Observe Article X, a peculiar specimen, removed from its natural habitat, on the verge of death or banality and given a new purpose by unknown forces. Photographer David Trautrimas dismantles and sculpts rusted household refugees—coffee pots, refrigerators, electric razors, oil cans and waffle irons—which are then digitally re-imagined as top-secret outposts. The Skunkwork structures are situated in Cold War landscapes, channeling the tangled relationships between militarism and consumerism. His experiments hypothesize the fictional origins of appliances and common household goods that defined the zeitgeist of the era. Kristina Lewis frees utilitarian objects from their allegiance to human agendas and gives the materials of our disregarded possessions space to evolve. Emancipated zippers, stilettos, and light switches (complete with their wiring), become indescribable relics that could be machine or animal. Reassembled high heels flaunt their insides: the grosthetics of metal bones, ragged flesh and skinned horns suggest the underlying torture of tottering on heels. Though we recognize the residuals of what was, her creations test the human urge to classify, ridding the shoes of their “shoeness,” as what we would normally recognize evaporates into the idiosyncrasies of its parts.
Reception on First Friday, February 5th, 5-8pm
Show Runs January 30th-March 20th 2010
Johansson Projects
2300 Telegraph Ave. Oakland, CA 94612
Hours: 12-6, Thurs–Fri and Sat 11-5
Information: 510.444.9140
kimberly@johanssonprojects.com
www.johanssonprojects.com
“Time” is always present in our interaction with works of art, whether we sit to contemplate a painting, stroll past a sculpture, or watch a video piece for its entire duration or cycle. Some works of art are time-based in that the viewer must experience them through the passage of time, as with music, while others refer to time through links or references to art history, our collective human history, or the timelessness of nature.
—Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century, Season 2, Episode: Time
Art in the twenty-first century, reflecting and defining new developments in a variety of areas, has radically extended the conventional media of time-based, or 4D work. Following Virtual Artists’ Immersive Discoveries in a Virtual 3D Frontier, I interviewed several Second Life artists who evoke time in their work.
Second Life artists are exploring how to captivate, or use the element of time to interact with an active audience. They have abandoned strict adherence to traditional hierarchies of art and embraced the virtual. In the past fifty years especially, ideas about time have shifted from passive to interactive and, currently, to perceptually immersive, via filmmaking and animation, the theatricality of performance, and virtual reality. This post highlights early visionaries in Second Life who are re-imagining how immersive 3D space can change, or transform 4D art.
Machinima (muh-sheen-eh-mah) is the convergence of filmmaking, animation and game development. It uses real-world filmmaking techniques that are applied within an interactive, immersive 3D space where characters and events can be either controlled by humans or scripts. In Second Life, the actors are avatars in the scene, and the computer (via screen capture software) doubles as the camera, recording everything that happens in the virtual world. It connotes the artistic and performative, or the collaborative action of artist and computer. [The Second Life elements from the Art:21 segment on Cao Fei were filmed using machinima methods. —Ed.]
“…the bird girl avatar weaves shimmery machinima with what seems like the internal monologue of the woman behind the computer, as she experiences Second Life, in other words, a stream of consciousness from within the metaverse.”
—Wagner James Au on ColeMarie Soleil
Art in Second Life is impermanent and as a result artists are finding new, creative ways to document, or memorialize the work. ColeMarie Soleil is one of several SL artists who have explored capturing the temporal aspects of immersive 3D art. I first encountered ColeMarie while interviewing Bryn Oh for my previous post. Bryn Oh’s work often serves as inspiration for ColeMarie’s machinima (she has composed songs for Bryn, as well).
Skye Galaxy performs Joga by Bjork, ColeMarie Soleil
ColeMarie Soleil: I have my artistic very serious videos where I hide a lot of personal meaning and stories inside of them. They are like waking dream sequences for me. I try to share what I love about SL and magic. Then, on the other hand, I have my serious documentaries where I capture sims (installations) and live performances from talented artists and musicians like Skye Galaxy, or AM Radio. I think the hard part of SL is that everything is transient. Nothing remains always.
My intent is to document the art I find that has hidden stories inside of them. These videos bring them to life for a watcher who might not understand Second Life. Long after the builds are gone the videos become like a trip back in time for friends and the artists who created them. It is a way to hold onto them as more than just memories or places we experienced. It’s something you can share after and have to tell stories with.
ColeMarie’s work has been exhibited at film festivals and other events in both real and virtual venues. Her My Friends Are Robots was awarded first place for Best Drama by The Machinima Artist Guild (M.A.G.), an association of Second Life users who produce Animation Films (Machinimas) in virtual worlds.
Fluxus, an international art movement identified with the 1960s, birthed innovations in filmmaking and performance. They introduced the concept of the viewer becomingthe work of art through active participation. Performances were open-ended, experimental events or happenings that encouraged participants to record what had happened. Fluxus artists challenged audiences to think in new and unconventional ways. In Second Life performance art continues to break down conventional ideas about what art is.
Being a member of Second Front is a dream come true. It’s an unprecedented opportunity to collaborate and perform with an amazing group of wonderfully talented artists from all over the world. This would be an almost impossible undertaking for us in a pre-digital age. Festivals like the 1962 Fluxus Festival in Wiesbaden, the DIAS in London and YAM in New York City were rare once or twice in a lifetime events, while with the advent of three dimensional metaverse Second Life, we are able to meet and work regularly together as an on-going reality. The work of Second Front generally has double resonance as it weaves and interacts with the real life, “meatspace” art world.
—Bibbe Hansen AKA Bibbe Oh in SL
Performance artists have increasingly incorporated technological media into pieces—mainly because they have acquired exponential amounts of new technology. Second Life performance art includes poets, musicians, machinima makers, dancers, etc.—in addition to visual artists. Since 2006 Second Front has been one of the first performance art groups in SL. ZeroG Skydancers, founded by DanCoyote Antonelli (DC Spensley) has been doing live, in-world performances for a similar length of time. I was invited to join Man Michinaga (Patrick Lichty) at his retrospective on Odyssey, in Second Life. Man is a member of Second Front and collaborated with Art21 Season 5 featured artist Cao Fei for RMB City.
ZeroG SkyDancers: ZeroG VIII, Created, Produced, and Directed by DanCoyote Antonelli
Nettrice Gaskins: How would you describe your work to someone who has never experienced Second Life? How does your work demonstrate the range and importance of time and space? What differentiates your work from other 2D and 3D works? What is the relationship of the performer and participant?
Man Michinaga: I’m a virtual performance artist. I’m one of the founders of Second Front, a mainly RL-centered SL performance art group. The closest colleagues we have are Franco, Eva, and Gazira Babeli (Eva and Franco Mattes were the first guest bloggers on the Art21 Blog). Before this I was a founder/member of RTMark and The Yes Men. I’ve been investigating Dada and Fluxus, e.g. Happenings.
What we do are performances and interventions that play with the specificities of SL. For example last week we were asked to intervene and set performance artist Stelarc on fire. Second Life is a videogame-like performance that makes one wonder about what is left in performance once you remove the body, which seems utterly ridiculous but it isn’t because the affect remains. We really seem to feel through these puppets (avatars) of ours. The relational aspect of virtual worlds occurs through interaction with our audience or the creation of huge spectacles. The audience is free to do anything they wish. We invite participation.
The difference between our performances in RL and in SL is intent, a totally different intention and set of questions. The RL performances are usually interventionist/politic and critical. Here they are still critical but they are more about investigating sociology.
SL performance artists see immersion as a means of taking their art directly to a global audience, thus completely eliminating the need for physical exhibition spaces, although augmented reality exhibitions are becoming the norm. Fellow Second Front member Bibbe Oh (Bibbe Hansen) is the daughter of Fluxus member Al Hansen. Second Front bases their performance of Car Bibbe on a script by Al Hansen of Fluxus.
Bibbe Oh: At first, I had suggested to Patrick that Second Front redo the original Car Bibbe in SL. Later, going through some materials in my father’s archive, I came across Car Bibbe II, scanned it and sent it to Patrick who immediately made it happen. In the audience at the Bridge event were my dad’s original Fluxus-fellow travelers and partners in art crime—Geoffrey Hendricks with partner Sur Rodney Sur and Larry Miller. Both were quite impressed with the new media swing of things and thought we did Al Hansen proud with our rendition. A new generation of artists attended as well, partly represented by singer-songwriter, now emerging visual artist, Adam Green and friends. Though these were more familiar with digital performance as an everyday reality, they were yet enchanted to be able to experience the work of Al Hansen in this way.
Artists Azdel Slade (Micha Cardenas) and echolalia Azalee (Elle Mehrmand) set up a live video feed for my Mixed Reality interview with them. Mixed reality (MR) refers to the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time. Mixed Reality events in SL are streamed real-time into a region. Streaming media is projected in the live event and may include feedback via text or audio from the Second Life audience.
Azdel Slade: This video is something we’re thinking about including in our performances in the future. We’ve been working on a series of mixed reality performances focusing on blurring the lines between physical reality and virtual reality, and most recently with technesexual, thinking about using sound to bridge the two realities. I’ve heard it described recently as an emerging paradigm but we want to try to get away from thinking in binary terms about RL/SL. That mirrors in a lot of ways our personal life experiences, since I’m a trans-woman. We don’t think of our relationship in binary terms.
technésexual performed at Artivistic TURN*ON, Montreal, 2009, echolalia Azalee and Azdel Slade
AS: SL also demonstrates this proliferation of new sexualities beyond what anyone would call lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender. But what’s interesting to us, as you can see in our avatars, is mixing in new an interesting ways. With our performances we’re in a way demonstrating what we think of as a queer sexuality in RL and SL. We’re very interested in the tradition of performance art, finding and pushing on limits. SL is in a way a new space for performance art, thinking about how to perform in RL and SL at the same time.
echolalia Azalee: we invite audiences from both SL and RL.
AS: And we project SL so the live audience can see it. I think that we try to create an intimate relationship with the audience.
eA: So they are invited to experience this very intimate and personal moment.
AS: But also we try to invite them into a mixed reality environment where the image and sound from RL and SL are blurred, which is why we make our avatars projected life sized.
eA: Artist influences come from many genres such as Marina Abramovic and Ulay.
AS: I think our main influences come from performance and new media.
eA: And looking at their collaborations.
AS: Stelarc and Orlan who are pushing the limits of the body and technology. We’ve both worked with Ricardo Dominguez a lot and he’s inspired us to think about performance and how it changes in a technological context. He refers to the performative matrix, which I think is a useful idea; the way a performance operates in multiple spaces at the same time, social, cultural, political, sexual…
As performing artists Azdel and echolalia are intent on infiltrating SL to exploit it for thinking of new forms of sexuality and identity. I was shown a scale model of Becoming Dragon. The installation included a “heteronormative” couch, red motion-capture cameras, and two large projection areas. This performance was a demonstration on how SL has a built-in structure of gender binaries. Currently they are working on documentation for technesexual, a performance that involves real bodies, SL avatars and merging the two using biometric sensors to monitor heart rate and temperature. They want to include and expand on the tradition of performance art of using the body as a medium.
Participation in virtual performance art removes barriers of entry and is judged by the reaction of the viewer. José den Burger and Velazquez Bonetto, founders of CARP (Cybernetic Art Research Projects), work in collaboration with artists, designers, engineers, and programmers in Second Life. Their performances allow audience members to “fly” inside the creations and become part of them.
José den Burger: Where in real life an artist creates mostly “alone”, in SL working with scriptwriters becomes common. Creators do not always have the knowledge of writing scripts as well and when you have made a beautiful (virtual) sculpture and it just stands there and “does” nothing is not very interesting. Scripted 3D objects rotate, change textures, fade or become transformed in ways that are powerful. Architects use the metaverse to build the most incredible buildings where you can walk in, look around and get the perception that you really are there. Scriptwriters and programmers can experiment and collaborate with others to develop new knowledge and technology to make things “happen”.
Pseudo-Futurist Video Game Improvisation Extravaganza (extract), Presented by PERFORMA09 (New York) and Odyssey (Second Life). Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG, 2009.
Collectively, immersive 4D art in SL combines sensors, video, sound, streaming, web cams, projections, programming, the web platform, and other technologies to produce immersive, interactive and participatory performances and installations. Audiences are able to experience real and fictional places simultaneously. Other examples include Second Front’s homage to Andy Warhol, Ballet Pixelle, and mellifera, an on-line interactive environment in SL that is linked to a complimentary series of real-time exhibitions. Stelarc, an Australian performance artist, focuses heavily on extending the capabilities of the human body and is performing as his avatar in Second Life. For this post Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG reflected on the nature of performance art as a collective hallucination taking place in real time, in perceptually immersive 3D space.
Franco Mattes: In our synthetic performances the performers and the audience only interact thorough avatars, they never meet. Everything is mediated. But this doesn’t mean the relationship is not “real”, as much as, for example, a “phone conversation” is a “real conversation”.
Ten years ago scholar Raoul Eshelman coined the term performatism to describe what we are now seeing take place in virtual 3D worlds such as Second Life. It’s an exciting time for new media in art!
Nettrice Gaskins is an artist and educator who bridges the actual and virtual worlds and explores how these realities can have a transformative impact on people’s lives and experiences when it can be fully implemented and realized. Her purpose is to bring together people, concepts, modalities, media, and worlds through art. Follow Nettrice’s blogs to explore writings on new media art and art in the classroom.
January 10 – February 14, 2010 Opening: Sunday, January 31, 5 – 7 PM Web Site
Dispatch presents Silly Rabbit – a gravestone and an urn, the artist’s first one-person show in New York. The exhibition takes the form of a parlor of funerary vessels and monuments by New York-based artist Tom Holmes.
January 15 – March 7, 2010 Opening: Friday, January 15, 6 – 8 PM Web Site
Scaramouche is pleased to announce Tolerance, the first solo exhibition of artist Michael Dean in New York, curated by Alessandro Sarri. Borrowing its title from the eponymous play written by Dean for this occasion, the exhibition explores the impenetrable distance/space that exists between object and its trace, between past experiences and how they are re-constructed/re-membered.
Taking the form of posters, drawings, sculptures and performance, Dean’s practice examines the physical properties of language, as well as its politics of authorship and autonomy. Hermetic monuments, texts appropriated from untraceable sources and cryptic typographies are the basic elements of the artist’s obscurely seductive language, a language that deliberately provides no accessible meaning while requesting the viewer to project significance onto the works.
For his exhibition at Scaramouche, Dean will present the aforementioned play Tolerance, which will be handed out to viewers, along with two new sculptures and several metal foils. Made with multiple layers of cement, broken glass and tape, Dean’s sculptures adopt the form of anachronistic monoliths. The metal foils placed around them function as negatives, shaped by rubbing the metal against the sculptures’ surfaces, drawing the viewers attention to the shifting, unfathomable space between remembrance and oblivion.
Michael Dean (1977, Brisbane, Australia) is a graduate in Fine Art and Contemporary Critical Theory at Goldsmiths College in London. His work has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries across Europe, including the Galleria Arte Moderna GAM in Turin, the Leeds City Art Gallery, and La Galerie Center for Contemporary Art in Paris. His work is also included in public and private collections. In 2010, the Henry Moore Institute will publish “The array of rain”, a new play by the artist. Dean lives and works in London.
Mike Weiss Gallery 520 West 24th Street, 212-691-6899
Chelsea
January 14 – February 20, 2010 Opening: Thursday, January 14, 6 – 8 PM Web Site
Mike Weiss Gallery presents Kopftheater, a new exhibition of paintings by Berlin based artist Stefanie Gutheil. This is the artist’s first exhibition in New York and at Mike Weiss Gallery. Stefanie’s bold, multi-dimensional paintings are tactile depictions of her own life. The patterns of unexpected fabrics and aluminum foil adhere to the oils, acrylics and spray paint applied to the surface and come together to form scenes from the artist’s excessive imagination, both playful and grotesque. Her paintings provide the cast and set for her own kopf theater, or theatre of the mind.
Born and raised in a small conservative town in southwest Germany, Stefanie moved to Berlin ten years ago and since that time has witnessed the growth of Berlin’s contemporary art scene; an international mish-mash of artists converging on the city after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her monsters and creatures, both miniature and giant, are gross caricatures of the people in her daily life; artists, musicians, dancers, poets and revelers in the city of Berlin. Tucked into the center of the city’s nightlife pocket, the scene around the artist’s studio provides the visual fodder for what becomes her larger than life imagery.
Influences from the chaotic and cramped compositions of Bosch and Brueghel are evident. In Berg I and Berg II, a massive heap of excrement and bodies rises up from the marred landscape of skulls and stumps; pyramid shaped in subtle homage to Brueghel’s The Tower of Babel. Mostly dirt colored in appearance; the landscapes are punctuated by flecks of silvery aluminum foil and hints of glitter and cheeky floral fabrics. In Kopftheater, for which the exhibition is titled, a Boschian landscape of monsters and gnarled animals peek and crawl out of the angular cave-like structures, one losing its eye in a cinematic projectile thrust from its socket.
The applications of materials to the canvas denote object and action. Sticky, dripped acrylic froths from the mouths of radioactive dogs; globs of oil, shot like bullets at the canvas, spew vomit from the mouths of behemoth monsters; stark geometric, bright floral or swirling blue textiles glued flat and then painted on top of indicate plant life, sea and sky or rooted structure. The diverse stylistic processes used on each painting’s surface bond the chaos within the imagery. Through their variety, they are united, much like the characters in Stefanie’s own life that inspired these scenes.
Stefanie Gutheil lives and works in Berlin, Germany. The artist received her Masters of Art and Bachelors of Art at the Universität der Künste, Berlin. She has exhibited previously throughout Germany and Europe and this is her first exhibition in New York.
Winkleman Gallery 637 West 27th Street, Suite A, 212-643-3152
Chelsea
January 8 – February 13, 2010 Opening: Friday, January 8, 6 – 8 PM Web Site
Winkleman Gallery is very pleased to inaugurate our new location with This Much Is Certain, the first New York solo exhibition by German conceptual photographer Ulrich Gebert. With selections from two series of his image-cycles, Typus (2005) and Life among beasts (2009), This Much Is Certain serves as an introduction to Gebert’s work in which he examines explosive topics—such as racism and power structures—via unspectacular motifs presented in quasi-scientific and sometimes unsettlingly humorous arrangements.
In each of the three tableaus from the Typus series, for example, Gebert presents 6-7 photographs of coniferous trees ordered by species. Photographed by trekking to remote botanical gardens and parks, often retracing the steps of 19th century scientists, the Typus tableaus are juxtaposed with an “List of Invalid Names”: a list of Latin terms that are no longer in use, making the reconciliation of competing names a difficult process and shattering the fantasies of their original christenings toward an authoritative ordering of nature. In doing so, Gebert also alludes to the darker side of cataloging nature, specifically with regards to totalitarian categorizations of humans.
Similarly, in the Life among beasts series, Gebert presents tableaus of two to five cropped photographs of humans physically interacting with animals. The results are both disturbing and awkwardly tender. New unusual creatures are suggested through the compositions, as impressions of brutality are counterbalanced with an almost absurd humor. Here again, the crisp aesthetics of the presentation suggest a fantasy of order that undercut by closer consideration.
Ulrich Gebert was born in Munich and lives and works in Munich and Leipzig. He received his Masters in Photography at Royal College of Art, London, and studied at the Glasgow School of Art and with Timm Rautert at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at KLEMM’S in Berlin; a group exhibition at project space 176/Zabludowicz Collection, London; and exhibitions at the Kunstverein Hildesheim, the University of Salamanca, and the Pfaffenhofer Kunstverein.
The UNCG M.F.A. in Studio Arts is a two year, full-time program designed for visual artists whose work demonstrates a high level of proficiency in studio practice and art history. Applicants are required to have an undergraduate education in the visual arts and to have successfully completed a minimum of thirty-nine (39) credit hours in studio art and fifteen (15) credit hours in art history, earning a B.A. or B.F.A. degree.
The students admitted to the MFA program at UNCG reflect a diverse community of artists working in close proximity to one another and across many disciplines, including painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation, video, photo and interactive media. Our mission is to foster an environment in which students simultaneously create, learn to think critically, and engage in dialogue with peers and faculty members.
We view our students as practicing artists. Graduate students have private studios in the state-of-the-art Maud Gatewood Studio Art Center; the privilege of working within walking distance of the world-class Weatherspoon Art Museum; consistent interaction with an impressive roster of visiting artists and lecturers through the Falk Visiting Artist Program; competitive teaching and graduate assistantships; and, competitive scholarships for nationally renowned residencies.
APPLY ONLINE:
Applicants to the program may apply online, visit: https://app.applyyourself.com/AYApplicantLogin/ApplicantConnectLogin.asp?id=uncgr-g
For specific information and how to apply to the graduate school at UNCG, contact Graduate Director Chris Cassidy, at cmcassid@uncg.edu
American-in-Paris artist Rick Tulka sends this 2010 greeting from his regular haunt, Le Select, in the heart of Paris
Rick Tulka, Paris-based artist and illustrator best known for his on-the-spot sketches of flâneurs burning daylight and washing back kirs at Le Select, the famed café on Boulevard Montparnasse, offers a self-portrait greeting for 2010. Yes, that was him, penciling in your double chin last Tuesday! Only kidding. Bonne Année…
