Weekly Roundup
Paul McCarthy, "Paula Jones," 2007. Fiberglass, 82 x 57 1/2 x 107 inches. via Art Daily.org
This President’s Day roundup begins with a hotly debated exhibition and ends with a divine duo:
- The New Museum has announced the details of their exhibition Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection. Curated by Season 5 artist Jeff Koons, this will be the first showing of the Athens-based collection in the United States. This will also be the first exhibition curated by Koons, whose early work is said to have inspired the evolution of the Dakis Joannou collection. Koons has selected over 100 works by 50 international artists spanning several generations, including Matthew Barney (Season 1), Janine Antoni, Kiki Smith, Kara Walker, (all Season 2), Mike Kelley (Season 3), Jenny Holzer (Season 4), Paul McCarthy (Season 5), David Altmejd, Nathalie Djurberg, Robert Gober, Terence Koh, Mark Manders, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Christiana Soulou, Jannis Varelas, and Andro Wekua, among others. The title of the exhibition alludes to notions of genesis, evolution, original sin, and sexuality. “Skin and fruit,” according to the press release, “evoke the essential tensions between interior and exterior, between what we see and what we consume.” The show will feature one work by Koons — One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (1985) — the first major artwork that Dakis Joannou acquired. Skin Fruit opens March 3.
- Art21 artists Louise Bourgeois (Season 1), Cai Guo-Qiang, Hiroshi Sugimoto (both Season 3), and Paul McCarthy (Season 5) will participate in the 17th Biennale of Sydney, Australia’s largest contemporary visual art event. Cai’s installation Inopportune: Stage One (2004), nine cars exploding and rotating in space, will dominate Cockatoo Island’s Turbine Hall. McCarthy will premiere his sound and sculpture installation Ship of Fools #2 (2010) at Pier 2/3. And Bourgeois will have a series of painted bronze sculptures on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Artistic director David Elliott says: “The aim of this Biennale is to bring together work from diverse cultures, at the same time, on the equal playing field of contemporary art, where no culture can assume superiority over any other.” The 17th Biennale of Sydney runs May 12 – August 1, 2010. Read more about the event in the Brisbane Times.
- Works by Season 5 artists Cindy Sherman and John Baldessari are on view in the exhibition Pop Art at the Havana Fine Arts Museum in Cuba. According to the Havana Times, the traveling exhibition (organized by Spain’s State Society for Foreign Cultural Action and the Valencian Institute of Modern Art) features nearly sixty works made by American and Spanish artists in the style/period of pop art. Works by John Chamberlain, Jasper Johns, Yves Klein, Claes Oldenburg, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, and James Rosenquist hang alongside works by Eduardo Arroyo, Equipo Cronica, Juan Genoves, Equipo Realidad, Josep Renau, Manuel Saez, Antonio Saura, Juan Antonio Toledo, and others. Pop Art continues through March 30.
- On February 22, Season 4 artist Alfredo Jaar will present his most recent short film Le Ceneri di Pasolini (The Ashes of Pasolini) (2009) at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. A tribute to the Italian filmmaker, intellectual, poet, critic, and journalist Pier Paolo Pasolini, the film incorporates footage from Pasolini’s films and rare interviews conducted prior to his sudden and mysterious death in 1975. The title refers to Pasolini’s own poem, Le Ceneri di Gramsci, itself a eulogy to the Italian left-wing intellectual Antonio Gramsci. In a separate unrelated event, Jaar will lecture in the Remis Auditorium of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on February 17. Both programs begin at 7pm.
- February is the last month that the Fundred Dollar Bill project by Season 1 artist Mel Chin will be at Arizona State University Art Museum (ASUAM). In addition to regular museum hours, ASUAM is holding three free events to give the public a final chance to contribute: On February 9, the museum will screen Chin’s award-winning animated film 9-11/9-11: A Tale of Two Cities, A Tragedy of Two Times. February 16, the Phoenix band Peachcake will give a free concert following a screening of Chin’s 2009 interview with Planet Awesome. February 25, an armored truck will pick up ASUAM’s Fundreds — free music and other festivities will lead up to its arrival. Read more about the Fundred Dollar Bill project in Huffington Post; Utah People’s Post; and The Tartan.
- On February 17 at 6:30pm, Roni Horn (Season 3) will be in conversation with John Waters at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Horn’s traveling retrospective exhibition Roni Horn aka Roni Horn opens at the ICA on February 19 and continues through June 13.
Weekly Roundup
Josiah McElheny, "Bruno Taut on Mies van der Rohe (1922), i," 2009. Drawing on silver gelatin photograph using color retouching pencil, 23 1/2 x 17 1/2 in., Edition variant 1 of 4 with 1 artist's proof. Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery.
- New works by Season 3 artist Josiah McElheny are on view at Andrea Rosen Gallery through Oct. 17. The centerpiece of the exhibition is an eight-foot tall sculpture based on Mies van der Rohe’s earliest model of a glassclad skyscraper. McElheny’s sculpture is an enlarged version of this original maquette that recasts Mies’s design in the spirit of rival architect Bruno Taut. Also included in the exhibition are a series of photo-based drawings inspired by a photograph Mies took of his skyscraper model in 1922. In each, the black-and-white photograph is highlighted, or defaced with photo-retouching pencil, thereby inserting Taut’s colorful ideas into Mies’s picture of purity and transparency.
- Works by Season 3 artist Richard Tuttle are on view in the exhibition Pollution is Ecology also at Andrea Rosen Gallery through October 17. Visit Contemporary Art Daily to browse through images of Tuttle’s concurrent exhibition, L’nger than Life, at Modern Art, London.
- Season 3 artist Fred Wilson is recipient of the 2009 Cheek Medal from the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary. The Cheek Medal was created to recognize individuals who have impacted the fields of visual, performing and museum arts. A dinner and ceremony will be held at the Lake Matoaka Amphitheater on Sept. 18.
- Opening October 7 at the Museum of Arts & Design, Slash: Paper Under the Knife will explore the creative possibilities of paper through works by Kara Walker (Season 2), Oliver Herring (Season 3), Olafur Eliasson, Pietro Ruffo, Ishmael Randall, Sangeeta Sandrasegar, and others.
- Kara Walker (Season 2) will be the next artist in the Proposition seminar series at the New Museum. Inspired by the scientific method of hypothesis, research, and synthesis, these two-day events explore a topic of current investigation in the invited speaker’s own artistic or intellectual practice. On Sept 25 and 26 Walker will explore the object of painting and the concept of liberty.
- Mel Chin (Season 1) will lecture at Arizona State University (ASU) on Thursday, Sept. 24 at 7:30pm. The event is organized in conjunction with the Defining Sustainability season of exhibitions and projects at the ASU Art Museum.
- Dance with Camera is now on view at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Contemporary Art. Both an exhibition and screening program, Dance with Camera explores the crossover between artists, and dancers who make choreography for the camera. The exhibition features works in film, video, and photography by artists Bruce Nauman (Season 1), Eleanor Antin (Season 2), Mike Kelley, Oliver Herring (both Season 3), Charles Atlas, Ann Carlson and Mary Ellen Strom, Bruce Conner, Tacita Dean, Luis Jacob, Joachim Koester, Elad Lassry, Kelly Nipper, robbinschilds + A.L. Steiner, Uri Tzaig, Flora Wiegmann, and Christopher Williams. On view through March 21, 2010.
Weekly Roundup
- Vernissage TV takes a close look at Let the Priests Tremble…(1998/2008), a large hand-printed wall installation by Season 4 artist Nancy Spero. The piece was included in Spero’s retrospective at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Sevilla, Spain.
- 9/11-9/11, an animated film by Season 1 artist Mel Chin, will screen tonight at MOMA (7pm). The piece will be screened twice, and a discussion with the artist and the audience will take place in between. Tickets are available at the Museum.
- On the occasion of the fourth Berlin Gallery Weekend (a program of 38 gallery openings in a 3-day span), c/o–Gerhardsen Gerner gallery will present works by Season 3 artist Matthew Ritchie. Read more about the exhibition, titled The Need-Fire, here.
- Ann Hamilton (Season 1) has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Science. Visit Artforum.com to read the full list of inductees in the visual art category.
- The Guggenheim exhibition catalogue Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe has won the 2008 George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award, which recognizes outstanding publications in visual arts and architecture. The catalogue accompanied the comprehensive exhibition of work by the Season 3 artist.
- Kara Walker and Raymond Pettibon (both Season 2) appear in the May issue of Black Book magazine.
Weekly Round Up
Robert Adams, "Eden, Colorado" (circa 1968-71). Courtesy the artist.
- Robert Adams has won the 2009 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. Based in Astoria, Oregon, the Season 4 artist received the $61,000 prize at a ceremony in San Francisco last week.
- Maya Lin will speak tonight at San-Francisco based not-for-profit organization City Arts and Lectures. The Season 2 artist will engage in dialogue with with Ryan Watt.
- As part of Earth Day events, Mel Chin (Season 1) will deliver a talk this Wednesday at Blue Ridge Community College in Blue Ridge, North Carolina. For more information, click here.
- The China Project: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art just opened at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia. Culled from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection, the show features installations, painting, sculpture and video by over 40 of China’s foremost contemporary artists including Xu Bing and Cai Guo-Qiang (Season 3).
- Opening tomorrow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is The Pictures Generation, 1974-1985. The show features artists “educated in the self-reflexive and critical principles of Minimal and Conceptual art,” a list of 30 that includes Barbara Kruger (Season 1), Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, Allan McCollum, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, and Laurie Simmons (Season 4).
First Spring Round-Up
Mark Dion, "Death of a Giant" (2009). Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.
Things to see:
- Mel Chin will be giving a free lecture on Tuesday, March 24, from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm, at the Arlington Arts Center as part of the closing reception for PUBLIC/PRIVATE, an exhibition juxtaposing art out in the world that requires the viewer’s direct physical participation with works about the artist’s immediate social or domestic sphere. Chin’s talk will also serve as the kickoff for the FUNDRED/PAYDIRT Project in Arlington public schools.
- Richard Tuttle’s exhibition Walking on Air opened March 20th at Pace Wildenstein. The show runs through April 25 and includes twelve new works of overlapping, dyed fabric cloths that suggest in non-ambiguous terms the relationship between the abstract and the real.
- Also opening over the weekend was Ancient Evenings: Libretto, an exhibition of new drawings by Matthew Barney at Gladstone Gallery in Brussels. Ancient Evenings is a seven act opera chronicling the seven stages the soul passes through after the death of the body, and is loosely based on Norman Mailer’s 1983 Egyptian-set novel. The show runs through May 9.
- Art by Women is up through April 26 at the Sheldon Museum of Art. The exhibition includes nearly 40 prints and photographs by “revolutionary” women artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, and Judy Pfaff.
Fundred Points of View
By now, many of you are quite familiar with Mel Chin’s nationwide Fundred project to help highlight the issue of lead contaminated soil in New Orleans. Students and professional artists all across the country are designing “Fundred” hundred dollar bills that will be collected in an artistic collaboration involving thousands of people.
This week, as part of the New York State Art Teachers Association annual conference, I will be presenting the attached lesson plan to give educators another way of sharing the Fundred project with their students. There are options for a one-day lesson or a series of four lessons that lead to making the bills and understanding how the project is truly a collaborative effort dependent on many voices being heard. Please check it out and share your thoughts, ideas, or experience with the Fundred project itself: fundredpointsof-view.doc
There Goes the Neighborhood
Artistic interventions in neighborhoods and community-inspired artworks are popping up all around us, from Pierre Huyghe’s playfully ritualistic Streamside Day (2003) to Mel Chin’s New Orleans recovery effort SAFEHOUSE (2008). It will be interesting to see how these kinds of projects develop in the tough economic times ahead, and with the new energy and sense of civic duty encapsulated in this week’s U.S. presidential elections. The four videos below show how the act of re-imagining may be a crucial strategy in the years ahead.
Mattress Factory | The Making of Street with a View
RE-IMAGINING MAPS: Artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley organized the first-ever intervention in Google Street View by enlisting residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside to decide how they wanted their neighborhood to be pictured online. Check out the results on Google Maps by searching for ‘Sampsonia Way Pittsburgh’ and more via Google Sightseeing.
L.A. Times | Watts House Project (WHP)
RE-IMAGINING DEVELOPMENT: A decade in the works, artist Edgar Arceneaux’s Watts House Project is located across the street from the landmark Watts Towers. A civic project modeled after artist Rick Lowe’s successful Project Row Houses in Houston, Arceneaux’s aim is to revitalize the surrounding area beginning by refurbishing 20 local properties. Read the full article.
Ill Doctrine | Kara Walker, Down in the Hole
RE-IMAGINING MEDIA: Fans of HBO’s groundbreaking television series The Wire will appreciate this one: after spotting the actor who plays Chris Partlow at the Whitney Museum’s recent survey of artist Kara Walker’s work, Jay Smooth created this video spoof set to the show’s opening theme song “Down in the Hole” (lifting some artwork from the Art:21 episode). The Wire and Walker’s artwork share innumerable themes — from the blurry line between victim and victimizer, to the complex expressions of race, gender and sexuality — and one can only imagine what a sixth art-centric season set in fair inner-city Baltimore would be like. Or as Omar Little would say, “Indeed.”
Houston Chronicle | Art in the Lower 9th Ward
RE-IMAGINING SPECTACLE: Biennials are typically excuses for various degrees of civic pride — from the national pavilions at the Venice Biennale to the continual redefinition of American-ess at the Whitney Biennial — in addition to performing the dual function of identifying trends and generating income out of tourism. What’s rather unique about the current Prospect 1.New Orleans is the explicit association of a biennial-like event with a well-known tragedy: Hurricane Katrina and it’s aftermath. How this kind of spectacle will evolve, and what impact it will make on the community is still unclear. The video features new works by Art21 artists Mark Bradford and Janine Antoni, but be sure to wait for the contrasting moment at the end of the video, when an alternative project slips into view.
Special report: Mel Chin’s “SAFEHOUSE”
Following is an exclusive update from Mel Chin’s FUNDRED/PAYDIRT team on their latest New Orleans-based project, SAFEHOUSE. Written by Mary Rubin and Amanda Wiles, with photos by FUNDRED, Elliot Coon, and Arthur Simons.
News Flash – A sculptural intervention transforming an entire house in the St. Roch neighborhood of New Orleans is scheduled to be unsealed during a national press conference on October 31, 2008 at 12:30pm. The level of security pertaining to the contents of the SAFEHOUSE is high, as it represents a sizable creative investment from the local community. The value of what is within this sculptural vault can only be estimated. While Mel Chin hesitates to reveal too much other than the release of this digital rendering, it is rumored to be part of a larger effort, $300 million in the making.
There was much going on in New Orleans last week as Mel Chin and his team worked to alter the fragile façade of 2461 North Villere Street (between Music and Art streets) into an operable safe door. The crew began staging the sculptural alteration of the house in September. Initial plans to introduce the project to the local community were interrupted when Hurricane Gustav appeared on the scene. When mandatory evacuation of the city was imposed, the community event was postponed and the crew was evacuated with the rest of the city’s population.
…so from Mel’s studio in North Carolina, the sculptural parts of SAFEHOUSE were fabricated. The crew arrived back in New Orleans on Tuesday, September 30 to begin the installation. By Thursday, the hinges were on and the façade was reinforced to accommodate the 10-foot diameter door. As the work progressed through the week, the neighborhood watched with curiosity.
ST. ROCH Love Where You Live – St. Roch Community Preview Event
By the morning of October 4, the crew had accomplished enough of the installation for the vault door to swing open that evening for a big event. This FUNDRED/PAYDIRT sponsored event was planned as a special St. Roch neighborhood preview of SAFEHOUSE in advance of the Prospect.1 Biennial.
At noon the street was closed for the party, which included a “Paradise” slippy slide (complete with palm trees and rainbows) and a table set for the community dinner planned for 100. Local chefs, Ms. Pat and Ms. Carol, renowned for their talent in the kitchen, cooked up a special menu that included redfish, fried chicken, jambalaya, greens, red beans, dirty rice, and a mean bread pudding.
With the SAFEHOUSE “done enough,” neighborhood favorite DJ Baby Boy set the scene performing at top volume and Mel started the dancing.
Just before sunset Mel led a group of excited youth to the steps of the house and cracked open the vault door to start a FUNDRED making fury. As some of us helped the kids with their FUNDRED artworks, the first of the anticipated 6000 FUNDREDS needed to entirely cover the walls were nailed on with gold tacks.
…the dancing, celebrating, and FUNDRED making continued ’til late in the evening and a good time was had by all!
Want to learn more about FUNDRED and PAYDIRT? Watch the videos.
More to come on the FUNDRED/PAYDIRT National Press Conference soon. Follow the project at www.fundred.org.
Mel Chin’s FUNDRED in San Francisco
Last Saturday, San Francisco Bay Area educators came together at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park to learn about FUNDRED/PAYDIRT, an important and compelling project initiated by Mel Chin (Season 1).
FUNDRED National Coordinator, Mary Rubin, delivered a dynamic presentation about some of Mel Chin’s other community artworks including the multi-facted installation project, Recolecciones, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in San Jose, CA.
Educators received a special FUNDRED operative kit, which includes all of the tools needed to implement the project with students this fall. Our community hopes to generate over 5,000 FUNDREDS to contribute to the vault, and we look forward to the armored truck’s pick-up visit in 2009. Students at our local collection center, Rooftop K-8 Alternative School, are studying jazz this year and plan to greet the truck in true New Orleans style.
To learn more about the FUNDRED/PAYDIRT project, visit www.fundred.org.
We have more FUNDRED operative kits to distribute. If you are an educator in California, leave a comment below with your email address. We’ll be happy to recruit you as a West Coast FUNDRED operative.
Mel Chin | “Paydirt”
EXCLUSIVE: Mel Chin describes the origins and motivations behind the nationwide art project Paydirt in a keynote address to the 2008 National Art Education Association Convention, and visits multiple sites in New Orleans adversely affected by both Hurricane Katrina and lead contamination in the soil.
New Orleans is the second most lead contaminated city in the United States. Discovering that “the disaster was in the soil before the disaster,” Chin felt he had to do something about it as an artist. Speaking before a crowd of thousands of art educators from across the country, Chin recounts, “I remember standing in the ruins of the Ninth Ward and realizing as a creative individual that I felt hopeless and inadequate. And I was flooded by this terrible insecurity that being an artist was not enough to deal with the tragedy that was before me.” Thus Paydirt, and its sister initiative, the Fundred Dollar Bill Project was born.
Fundred focuses on the creation of three million artworks (personal drawings based on the likeness of a one hundred dollar bill) by children across the United States. These artworks, a collective creative action, will be delivered to Washington D.C. to raise awareness and funding for Paydirt. Ultimately Paydirt intends to heal the environmental impact of years of pollution on a city-wide scale. As Chin explains:
