Weekly Roundup

Mark Bradford, "Red Painting", 2009. Mixed media collage on canvas, 101.75 x 143.5 in. Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

• Season 4 artist Mark Bradford has been awarded the 2009 MacArthur “Genius” Award. The MacArthur Fellows Program, as it is also known, awards unrestricted fellowships to individuals who have shown “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.” The Foundation recently released a YouTube video of Bradford. Watch it here.

• The Japan Art Association has announced the winners of the twenty-first Praemium Imperiale, an international arts prize that celebrates the human spirit as expressed by the world’s artists. This year’s recipients include Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3), Richard Long, and Zaha Hadid.

• Ear Sofa; Nose Sconces with Flowers (In Stage Setting) is the first ever tableau vivant created by Season 5 artist John Baldessari. The installation will be unveiled at Sprüth Magers London on October 12, the day before Baldessari’s retrospective opens at Tate Modern. Central to this piece is an ear-shaped sofa, on which a model sits, flanked on either side by a pair of nose-shaped wall sconces. Inspired by Art Deco aesthetics, the sofa is framed by a large decorative semi-circular arch. The gallery’s storefront window will be shrouded by a sheet of sheer stretched silk. The exhibition was developed by Baldessari in collaboration with production designer Naomi Shohan, whose credits include work on American Beauty; I Am Legend; and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

• Andrea Rosen Gallery’s fourth solo exhibition of work by Season 3 artist Matthew Ritchie opens October 23. Works include Line Shot, a one hour animated feature film; Haruspex, a series of collaborative drawings; and The Dawn Line, a modular structure that is part of a larger architectural, film and musical collaboration. The exhibition is held in conjunction with The Long Count, part of the Next Wave Festival at Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York.

• A new single-channel film by Catherine Sullivan (Season 4) is on view at Metro Pictures.  LULU – Or: To What Ends Does the Bourgeoisie Need Despair is based on the 1978 affair between silent film star Louise Brooks and British theater critic Kenneth Tynan who was also the creator of the musical review Oh! Calcutta! Runs through October 17.

• Illusion of Childhood, an assemblage of bicycles, toys and other objects by Season 3 artist Cai Guo–Qiang is included in the exhibition Bikes Rides at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Organized with help from bicycle enthusiast David Byrne, the show features approximately thirty works from around the world, from functional cycles to bicycle-inspired sculpture and video. On view through January 2010.

• Season 5 artist Jeff Koons will curate the Dakis Joannou Collection exhibition at the New Museum that is scheduled to open late February 2010. This will be the first time Dakis Joannou, a New Museum Trustee based in Athens, shows his collection in the U.S. The collection contains major holdings of works by Koons, Kara Walker, Kiki Smith (both Season 2), Pawel Althamer, Maurizio Cattelan, Nathalie Djurberg, Urs Fischer, Robert Gober, Chris Ofili, and Charles Ray among others. Read more about the exhibition here.

Play Art Loud: Creating Characters on ArtBabble

Have you ever pretended to be someone else? Is there a difference between fictional characters and historical figures lost to time? This week we’re looking at videos of artists who create memorable characters in their work, often by adapting existing personae—be they well known, obscure, or anonymous.

Artists Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno purchased a Japanese Manga character and, through some legal wizardy, returned the copyright to the character itself. (via Art21)

Joshua Mosley imagines an imaginary conversation between the philosophers Jean Jacques Rousseau and Blaise Pascal on the subject of nature and faith. (via MCASD)

Catherine Sullivan and Sean Griffin (introduced by fellow Art21 alumn Barbara Kruger) have a conversation about Sullivan’s anxiety-inducing recent work Triangle of Need set in James Deering’s faux-historic Vizcaya Museum & Gardens in Florida. (via Hammer)
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Weekly Roundup

Pepón Osorio, "Lolo," 2008. Pins, digital image, plexiglas and slippers, 8 x 12 x 13 in. Photo: Catherine Serrano. Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.

• Works by Art21 artists Pepón Osario (Season 1) and Eleanor Antin (Season 2) are currently on view in the exhibition Black&WhiteWorks at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts. The show includes painting, sculpture, drawings and prints by more than twenty-five artists, many of whom are associated with the history of the gallery, which was founded in 1971. The exhibition continues through July 31.

• Through October 19, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles will display a selection of objects from their permanent collection with a particular focus on the past five years. Titled Collecting History: Highlighting Recent Acquisitions, the exhibition includes works by Mike Kelley (Season 3) and William Wegman (Season 1).

• Wegman’s work is also on view at the Scottsdale Museum of Art in Arizona in the solo exhibition, Unexpected Wegman. All forty-five pieces on view are held in the museum’s permanent collection; some have never before been exhibited. In addition to the artist’s well-known Weimaraner portraits, the exhibition includes facile prints Wegman made with the Segura Publishing Company beginning in 1985. Unexpected Wegman continues through January 2010.

• Season 1 artist Barry McGee is included in the group exhibition Work Now, which explores the concept and meaning of “work” in our present society. The exhibition is on view at Z33 in Belgium through September 27.

• See images of Lance Armstrong’s bike–with graphics by McGee–at Supertouchart.com. According to the website, the bikes was created to commemorate Armstrong’s competition in the Tour of California this year. McGee’s signature characters “populate a carbon fiber frame masterfully altered to resemble a vintage metal race cycle literally ‘ridden hard and left out in the rain’ one too many times.”

• Kara Walker and Martin Puryear (both Season 2) are mentioned in Kinshasha Holman Conwill’s recent article about the push to bring greater diversity to the White House art collection, and the importance of supporting African American artists. Read Conwill’s piece for the Art Newspaper here.

• Through September 12, the Otis College of Art and Design presents Superficiality and Superexcrescence, an exhibition focusing on the work of thirteen Los Angeles-based artists–including Season 4 artist Catherine Sullivan–who remake superficiality “not as a condition to be resisted, but rather one to be analyzed and manipulated.” A full-color catalog is available for purchase.

• The Southwest School of Art and Craft presents Texas Draws I, an exhibition of drawings by thirteen artists from various parts of Texas. Work by Houston-based artist Trenton Doyle Hancock (Season 2) is included, along with drawings by Benito Huerta, Jules Buck Jones, Jayne Lawrence, Mona Marshall, Christine Olejniczak, Katie Pell, Jimmy Peña, Regis Shephard, Bonnie Young, and Eric Zimmerman.

• Season 4 artist Mark Bradford will lecture at the Dallas Museum of Art on July 23 at 7pm. Bradford’s work is featured in the museum’s exhibit, Private Universes, which continues through August 30.

Weekly Roundup

Catherine Sullivan, "Triangle of Need," 2007. Multi-channel video installation. Collection of Miami Art Museum, Gift of Ella Fontanals-Cisneros.

• The Miami Art Museum recently acquired Triangle of Need, a video installation by Catherine Sullivan (Season 4). Her piece is on view at the museum through October 11.
• A full room installation by Season 2 artist Kiki Smith is included in the exhibition Space-Time at the National Glass Centre in the UK. The artist’s three-dimensional astrological star chart, with cut-glass stars and animals of the zodiac scattered across a night-blue paper carpet, titled Constellation, is on display through September 6.
• The Times Online (in association with Saatchi Gallery) is asking readers to vote for their favorite artists of the 20th and/or 21st century. At present, Art21’s Louise Bourgeois (Season 2) and Alfredo Jaar (Season 4) are included in the list of leading artists. The Top 200 will be revealed on May 25. Cast your vote now.
• On April 16, Hubbard & Birchler (Season 3) will lecture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The talk is the second in a series ssponsored by the Buffalo Bayou Partnership in conjunction with Confluence: Points of View on Buffalo Bayou, a public art project on Houston’s historic waterway.
• A site specific piece by Mark Dion (Season 4) has been added to the outdoor sculpture garden at the The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Antiquarian Book Shop (2008), the artist’s life-size curiosity shop, is filled with hundreds of books and collectibles from around the world. Learn more about the installation here.
• Chelsea visits Havana, an exhibition presented by Fundacion Amistad in conjunction with the 10th Biennial of Havana, features work by Season 2 artists Walton Ford and Matthew Barney, among others. The exhibition is part of the Bridges to Culture initiative, which uses the power of art to surmount the cultural, political and social boundaries between the United States and Cuba.

What’s an Art Contest?

Catherine Sullivan, "Baby Jane/Amusement Infusion," production still, 2002. Performer: Michael Garvey. From "Big Hunt," five channels shot on 16mm film transferred to video, projected from DVD, 21 min 48 sec per channel, black and white, silent. © Catherine Sullivan.

Contests. Art Shows. Expos. Special Exhibits. Art Festivals. It’s crazy.

While they are called by different names, art educators often have a similar reaction: Someone has a big idea and wants student art to decorate a space. The number of art contests we see in the average school year can make your head spin. There are contests to make posters about everything from teeth to tap water to trash recycling. There are contests for holidays and anniversaries. There are even contests for exhibits that the student artists themselves can’t attend. I’m serious!

But contests, if there is a clear set of criteria that judges are using to pick the artists, can offer students and teachers a chance try new ideas and tap into themes, media, and forms of expression that may not see the light of day in an existing curriculum. Distinguishing between contests that essentially exploit students vs. participating in meaningful and interesting opportunities with them is part our work. Classroom time is never enough for many kids and creating works of art outside of school that utilize meaningful exhibition opportunites can actually enhance curriculum and student portfolios.

Contemporary art gives students a basis and starting point for looking at themes, such as Protest and Consumption, that can influence extra-curricular work dramatically. Artists such as Jenny Holzer, Nancy Spero, Michael Ray Charles and Kerry James Marshall, for example, can give students new insights into work that’s about race, activism, propaganda and stereotypes. Exhibit opportunities and contests can be a chance for students to get inspired by art outside of the planned curriculum.

How do you use (or not use) these kinds of “opportunities” in your own classroom?

Adaptation

An exhibition examining the use of adaptation in recent video art is currently on view at the University of Washington’s Henry Art Gallery. Simply titled Adaptation, the show explores questions of fidelity and creativity that arise when a practice common to commercial film, television and other forms of pop culture appears in contemporary art. The exhibition is curated by Stephanie Smith of the Smart Museum of Art, and includes works by Arturo Herrera (Season 3), Catherine Sullivan (Season 4), Guy Ben-Ner, and Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation.

Herrera’s two-channel video installation Les Noces (2007) is a digital reworking of Igor Stravinsky’s 1923 ballet by the same title. The video features Herrera’s abstracted black-and-white drawings projected onto multiple screens and animated in direct relationship to the notes of the modernist musical composition.

Sullivan’s Triangle of Need combines “Neanderthals, e-mail scams, and figure skating in scenes set in lush and mysterious environments, [conveying] difficult and abstract ideas about evolution, human behavior, and social inequality.” Triangle of Need screens Tuesday–Sunday at 11am, 12pm, 2pm, 3pm, and 4pm, with additional screenings on Thursday evenings. Click here for the full schedule of screenings. The exhibition runs through March 22, 2009.

The Henry Art Gallery Adaptation YouTube Challenge invites Henry staff members to curate a short playlist of videos with the theme of adaptation. Each playlist is featured on the Henry Website with a brief curator’s statement. Visit the Gallery’s YouTube channel and follow their Twitter tweets.

Don’t Miss: Catherine Sullivan at The New School

Catherine Sullivan (Season 4) will speak at The New School on Wednesday, November 19 at 6:30pm. The event is part of the Public Art Fund Talks, an ongoing series of discussions and presentations by artists, critics, and curators, organized in collaboration with the School’s Vera List Center for Art and Politics.

Tickets can be purchased at The New School Box Office at 66 West 12th Street, New York, NY. Click here for more information.

Sullivan and Walker Awarded USA Fellowship

United States Artists (USA) is a grant-making organization dedicated to supporting America’s living artists working in a diverse array of disciplines. Catherine Sullivan (Season 4) and Kara Walker (Season 2) have been awarded the organization’s 2008 fellowship, which provides each of its 50 recipients an unrestricted grant of $50,000.

According to Artinfo.com, USA was established in 2005 in response to a study finding poor support structures for American artists. To become a USA Fellow, one must be nominated. Each year nominations for the award are made by an anonymous group of arts leaders, critics, scholars, and artists chosen by the organization. Nominators are asked to submit names of artists they believe show an extraordinary commitment to their craft. Eight other visual artists will receive the award this year: Terry Adkins; Michael Asher; Andrea Bowers; Deanna Dikeman; Barkley L. Hendricks; Tehching Hsieh; Rodney McMillian; and Martha Rosler.

Museum

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was established eighteen years ago in Kansas City, Missouri on 18th and Vine Streets, just around the corner from the Paseo YMCA building where the Negro National League was founded in 1920 by Andrew “Rube” Foster. The founding of the eight-team league was the direct result of a silent agreement to segregate African-American players from baseball. Jonathan Earle, Associate Professor of History at the University of Kansas, presents an extensive review of NLBM in a feature article titled In a League of Its Own: The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in May/June 2008 issue of Museum. Several pictures and illustrations accompanying the article make the hard copy more informative and visually appealing than the electronic version. The expansion plans for NLBM will create a five-level structure complete with a gymnasium and an addition of 40,000 square feet, making the museum emerge as one of the most remarkable sport museums in the world.

The other interesting article in the same issue, titled Meet the New Boss: Opening the Door for Emerging Professionals, is a brief survey of the formation of new leadership in the museum field, and it introduces five new leaders who speak about their careers. Given the freedom and team support, this is an enormously fertile time for new leaders to grow and to make dramatic changes and improvements. Kathy Halbreich, Associate Director of MoMA, is a great advocate for open thinking and a huge source of inspiration to new museum professionals and artists. In her Museum interview, Making the Modern More Contemporary, by Robert Ayers, she reflects back on her experience as the director of the Walker Art Center and mentions the positive ripple effects of the close camaraderie and teamwork between the staff. During the April 14th “Artforum at The New School – Art and Money” panel discussion she expressed some of her thoughts on institutional traditions and the necessity for in-depth research to discover new approaches in art.

Another seasoned leader who also took up her new position in February 2008 is Sabine Folie, the Artistic and Managing Director of the Generali Foundation in Vienna, Austria. In her statement she also makes a reference to teamwork: “The time has now come for me and a highly committed team to resume work under the new premises and to continue to build a collection that constitutes a commitment to collecting far away from all criteria oriented by speculation or conforming to the market.”

Exemplary teamwork and nurturing leadership is what I also encountered during my recent collaboration with the staff of Art21. Witnessing the tremendous dedication and knowledge of contemporary art among the Art21 staff was an unprecedented experience for me. The extraordinary results of harmonious teamwork can also be seen in the work of the Art:21 Season 4 artists Mark Dion, Judy Pfaff, Catherine Sullivan and Ursula von Rydingsvard. It is apropos to conclude with an interview, featuring Art:21 Season 2 artist Raymond Pettibon, titled Gumby, Vavoom, & Baseball Players.

Catherine Sullivan in BOMB Magazine

In a BOMB Magazine web exclusive, Season 4 artist Catherine Sullivan (pictured top right) and choreographer Meg Stuart discuss mining the history of the avant-garde tradition and emotional overflow in ensemble-based work. BOMB’s Summer 2008 print issue will include the full-length conversation.

The magazine’s online art section, which currently archives 1,206 articles and interviews, features numerous Art21 artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Andrea Zittel (both Season 1), Gabriel Orozco, Paul Pfeiffer, Kara Walker (all Season 2), Arturo Herrera (Season 3), and Pierre Huyghe (Season 4).