Transcendent: Vija Celmins and Kimsooja

Vija Celmins, "Untitled (Big Sea #1)," 1969. Graphite on acrylic ground on paper, 34 1/8 x 45 1/4 inches. Private collection. Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York.

Recently I was engaged in a little debate about whether contemporary art can truly be transcendent — taking us beyond the range of normal perception to some place else, some place free from the constraints of the material world. While I immediately thought of Season 5 artist, Kimsooja, and her ability to highlight the artistic context in everyday activities (sewing, cleaning, decorating, etc.), I also thought about the repetitive nature of her work and how repetition is one path to transcendence that many other artists most certainly incorporate. One of these artists, Vija Celmins, is featured in Season 2 and utilizes repetition in her seascapes and night skies. They are meticulously drawn and painted to the point that the viewer isn’t looking at a picture as much as they are looking into one. And when you look close enough, similar to the experience thousands of students have when really seeing a painting by George Seurat or Chuck Close, you go someplace else; you see beyond what the picture is.

I try to make a piece that’s strong and thorough and doesn’t jump off the paper. It’s neither ocean nor a piece of paper. It becomes a third thing.   

— Vija Celmins

Any teacher that has experienced the hum of fluorescent lights and a roomful of students engaged to the point that you can actually hear ideas being scratched into paper or canvas has experienced another kind of transcendent moment. These are the times we feel that “buzz” of work and the rhythm of not necessarily moving through the room, but of the room moving through us, through our own energy and the work we’re facilitating. It’s our job to create spaces for these kinds of moments where students become immersed in the ideas they are shaping and shaping them slowly, without rushing, but with a sense of urgency.

Art21 “Exclusive” Video, Year 2

What a year it’s been! We’re taking a look back at the 42 Exclusive videos that premiered here on the Art21 Blog, and subsequently on YouTube and iTunes. We hope you’ve enjoyed this new feature for 2009 and, as always, look forward to your comments.

What’s our New Year’s resolution? We’ll be premiering more behind-the-scenes moments with contemporary artists such as Beryl Korot, Shahzia Sikander, Allan McCollum, Julie Mehretu, Cao Fei, Florian Maier-Aichen, and many, many more. Check out what happened in year one.

Weekly Roundup

Jeff Koons, "Triple Hulk Elvis I", 2007. Collection of William J. Bell. © Jeff Koons. Courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (via White Hot Magazine).

In this week’s roundup of Art21 artist news you’ll read about a forty-million dollar art collection in Las Vegas, a major exhibition of work by Korean and Korean American artists, an installation made of yogurt caps, a massive concrete sculpture in Canada, and more:

• On December 17, Season 5 artist Jeff Koons will sign copies of his book Jeff Koons: Hulk Elvis at Gagosian Shop in New York City (988 Madison Ave). The 2009 publication features Koons’ painting series, Hulk Elvis, in which he creates large works of the Incredible Hulk, inflatable monkeys, geishas, birds, and the Liberty Bell; a text by Scott Rothkopf, and an interview between the artist and Hans Ulrich Obrist. The event begins at 6pm. Contact Gagosian Gallery for more information.

• Faces & Facts: Korean Contemporary Art in New York commemorates the 30-year anniversary of the Korean Cultural Service of New York (KCSNY). The exhibition of more than 60 works by 54 Korean and Korean American artists — including Art21’s Do-Ho Suh (Season 2) and Kimsooja (Season 5) — is spread across three venues: the Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Art Gallery, KCSNY’s Gallery Korea and the Queens Museum of Art (QMA). Faces & Facts is on view at the first two venues through February 19, and closes February 21 at the QMA.

• Grey Area, the Deutsche Guggenheim exhibition of new paintings by Season 5 artist Julie Mehretu, has been reviewed by art critic Brian Dillon of The Guardian. Dillon writes: “It’s easy to conclude that Mehretu makes history paintings of a sort, intricate tableaux of the recent geopolitical past. But that would be to ignore her commitment to painting as such, and to miss the extraordinary graphic transformations that her source images undergo.” Read the entire article here. And to watch a video (produced by Vernissage TV) of Mehretu discussing the works in Grey Area, click here.

• CityCenter in Las Vegas, a new 67 acre luxury complex on the Vegas Strip, boasts the first major permanent collection of art in Las Vegas to be integrated into a public space, as well as one of the world’s largest corporate art collections in existence today. Works by Art21 artists Maya Lin (Season 2) and Jenny Holzer (Season 4) are included in this collection that, according to USA Today, amounts to roughly $40 million.

• Works by Allora & Calzadilla (Season 4) and Richard Serra (Season 1) are on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art S.M.A.K. (located in Ghent, Belgium) in the exhibition The Artists in their Own Words. The show is entirely dedicated to Gagarin, the first international magazine of artist’s texts, and brings together the zine’s entire oeuvre with a selection of related works from in the museum’s collection. The editorial lay-out of Gagarin is based on a quote by Season 5 artist John Baldessari: “Talking about art simply is not art. Talk can be art, but then it is not talking about art.” The Artists in their Own Words continues through March 14, 2010.

• Serra’s outdoor sculpture Shift has been granted heritage status by the Township of King, located just north of Toronto, Canada. This early 1970s sculpture consists of six concrete walls, each five feet long and eight inches thick but of varying lengths. It spans two hills and encompasses more than 15 acres. Serra has said of Shift, according to Yorkregion.com: “When you walk it measures your distance in relation to the landscape so it allows you to understand the shift in elevation as you’re walking because there’s no set horizon there. The boundaries of the work became the maximum distance two people could occupy and still keep each other in view…The intent of the work is an awareness of physicality in time, space and motion.” The sculpture’s new status was declared in response to a development proposal by Hickory Hills Investments, owner of the land on which it is located, that threatened its safety. Read the full story here.

• On December 10, The New School (in collaboration with Aperture Foundation) will hold a public talk titled Confounding Expectations – Photography in Context: The Projected Photograph. Paul Pfeiffer (Season 2) and Krzysztof Wodiczko (Season 3); George Baker, Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Vice-Chair of UCLA, Department of Art History; and Andrea Geyer, artist and Assistant Professor of Fine Art at Parsons will discuss projection and installation strategies used by contemporary artists to create immersive and cinema-like experiences. The program begins at 7pm and is free and open to the public.

• More Mergers & Acquisitions at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center is a continuation of the Center’s earlier exhibition, Mergers & Acquisitions (December 2008 – January 2009), which brought together works by modern masters and contemporary artists. The second installment is organized into four themes: Figure-Ground, Collaboration, Un-Natural, and Familiar Faces. Work by William Wegman (Season 1) is included in the latter, a variety of funny or disturbing head shots of, for instance, Osama Bin Laden, Farrah Fawcett, the Man in the Moon, and artist self portraits. More Mergers & Acquisitions runs December 10 through February 14, 2010.

• Building on a Cliff at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. features work by Arturo Herrera (Season 3), Matt Connors, and Merlin James. The exhibition title is taken from a painting by James and meant to reflect the works on view. “These three artists,” according to the press release, “work at the edges of abstraction and modes of representation to create bodies of work that are both familiar and unsettling at the same time.” Herrera’s steel sculptures based on ink drawings; large wall works from small found photo images; and collages will be on view. Building on a Cliff opens December 10.

• Gabriel Orozco (Season 2) and yogurt lids were the focus of a recent article in The New York Observer; read it here. Orozco’s retrospective exhibition opens at the Museum of Modern Art, New York on December 13.

Kimsooja | “A Beggar Woman” & “A Homeless Woman”

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Artist Kimsooja reflects on her series of videotaped performances — A Beggar Woman and A Homeless Woman (both 2000-01) — realized in cities around the world: Cairo, Delhi, Lagos, and Mexico City.

Kimsooja’s videos and installations blur the boundaries between aesthetics and transcendent experience through their use of repetitive actions, meditative practices, and serial forms. In many pieces, everyday actions—such as sewing or doing laundry—become two- and three-dimensional or performative activities. In videos that feature her in various personas (Needle Woman, Beggar Woman, Homeless Woman), she leads us to reflect on the human condition, offering open-ended perspectives through which she presents and questions reality.

Kimsooja is featured in the Season 5 (2009) episode Systems of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.

Her work can currently be seen in the exhibitions Your Bright Future at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (through February 14th, 2010) and Dress Codes: The Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video at the International Center of Photography in New York (through January 17th, 2010).

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Richard Numeroff. Sound: Merce Williams. Editor: Lizzie Donahue & Paulo Padilha. Artwork Courtesy: Kimsooja.

ART:21 SEASON 5 PREMIERES TONITE ON PBS!

The wait is over–Season 5 of Art:21–Art in the Twenty-First Century is here! The new season begins tonight on PBS at 10:00 p.m. ET (check local listings) with the episode Compassion, featuring William Kentridge, Doris Salcedo, and Carrie Mae Weems.

Might a work of art move us to temper our more destructive impulses? In what ways do artists’ feelings of empathy contribute to works that tackle problematic subjects and address the human condition? Compassion explores these questions in the work of the three featured artists.

Be sure to tune in to PBS every Wednesday at 10:00 p.m. throughout October (check local listings) for more brand new episodes: Fantasy, featuring Cao Fei, Mary Heilmann, Jeff Koons, and Florian Maier-Aichen; Transformation, featuring Paul McCarthy, Cindy Sherman, and Yinka Shonibare MBE; and Systems, featuring John Baldessari, Kimsooja, Allan McCollum, and Julie Mehretu.

Read more about Season 5 at PBS, and visit ArtBabble for previews of all Season 5 episodes and artist segments.

Krzysztof Wodiczko interviewed by Giuliana Bruno

Welcome back to BOMB in the Building, where each week we’re featuring a BOMB contributor relating to a Season 5 artist. This week, inspired by Kimsooja’s videos and installations, we’re revisiting the work of Polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko. Instead of an interview this time, we’re giving you a short video clip of a BOMBLive! conversation that took place before an audience of 75 people at SculptureCenter in Long Island City, NY, on October 27, 2007. In addition to being a great event, it was significant as it marked the launched of BOMB’s “In the Open: Art in Public Spaces” series and also the occasion of our first-ever collaboration with Art21, who screened their Season 3 segment on Wodiczko as a prelude to the conversation.

In this short excerpt from the longer video, author and theorist Giuliana Bruno and the artist discuss his video installations at Hiroshima and elsewhere. You can watch the full 15-minute BOMBLive! video here.

Meet the Season 5 Artist: Kimsooja

The above video is excerpted from the Season 5 episode Systems, premiering on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 10pm (ET) on PBS (check local listings). Systems features four artists — John Baldessari, Kimsooja, Allan McCollum, and Julie Mehretu — who invent new grammars and logics, finding comfort in some systems while rebelling against others in today’s supercharged, information-based society.

Who is Kimsooja and what does she have to say about systems?

Kimsooja was born in 1957 in Taegu, South Korea; she lives and works in New York. Kimsooja’s videos and installations blur the boundaries between aesthetics and transcendent experience through their use of repetitive actions, meditative practices, and serial forms. In many pieces, everyday actions—such as sewing or doing laundry—become two- and three-dimensional or performative activities. Central to her work is the bottari, a traditional Korean bundle used to wrap and protect personal belongings, which Kimsooja transforms into a philosophical metaphor for structure and connection.  In videos that feature her in various personas (Needle Woman, Beggar Woman, Homeless Woman), she leads us to reflect on the human condition, offering open-ended perspectives through which she presents and questions reality. Using her own body, facing away from the camera, Kimsooja becomes a void; we literally see and respond through her. While striking for their vibrant color and density of imagery, Kimsooja’s works emphasize metaphysical changes within the artist-as-performer as well as the viewer.

On the subject of systems in art, Kimsooja talks about blurring conceptual systems from art and life in her work (in the forthcoming Season 5 book):

When I was doing sewing pieces, I considered all the women’s activities—sewing, cooking, laundry, pressing, cleaning the house, shopping, decorating—as two- and three-dimensional or performative activities. I wanted to appreciate that aspect and reveal the artistic context. So my work was all, in a way, related to women’s activity, but then it was also linked to contemporary art issues. I’d been working a lot using femininity and female activities, but I never considered myself as a feminist. The only thing I can agree to is that ‘feminist’ is part of ‘humanist’. So I don’t even participate in feminist shows—because that really simplifies and limits my ideas. I refuse to be in a specific ism. But my practice can be perceived in different isms—like conceptualism, globalism, feminism, minimalism. My intention is to reach to the totality of our life in art, so that’s also one reason my practice is quite broad and diverse—to reach that complexity and comprehensiveness.

What happens in Kimsooja’s segment in Systems this October?

Kimsooja’s segment opens with a series of videotaped performances in crowded cities around the world, titled A Needle Woman (1999-2001). In the videos, the artist is shown from behind, her form acting as an unmoving axis on the horizon. Comparing her body to a needle that threads through space and time, she explains that her conceptual “system is very much rooted to the practice of sewing” and that she discovers “artistic questions and answers from our daily life activities.” Discovering that bottari—a traditional Korean bundle—could be used as minimalist sculpture, the artist later explored autobiographical and cultural aspects of the form in works such as a tour of South Korea in Cities On The Move–2727 km Bottari Truck (1997) and an installation of hanging bedsheets belonging to newlyweds in A Laundry Woman (2004).

The segment focuses in depth on two recent site-specific works. Lotus: Zone of Zero (2008) in Brussels consists of 2,000 fuchsia lotus lanterns with a soundtrack of Tibetan, Gregorian, and Islamic chants. To Breathe–A Mirror Woman (2006) is an intervention at the Crystal Palace in Madrid in which rainbow-colored sunlight, diffused through diffraction grating film applied to windows, is reflected in a mirrored surface applied to the floor while a pre-recorded performance of the artist’s rythmic breathing—A Weaving Factory (2005)—fills the space. Says the artist on her ethereal and genre-bending work: “My intention is to reach to the totality of our life in art.”

Kimsooja. "Cities On The Move - 2727 km Bottari Truck," 1997. Single channel video projection, silent, 7:33 minute loop. © Kimsooja, courtesy the artist.

What else has Kimsooja done?

Kimsooja  earned a BFA (1980) and MA (1984) from Hong-Ik University, Seoul. Kimsooja has received the Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2002), among others, and has been an artist-in-residence at the World Trade Center, New York (1998); P.S. 1 Museum, New York (1992-93); and École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts, Paris (1984). She has had major exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2009); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2008); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2006); Magasin 3, Stockholm Konsthall, Sweden (2006); the MIT List Gallery, Cambridge (2005), and other institutions. Kimsooja has participated in international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2001, 2005, 2007); Yokohama Triennial (2005); and Whitney Biennial (2002).

Where can I see more of Kimsooja’s work between now and the Art21 premiere this October?

Kimsooja maintains an extensive website of her work.

What’s your take on Kimsooja’s inclusion in Season 5?

Tell us what you think by leaving a comment below!

New Flash Points topic: Systems

John Baldessari, "Two Person Fight (One Orange): With Spectator," 2004. Three dimensional digital archival print with acrylic paint on sintra, dibon and gatorfoam panels, 84 x 79 inches. © John Baldessari, courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.

In celebration of the fifth season of Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century, premiering this fall on PBS, the current round of Flash Points topics correspond to our four thematic episodes: Compassion, Fantasy, Transformation, and Systems.

Lastly, after a series of illuminating posts on Transformation (thanks to our fabulous guest editor Hrag Vartanian), we conclude this series with Systems. The Systems episode features artists who realize complex projects, whether through acts of appropriation, accumulation, collaboration, or creating projects so vast in scope as to elude comprehension.

Left: Allan McCollum, "Shapes from Maine: Shapes Copper Cookie Cutters," 2005/2008. Polished copper, 5 1/2 x 3 2/3 x 1 inches each, each unique, formed in copper by hand. Produced in collaboration with Holly and Larry Little, founders of Aunt Holly's Copper Cookie Cutters, Trescott, Maine. Photo by Lamay Photo, © Allan McCollum, courtesy Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York. Right: Julie Mehretu, "Stadia II," 2004. Ink and acrylic on canvas, 108 x 144 inches. Collection of Carnegie Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, Gift of Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn and Nicolas Rohatyn and A.W. Mellon Acquisition Endowment Fund. Photo by Richard Stoner, © Julie Mehretu, courtesy the Artist and The Project, New York.

Keeping with Flash Points tradition, we always highlight a key question to consider over the course of a topic’s run. To this end, we ask:

Can art transcend paradigms?

Additional questions to ponder include:

• How and why do artists use systems?
• Why do we find comfort in some systems while rebelling against others?
• What new forms of grammar and logic do artists invent in today’s supercharged, information-based society?

Throughout this time, we’ll publish in-depth posts about the artists profiled in Systems — John Baldessari, Kimsooja, Julie Mehretu, and Allan McCollum— as well as feature musings from our roster of guest writers, extending the theme beyond the series to real world networks, matrices, conventions, and subversions.

Kimsooja, "Cities On The Move - 2727 km Bottari Truck," 1997. Single channel video projection, silent, 7:33 minute loop. © Kimsooja, courtesy the artist.

Help us start the conversation by leaving a comment below. Feel free to note other artists whose work addresses the topic of systems — we’d love to collectively envision a broader landscape of how it is considered in contemporary art practice. And save the date for the premiere Systems episode which debuts nationwide October 28, 2009 on PBS!

Weekly Round Up

Bob and Roberta Smith, "So I Came to Bourgeois." Courtesy Grey Gallery.

• Last year the Guardian asked its sports and art writers to swap pieces for a day. Tennis correspondent Steve Bierley reviewed a Louise Bourgeois (Season 1) exhibition, which Bob and Roberta Smith fell in love with and subsequently made into a text-based painting. As part of the current Edinburgh Art Festival, Smith (it’s one person) has turned the project into a full fledged exhibition at the nomadic Grey Gallery. Now if only they would swap athletes and artists salaries for a day….

• In other sports and arts news, America’s team the Dallas Cowboys just finished building their state of the art football stadium at the cost of $1.15 billion dollars. Owners Gene and Jerry Jones formed an art program that brings site-specific installations to the venue, including commissioned works from Franz Ackermann, Olafur Eliasson, Trenton Doyle Hancock (Season 2), and Matthew Ritchie (Season 3).  Additionally, the program will develop educational initiatives and tours focused on the collection of works.

• Through September 20th at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is Your Bright Future, a show of twelve artists from South Korea who were born between 1957 and 1972. Your Bright Future includes, among others, Kimsooja (Season 5), Jooyeon Park, Do-Ho Suh (Season 2), and Haegue Yangthe.

• Season 2 artist Kiki Smith has received the Edward MacDowell Medal at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.   She is the 50th MacDowell Medalist, with past recipients including I.M. Pei, Merce Cunningham, Georgia O’Keeffe, and John Updike.  The award is given each year to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to his or her field.

• Through September 7, the Pompidou Centre is displaying the “feminine side of its own collections” in an exhibition titled elles@centrepompidou.  Giving the galleries over to 200+ women artists from the 20th century to now, sub-themes take the headings of Pioneer, Free Fire, and Body Slogan, and includes many notables like Art21’s Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, and Barbara Kruger.

Weekly Roundup

Film still from Cao Fei, "RMB City," 2007. DVD, 6 minutes. Courtesy the Artist and Lombard-Freid Gallery.

• Currently showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, There Goes the Neighborhood explores the many aspects of community, focusing on the evolution of architecture and landscape as it is embodied within a neighborhood’s past, present, and future. The exhibition features Willie Birch, Amy Casey, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Eva Struble, Dionsio Gonzàlez, Leslie Grant, Nina Pessin-Whedbee, Catherine Yass, Kristin Bly, Matthew Kolodziej, and Season 5 artist Cao Fei. Through August 16.

• The International Center of Photography released the list of artists for the third edition of their upcoming triennial on photography and video art, thematically titled Dress Codes. Centering on fashion, the mix of 34 includes Art21 artists Cao Fei, Kimsooja, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, and Laurie Simmons. The show opens October 2.

• The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women is on view at Cheim and Read. The show brushes aside the traditional “male gaze” and includes sculpture, painting, photography, installation and video by the likes of Ghada Amer, Vanessa Beecroft, Marilyn Minter, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Shirin Neshat, and Art21 artists Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Sally Mann, Collier Schorr, Cindy Sherman, and Kara Walker. Through September 19.

• Send in the clowns! Send in the critics! Send in the clown critics! Ever wondered what a bunch of real clowns talk about while watching Bruce Nauman’s (Season 1) 1978 video installation Clown Torture?  Your prayers have been answered.

• The Whitney Museum of American Art announced that it will open a retrospective of Roni Horn’s works on November 6, integrating three decades of the Season 3 artist’s sculpture, photography, installations, drawings, and books.

• A retrospective of John Baldessari’s prints are on view now until Novermber 8th at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor. Over 100 prints are included in the exhibition that spans the four decades of the Season 5 artist’s post-painting period, 1970s to the present. Through November 8.