fantastic heliotherapy

On Making

Make More Bad Art

April 8, 2013 – 2:42 am

Make more bad art.

My roommate and I scrawled this sentence on our living room wall on New Year’s Day 2008. This injunction from myself remains as pertinent today as it did then. Wise words Alex and Madeline of the past.

***

Sometime last year I turned against painting, the activity that has provided me with solace and satisfaction since I was old enough to hold a dried-out marker, dunk it in poster paint, and scrawl all over a piece of paper. I didn’t want to see a paint brush, let alone pick it up or think about what I might do with it. The strength of my revulsion mirrored the strength of my awe when, during college, I discovered the creative power I wielded with a small collection of colored tubes and a stick with animal hair at one end.

There are a whole collection of reasons why I took an extended hiatus from painting last year, (a hiatus that continues, though ideas are simmering and stirring) but one is the very simple factor that my critical inner voice drowned out my inner cheerleader.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s Late Bloomers, a lovely piece about the different speeds at which artists find their rhythm, Gladwell points out that not all successful artists storm out of the gate at the age of 23 and many don’t hit their stride until they are in their 40s, 50s or 60s. This is an encouraging truth for any living artist, but one of the unsettling conundrums of the article is that the failures that occur as part of the experimental process on the way to something great, look a lot like the failures of someone who just isn’t going to cut it. And how do you know the difference between the two?

When Robert Hughes died in August of last year, a number of newspapers published collections of this iconoclastic critic’s quotes. One quote in particular grabbed my attention:

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is given to the less talented as a consolation prize.”

This is a lovely thought, but I am immediately reminded of a character in Good Omens (a cult fantasy novel that served as fount of wisdom in my family) who believes she is anorexic because every time she looks in the mirror she does, indeed, see a fat woman. Though a cruel joke against this woman, the authors are making a very succinct point about humans’ capacity for self-delusion and the need for occasional harsh truths.

So, i’m back to the question of how does an artist know the difference between legitimate self-doubt and overly critical self-doubt?

Apparently it is fairly common to reach this point–a wall of exhaustion, self-recrimination and perhaps hopelessness–and possibly a lot of what separates the success stories from the failures is how you deal with this wall and the enshrouding doubt. Can you power through like a marathon runner, embracing the pain, and win through sheer determination? Or do you see the wall and think “I’ve already hit my head on a couple of things like that, and it really hurt. This time I will have a picnic in the shade and not worry too much about the other side.” In other words, do you continue to hustle and dream, or do you decide to go work in an office, get health benefits and take your weekends off? (Or is there a magical compromise? I hope to find it and report back from the land of creative and monetary fulfillment.)

I suspect that the difference between legitimate self-doubt and overly critical self-doubt is that the first one pushes the process deeper while the second one stops the work from happening at all. And I would like to think that the difference between bad art on the road to something good and bad art on the road to more failures is just a matter of time. The only way to know is to make more art, bad or otherwise.

Tags doubt, Malcolm Gladwell, Robert Hughes | Permalink | Comments (7)

New York

Tell Me Something I Don’t Know, Give Me Something I Need

March 31, 2013 – 4:06 am

Robin Tewes in her studio.

“You don’t choose art; you do it because you have to,” declares Robin Tewes, repeating the advice she gives her art students. Whenever I hear that sentiment I get nervous; could I have done something else or would all roads have led to the studio? In Robin’s case the answer seems clear; the paintings in her studio (which include a portrait of well-known performance artist Carollee Schneeman), the works from other established artists hanging throughout her apartment, and the gorilla mask tucked onto a shelf, demonstrate her long time commitment to New York and the art community here. And to her habit of saying exactly what she thinks.

(L) Another Tasteful Discussion of Contemporary War
(R) Solitary Confinement

Robin paints in a flat, representational style that is reminiscent of Magritte. In an older work, Pink on Pink, a pink bedroom that is empty except for a woman’s handbag on the bed, Robin scratched text into the paint which included pronouncements by Suprematist painter Kazimir Malevich (who made a series of white on white paintings) interspersed with the more mundane concerns of every day life. The painting suggests that abstraction based upon revolutionary theory is all very well and everything, but what about the real world of sex, money, and embarrassing personal problems?

Abstract Art #1

In Abstract Painting I, Robin makes light of the serious, male-dominated tradition of Abstract Expressionism and its offspring. ”I grew up admiring those guys, but now…I want some content. The form is just a bucket for me to pour my ideas into.” She looks at a painting of a graffiti covered wall and a trash can “or the waste paper basket in which I can throw my crumpled up pieces of thoughts.” Those thoughts meander between sharp critiques of New York and art world society, to the more personal experiences of relationships, motherhood, and loss. Like a seasoned New Yorker, the paintings have a tough, slick, and well put together exterior, which belie the neurosis and struggles contained within. At their most successful, the paintings manage to be direct, witty, and tenderly revealing.

In recent years she has incorporated glitter, neon and iridescent paints into the compositions. “It is playful, for the joy of it; the opposite of what Malevich would ever approve of!” This attitude is particularly clear in a recent series that mourns the passing of Robin’s mother. The paintings aren’t without sadness, but they also let loose and celebrate her mother’s life, as she gradually fades into a world of bright and fragmented abstraction; a world that is aggressively flat and hard to absorb.

(L) I Want to be a Housewife, I Want to be a Widow. (R) Tell me Something I Don't Know, Give me Something I Need.

(L) I Want to be a Housewife, I Want to be a Widow.
(R) Tell me Something I Don’t Know, Give me Something I Don’t Have.

What makes Robin’s paintings particularly strong is her use of text that is both slyly observant and painfully honest. The picture of the waste paper basket is at first glance, merely empty and melancholy, but slowly the text reveals itself. The graffiti reads: “All I want is my equal and then some. I want an adult unconditional love.” Into the garden wall the artist has scratched: “Tell me something I don’t know, Give me something I don’t have,” a demand that could be made of a partner or of a work of art. It really doesn’t seem like a lot to ask, but Robin’s work suggests that those desires are very often disappointed.

Tags figurative, Painting, Robin Tewes, The Guerrilla Girls | Permalink | Comment (0)

New York

Stars explode around you…

February 25, 2013 – 10:02 pm

Ragnar Kjartansson, The Visitors, 2012
Nine channel HD video projection.
Image courtesy of Luhring Augustine.

Pulling back the black curtain and stepping into the darkness, we were quickly enveloped by a lulling, melancholy melody. ”Stars explode around you, and there’s nothing, no nothing you can do…” sang a chorus of voices. My friend and I turned to each other with broad smiles on our faces. After this brief moment of acknowledgement that we had happened upon something wonderful, we each slipped among the crowd and into The Visitors.

The installation of Ragnar Kjartansson’s piece at Luhring Augustine gallery in Chelsea, is comprised of ten large videos that are projected into the gallery walls and onto both sides of a screen that divides the space. In nine of the ten videos, a single musician is alone in a room, playing their part of a collective melody. In the tenth video, a group of people mill around on the porch of a large, Hudson Valley farmhouse, seemingly listening to the music and occasionally adding their voices to the chorus. This group provided context, an internal audience, and a little distance: the haunting sweetness of the melody, the mournful poetry (by artist Ásdis Sif Gunnarsdóttir) of the lyrics, and the intensity of the visuals were almost overwhelming, so a retreat to the porch provided a welcome break.

Installation View. Ragnar Kjartansson, The Visitors, 2012
Nine channel HD video projection.
Image courtesy of Luhring Augustine.

Each musician infused the simple words and melody with their own sensibility, a detail that the artist retained by keeping the sound tracks separate. As a viewer, I was free to roam within the space, finding a sweet spot where I seemed to be in the room with both the emotionally raw accordion player and the grounded, bluesy pianist, or allowing myself the voyeuristic pleasure of watching the guitarist (who, it turns out, is the artist) forlornly strumming in the bath. The videos are carefully composed, full of interesting visual details (birds flocking across a bedroom wall, the curve of a wooden banister, the bright blue inside of full kitchen cabinets) that seem to echo the tone and body language of the separate room’s inhabitant, enhancing the sense that the musicians are in their own little worlds.

Ragnar Kjartansson, The Visitors, 2012
Nine channel HD video projection.
Image courtesy of Luhring Augustine.

Though the musicians played alone, they were all connected via headphones and wires that snaked around the wooden furniture and delicate antiques. At one moment, one guitar player set down his instrument to go share a cigarette and a drink with his buddy in the next room, where they then harmonized as the music swelled around us. The freedom of the performers, the “in-the-round” set-up, and the single, unedited take, gave the video(s) a feeling similar to live theater–a living, breathing spectacle, rather than a video to speculate upon from a safe distance.

The choice of an upstate farmhouse was perfect, not only because of the warm, ramshackle decor, but because upstate is where so many New Yorkers (artists or otherwise) go to escape the city. This felt like a little slice of an artist’s retreat, smuggled back into the heart of New York’s gallery scene

The show closes March 9th. Go see it if you can.

Tags installation, music, video | Permalink | Comment (0)

New York

An Existential Survival Kit

January 31, 2013 – 5:48 pm

First Work Set (1963–69)

This past Friday, the Museum of Modern Art presented a demonstration of First Work Set (1963–69) by Franz Erhard Walther. The piece is a collection of canvas bundles, suggestive of army tents or boat rigging, complete with an over sized life vest. The bundles are labeled with simple directives or descriptions such as “for two people,” or “standard object.” But as I looked carefully, I noticed that one is labeled “to forget” and another, more ominously, “to understand brutality.” What knowledge could be wrapped up in that deceptively simple package?

This is early “relational” art, in the best sense of the word. Franz was among the artists in the sixties who pioneered our current trend for art that examines the space between individuals or art that is “activated” by an interaction with the viewer. For some of the elements, the rules of engagement are clearly determined by the piece’s shape—such as the cloth covered masonite that hung from the neck of two intimately connected strangers (an early forebear of Liz Nurenberg’s wearable sculptures for two), or the long strip with a forearm shaped pocket—but some of the canvas shapes are more ambiguous, requiring invention from the viewer/audience.

The need for invention, and the viewer interactions that arose out of the demonstration exemplified why this kind of work is important–it jostles the brain, makes people feel a little silly, and presents very simple suggestions for seeing the world differently.

Though not technically a drawing ( a work on paper), this piece was in the Recent Acquisitions in Drawings exhibit because it is accompanied by a lengthy series of sketches. These pieces work symbiotically with the canvas objects, serving as a guide for use and a record of “the inner view” of the work–as Franz noted, “what happens within the person who experiences the piece, cannot be recorded by a camera.” The drawings were visually interesting and playful, giving an insight into Franz’s inner logic and mental meanderings.

For many artists the definition of drawing is less about the materials used and more about the intention: a drawing is an idea, an impetus in its most direct or basic form, or the process of seeing clearly. I have heard artist’s refer to a sound drawing, or been shown a drawing made of hair. By this definition, Franz’s canvas pieces were themselves drawings: activities for seeing clearly the elements of sculpture; actions that revealed their internal logic with no frills attached.

At the end of the two hour demonstration I approached the artist and asked him about the brutality bundle. He gave me an enigmatic smile but brushed my question aside saying that it “marked a moment in time” but really had nothing to do with the piece. I felt deflated, but not totally surprised–what sort of explanation or intimate revelation was I imagining I would receive during the rushed, post-performance hub-bub?

Since the performance, I find myself inventing canvas-bound scenarios which could potentially reveal the meaning of human cruelty, the mechanics of love or how to forget unwanted pain. And I try to imagine the circumstances of the brutality bundle’s creation. Did Franz experience brutality personally or was he at a safely contemplative distance? Is the sculpture dangerous? Or is the brutality totally abstracted? The art continues unfolding in my head, though the objects themselves are back somewhere in MoMA’s vast vaults.

This circling of thoughts, this potential for poetry, and possibility for answers that will always be just out of reach– that in itself is a survival kit.

Tags drawings, performance | Permalink | Comment (0)

Los Angeles

Arts Matter: The best of the rest from 2012

January 1, 2013 – 9:29 pm

To wrap up 2012 and bound into 2013 without any baggage, here, in mostly chronological order, are the interesting images I have collected over the year, of art works that I experienced but didn’t end up writing about at the time.

I attended a heartening number of solid shows at artist-run spaces. Among the highlights were Liz Nurenberg‘s wearable sculptures and MUC‘s Carnival of Insecurities. Both these art events grabbed me with their honest embrace of dysfunction and their humorous yet earnest solutions.

THEEVERYMANY (Marc Fornes) Y/Struc/Surf 2010

This piece in the Centre Pompiduo represents a growing field of applying computer programming and generative processes to art and design. Flashy design technology probably won’t remain that interesting or cutting edge for long, but Everymany is leading the field in visually impressive directions.

Ahmed Mater, Magnetism.
(c) Ahmed Mater and the Trustees of the British Museum

Part of the British Museum’s Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam, an exhibition which explored the history of the pilgrimage to Mecca, Ahmed Mater’s striking sculpture of iron filings surrounding a small magnet, eloquently captured the collective energy and awe of not only the hajj, but of belonging to the Islamic faith.

Exploring Liz Glynn’s “Anonymous Needs and Desires,” part of her installation at the Hammer Biennial.

Liz Glynn’s installation at the Hammer’s Made in LA biennial, balanced visual pleasure with a science museum’s hands-on exploration. It was smart but approachable, grounded in current events but nuanced and open ended, without the unpleasant aftertaste of a political diatribe.

The LA public bus emblazoned with Barbara Kruger’s words makes me happy every time I see it; not only is it a splash of visual excitement when stuck in traffic, but it also proclaims loudly the importance of education in eradicating prejudice, encouraging empathy, developing self-confidence and building a healthy society. This is the first bus in the LA Fund’s year-long Arts Matter campaign, hoping to raise $1.5 million for arts education. Yes, apparently the greater metropolis and our city’s politicians need reminding that the arts matter, as absurd as that may seem to me.

In addition to the success of Arts Matter, I have some other art related wishes for 2013, just in case the universe is listening.

To interview Wangechi Mutu. Her December show at Susan Vielmetter Gallery used collage to powerful effect. One piece very specifically referred to traditional African masks and rituals, and I hesitate to interpret the piece myself–a conversation with the artist is the obvious solution.

To see a really great painting show. One that delights, inspires and moves me, or stirs something that I don’t understand. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

A trip to either Amsterdam or Accra. I’m always itching to travel and see new work, but there are particularly exciting things happening in these cities. On a more achievable scale, while on the east coast this spring I hope to visit Amalia Pica’s show in Boston, this exhibition at Princeton and squeeze in the current Picasso exhibition at the Guggenheim.

A Fantastic Heliotherapy logo. Any graphic designers looking to trade skills?

Some clarity. I started this blog at the beginning of 2012 with the tentative sense that I had some things to say and didn’t want to wait until someone asked my opinion. I am still figuring out if this counts as criticism, what is interesting to readers and where to point my nose. Your feedback is truly appreciated.

With that, into 2013 we go!

Tags MoMA, relational | Permalink | Comment (0)

Los Angeles Studio Visits

Some Say Ice

December 14, 2012 – 6:21 pm

Dai Toyofuku, Glacier, 2012

What can one artist do, in one day, to save the planet?

For Dai Toyofuku’s performance piece Glacier, which took place at the Eagle Rock Recreation Center during the height of the summer heat wave, the artist temporarily turned himself and his car into “glaciers”—structures draped with tarps that were then painted white. Over the course of the five hour performance/experiment, Toyofuku stayed inside his “human glacier,” and carefully recorded the temperatures inside the human glacier, the car glacierist, a control car and outside. At the peak of the day it was 15 degrees Fahrenheit cooler inside the human glacier than outside, and 30 degrees cooler in the car glacier than the control car.

For five hours, Dai Toyofuku successfully contributed to the cooling of the earth. It was an absurd yet earnest act.

The absurdity was inspired by the very real claim of Nobel Prize winning physicist Stephen Chu that painting roofs white and manufacturing “cooler” colored cars could dramatically reduce global warming. Within this context, Toyofuku’s gesture becomes a way to raise awareness, make scientific theory approachable and render the specter of climate change less abstract and overwhelming.

The execution of the glaciers was quick and dirty, more a child’s sketch of a glacier (a big white triangle) than something scientifically or visually accurate. Placing these homemade glaciers in the Southern California landscape, Dai drew attention to their foreignness. Though they hold a strong role in our cultural story, glaciers remain unreal, almost mythological, to most people–especially on a hot summer day. However, we have to be able to hold multiple landscapes in our minds simultaneously, imagining the totality of our planet and the long term consequences of seemingly harmless choices, if we are going to start really digesting what climate change does and could mean.

This cognitive collapse of space and experience also happens in the Parts (un)known collage works of Sara Schnadt. She created these collages for an installation and performance work that tracked her personal travel history through found images, but now Schnadt is beginning to explore the collages as works in their own right.

One that caught my eye, and acts as a nice visual accompaniment to Dai’s performance, is a juxtaposition of a glacial landscape with what looks to be a piece of farm equipment, obscured by a tarp, sitting in a hot dry landscape. My focus is magnetically drawn to the single tentative point of contact—the impossible space which connects hot with cold, the untouchable arctic and some obscure, unreachable past.

This flattening of the world is not a new concept, but Schnadt’s personal approach creates compelling fictive spaces from the fragments of experience. I am a fellow nomad–someone who’s friends and family are regularly stretched over the globe and who’s working life happens in the intangible data-space between L.A. and Cameroon–so this bittersweet work hits home.

Parts (un)known, Sara Schnadt, 2012

A particularly haunting collage in the series connects together Berlin, Inverness, Afghanistan and Jerusalem. The way the spaces transition into each other is artfully done–the experience of viewing recedes into mist just as memory allows places and experiences to blend and soften. There are very specific and painful histories lying just below the surface, but these snapshots and postcards see the world through a tourist’s idealized and apolitical lens, speaking not to specific places but to the melding of longing and familiarity that permeates the experience of ex-pats and wanderers.

Parts (un)known, Sara Schnadt, 2012

Though with very different agendas, these two artists are addressing the ways we conceptualize and understand our relationship to the globe in its entirety. I want to be optimistic and claim that as we become more familiar with far away lands and people, we become more empathetic and have a larger sense of responsibility. But on the converse, the more information we have, the more overwhelming and hopeless things seem to feel. It is at the nexus of global responsibility, frustrated activism and instant gratification that Toyofuku’s performance makes sense.

So, just what can one person do, in one day, to have a positive impact on the planet?

Tags collage, environment, performance, Sculpture | Permalink | Comment (0)

Los Angeles

We Were Here

December 10, 2012 – 11:19 pm

The first time I remember imbuing a rock with personal meaning, I was twelve or thirteen. The stone was grey-pink and diamond shaped and came from beside a stile in the Lake District. It was picked up and handed unceremoniously to me by the boy I was hiking with. Though an almost invisible gesture–and one that thoroughly confused me at the time–six months later we built up the courage to hold hands. As often happens, life got in the way of that romance, but I think I still have the rock somewhere.

Behind the adverts commanding heterosexual men to formalize their feelings with sparkly stones that are really labor intensive (and probably morally problematic) to procure, I think there is a long held instinct to give another person a little piece of the Earth. That rock is a reminder that we were here, together, for one tiny chip out of eternity.

***

Carmine Iannoccone’s GravitySurfer Number 1. Found rock, paper and paint.

During the summer, a giant rock rolled into LA and took up its post at LACMA. Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass is intended to last for 30,000 years, standing to remind the post-apocalyptic residents of Southern California (which could one day be an island–just read the zine) of the larger forces, the expanse of art history, human mortality, and Michael Heizer’s genius.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, a much smaller rock arrived at a bookstore in LA’s Atwater village, in a gallery about twice the size of a shoe box.

Showbox LA exhibitions are small in scale, and last only a matter of hours. The organizers, artists Sophia Allison and Paul W. Evans, have created a venue which provides an alternative space and unique audience, but demands that artists address scale–not by making a miniature of what they would normally do, but thinking specifically about what they can accomplish in a table top setting. As no one can be inside the gallery itself, the crowd clusters around the edges and is forced into close proximity with each other and the artist. The exhibitions are almost performance pieces the artist is so much a part of the experience.

For I am the Gravity Surfer artist Carmine Iannaccone exhibited a rock and a portrait of that rock, separated by an abstract undulation of paper and paint. The first person stance of the title lets you know right away that this show is intimate in its intentions. The objects in the exhibition used the microscope of Carmine’s process–scale shifts, layer building and careful observation–to draw the viewer’s attention to the forces of physics and geology.

I am The Gravity Surfer, a one day installation organized by Shoebox LA

Carmine’s portrait of the rock does what any good portrait does—renders that individual unique and reminds us to look more carefully at the real thing when we see it. Carmine clearly spent hours observing the original and lovingly paint-sculpting a representation—a fresh view of something so ubiquitous that I normally forget to notice it. Like a shell picked off the beach, it is transformed into a particular and given momentary meaning.

The accompanying Accordion Fold zine meticulously renders the data and design of the universe personal and intriguing; the earth moves, experience accumulates and trees tell tales. What does that mean? I encourage you to email Carmine at iannacco@usc.edu with your mailing address for a free copy, and all will become clear.

Heizer’s big rock struck me as out of sync with the contemporary moment: though aesthetically appealing and thrilling for little kids (I watched a four-year-old girl run back and forth exclaiming “it’s just so big!”), the moment for machismo monuments came and went long before 2008′s financial collapse or 2012′s record high temperatures. I don’t think that I am alone in appreciating small scale art which gets me into conversation with my neighbors and asks me to think of myself as a surfer–someone momentarily riding the larger forces, completely present and listening, for just one small swell out of eternity.

The next Shoebox LA installation takes place on Saturday, December 15, from 4-7pm at Half Off Clothing Store in Los Feliz. I hope to see you there.

Tags alternative spaces, environment, LACMA, Painting, Sculpture | Permalink | Comment (0)

Los Angeles Short & Sweet

Forms & Flavors of Love

November 22, 2012 – 12:58 pm

It is time for the obligatory post of thankfulness. So who better to talk about than Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin? These two artists may not be the first who come to mind when you gather around the table and think about your blessings—hopefully some combination of love, good health and family—but if I move deeper, towards the central theme of those blessings, I think that an open eyed appreciation of the physical body, the pleasures and pains it can bring and the connection it affords us, are actually the perfect themes for a thanksgiving. Today, I am thankful for daring artists, for troublemakers, for people who refused shame or false piety and intertwined visual and physical pleasure. This is art that makes me thankful to be alive, in all my flawed and messy glory.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Rose, NYC (Y Portfolio), 1977, Gelatin Silver Print. (c) The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Currently on display at LACMA are Mapplehorpe’s X,Y and Z Portfolios, hung staggered above one another, like lines of free verse. Augmenting the literary sense of the work, the photographs are displayed with their portfolio cases and the original writings that were published with them: poems by Patti Smith and Paul Schmidt, and an essay by Edmund White. In this installation, beyond marveling at his formal skills, I understood the depth of Mapplethorpe’s classicism and the continuity between his darkly sexual still lives, the fragility of the body engaged in S&M rituals and the well-loved surface and forms of the black male nudes. Each portfolio tells a compelling story of it’s own, but together they are a revelation.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Jim, Sausilito. X Portfolio, 1977. Gelatin Silver Print. (c) The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

I am in Seattle for Thanksgiving, and have had the chance to visit the Seattle Art Museum’s survey show Elles:Women Artists from the Centre Pompidou, Paris which is accompanied by Elles:SAM, a major reinstallation of the museum’s own collections of modern and contemporary art that highlights the work of women artists. I’m going to save the feminist polemic for another day, but LA take note: your REI wearing sister to the north is ahead of you on this one.

Still from Heartbeat, 2000-2001 by Nan Goldin. Projection of 245 color slides in sequences of 4 plates accompanied by soundtrack of “Prayer of the Heart” by John Tavener, played by Björk and the Brodsky Quartet; duration 15’08″. Image courtesy of Seattle Art Museum and Centre Georges Pompidou.

Nan Goldin’s Heartbeat installation took me by surprise, not so much because it contains daringly explicit images of sex and nudity, but because I was so enraptured by a subject that, in the hands of a less sensitive photographer, could easily have been sleazy or dull. Bjork’s soundtrack seduced me into sitting down, but the unfolding stories of different couples kept me engaged. Without idealizing, air-brushing or simplifying, she shows the viewer the casual choreography of intimacy and the way people’s bodies and lives interlock. Yes, there is an aspect of voyeurism, but Goldin’s photos are a lesson in the forms and flavors of love–a lesson at least as old as Plato’s Symposium and still a relevant one. Especially at Thanksgiving.

Tags erotic, LACMA, photography, Seattle | Permalink | Comment (0)

Art Books Los Angeles

Join The Art Nerds, We Have Cookies

October 29, 2012 – 10:30 pm

Hello Victims: Ad Reinhardt by Brian Kennon, 2005, edition of 100

My ideal Saturday afternoon might involve unending cups of tea, a rotating selection of simple but gourmet cookies, interesting art, beautiful books and stimulating conversation. This weekend, For Your Art, the hole in the wall art gallery/project space that sits across the street from LACMA supplied all of these except the tea—though coffee and tequila were reasonable substitutes.

From 11am until 8pm the space hosted a series of presentations by artists, designers and curators on the topic of art books. For the three hours that I was present, the vibe was relaxed, with presentations lasting between 15 and 45 minutes. The arrival of a new type of cookie every hour—a premise which could have been overly twee or cloying–conjured the indulgence and intimacy of artists books while conveniently keeping the audience engaged through the constant injection of sugar.

Though a cousin of the zine movement, the artist book tends to be a labored, almost fetish level product and FYA’s event highlighted the attentiveness and commitment (dare I say obsession?) that fuels this particular brand of art practice. Having collaborated on a limited edition book last year, I was just as interested to learn more about the nuts and bolts of collaborative efforts, book design and distribution as I was to explore the content of the pieces presented.

Brian Kennon, the artist behind 2^nd Cannons Publications, talked about a number of his own works as well as the books by others that he has produced. I appreciated his hijacking of the catalog format to make a case for Ad Reinhardt as a herald of the zombie apocalypse, and was intrigued by the mixture of scrapbooked history and art world memoir that he created with New York based curator Bob Nickas. The pages of Bob’s anecdotes range from an artist’s advice that “people in the art world are basically sociopaths” to his own description of a Robert Smithson collage: “the earthwork as sci-fi monster movie.”

Spread from Heliogabalus by William E. Jones. Published by 2nd Cannons in 2009, edition of 500.

Following Kennon, came a conversation between artist William E Jones and LACMA curator Rita Gonzalez. This was my first in-depth introduction to Jones who’s conceptual and experimental work explores marginalization, often specifically in reference to American gay subculture. He discussed his Tearoom project–a film and accompanying book that re-purposes footage of men having sex in a public toilet, that was shot surreptitiously by Ohio police in 1962—as well as his book of censored WPA negatives, his tribute to decadent Roman Emperor Heliogabalus which intersperses official portraits with adverts from 70s magazine After Dark, and his footnoted parody of academic writing. I plan to consume them all.

Among others, I missed Lisa Anne Auerbach’s talk, but I was happy to discover that her project Bookshelf–a meander of a book, dedicated to the personal relationships that book lovers build with their collections–is available for download on her website.

An excerpt (K after the description refers to her decision to keep the book):

City of Quartz by Mike Davis
This seminal book about Los Angeles came out just before I moved here. Dan gave me this hardcover copy on my birthday in 1991. The inscription reads, “Happy Birthday and thank you for coming with me.” This is the first book I’d ever read about Los Angeles, and a great introduction to the area. I’ve re-read various chapters since I’ve been here, and always find something new and amazing out about the city. K

The Cyclist’s Manifesto by Robert Hurst
My father got me this book, which is really sweet. I haven’t read it. The book is subtitled “The Case for Riding on Two Wheels instead of Four” and I’m not sure I need to read that case. I’m pretty much convinced already. K

The Business of Charity: The Woman’s Exchange Movement 1832-1900 by Kathleen Waters Sander
I had never heard about this chapter of women’s labor history until I found this book. I bought it somewhere east, either Baltimore or Philadelphia, I don’t remember which. Women’s exchanges were a venue for selling hand-crafted goods on consignment. K

I found myself reading through almost all 21 pages of book descriptions and ephemera collected from within their pages, compelled by curiosity and voyeurism to hear her thoughts, see what she has read, and compare my own mental notes. I don’t know Lisa Anne well, but I admire her work and I adopted my cat from her, so I am probably at just the right distance to devour her bite-size reviews. I don’t know if a complete stranger would be interested.

This event at FYA was a town hall meeting of the local art world nerds: people who slave away on books that will have tiny audiences and make negligible profits, at best. So what is the appeal? As Lisa Anne’s book demonstrates, one strength of the artist’s book is that a limited edition or cheaply produced object only needs to appeal to an enthusiastic niche audience. I am drawn to the medium because art books are handheld art objects that get multiple private viewings. Making a book can enable an artist to write their own version of history or to engage in a form of institutional critique. To create and distribute a book doesn’t need approval from any higher power so the work can be irreverent, playful, pornographic, confusing, extremely personal–anything goes. The artist can have complete control.

I hope we see more events like this and that more artists explore the medium; it is fertile ground and there is plenty of room for newcomers. Join the art nerds! We have cookies.

Tags Artist books, Brian Kennon, For Your Art, Lisa Anne Auerbach, William E Jones | Permalink | Comment (1)

Los Angeles

Are you in the loop?

October 13, 2012 – 11:22 am

Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor, Googy (Courtesy of Charlie James Gallery), 2012. Photo by Kohl King.

I’m not usually one for superlatives, but the first incarnation of The Loop Show, which took place at the Beacon Arts Building last fall, was one of the most exciting group shows I saw in 2011. Carefully thought out, the show not only had a strong conceptual through line, but also addressed the particularities of the space—women dressed in curator China Adams’ Trash Garments guided viewers up and down the stairs; a large collage of cigarette packets by Robert Larson reflected the stained concrete of the warehouse space; an undulating installation by Anne Heironymous flowed seamlessly into the warehouse architecture —and brought together a group of artists with unique and divergent aesthetics.

Having been rejuvenated and inspired by the first installment, I was truly excited to hear that the show was being re-staged, on a smaller scale, in Chinatown. The Small Loop Show features works by a selection of the same artists, but where the last show highlighted excess and had a freewheeling sense of possibility—the art pieces seemed as if they could actively climb the walls, consume the furniture and possess the whole space—this show addresses material waste in a more personal and introspective manner.

The Small Loop Show, Installation View. Photo by Kohl King

Before visiting the show I had dinner with a friend who is a recent transplant to LA. She summarized her initial impression of Angelino art as “rigorous decorative,” and I can’t think of a better starting place to describe this show. Like last time, the pieces were carefully chosen and create a satisfying flow of material, form, texture and color, allowing the eye to easily move between pieces and make immediate visual comparisons. Though all the pieces use recycled materials (hence the loop of the title) their approaches and internal logic vary widely. From the simple gesture of William Ransom’s wooden sculptures, to Nuttaphol Ma‘s subtly politicized spool, and the large friendly creature created by Elizabeth Higgins O’Connor, the show weaves effortlessly between playful and serious, elegant and goofy.

Neither my eye, nor my mind could settle for too long on any specific piece, but this is the nature of a group show; it is not about the individual pieces, but about building a conversation and, in this case, making critical and cultural space for hand crafted, carefully conceptualized, small foot-print work. Unlike the work from the New Museum’s influential Unmonumental Show, the work does not look like piles of junk, even on first glance, and transcends its “recycled materials” premise. These are beautiful objects that just happen to be “ sustainable.”

Stephen McCabe, Long Horn Beetle, 2012 and Soft Wing Flower Beetle, 2012. Photo by Kohl King

The Loop Show does not for a second feel like a lecture or even a call to action—unless you count joyfully pondering as an action–but it surreptitiously criticizes the art world’s excesses. Adams has been working with found materials and confronting our culture’s materialism head on for a number of years. Was it a coincidence that this show opened the same weekend as the Art Platform Los Angeles art fair? Whether purposeful or not, viewing the two events on the same day certainly created a juxtaposition between the mostly slick and commercially viable work of the fair, and the pieces in this exhibition. It is an irony of the art world that though many artists make do with less in the way of material goods, we actively create more stuff for other people to consume and may admire artwork that adds toxins to the air and junk to the landfills. I choose my toothbrush, shampoo, milk, and t-shirts based on how and where they are made–so why not ask that my art be eco-friendly also?

The artists that are in The Loop, casually capture this contemporary trend, and knowingly suggest that, far from being a limiting responsibility, using recycled materials is a creative opportunity and a possible pathway towards rigorously decorative work that is also socially relevant.

The Small Loop Show
The Fellows of Contemporary Arts
970 North Broadway Suite 208 . Los Angeles CA 90012
29 Sep 2012 – 24 Nov 2012.
Call (213) 808 1008 to inquire for gallery hours.

Tags China Adams, collage, decorative, recycling, Sculpture | Permalink | Comment (0)

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