invitation from the IMA, I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like. The next step was to make a working model for the fabricators, so I hired Steve Kim to make digital images of the island as well as a laser-cut model and scaled drawings that could be used by Smilee Barnacle (of the Los Angeles-based Barnacle Bros.) for the actual construction.
Andrea Zittel's island for 100 Acres being constructed at Barnacle Bros. Photo: Indianapolis Museum of Art.
RM: I recently read this quote on Robert Smithson’s webpage about “A Provisional Theory of Non-Sites”:
By drawing a diagram, a ground plan of a house, a street plan to the location of a site, or a topographic map, one draws a ‘logical two dimensional picture.’ A ‘logical picture’ differs from a natural or realistic picture in that it rarely looks like the thing it stands for. It is a two-dimensional analogy or metaphor — A is Z.
Robert Smithson, "The Non-Site" (an indoor earthwork), Photostat, 12 1/2" x 10 1/2", from www.robertsmithson.com
With this in mind, can you talk about how this has evolved from an idea or concept to what is now floating on the lake here in Indianapolis?
AZ: I interpret Smithson’s “logical picture” as one that refers to the relationships generated within the work rather than the external appearance of it. I would say that the island in its current condition (completed but uninhabited) is still only one element of the larger equation that will ultimately end up as the “work.” In this sense, it is still only a concept, but once the first inhabitant arrives and begins to add the accoutrements of his or her life, it will become activated into something that is more complete and multi-dimensional. At that time, it will make a far more interesting “logic picture.”
Weekly Roundup
Pipilotti Rist, "Open My Glade", 2000. Courtesy UNstudio. Photo: © Katrien Franken.
- Curators Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos/UNstudio have invited 12 artists to exhibit work at Fort Asperen, a 19th century defense tower in the Netherlands. “Retreat” is the central theme of the exhibition. Season 1 artist Andrea Zittel participates along with artists Pipilotti Rist, Tobias Rehberger, Frank Havermans, Ann Lislegaard, Absalon, A.P. Komen/Karen Murphy, Jerszy Seymour and others. On view through September 6. Read more here.
- Through September 6, you can see work by Sally Man (Season 1) in By Way of These Eyes: The Sublime, Exotic and Familiar at the New Britain Museum of American Art. The exhibition, drawn entirely from collector Christopher Hyland’s private holdings, also includes photographs by Herb Ritts, Robert Mapplethorpe, Edward Weston, John Dugdale and Edward Steichen.
- “The master of transforming incidental gestures into art worth thinking about is Richard Tuttle,” writes David Pagel for the LA Times. Read what else Pagel had to say about the Season 3 artist in his review of Thunk, a group exhibition at Khastoo Gallery.
This Week’s Roundup
Alfredo Jaar, "The Sound of Silence", 2006. Installation with wood, aluminum, fluorescent lights, strobe lights and video projection. Software design by Ravi Rajan. Installation view at Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts Lausanne, Switzerland, 2007.
What’s happening now:
- The Sound of Silence, an exhibition of works by Alfredo Jaar (Season 4), is on view at Galerie Lelong in New York through May 2. Visitors are invited to enter an enclosed aluminum structure that presents an 8-minute silent film. Read more about the exhibition here.
- Read Quinn Latimer’s interview with Season 3 artist Ellen Gallagher for Modern Painters. Gallagher’s first exhibition in London is on view at South London Gallery through May 2.
- Her Memory, an exhibition of recent works by Season 2 artist Kiki Smith, is on view at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona through May 24.
- Roni Horn’s first major museum show in the U.K. is on view at Tate Modern through May 25. Watch a webcast of the Season 3 artist in conversation with curator James Lingwood; art historian Briony Fer; and Tate Curator Mark Godfrey here.
- Through June 1, two new videos by Allora & Calzadilla (Season 4) are on view at the Museum Haus Esters Krefeld in Germany.
- Andrea Zittel and Shahzia Sikander (both Season 1) are included in Fashioning Felt at Cooper-Hewitt, a survey of more than 70 contemporary objects made of the material. The exhibition is on view through September 7.
- Ann Hamilton (Season 1) has collaborated with the Los Angeles-based workshop Gemini G.E.L. to produced new works, including three 3-dimensional objects and twenty-five prints. A reception with artist and a book signing will be held on March 19 from 6 to 8pm.
Say It Ain’t Sew
Smock by V. Smiley
Andrea Zittel’s traveling Smockshop makes its first appearance in Europe today before sadly closing shop for good. This is the final opportunity to experience Zittel’s economic experiment, which invites other artists to take infinite liberties reinterpreting the Season 1 artist’s original double-wrap around smock design. The enterprise generates income for artists whose works may be noncommercial or insubsistent. Since it was founded in 2007, almost 300 smocks have been made by the collaborative.
At Sprüth Magers, two artisans will turn out the goods inside the Berlin gallery for the first four days of the exhibition and make them available for purchase right after their production. The smocks will remain on display until April 10.
After that, a bid adieu.
Letter from London: Altermodern Love
Nathaniel Mellor, "Giantbum" (2008)
I have to confess to a fear that strikes me whenever I go into a gallery of contemporary art and see the entrance to a video installation. Does anyone else get this? I get this sinking realization that if I walk down that darkening corridor towards the sound of that whirring projector or muffled dialogue, I’m going to have to be there for at least 20 seconds. I’ll have to crunch myself up against the wall. That might hurt. And what if I don’t like it? When is it ok to slowly walk back out of the room, as though lost in contemplation of the muzzily out-of-focus shots of deserted parking lots with subtitled dialogue? Is five seconds enough? I might smile knowingly to myself as though I have reached a level of understanding beyond most of the other visitors, while secretly thinking to myself that I’d far rather be watching the last 20 minutes of Liar Liar. Again.
I had this feeling a couple of times while visiting the new triennial of contemporary art at Tate Britain. The triennial has, over the years, showcased contemporary British art, but, perhaps in order to better illustrate the guiding thesis of its curator, Nicholas Bourriaud, this iteration takes in a range of artists working all over the world but within a fairly established artistic strategy, i.e. one well-versed in the writings of N. Bourriaud. The triennial’s title, Altermodern, needs a bit of explaining. Unfortunately, and despite the good intentions both of Bourriaud and the Tate publicity and interpretation department (the Tate really does have a department called “Interpretation and Education”; I think Stalin had one of those, too), explaining this intentionally open-ended term has proved something of a headache. The Tate website has a video interview with Bourriaud and a (slightly tongue-in-cheek, I hope) manifesto that aims to pinpoint the times in which we live with pithy phrases like “our daily lives consist of journeys in a chaotic and teeming universe.” Having taken the Tube to the gallery that day, I totally got that bit.
I think Bourriaud realizes he’s in deep water trying to define art being made now, as anyone would (no one confidently used the term ‘Renaissance’ until the nineteenth century, after all, and even now no one can quite agree when that got going), but for all the obfuscation and slippery language of the manifesto, the exhibition itself makes thoughtful and often compelling links across a range of artistic approaches. Credit is due to Bourriaud for allowing the art to take precedence over the curatorial conceit and not the other way around. Although when the conceit is this vague it’s hard to know what wouldn’t be considered “altermodern.” A hint at the broadness of Bourriaud’s brief is given in the inclusion of veteran art maverick Gustav Metzger, whose past as lighting designer for sixties bands like Cream and The Who is evident in his 2006 piece shown here: five liquid crystal color projections of an exceptionally trippy nature that brought me right back to the last time I watched a documentary on “the swinging Sixties.” Those were the days.
Video projections dominate Bourriaud’s exhibition, although happily the majority of them feel like real extensions of the language of video. Marcus Coates’s The Plover’s Wing, a 30-minute interview between the artist, dressed in an old-school Adidas tracksuit with a dead badger on his head and a dead rabbit poking out of his top (no, wait! Come back!), and an Israeli mayor concerned about the impact of the region’s violence on the young generation, is a strange, deadpan, hilarious and ultimately heartening work that has a warmth about it I don’t remember seeing in previous triennials. Honestly, it’s truly touching to watch the patient seriousness of the mayor and his translator as they observe Coates performing various animal sounds while acting as a mediator between the human and animal worlds. Lindsay Seers’s film Extramission 6 (Black Maria)—projected inside a wooden mock-up of Thomas Edison’s 1893 film production studio Black Maria—is a kind of patchwork documentary of Seers’s childhood. Suffering from memory loss as a young child, Seers retreated into an obsession with film that led her to using her mouth as a camera. It’s all filmed and staged in a way that steers clear of sentimentality while packing a significant emotional punch. Both films—connected, I suppose, by an interest in translation and the slippages it succumbs to—are both witty and unashamedly emotive. It’s also maybe the first time I’ve sat through an entire video installation without itching to leave. That’s that fear conquered.
Altermodern does sometimes slip into neutral. Simon Starling out-banals his own impressive record of drearily quixotic projects with a piece involving camera phones and Francis Bacon furniture that I’d rather not go into (the brevity of life suddenly being particularly apparent); Rachel Harrison, darling of the New Museum’s Unmonumental show, looks lazily hip and studiedly noncommittal with her stack of painted buckets wired up to a tiny video of some people in Florida smashing up a car. There’s a smattering of post-Matthew Barney D&D style mythologizing in the work of Charles Avery and Nathaniel Mellors, whose palatability is directly proportional to your resistance to whimsy and interest in made-up maps. Andrea Zittel’s influence continues to proliferate, as seen in the nudge-nudge utopianism of Olivia Plender, whose handmade costumes and knowingly obscure reference points can be a bit wearisome. And the seemingly omnipresent Subodh Gupta fills one of the central halls with a vast mushroom cloud of reflective kitchen utensils, a hangover from the brash days of the YBAs, like a big silver fart.
There are, though, many more hits than misses, especially Tacita Dean’s suite of photogravures entitled The Russian Ending, a reference to the doctored sad endings of Danish films released in Russia (they reserved the happy endings for the American market). The photos, culled from flea market postcards, show beached whales, collapsed bridges, and open-casket wakes, each etched with Dean’s storyboard-style notes (“zoom in,” “pan out,” and so on). As with Dean’s best work, it’s a contemplative experience that never sacrifices a kind of melancholy beauty to its conceptual rigor, and epitomizes the best bits of Altermodern: uncertain, searching, witty, serious and—this is the really radical bit—generous.
single strand, forward motion: Andrea Zittel
Andrea Zittel, "Single Strand Shapes: Forward Motion with 90˚ and 180˚ Rotations (Black and Ivory)," 2009. Crocheted black and ivory wool on plywood. Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery
single strand, forward motion, an exhibition of new works by Season 1 artist Andrea Zittel, will open at Andrea Rosen Gallery tomorrow, Friday, February 6. This is the artist’s ninth solo exhibition at the gallery.
In a statement for the exhibition, Zittel writes:
I feel that my practice continually negotiates the fine line between emancipation and restriction, and in doing so reveals how creativity often stems from a reaction to a series of constraints. The works in this show attempt to bridge these concerns in both art and life and to show how problem solving and planning can result in a complex visual language…I have been recently drawn into a reinvestigation of logic based works such as Frank Stella’s black paintings (in which the logic of the making fully embodies the resulting shape), Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings (in terms of setting up a series of rules that can create a coherent visual structure), and incremental works such as Carl Andre’s floor pieces (which also embody an element of time and distance because one is required to ‘travel’ in order to view the entire work). All of these works have fundamental elements both formal and conceptual that have strongly influenced my own work.
single strand, forward motion will include a series of bronze hooks titled Energetic Accumulators: Digits that, in the exhibition space, become a temporary armature for some of Zittel’s own personal accumulations: a group of sewing scissors inherited from her grandmother, and a collection of tea bags. Although placed in sometimes random and/or temporary arrangements, the accumulated objects are organized into a regulated system by the supporting armatures.
Walking Patterns, a performance piece, begins with participants in a parallel line walking to the rhythm of a simple percussive soundtrack, the sound of hands clapping. Each performer begins to walk a pattern based on a simple crochet element; the process of “linking chains” is translated to walking steps. Performances of Walking Patterns will occur on February 6 from 6-8pm, and on Saturday, February 7 at noon and 3pm. These events are free and open to the public.
Lilly Ledbetter* Art
It is only a coincidence that the world’s largest franchised art fair and the international banking regulatory body share a moniker from their shared base, Basel, Switzerland, but no coincidence at all that each are currently in a bit of a funk. From Basel to Boston, institutions all over are now contemplating how to function in a financial black hole. Equally funky and oddly inspiring have been the community-based, democratically modeled responses to these crises-induced measures. One such example of this is an online petition to preserve the Rose Art Museum collection. No doubt this action is inspired by such tactics like the one that is lobbying the new Obama administration for a culture czar. How do we really feel about Quincy Jones at the helm of U.S. cultural institutions?
I’m more intrigued by artists’ responses to the increasingly challenging economic conditions—ones that are taking the form of community action groups. It seems that collaborations as community actions are the way forward for artists’ and art mavens’ take on large issues and institutions, even when the goal is individual empowerment. W.A.G.E. is one such feminist art group seeking economic parity for artists’ work.
Democracy in America: W.A.G.E. from Creative Time on Vimeo.
W.A.G.E. was formed well before the global credit crunch. In fact, it developed in the midst of a hyperbolic market where (generally male) artists such as Michael Landy, the Chapman Brothers, and Jeff Koons were parodying the same market forces that were feeding them. When the art world was awash in obscene amounts of cash, W.A.G.E. wondered why more artists weren’t seeing more of it. Granted, this is the complication of peculiar economic relationships in the art world based on buying, selling, and patronage, but not on the basic equation of labor and compensation. And thus the question remains: how do artists make a living from the practice of making art alone without wholly capitulating to market forces?
I have no answers at all to the big economic questions but personally, when things are a bit tight, I like to fall back on the old-school green motto that is both earth-friendly and cost-effective: the 3Rs. Below is an offering of some art projects that exemplify each in principle.
REDUCE
This collage is more of a collaboration between Art21 artist Andrea Zittel and MOMA curator Klaus Biesenbach featured in the latest W magazine. Biesenbach’s austere downtown digs inspired a collage, which adds some visual texture to his monk-like quarters. Granted, this is a design editorial for a luxury-goods magazine but it’s amazing how idealistically anti-consumerist it comes across.
Photographed by Dean Kaufman for "W" magazine.
REUSE
The largest of Phoebe Washburn’s installations mimic landscapes and the most ambitious ones create their own biosphere.
Phoebe Washburn, "Manning Stay Station," 2005. Installation view.
Yes it’s cool that Washburn goes on walks, collecting discarded materials on her meanderings and then sorts them with her own cataloging system, but it’s even cooler that she retrieves the materials when the installations are dismantled and re-catalogs them for possible use in future projects. Granted, there are all sorts of formal and conceptual issues to tackle in this work and it’s really more about an obsessive practice, but it’s great to think about these practices as self-sustaining systems that form a tacit critique of consumption-based market systems.
RECYCLE
I think it may be high time to reinvigorate The Black Factory, William Pope.L’s peripatetic truck that solicits folks to bring objects they associate with black culture. The Factory’s workers then “convert” those objects into products to be sold.
William Pope.L’s “Black Factory,” 2006, via sokref1 on Flickr.
Perhaps these conversations on race would be interesting to revisit now that Obama is in office but, in a more compelling sense, I like that Pope.L’s art has often been based on the consumption habits of the working class and the poor. No one often thinks of the words “poor” and “consumer” at the same time, but those consumed things make for a material culture that has been fueling art projects for years.
* Lilly Ledbetter is the namesake of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, President Obama’s first official piece of legislation. It expands workers’ rights to sue on the grounds of race, sex, age, and/or disability discrimination.
2008 Lucelia Artist Award Nominees Announced
The Smithsonian American Art Museum recently announced the nominees for their annual 2008 Lucelia Artist Award. The nominees are: Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Mark Dion (both Season 4), Trenton Doyle Hancock (Season 2), Slater Bradley, Matthew Buckingham, Doug Aitken, Keith Edmier, Spencer Finch, Harrell Fletcher, Mark Grotjahn, Rachel Harrison, Zoe Leonard, Suzanne McClelland, Wangechi Mutu and Dana Schutz.
Established in 2001, the award of $25,000 recognizes an American artist younger than 50 who has produced a significant body of work and consistently demonstrates exceptional creativity. Five jurors, each with a wide knowledge of contemporary American art, nominate the artists and determine the award winner in a day of discussion and review. Jurors remain anonymous until the winner is announced in September.
Art21 artists Jessica Stockholder (Season 3), Andrea Zittel (Season 1) and Kara Walker (Season 2) were recipients of the award in previous years. Joanna Marsh, The James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum says, “The artists nominated this year “continue to show a sustained commitment to distinctive work that challenges conventional thinking and expectations about the nature of art.”
( An installation by Zittel–winner of the 2005 Lucelia Artist Award–is pictured above.)
Smockshop in Chinatown
The Smockshop, Andrea Zittel’s artist run enterprise that generates income for artists whose work is either non-commercial or not yet self sustaining, will be opening a store in Los Angeles Chinatown from June 27 through September 21st.
“We produce and sell smocks: a simple double wrap around garments designed by Andrea Zittel (Season 1) – then sewn by artists who often reinterprets the original design based on their individual skill sets, tastes and interests. As an active testament to Zittel’s principle that “rules make us more creative”, each resulting smock is completely unique and one of a kind.”
Summer Smockshop will be located on 936 Mei Ling Way, in the former Rental Gallery Space. Now that’s a wrap.
