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

Kara Walker, "A Warm Summer Evening in 1863", 2008. Wool tapestry with hand cut felt silhouette figure, 5' 9" x 8' 2". Edition of 5. ©Kara Walker. Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery, Banners of Persuasion, and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

This week in Art21 artist news we have two tapestry makers, a silk archway, the master of Cremaster, an artist who likes to do laundry, a magical sound installation, environmental issues, creative explosions, and more.

• Opening January 8 at James Cohen Gallery, Demons, Yarns & Tales features hand-woven tapestries created by thirteen contemporary artists: Kara Walker (Season 2), Shahzia Sikander (Season 1), avaf, Peter Blake, Gary Hume, Jaime Gili, Francesca Lowe, Beatriz Milhazes, Paul Noble, Grayson Perry, Fred Tomaselli, Gavin Turk, and Julie Verhoeven. The exhibition was created by the London-based art organization, Banners of Persuasion, who commissioned each artist to design a tapestry, a medium foreign to his or her usual practice. Walker’s A Warm Summer Evening in 1863 uses an image published in Harpers Magazine during the American Civil War, captioned “The Destruction of the Coloured Orphan Asylum on 5th Avenue.” A black silhouette of a lynched female figure hangs in front of this scene. The exhibition will be on view through February 13.

• Renaissance Unframed, an exhibition at Carolina Nitsch Project Room in New York, consists of twenty-five encaustic drawings on muslin and two companion bronze sculptures by Season 3 artist Richard Tuttle. Tuttle’s drawings “explore fabric as a medium to receive color and as a tool to direct its movement” and the bronze works “represent the antithesis of the fabric on the wall.” The fabric pieces are rotated every 2 weeks with only five works being shown at a time. The exhibition is on view through January 9.

• On January 13, Season 2 artist Matthew Barney will speak at the Detroit Institute of Arts and discuss his newest project Khu, a performance and film loosely based on Norman Mailer’s 1983 novel, Ancient Evenings. Barney updates Mailer’s plot from an ancient Egyptian narrative to a present day account of reincarnation and rebirth set in an American landscape. Each chapter will be set in a different city and correspond to the seven stages of the soul’s departure from the body according to Egyptian mythology. The first chapter was performed in Los Angeles in 2007. The latest chapter takes place in Detroit. Barney’s lecture begins at 7pm; a (free) pass is required and can be obtained here.

• Through January 17, work by Season 1 artist Kerry James Marshall is on view at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art in the exhibition Heartland. The show features site-specific installations and performances as well as drawing, photography, and video by artists and collaboratives working in, and in response to, Detroit, Kansas City, and other cities and rural communities across the region. Also included in the exhibition are artists Carnal Torpor, Compass Group, Cody Critcheloe, Jeremiah Day, Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop, Design 99, Scott Hocking, Greely Myatt, Marjetica Potrč, Julika Rudelius, Artur Silva, Deb Sokolow, and Whoop Dee Doo.

• Gate (2005) by Season 2 artist Do-Ho Suh is now on view in the Los Angles County Museum of Art’s Korean art galleries. Made of translucent silk, the piece is a full-size rendering of one of the gates to the artist’s childhood home in Seoul. Suh’s father, the artist and scholar Suh Se-Ok, built the house based on the design of traditional Korean architecture of the 1880s.

• Rethink: Contemporary Art & Climate Change (part of the official culture program for the United Nations Climate Change Conference) is a collaboration of the National Gallery of Denmark, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, and Moesgård Museum. The exhibition includes more than 25 artists spread across the four venues. Each space is dedicated to a different theme: Relations, The Implicit, Kakotopia, and Information, respectively. At the Nat’l Gallery of Denmark, A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear, a 2008 film by duo Allora & Calzadilla (Season 4) presents viewers with three scenes: gently flowing images of a lush river landscape, a dilapidated interior in an abandoned house, and footage of a young man who drums rhythmically on the slats of a Venetian blind. The piece, shot in New Orleans and on the Mississippi Delta, draws attention to the remaining wreckage of Hurricane Katrina. A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear is on view through April 5. (Note: each theme/venue closes on a different day; check the website for more information.)

• Season 2 artist Maya Lin unveiled her new video, Unchopping a Tree, in Copenhagen last week. This is the latest iteration of Lin’s larger and last memorial project, What is Missing? The video addresses deforestation prevention and sustainable reforestation to reduce carbon emissions and protect endangered species and habitats — watch it here.

• In Roberta Smith’s review of Days and Giorni by Bruce Nauman (Season 1) — two sound installations on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art — she writes: “Each piece consists of 14 recordings of seven people reciting the days of the week. Their voices are broadcast from 14 wafer-thin white speakers, around 23 inches square, arranged in seven facing pairs, one for each person’s voice. Each speaker is simply clipped to two wires strung tautly from floor to ceiling. It’s like paintings by Robert Ryman hanging on Fred Sandback’s string sculptures, and the effect is magical. Read more here.

• “A countdown began two minutes out. 90 seconds. One minute. 50 seconds. 40. 30. And so on. And then: fireworks! And then: fire! The blossom burned, glowing orange against the museum and the now dusky sky, and dark smoke billowed into the air. The crowd oohed and aahed.” Click here to read more about the recent “explosion events” by Season 3 artist Cai Guo-Qiang (as reported by Kris Wilton of Artinfo.com).

• Congratulations to Art21 artists Vija Celmins (Season 2), and Judy Pfaff (Season 4) who have been granted the United States Artists annual award for $50k.

• Season 4 artist Jenny Holzer has shared her morning routine, favorite household chore, travel rituals, and more with Times Magazine. Read her witty profile here.

• More on the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition of works by Gabriel Orozco (Season 2): Man of the World, The New Yorker; Pic of the Day: Gabriel Orozco’s Home Run, Flavorwire; and Gabriel Orozco: The Art of the Readymade, WNYC.

Tree Museum

We invited artist Katie Holten to write about her current project, Tree Museum, a public artwork in the Bronx, New York.  — Ed.

Katie Holten, "Tree Museum," Grand Concourse, Bronx, New York, 2009. Aerial view from the roof of the former Concourse Plaza Hotel.

I think it’s fair to say that Tree Museum is unlike most other recent public art projects in New York City. The scale of the project is huge and at ten miles in length, rivals that of recent blockbusters such as Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates (Central Park, 2005), Olafur Eliasson’s The New York City Waterfalls (NYC waterfronts, produced by the Public Art Fund, 2008) and PLOT: This World and Nearer Ones (Governor’s Island, produced by CREATIVE TIME, 2009). But the comparison ends there. In all other regards, the Tree Museum is a different species.

Almost invisible, the Tree Museum, which quietly opened on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx in June, makes the hidden elements of the street visible. At the root of my practice is an understanding that nature is not somewhere else. Nature is not far away on an abandoned island or in a prairie; it is everything around us, including the unforgiving city streets and the inherently urban communities of the South Bronx. These very streets are natural and this environment – our sidewalk, our block, our apartment building, and of course our street tree — is our place in the city.

Katie Holten, "Tree Museum," Grand Concourse, Bronx, New York, 2009

The Tree Museum invites pedestrians to experience the Bronx, and New York City, in unexpected ways. One hundred street trees, from 138th Street at the southern tip of the Grand Concourse to Mosholu Parkway at the northern tip, are the points of entry to this “museum-without-walls.”  The audio guide at the core of the Tree Museum links the natural and social ecosystems. The recorded voices and stories are used sculpturally to create an artwork whose roots reach down into the history of the place, while the branches spread out and offer insights into the resilient communities, fragile ecologies, and vibrant daily scenes to be found along the street.

I was commissioned in December 2007 to create a public artwork to celebrate the centennial of the four-and-a-half-mile stretch of the Grand Concourse, the historic boulevard connecting Manhattan to the parks of the north Bronx. I moved to New York City in 2004 on a Fulbright Scholarship to investigate nature and landscape in the urban context. I began working with street trees, as they are the most palpable connection most city dwellers have with nature.

I walked the Grand Concourse countless times and photographed the entire length, documenting the street through drawings of its trees.  On the one hand, I was taking my time, trying to get a grip on the scale of the most important boulevard in the borough.  On the other hand, I was forming a simple portrait of the Grand Concourse through the trees, some of which date back to before the Concourse was constructed. Throughout these months, I met hundreds of people, gathered stories and histories, and eventually these simple black and white line drawings developed into the Tree Museum.

Continue reading »

Word Games

Judy Pfaff- production still

Friends like to pass along quotes because they know I love them. I hang them on my office door, take them to the studio, use them as bookmarks, and read them when I’m taking a break from painting. I even torture my family with them.

Here’s one I received that was given to me at the beginning of the school year (which, by the way, feels like a long time ago already):

All the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow. – Grant Wood

Now don’t think I’m completely nuts- there’s a connection here. As we round out the first month or so of a new school year, a quote like Wood’s reminds us all to reach back and get some quiet from time to time in order to pull from the stillness new ideas, patience, a new perspective, or even a chance to soothe some of the daily stress that goes with teaching. Similar to what Wood describes, I find that taking a walk during a lunch break or finding some real quiet during all of the noise and general insanity can do wonders for my teaching, planning, and even my time at home after the day is done. It may not be as effective as milking a cow, but the calm of a slow walk on campus or simply tuning in to the hum of lights in the library can recenter us when we need it. And believe me, we all need it.

Weekly Roundup

Mary Heilmann, "Two Lane Blacktop" (below) and Tony Oursler, "Five Take Radius" (above), 2009. Courtesy of AIR, Art International Radio.

• Site-specific installations by Mary Heilmann (Season 5), Tony Oursler, Todd Eberle, and Sabina Streeter are currently on view at the Clocktower Gallery in Manhattan. This is the first group of installations at the space since it became the home of Art International Radio in January 2009. For Two Lane Blacktop, Heilmann has painted white lines down a black floor, turning a corridor of the Clocktower into “a displaced highway.” Just above her piece, Tony Oursler has lined the ceiling with eleven over-sized filament light bulbs that brighten and dim as recordings of the artist’s voice emanate from speakers overhead. The Clocktower is open to the public on Thursdays from 12pm to 5pm or by appointment.

• On the occasion of their 95th anniversary, Montclair Art Museum has mounted Out of the Vault. This year-long exhibition celebrates the Museum’s American and Native American art focus. Works by Barbara Kruger (Season 1), Kara Walker (Season 2), and Jenny Holzer (Season 4) are included in the 60 piece display.

• From August 25-November 21, Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois will present Reflection, a one video per day program featuring works by five artists: Andrea Zittel (Season 1), Phyllis Baldino, Patricia Esquivias, Alex Hubbard, and Glenn Ligon. Each video is scheduled for a specific day of the week; Andrea Zittel’s Small Liberties will screen on Fridays.

• Kandors (2000), a video by Season 3 artist Mike Kelley, will be shown in Switzerland as part of the 10-day St. Moritz Art Masters contemporary art program. The festivities begin Friday, August 21. Kelley’s work will be the focus of a panel discussion on Sunday, August 23.

• A newly commissioned collaboration between Mike Kelley and Michael Smith, titled A Voyage of Growth & Discovery, will open September 13 at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City, Queens. The installation comprises a two-and-a-half hour six-channel video of Smith’s character Baby IKKI, which he has performed for over thirty years. This is the first collaboration between Kelley and Smith who have been friends since 1975.

• On September 12, Bruce Nauman (Season 1) will bring his project Untitled (Leave the Land Alone) to fruition. Between 11:30am-12:30pm, the words “Leave the Land Alone” will be written across the Pasadena, California sky. Read more about Nauman’s project in the Los Angeles Times.

• Proud Flesh, a new book by Season 1 artist Sally Mann, investigates the bonds between husband and wife. Mann’s sole subject is her husband of 39 years, Larry. This body of nude studies, photographed over a six-year period, will be on view at Gagosian Gallery in New York beginning September 15.

• The Wall Street Journal and Artinfo.com report that Polaroid’s art collection will be auctioned off by Sotheby’s. Polaroid filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late last year. Their collection includes work by William Wegman (Season 1) who, like other well-known artists, used Polaroid’s large-format, 235 pound instant camera for special projects.

Talking with Students about Christian Marclay’s “Video Quartet”

Christian Marclay, still from "Video Quartet," 2002

With the opening of Christian Marclay’s Video Quartet at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University (on view through July 26, 2009), I have been thinking about how to share this 14-minute video work of art with students.

For educators, I think there is often a reluctance to discuss video art on tours. Sometimes there are logistical issues in terms of time and sequencing, while at other times, the narrative of the video poses challenges. However, works like Video Quartet—videos that can be watched for a portion of time and then discussed—offer possibilities for meaningful exchanges with students and exposure to this medium.

I developed some strategies to discuss Video Quartet after hearing a talk from educator Denise Gray. In regards to looking at video art with students, she emphasized a structured interaction, such that it includes time to experience the work, as well as the conditions in which to discuss it. The discussion portion sometimes requires you to step away from the work, or even outside of the gallery where it is being shown. These comments might be helpful for talking about video art by Art21 artists Matthew Barney, Pierre Huyghe, Mike Kelley, and Paul Pfeiffer.

Before entering the gallery showing Video Quartet, I introduce students briefly to what they will see: a collage of over 700 film clips of sounds edited together by the artist Christian Marclay to create a musical composition—a quartet. I mention that they will watch about five minutes of this 15-minute work. I also ask students to look for something specific: the various ways in which sounds are made, as well as how the image of the sound fits with the recorded sound.

A recent group of eighth graders, upon viewing part of Video Quartet, discussed “traditional music,” and how combined sounds—such as those made by car horns, feet tapping, and glasses filled with water—also create a type of music. The musical possibilities of car horns caused many of them to view the sound in new ways.

Marclay’s process to create Video Quartet was also something they wanted to discuss. While they were familiar with collage, seeing a collage made with video allowed them to think about repetition and arrangement in new ways. One student said how she thought the four screens was a really engaging choice, and another commented on how the clips on different screens competed for his attention. Through this work, Marclay also demonstrates an interest in the memory that viewers may have with some of these movies—which is something else that the students picked up on, recognizing films including Back to the Future and The Addams Family.

In addition to talking with students about this work, we plan to facilitate a drawing activity for summer K-12 tours where students draw the pattern of a sound or sounds they choose to focus on, creating an alternate image to accompany the sound and image pairing that Marclay produced. At our May Family Day, we also had stations where students could experiment with the mixing and editing process, creating their own song using an application called Super Duper Music Looper.

In our media-saturated lives, Christian Marclay reminds us to question the relationships that we are presented with—the sounds and images edited together for films. I also feel he encourages viewers to think creatively about ways in which they can change their role from being a consumer to being a producer.

Julie Thomson is the Associate Curator of Education at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University where she develops materials for docents and teachers to use with K-12 audiences.

Pride: Golden Lion Awarded to Bruce Nauman’s “Topological Gardens”

Installation shot of Bruce Nauman, "Pink and Yellow Light Corridor (Variable Lights)," 1972. Pink and yellow fluorescent lights. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Panza Collection, 1991. 91.3828 © 2009 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo credit: Michele Lamanna, courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art.

I have never thought of myself as susceptible to patriotism, but for the second time this year, I’ve felt proud to be an American.  The first incident of pride stemmed from the victory of a certain groundbreaker whose name begins with a “B” and ends with “arack Obama.” Incident number two occurred this weekend, when the United States Pavilion received the Golden Lion Award for Best National Participation in the 53rd Venice Biennale, honoring a certain artist who was featured in the inaugural season of Art:21 (2001). Ahem! Given my previous post’s shameless rhapsodizing on the bewitching beauty of Venice, you will probably not be surprised when I say that my favorite works in the Biennale are those that engage in some way with the magical surrounding city. Perhaps the committee that selected Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens for this exciting award shared my sentiment, since the very structure of the exhibition is rooted in a rich and exciting interplay with the history, geography, architecture, and people of Venice.

Biennalers (as I have taken to calling them) have been lining up since last week outside the American Pavilion in the Giardini.  Sometimes they chatted with each other, sometimes they scanned the surrounding area, but mostly they just stared straight ahead, their eyes fixed on the spiraling neon text piece that is visible through the doorway.  You know the one, it’s titled The True Artist Helps the World By Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign).  In this case, it is a window sign rather than a wall sign, hung in front of the arched glass on the far side of the Pavilion’s foyer, facing outward. This orientation means that viewers entering the pavilion read the words backwards, and only those walking outside the rear of the pavilion can read the text the “right” way.  Thus the glowing pink and blue work draws viewers into the pavilion, only to suggest that they go outside of it again.

Bruce Nauman, "The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign)," 1967. Neon, edition a/p, 59 x 55 x 2 inches, SW 99073. Private Collection. Courtesy Sperone Westwater.

Indeed, brochures, posters, banners, and even t-shirts worn by the exhibition’s security guards explicitly direct viewers to continue their experience of Bruce Nauman’s four-decade oeuvre at two additional sites outside of the official American Pavilion. In case you consider skipping these excursions outside the Giardini, you are sure to be dissuaded from your laziness when you learn that the only new pieces of the 30-odd works in the sprawling exhibition are found in these off-site…sites. The new works, entitled Giorni and Days, are installed at the Universita Ca’Foscari, and the Universita Iuay di Venezia, respectively. Each piece is comprised of seven white panels facing each other, extending across a long corridor. The pairs of panels emanate different voices reading out days of the week, in order, over and over. As you might guess, the disembodied voices of  Giordini recite the days in Italian, while Days is, yep, in English.

I have to admit, when I first learned that the American pavilion had spread Nauman’s works across three separate locations–a Biennale “first”—I was concerned that it might be an art-world version of American imperialism. Upon experiencing the diasporal exhibition, however, it became clear that these installations were, in fact, functioning in a way that destabalizes the very notion of borders, segregation, and hierarchy. Moreover, the works strive to fully integrate Nauman’s work into the exquisite context of Venice, in a way that enhances both the work and its surroundings. This is especially true for the new works, which were created specifically for this context, in collaboration with the students at the universities that house them.  Not only do the rows of white rectangles visually mirror the glowing windows that line the corridor around Giorni, but the voices themselves are those of the students, and were recorded in Venice. The repetitition of the names of days not only conjures repetition in Nauman’s blinking signs and looping videos, but also the repetition of meditation. Given that the building was originally a convent, I feel that Nauman intends to reference Venice’s broader history of transition from private palaces and religious institutions to public buildings for visitors and learners. In turn, this seems to echo his own process of expanding private studio revelations to public installations.

Installation shot of Bruce Nauman, "Days," 2009. Audio (fourteen channels); continuous play; one audio source consisting of seven stereo audio files with fourteen speakers. Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York © 2009 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo credit: Michele Lamanna, courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In his Art:21 segment, Nauman reveals, “I don’t generally think about large audiences. I think about, ‘who would I like to show this to?’ Who that came over to visit would I say, ‘Let me show you this…’” Whether it becomes a sign, or a projection, or a loud voice in a large space, Nauman’s work always gives the feeling that you are experiencing, in a very public way, something that is terribly intimate. In the context of the very grand Venice Biennale, this tension becomes even more exaggerated, and the work is that much more striking.

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.

O hai :: Approaches + Modes

Nicholas O'Brien, Untitled still from an ongoing project made with Google SketchUp, 2009.

I thought before I get really started the guest blogging here, I’d speak a little bit about my intentions/directions/plans. BEFORE that, however, I’d like to thank Kelly Shindler for giving me this great opportunity as well as fellow Art21 bloggers and staff for their continued efforts and insight.

Although I hope not to linger too often on my own personal work while blogging here, I feel the need to provide slight context for what I will hopefully discuss. The easiest way I see myself establishing this context is through a brief examination of what I’m working on.

My academic and artistic practice (and these should be seen as being mutually influential or one in the same) filters through many sub-genres of what has often times been commonly dubbed newMedia Art (I prefer this spelling for reasons I might get into during my visit). Although I am sometimes in conflict with this classification and its specificity for mostly digitally-based artworks (according to some), I find it to be the most appropriate genre for me to identify with. Although my work encompasses Super-8mm film, photography, sound, performance, video, video games, and installation, I still feel most at home with wanting to associate with newMedia, even when the medium in which I’m working in is not often considered part of this genre, or even particularly “new.” In other words I feel as though newMedia is based more on ideology than on technology.

Nicholas O'Brien, Untitled still from a video sketch made in 2009.

With this in mind, what draws me to newMedia, and what I will be hopefully discussing her , is its possibility for multidisciplinary production. Recently, one primary concern deals with “the virtual.” In typical newMedia art narratives, the virtual is a common semantic replacement for cyberspace, or more simply the WWW. For my practice, however, I’m more interested in how/why this notion of the virtual has been primarily limited to digital experiences in cyberspace. In doing so, this bracketing overlooks a larger art historical discourse concerning representation in general being a virtual process. Virtuality extends beyond cyberworlds, refracting into different prisms; sculpted space, identity politics associated to land(scape), and memory. I feel as though we’re now seeing that the re-translation of virtual experience into physical manifestations is in disproportion to the initial transcription of ourselves into virtual realms; the machine is imperfect, the input is not (or is no longer) equal to the output. Our virtual selves contain more substance than our fleshy counterparts. We embody our tech more than we do our organs. To quote Erik Davis, “We have been cyborgs since year zero.”

Although I’m speaking somewhat abstractly (let’s get used to it), I plan on discussing these discrepancies through looking at works that are personally influential, as well as ones that represent/exemplify several stances on reconsidering the relationship between virtual spaces. Some approaches to this agenda include conversing about obsolescence (physical and cultural), art games/indie games, the disintegration/fabrication (a mutually implicated binary for me) of architectural space, rediscovering/reconsidering Home, reprogramming media myths, and exploring alternative histories(hystories) for newMedia Art.

Nicholas O'Brien, composite still from the Half-Life2 Game engine, made in 2009.

That all being said, one of the most distinct ways that I choose to trudge through this swampy mire is through Play. I love discussing Play (note capitalization, please) as an abstract ideal of cultural production. Play is enabling, empowering, and distinct in that it allows for a type of cultural liquidity that is hard to find in stringent artmaking. How can lolCats, OULIPO, Voltron, Half-Life2, and Philip Glass all be put on the same cultural pedestal without determining each element as pejoratively more or less culturally important? I’m not necessarily going to be providing answers for this, but I feel as though attempting to ask the question is testament to the subject material that I address in my work. The polymorphic significance of these different zones relate to the cultural leveling Barthes proposes in his examination of Wrestling (in Mythologies). I wish not to just analyze or observe anthropologically, I wish to engage (both skeptically and in celebration) how these environments or frameworks encourage and reinforce the importance of Play. To be able to weave through, without misappropriating/misrepresenting, these various lo(l)cals of Play is something that I hope I’m able to convey during my time with Art21.

It Takes Two…. or Two Hundred

Production still from "Art:21" Season 4 segment featuring Mark Dion

Recently I saw the Mark Dion segment from Season 4 for the sixth or seventh time. I love the Dion segment. I was sharing the video with teachers in a small, informal workshop introducing ways of working with Art21 in the classroom. During the discussion, we talked about the fact that many, many contemporary artists rely on others, sometimes hundreds of others, in order to realize their work. On my way home that evening, I started thinking about the number of artists in Season 4 alone that rely on other people to make their work ready for public viewing and/or consumption. The total number? Fifteen out of the seventeen, at least, rely on others to bring their work full circle into the gallery, museum, or exhibition space.

I mention this fact because it came up in discussion more than once over the past week that the days of artists working alone in a studio, tortured with their ideas and feverishly slaving over canvas, are slowly coming to an end. Artists are collaborating more and more, and using teams to realize ideas that would be impossible to complete on their own.

In a few days, I plan to visit Allora and Calzadilla’s new exhibit/performance at Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea. The idea to cut a hole in a grand piano and have someone stand inside and play is one thing. Actually making it happen requires more than two artists with a beautiful idea. And without musicians (able to play the keyboard upside down, no less) performing on a regular schedule, their work would be a series of still photos and cheesy background music.

Students in art classes today are most often engaged with working on projects alone. Why do so many teachers resist collaboration? Is it solely the organizational challenges? We’re certainly aware of the benefits it offers to both students and ourselves. How can we overcome the fear of planning collaborative work to more realistically reflect contemporary practice?