Asia Society Museum Through 2 January 2011 Asia Society Museum devotes its entire museum space to a major exhibition of Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, one of the most influential Neo Pop artists working today. More than one hundred works including drawings, paintings, sculptures, and installations—many of which have never been exhibited in the United States—will emphasize the relationship of Nara's art to rock and punk music, which has been an ongoing source of inspiration and prevailing reference point in his work.

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The show at Jolie Laide on First Friday included the slick, decorative surfaces of Robert Horvath in the main space, in the alley the funky DIY installation by Tim Eads, and in the project space the mechanical torture rack of Heather Ramsdale.

Horvath is the artist of the month at the gallery, and the other two were there for one-night installations. But all three seemed to be cogitating the relationship of surfaces to substances and to the body itself. (Another installation by Jessie Hemmons I completely missed, alas–hand knit socks covering some of the city’s street lamps; they will be up for a while, so I can go back to look–and so can you).

Starting with Horvath, his two related bodies of work–six sculptures and seven paintings–have a Jeff Koons-ian merchandise feel, except Horvath’s objets are abstract.

The sculptures–earbobs for an Amazon, chandeliers for the cosmos, or maybe costumes for the Oscars–have cheap underpinnings–disgusting globs of canned insulation foam, wires and plastic, transformed with luscious colors and metallic surfaces.

The sculptures serve as models for the paintings, which are equally focused on surfaces. Horvath, who lives and works in Indianapolis and had recent shows in Chicago and L.A. was born in the Slovak Republic (he retains a charming trace of an accent). I asked him if he uses an airbrush, but no, he uses a regular paintbrush. And he works from photographs of the models–these are not computer generated images. Reproduced in paint, the objects take on a boyish gothic fantasy style–stage sets and costumes for Star Wars. The tour-de-force painting is all surface, all formal. The joy in the gorgeous trompe l’oeil trumps any cynicism about celebrity culture. It’s mainly the excess that suggests these paintings are more than kitsch.

The sculptures, on the other hand, maintain a tension between the crappiness and the gorgeousness, between the awkward hand-made cheesiness and the shiny perfection of manufacturing. Parodies of consumer goods, they are at once fabulous and awful and seductive–take the merch home, sweep the dirt under the rug, and decorate.

Tim Eads‘ pair of painting machines installed in the alley for the evening are neither slick nor beautiful, yet they are equally useless. The gizmos create a couple of paintings by fanning streams of dripping paint on a blank wall. The resulting works are two colored stripes from one gizmo, and a splatter painting from the other. The two gizmos glory in their their inelegance, in one case requiring human intervention to move up and down the wall via a rope-and-pulley system. Tim gave us a demonstration, unwinding the rope from a nearby bollard and tugging. Here the mechanical looks and is handmade, and the mark-making looks and is mechanical. For all it’s art-insider jokey content about creating paintings, the work is charming and friendly enough for anyone. And so is Eads, who seems to be making friends with everyone around and showing everywhere. Last month he was at Grizzly Grizzly (with his wife Tiernan Alexander). And in the spring he was at FLUXspace.

Using a very different aesthetic–the look of high-tech mechanics, Heather Ramsdale invites a viewer’s body into a thoroughly unfriendly, minimalist structure, all fluorescent lighting and metal right angles. The one-night installation was in the project space right across the street from the gallery. Next to the white-light torture chamber–kind of like a tanning booth–a white upholstered trolley invites a viewer to take a ride into the belly of the structure. The trolley is a swell version of what a mechanic rides to slide beneath a car chassis. When I was there, no one took a ride. In the push-pull of the approach/avoidance situation, avoidance seems to have won the day. That’s a shame. But I suppose it shows that the torture chamber gets its point across. Ramsdale had this piece at the Penn MFA show in the spring, and the fellow who was gallery sitting gave us a demonstration of the slider in action. I only looked.

More First Friday pix at Flickr.

Every year, the Share Festival chooses a special topic to focus on, to help broaden our minds, sharpen our skills, and inspire creative expression. So don’t miss this year’s festival from 2nd–7th November, 2010 in Turin!

Smart Mistakes – Share Festival 2010

ERROR, mistake, mutation, failure, dysfunction, discrepancy, accident, unexpected change, chance discovery, the aesthetics of error, mass waste, project failure, abandon project, disaster, flaw, inconvenience, misappropriation, side-effect, slip-up, flop.

This year, the VI Piemonte Share Festival will be focusing on the artistic and cultural significance of mistake, in all its broader senses. The creative potential of analysing and looking into what lies behind an error is truly great, as it represents the uncovering of an issue. Which is of particular interest in this year of global emergencies. The issue uncovered then demands attention, which in turn elicits controversy, while it is controversy that generates solutions and innovation.
In the art and culture of our digital age, does mistake still play the role of instigating change and activating value?

Share Prize 2010
Now are you ready to discover the group of artists called to Turin to take part in a Share Festival?

Some 270 projects from 20 countries were submitted for consideration for the Share Prize 2010. The aim of the Share Prize is to discover, promote and support the digital arts. The competition is open to artists that use digital technology as a language of creative expression, in all shapes and formats.
The cultural aim of the Share Prize is to make participation in the Share Festival open and accessible to all artists.

An international panel of judges consisting of Jurij Krpan (Ljubljana), Andy Cameron (London), Fulvio Gianaria (Turin), and Bruce Sterling (Austin/Turin) assessed the submissions. After a very interesting meeting and a professional, in-depth analysis of all the works, it is with great pleasure that we announce the six incredible artists who have been short-listed for the Share Prize 2010.

Read the judges’ statement here: http://www.toshare.it/?page_id=2090〈=en

The prize winners will be announced at the Share Prize award ceremony on 7th November, 2010 at the Regional Museum of Natural Science in Turin.

Kuai Auson (EC), 0h!m1gas (2008)
0h!m1gas is a biomimetic stridulation environment, based on the activity of an ant colony under video and audio surveillance, transforming the ants into DJs and creating a sound-reactive space which reveals the connection between scratching, as an aesthetical expression created by human culture, and the stridulation phenomena produced by ants as a communication mechanism.
http://kuaishen.tv/0hm1gas

Perry Bard (CDN), Man with a Movie Camera (2007)
Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake is a participatory video shot by people around the world who are invited to record images interpreting the original script of Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera, and upload them to http://dziga.perrybard.net, where software developed specifically for this project archives, sequences and streams the submissions as a film.
http://dziga.perrybard.net

Sonia Cillari (IT), As an artist, I need to rest (2009)
The artist is lying still on the floor of the exhibition space, exhaling through a very long cable, which departs from inside her left nostril and ends at the centre of the main screen, suspended from the floor. A digital creature which she calls 'feather' is entirely generated by her exhaling into the suspended screen. During the performance, Sonia Cillari exhales 14,000 digital elements and brings the digital feather into more than 6 different states of beings, from 'addition' to 'resistance' patterns of life.
http://www.soniacillari.net/AaA-IntR_dedicated.htm

Ernesto Klar (IT/VE/USA), Luzes relacionais (2009-10)
Luzes relacionais" (Relational Lights) is an interactive audiovisual installation that explores our relationship with the expressional-organic character of space. The installation uses light, sound, haze, and a custom-software system to create a morphing, three-dimensional light-space in which spectators actively participate, manipulating it with their presence and movements. "Luzes relacionais" is pays homage to the work and aesthetic inquiry of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark.
http://www.klaresque.org/luzes_video.mov

Knowbotic Research (GER), Macghillie_ just a void (2009-10)
In the public performance project MacGhillie, urban sites are visited by a figure, clad in a camouflage suit, who shows neither the traits of an individual, or even of a person. The so-called Ghillie Suit was originally invented in the 19th century for hunting and was later also used during the First World War (bis heute). Its camouflage anonymizes and neutralises of the person who wears it in public. The figure oscillates between the hyperpresence of a mask and visual redundancy.
http://krcf.org/krcf.org/?p=249

Teatrino Elettrico (IT), DC12V (2009)
DC12V is a board-game version of elektrolivecircus. Sounds are generated using analogue instruments only, recordings of movements, percussion, friction and the electromagnetic fields of various everyday machines. Small in converted into big, futile into necessary, objects into personages, the board into a location. A desktop tragedy in one act for self-propelled machines.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idaVeVj7ZMc

Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 8-26 September 2010 Following last year's success, the exhibition project Playing the City 2 once again presents a wide range of artistic activities in public space, involving the city and its inhabitants in a variety of ways. From 8 to 26 September 2010, central Frankfurt will see new actions taking place daily, from performances to installations to "guerrilla actions".

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In this talk about his installation at AC Institute, When does a gallery give away artworks?, Kim Wan will discuss his artistic practice, how the concept of the installation came into being, and the making and "defacing" of 210 individually painted one dollar bills. He will also be taking questions from the floor.

About When does an art gallery give away artworks?:
Just when does an art gallery give away artworks, hand-made especially for the free market? In a world of climate change and water shortages does free, clean water mean anything to a person living in the developed world? Are paintings more important than water? When does money become art, instead of art accruing fiscal value? These are some of the questions posed in this installation by artist Kim Wan.
The installation itself consists of hand-painted $1 bills, photocopies of drawings, a water-cooler with a set of scales and plastic cups. As the viewer enters the space, s/he is offered the choice of taking either a photocopy or a cup of water. The painted dollar bills, however, stay on the wall, occupying the space and remain indeterminate.
“I am attempting to set up a market economy within the gallery space. In response to the project brief, I have identified differences between the ‘artificial’ value that consumers place on luxury objects such as paintings, and the ‘real’ value placed on natural resources - such as a cup of water. In identifying the choices and economic forces which shape and inform a free-market economy, I wish to enter into a discourse where the artworks become an interactive and quantifiable commodity. My aim is to realise interpretations and debates surrounding the capitalist system whilst provoking discussion and debate Art, money, death, life.............” (Kim Wan)


About Kim Wan:

Kim Wan is a contemporary artist working on an international platform. Recent collaborations include a self-portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London; exhibiting work alongside Van Gogh; and public art in Bejing. Kim is a process-based artist, investigating materials and different disciplines and then developing them into more advanced and/or reconciled works. Educated at Winchester School of Art, UK, in Fine Art and trained as a painter with an artistic lineage tracing back to David Bomberg, Kim reaches beyond formal approaches to the problem of painting and embraces the new. Art insiders have described Kim Wan as being in that group of painters that includes Bacon, Freud and Auerbach. Being of Chinese-Malay and English descent, this heady mix informs Kim’s work. Not Chinese work, not English work, but both and more: informed by a far-reaching global consciousness.
www.kimwanart.wordpress.com

Gallery #610
Wednesday – Saturday: 1-6PM, Thursday: 1-8PM
www.artcurrents.org / info@artcurrents.org
Art Currents is a non-profit 501(c)3

I suspect most people today would agree that making art involves more than technical skill. By the seventeenth century, the intellectual and philosophical side of artistic expression had already been institutionalized in “academies,” which broke from the guild system of instruction. Even the word “academy” asserted that art was a serious mental pursuit that deserved schools like those of any other humanistic discipline.

Unlike other disciplines in the humanities, however, visual art has carried on without doctoral degrees, at least until recently. When George Smith founded the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA) in 2007, the program had few peers. While the number of PhD programs in art has grown significantly since then, IDSVA remains unique for its emphasis on theory and philosophy. Notably, the program does not include any studio work. Instead, reading, writing, and on-site discussions in the world of art form the basis of the low-residency school, which convenes for intensive sessions in Europe and the United States. I recently met with Smith at his home in Portland, Maine to talk about IDSVA and the basic question of whether artists need PhDs.

Oliver Wunsch: I understand that IDSVA offers no studio instruction, but theory plays a major role in the program. As a way of beginning, could you talk about the reasoning behind this format?

George Smith: If the way an artist sees the world changes, if her range of perception broadens and deepens, then her artistic ability, her ability to represent history, human consciousness, the history of aesthetic discourse, this will change for the better because she will have changed for the better. In other words, the studio practice gets taken to the next level because the artist who goes into the studio has developed intellectually, spiritually, and as a citizen of the world. In my experience as a teacher of artists, the rigorous study of theory and philosophy can make that happen. But IDSVA is not just about making better studio artists; we’re trying to produce artist-philosophers.

OW: Does that experience need to be called a PhD? Why not just invite qualified people who want to do this sort of thinking, reading, and writing, without the doctoral degree?

GS: The PhD requires a measure of rigor that cannot be imposed upon people who are just stopping by for a conversation. For one thing, you have to write a dissertation and that dissertation has to be submitted to professional review. Writing to an audience of that kind is a tremendously important aspect of the experience. But more to the point, we want IDSVA graduates to go into universities and colleges and teach. We want them to lead the discussion that is shaping the future of American intellectual discourse, not just in visual arts, but in the humanities and in other disciplines as well. And to do that, they have to be credentialed.

OW: Right now, you can become a professor of studio art with an MFA. With a PhD, your graduates presumably would be able to teach not just studio practice, but also theory, philosophy, and so forth…

GS: Exactly.

OW: Why shouldn’t those artists simply get a degree in the subjects that seem relevant to their work? For instance, if psychoanalytic theory means something to your art, shouldn’t you just study in that field?

GS: The answer to your question is partly practical. If you have an MFA and want to go to someplace like the University of Chicago for a PhD in the history of psychoanalysis, they’ll probably say go back and do your MA first. IDSVA grants credit to the MFA for a humanities PhD. More importantly, though, we’re putting together an intensive collaboration. Most IDSVA students hold an MFA and many are studio faculty. Maybe half are tenure track, many are full-professors, and some are department heads. About a third are adjunct professors looking to strengthen their academic position. Others are curators or creative intellectuals with an MA in cultural studies or art history. We love the dialogical mix. The common thread is that most everybody at the table sees the world through the relationship of the hand, the eye, the body, and space, and they resolve abstract problems from that experiential standpoint as opposed to a purely abstract view.

OW: All of that makes sense, but I wonder if there’s a danger that you won’t ever really be in dialogue with the traditional scholars who specialize in the subjects that you’re studying. Do you worry about separating yourself from the people whose ideas you’re borrowing?

GS: We want to cultivate a space in which artists and creative thinkers can grow and develop as artist-philosophers, but also where all kinds of artists and scholars can gain from the process. For instance, someone like Stephen Greenblatt, a leading Renaissance scholar from Harvard University, comes to lecture for us at Spannocchia Castle in Tuscany and leaves deeply affected by the experience. We’re not looking to balkanize ourselves as some group of artists who are now going to take over the world from the standpoint of theoretical advancement. The point is to open up a discussion in a way that allows people like Greenblatt to hear what an artist-philosopher has to say about the Renaissance. Of course the artist-philosopher has a pretty wide-eyed appreciation of what Greenblatt’s saying, too, and it’s the exchange that makes the conversation so rich and productive.

OW: Could you say more about the locations where the program meets, what goes on, and how these activities relate to the setting?

GS: I mentioned Stephen Greenblatt because his participation as IDSVA Visiting Faculty typifies our pedagogical approach in an important way. When Stephen lectures on the transition from Feudal to Renaissance to postmodern consciousness, for historical context he’s using Spannocchia Castle, which has been restored to its origins as an agrarian estate, and he’s using the art and architecture of Siena, which is a nearby medieval banking city. Then we go up to Milan, where we look at Da Vinci’s Last Supper as a visual dramatization of Stephen’s cultural critique, and afterwards we go across town, to a little-known cathedral that houses a Dan Flavin installation, and ask ourselves, “Okay, what’s the relation between Stephen’s lecture, Leonardo’s representation of Renaissance thought, and Flavin’s projection of light in a fifteenth-century Milanese church?” From there we go to Paris, where Étienne Balibar, the preeminent French Marxist, picks up the thread with John Rajchman and they talk about their new book on postmodern French philosophy and what they and others are calling “the contemporary.” In Januar,y it’s on to Harlem and Manhattan, where Jim Elkins, Julie Mehretu (Art21 Season 5), Simon Critchley, and Avital Ronell will push the question of the contemporary from within the framework of post-industrial urban space. Next June, we’ll be at the Venice Biennale. In years to come we hope to be in Berlin, Beijing, São Paulo, and Cape Town.

OW: The second portion of the program involves the dissertation, which I wanted to ask you about, but in a somewhat roundabout way. I read that you started out pursuing poetry. Since poetry merges textual communication and artistic expression, I wondered whether this early experience influenced your interest in seeing artists write PhD theses. Specifically, how do you see the dissertation in relation to creative expression? Do you consider the writing that comes out of the program to be art? Or is it totally separate from the artistic practice of your students?

GS: From writing poetry, I learned how to write prose criticism. And what I learned was that it’s arduous labor. It’s not a matter of inspired spontaneous expression. I don’t ever want a search committee to say of a job applicant from IDSVA, “Well, they’re writing on their own art,” or, “this creative expression of the artist’s relationship to the work of art lacks theoretical rigor.” Hence IDSVA students refrain from writing on their studio practice, especially in the dissertation. We have a lot of artists coming in who see their relationship to language—particularly abstract, philosophical language—as their weakest link. Through a very tough transformative learning process, they make their weakest link as strong as their strongest one, which is the studio. What they come away with is the inspiration to give those now inexhaustible powers to others—through their art, their teaching, their critical thinking and writing. If we said, “You’re not going to be like other scholars; you’re going to get the easy version where you can write about yourself or write non-critical prose,” we’d be selling everybody short.

OW: I’m surprised to hear you say that many of your students enter the program thinking that they have a weak relationship with language. Somehow I just assumed that you would only attract artists who already felt very confident about dealing with theoretical texts. What type of student makes a good match for IDSVA?

GS: It runs up and down the spectrum. Those who come in thinking that theory and philosophy are of less interest than career development often get drawn so deeply into the program of study that they wind up in a very different place. There’s no one type. I’ll say that there’s a general consistency in that even those who are “up” on theory make it plain that they’re not at IDSVA to primp their version of theory and philosophy. Most everybody comes wanting to know more and to share what they learn. It’s an amazing, incredibly generous, and intelligent bunch.

OW: If a student applies to the program and doesn’t feel especially grounded in theoretical thinking, then I wonder how do you figure out whether this person has potential. Do you see it in their studio practice? Do you find intelligence in works of art themselves?

GS: You figure out whether a person has potential through multiple interviews, writing samples, and looking at the work. But that’s hardly to say that every artist with an MFA should run out and apply to IDSVA. There are some, though—a tiny fraction of the total population of artists—who really want to understand theory and philosophy in relation to art and to themselves as practicing artists. IDSVA is a place in the world where artists and creative thinkers can go and do precisely that.

The current show at Famous Accountants, a dimly lit, but glowing white basement gallery in a Bushwick home, is a disorienting mix of media and technology. The exhibition, Tunneling, is a 13-person group show which covers the theme of tunneling in both its physical/spatial associations and its psychological—“confining, degenerating, myopic” (press release).

The show features roughly an even mix of palpable works using paper or cloth and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, video, digital media, and performance. The pieces are arranged in a loose salon style, with flat-screen TV monitors and digital projections interspersed with works on paper. It is the video and digital media pieces that stand out.

The exhibition is curated by Will Pappenheimer. His piece, a collaboration with John Craig Freeman, is a 12-minute video which documents the experience of Second Life avatars on Virta-Flaneurazine, a drug meant to treat Wanderlust Deficit Disorder (internet addiction). The drug is a digital pill that Second Life users can download, but it has side-effects that can be dream-like and psychedelic, which watchers of the video will understand. In it, a tall figure with mouse ears and tail in a hospital gown floats across a misty, digital landscape. She reaches a Cliffside and hovers vaguely; her eyes light up in a red and white pinwheel. The tunneling theme was inspired by the delirious experiences of Mr. Pappenheimer’s patients (the Second Life users and their avatars).

Famous Accountants was started last fall by Ellen Letcher and Kevin Regan. Kevin, an energetic man with tousled grey hair and beard, describes it as “a labor of love.” It is apparent that for Ellen, a petite woman with cropped blonde hair, and Kevin, the space is an important venue to hold together a large, extended family of Bushwick artists and residents. They pay homage to members of the community that came before them, perhaps most importantly Lady Jaye and Genesis Breyer P-orrdige, the husband and wife duo who together are the artistic entity, Breyer P-orrdige. (The couple is well-known for their mission to make themselves look like each other through a succession of surgical operations). Lady Jaye’s grandmother owned the building until Lady Jaye and Genesis purchased it. Prior to her early death, a result of sudden heart failure related to stomach cancer, Lady Jaye renovated the gallery. Kevin, the admittedly louder of Famous Accountants’ directors, says that he and Ellen “are honored that, on some level, we are fulfilling Lady Jaye’s wishes”.

Jaye envisioned an organic space that would shift for different purposes. And, more or less, this is what Famous Accountants is. Tunneling uses the space like a laboratory, cramming in much disparate media to see what the results might be.

Time is warped, stopped, and chopped throughout. Up close the pieces lose the experience of time as encompassing and continuous, with a few exceptions. The viewer’s experience with the exhibition, particularly with certain pieces, for instance Rico Gatson’s Departure video, which applies a kaleidoscope effect to scenes from Alien, is like watching the broken second hand on a clock that progresses minutely, only to jump backwards, never advancing.

This is literally what happens in Takuji Kogo’s video Nonsites, in which clips of individuals or small groups in vacant waiting areas play for one or two seconds then reverse and repeat, performing a jerky dance reminiscent of 90s gif animations. One clip records a man asleep at a dim Chinese food restaurant. The scene is dark and humorless, strange and lonely. While the ceiling fans above gyrate fractions of a circle, the entire image zooms slowly out, getting smaller but revealing a kaleidoscoped pattern of itself. Strangely, Kogo’s video is one of the few pieces that does retain a sense of time moving—one of the few that creates an enterable world. (I would include also the Virta-Flaneurazine program and Cooper Holoweski’s video—a slow, upside-down ride through a digital skyline)

As the fan blades in Kogo’s video meet their kaleidoscoped reflections they create a pattern of rays echoed across the wall in Jen Schwarting’s double dip (black). Forms all over the show morph and collide into each other, suggesting a reality that is multi-dimensional and fragmented. The work in Tunneling feels a bit like a bug got into your computer and made things go awfully awry, forgetting what is real and what is virtual.

Viewing the exhibition on a quiet Sunday the weekend after the opening is a bit like walking onto the set of a play that has already happened. Pieces like Irvin Morazan’s Death of a Ghettoblaster are exoskeletons without the performance. The sense of frenzy throughout Tunneling is produced in large part by work that is frenzied itself and lacks focus. However, this is not the rule and what is provided as an alternative to contemplative concentration is volatile energy. There is plenty to see—plenty of radiating images to compete for attention and Lady Jaye’s spirit reverberates throughout.

Tunneling is only up until September 4^th, so see it soon. There is a closing party this Saturday from 6-9pm. Famous Accountants is located at 1673 Gates Avenue, Ridgewood/Bushwick. Open Sundays and by appointment.

Whether produced in the context of the “independent non-profit art space” or the “new contemporary art museum,” in countless panels conducted in English or as quotes in secondary features published in international art magazines that cover an art scene in 1500 words, it is imperative to view the rising liberal institution’s superficial critique of the figure of the corrupt intellectual as self-serving and disingenuous. For that figure serves the liberal institution well by imparting it with the legitimacy and glamour of an oppositional and therefore heroic position, while helping to facilitate a sense of definition—in other words, an identity.

Fleetwing Gallery and 54 Magazine are looking for artists’ work for quarterly solo shows at our boutique gallery space at The Hook And Ladder in Lambertville, NJ.

Deadline for submissions is October 25th! To the selected artist:

• A 6-week solo at Fleetwing Gallery in Lambertville, NJ.
• Opening reception on Friday, November 5, 2010 from 6 to 9 pm.
• Selected artwork on the cover of 54 Magazine (6K distribution, 450+ locations PA, NJ).
• A 2-page feature article in 54 Magazine.
• Feature on Hook And Ladder and 54 Magazine websites.

Please review the SUBMISSION GUIDELINES at:

We look forward to seeing your work.

by Clarissa Shanahan

Chestnut Hill Arts Initiative’s premiere show, ‘Summer Phase’, proved to be a thoughtfully curated blend of conceptual installations in a variety of mediums, featuring the work of ten different artists.This was a particularly contemporary and progressive show in an otherwise conservative area.

The initiative aims to create a presence of progressive and contemporary art installations in the commercial property windows along Germantown Ave. CAi is in partnership with The Chestnut Hill Business Association, the Chestnut Hill Community Association and Bowman Properties.

The old Magarity Ford Dealership features a site-specific installation piece by Tom Judd, entitled ‘The World is Flat’. It’s fills the enormous window of the dealership building with a painted world map. The piece is constructed of cardboard and framing, the markings and lettering from the cardboard boxes intentionally left visible, inviting us to view the map as a whole work, as well as reflect on the sum of its parts. It resembles a low-tech, whimsical class project. I had the opportunity to speak with him at the reception, and upon being asked what inspired this work, he said the size of the space inspired him to create something “patently silly and outrageous”, with the “exuberance of a sixth grade geography project.” It’s an irreverent, playful and exuberant piece.

There are two additional site-specific pieces, one from Caroline Lathan-Stiefel, ‘Blue in Green’, which is completely constructed with pipe cleaners, bits of recycled plastic, bottle caps….and it’s beautiful.  With a big colorful net, created around the exterior of a storefront, wrapping the windows, stoop and railing, Lathan-Stiefel plays with ideas of growth and sprawl, supporting the notion of it being an organic, living thing. It’s beautifully crafted, thoughtfully designed for the site and has the feeling of being a super-stylized, children’s programming version of an underwater creature-capturing device. At least to me, anyway. It’s fantastic.

‘The Last Breath’ by Philip Scarpone, is an installation using natural materials – milled wood, concrete, natural wood and a ground covering – mulch? woodchips? This is a beautiful, quiet installation piece reflecting a delicate balance of geometry and nature. It makes you want to whisper when in proximity.

One piece that absolutely knocked me out, was ‘High Definition’ by Michael Kalmbach. This one is hard to describe, but the first thing I’ll say is that it’s unbelievably compelling. Granted, I am absolutely fanatical about interesting materials, and tactile surfaces and this piece did not disappoint.
The form is created with a poured acrylic, decorated with “stacks” of “dot strands”, in organic, ripply waves around the piece. I am in awe of this combination of really innovative uses of fluid acrylic, and other chemical means. Beautiful pieces.

Two pieces from Aaron Wiener with Visionary Fusion Glass Works were displayed in one exhibition space. Created with pattern-cut and fused glass (I do not, I confess, completely understand this), not only are the forms distinct, and have an organic sensibility, but he has used glass brilliantly, in a newly realized way – the texture is as present as the form.

One of the pieces is colored glass formed in a fluid, not-unlike Chihuly manner, however, the other piece resembles a lacy bowl made of iron. Except it’s not. I know! It’s very hard to say what it’s made from, just by looking. But, actually is crafted of quartz glass with a metallic coating fused to the surface. Fantastic.

Surprisingly for me, the two-dimensional work didn’t speak to me quite as much as the other dynamic sculpture and installations. However, it was an eclectic offering, which I pretty much always appreciate.

‘Danger in Nature’ by Alexander Conner, is a collection of paintings, roughly 6’ x 4’, (UPDATE per comment below from the artist: Each of my works are 4′ Tall x 3′ Wide making them 4′ x 9′ Wide overall. They are not paintings, but full scale Cyanotypes, and were exposed in my backyard.) made to resemble those photosensitive paper experiments that you did with flowers and leaves, creating white silhouettes on that specific denim blue. His paintings playfully reflected that relationship between nature and our experience of- and place in it. Christopher Motta’s photography, is self-reflective, and it seems, a rather intimate view of his own recollections. I appreciated these as well-composed images, but for me, the meanings of them, at least as intended, didn’t quite translate. Except as good imagery.

There were two paintings by Daniel Mahlman, entitled ‘Fun and Games’ [4’ x 4’], mixed media paintings, in an illustrative, line drawing kind of style. They’re playful, and seem to be making a statement about guns. And candy. I like them, I like that I’m still thinking about them.

I am sorry I missed a couple of pieces–one by Brookes Britcher, who curated the show, and one by Jaime Alvarez. Britcher, who is also the CAi project coordinator, was responsible for a mixed media installation piece entitled “The Apple and the Tree,” a reconfiguration of a previously created installation. Being interested, like Judd, in usable, accessible materials to create a conversation about utility and new ways to look at objects, Britcher used found materials procured from local stores and restaurants. The good news is the installation had to come down because the store is rented. However, you can catch Brookes’ work in upcoming CAi shows. Sadly, I didn’t get the opportunity to see the work of Jaime Alvarez, a piece called GW. It seems to me, upon later seeing images of this work, that I’m missing out.

There is, for me, a very tangible thread throughout this well curated show, a certain levity, a lightheartedness, and images of Jaime’s GW display a very definitively whimsical feel.

As a show, I’m heartened to see such an energetic and conceptual art presence here in Chestnut Hill. Good sign for things to come, I hope.
CAi, which evolved out of Project Sketchbook – a curated show of area student artwork, is creating another work for the fall, entitled “Lessons’, featuring the work of art educators, with workshops offered from the artists throughout the season.

CAi – ‘Summer Phase’
Closing Reception: 6-9pm / Friday, August 20th 2010 / Magarity Ford
Hours: Free to the public everyday
Germantown Ave, between E Springfield Ave. and Hartwell Ln.
Chestnut Hill, 19118

Public art is rubbish. Starting from that premise is the best possible pre-emptive strike against disappointment. Don’t expect public art to be any good and you’ll be surprised when it actually is. Which it never is. Which it sometimes is. Public art needs its own completely separate language of appreciation from that conventionally used for contemporary art. In a sense, public art is the closest thing we have, in experiential terms, to western religious art of the Christian era: objects and images that form part of the fabric of nearly everyone’s daily experience, noticed or not. Public art might, at best, be a ladder to thought or a rethinking of urban space (although I’m not sure why urban space needs to be rethought; it’s just that you’re always told it should be). For the most part, though, it isn’t. It doesn’t do anything. It’s just there. At best, it may provide a momentary pause between dermatology appointments or a useful meeting spot for a blind date, but it’s rarely much more than that, simply (I’d suggest) because it’s just too embarrassing to be standing stroking your chin contemplatively in a public place. Public art knows this, and tries not to make too many demands on your brain, while making an immediate visual zing that’s useful when you’re giving directions. (Now that there’s SatNav, maybe we don’t need any more public art).

The most exemplary recent example in London was an invasion of squatting brightly coloured elephant sculptures that appeared across parks and plazas, made and sold for an elephant charity. While the charity no doubt does sterling and admirable work, as public art it was sadly symptomatic. Scant of imagination and artistic interest, it just looked a bit sad and wacky, the sort of thing Jerry Garcia might have in his downstairs toilet.

The central pitfall of public art is the word public. Public art depends upon a small proportion of people (funding bodies, government, galleries, museums, and artists themselves) making decisions on behalf of a much larger proportion of people (everyone else). If the decision-making tips more to the benefit of the former, you have Stalinist public sculpture, glowering down at the populace; to the latter, and you have a mealy-mouthed approach that loves to be loved. Both approaches talk down to their audience, in different and equally excruciating ways. But it does work, sometimes, against all the odds. My favorite public works of art from recent times, Tom Otterness’s Life Underground sculptures at the 14^th Street and 8^th Avenue subway station in New York, are the best possible case for the defense of public art. They can be experienced briefly, enjoyed repeatedly and contemplated leisurely. Nothing about them depends upon the theoretical safety net of the cloistered world of the contemporary art gallery, and they employ a visual language familiar to anyone who’s aware of the Doozers from Fraggle Rock. Their satirical import is pretty self-evident – i.e. creepy cash-bag-headed lobster attempts to separate parents from their child – but the breadth and burlesque of their satire is made necessary by the site itself.

The debate around public art – the it’s-rubbish camp versus the it-isn’t camp, in a nutshell – has been made a mainstream discussion in the UK, partly because of the foregrounding of the is-it-art debate (which is what it all comes down to, ultimately) by the huge success of Tate Modern (about which much more here), but partly because of the Fourth Plinth commissions in Trafalgar Square (about which much, much more here). The six new ideas for the always-previously-vacant plinth, by Art21’s own Allora & Calzadilla, Elmgreen & Dragset, Katharina Fritsch, Brian Griffiths, Hew Locke and Mariele Neudecker, are a lesson in how and why public art works, when it does.

The proposals generally take one of the two approaches established by previous occupants of the plinth: either tongue-in-cheek references to the existing figurative works on the other plinths (a precedent set up by Quinn and Wallinger and continued in Elmgreen & Dragset’s boy on a rocking horse, Locke’s carnivalesque equestrian sculpture, and Fritsch’s big blue cock), or maquette-like blow-ups of self-consciously “humble” objects (from Whiteread and Shonibare to Allora & Calzadilla’s big silver organ – spot the theme, kids! – and Griffith’s slab of cake in bricks). Neudecker’s mountain range in the shape of the British Isles is the only one to make a decisive break from previous traditions (although its hovering, topographical/geographical quality is somewhat reminiscent of Thomas Schutte’s glass modernist hotel plan). It seems unlikely, given the plinth’s proximity to the National Gallery, that Allora & Calzadilla’s project – a working ATM set into the base of the plinth, the operation of which causes the organ to blast out some triumphal chords – will be one of the two chosen (I may well be wrong). It’s a kitschy explosion of gold and silver whose ecclesiastical overtones don’t sit that well with the square and its history. For the same reason, the Fritsch – a cockerel in what is possibly IKB ultramarine – seems likely to ruffle feathers (“LOL”!) over its employment of the French national symbol.

I’m willing to bet that the Elmgreen & Dragset will be taken on, given its bathetic/heroic dichotomy that proved successful for Quinn’s Alison Lapper and Wallinger’s Christ; it’s a pretty facile work, though, and its self-conscious playfulness is a step away from snide. I’m more willing to bet on the Griffiths, a squat, fat, defiantly horizontal cake of Victorian origin, made using Victorian pink, yellow, and blue bricks, that manages to reference Claes Oldenberg (perhaps the 20^th century’s greatest public sculptor), British colonial history, obesity, tea-time, consumerism and childhood. Griffiths’s work does – and, I hope, will do – for Trafalgar Square what Otterness’s work has done for the New York subway station: cater, without compromise, to a diversity of experiences (fast/slow, one-off/daily), and be, unexpectedly, not rubbish.

Museum of Contemporary Art 10 September – 7 November 2010 Taking 'My world images' as a starting point, the exhibition will explore personal visions of local places throughout the world. The title Localities refers to the city of Roskilde. It also refers to how artists living in different parts of the globe envision their own world. These worlds are an inter zone holding fantasies and desires, frustration and alienation. They can be tangible or virtual, a space of freedom or restriction. In the current international geopolitical context, the perception of 'my world' and 'my images' resonate in multiple ways depending on who is presenting and who is receiving them. By the use of real or fictional narrations, artists will question the value of the images of the world we daily receive and passively swallow.

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As a visitor walking around an art venue, it’s refreshing and pleasing to stumble across green spaces. Open-air and enclosed courtyards featuring lush vegetation and bubbling fountains, outdoor terraces and cafés, rooftop and sculpture gardens – these snapshots of nature have become de rigueur inclusions in the physical layout of museums and galleries. But how are these spaces used? What are new and creative ways in which museum staff are utilizing these natural areas for events, participatory programs, and exhibitions? Can we foresee the direction of their evolution? To try and answer some of these questions, I have asked Nina Simon, author of The Participatory Museum (2010) and founder of design consultancy Museum 2.0, for an insider’s take on enhancing the visitor experience in these spaces.

Meg Floryan: Art museums are often seen as cold, white-walled institutions with strictly defined areas and rules of behavior. Are you seeing these attitudes and approaches relaxing? That is, do you see it as advantageous for museum layouts to become more or less compartmentalized?

Nina Simon: I definitely see it as advantageous to design museums for diverse use — but I don’t see that being different now than it was ten or twenty years ago. The best museums have always provided people with a range of settings, flooring, and stimulus. For hundreds of years, for example, German art museums have interspersed galleries with window nooks where people could sit and rest their eyes between viewing artworks. The need for a multifaceted experience is nothing new.

MF: What are some of your personal favorite programs or exhibitions that have been staged in museum green spaces? What are your least favorite?

NS: One of my favorite museums in the world is the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, north of Copenhagen. The museum is an incredible retreat, a fluid indoor-outdoor experience that takes you through winding galleries and rolling hills with incredible views across the sea to Sweden. There’s even a secret garden with installation works carved into the woods — a wonderland for a few intrepid visitors willing to open a nondescript side door. Yes, the Louisiana has great art, but more than that, it’s an inspiring, relaxing experience due to its natural setting and the integration of green spaces into the whole art experience.

Another wonderful place is the outdoor sculpture garden at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In this case, the outdoors is somewhat discontinuous from the inside. While the museum is beautiful, the sculpture garden is a true community commons — used by any and everyone enjoying the city outdoors. It’s free. It’s open. It’s easy to get to. And the hedging and separation of the installations visually allow you to spend time with the sculptures without being distracted by a jumble of other works.

I don’t have a “least favorite” green space experience. I do think it’s a mistake when a museum has a beautiful green space and doesn’t choose to activate it  — even lightly — with content. Too often we segment spaces into content or non-content. Bathrooms, parking lots, courtyards, rooftops, can all be big parts of visitors’ experiences and are often content-free. If a family is picnicking on your lawn, why not give them some art to enjoy as part of that experience?

MF: How do you see the use of such spaces changing as our design and curatorial perspectives evolve?

NS: I do see some museums moving toward a much more integrated approach toward the whole space, the whole experience. One of my favorite trends is the “leaking” of art elements into atypical parts of the museum. For example, at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Machine Project has been staging art encounters in closets under the stairs and in other interstitial places.

This isn’t just about curatorial and design perspectives; it’s also about the business of crafting a holistic “guest experience.” For example, over the last several years, many museums have brought food service back under their domain (after years of subcontracting) and have added menu items inspired by artworks to keep the art context constant.

MF: I’ve noticed in my own career of museum-visiting that guests tend to be more relaxed and open to interaction in green spaces such as garden courtyards or outdoor cafés. You’ve recently hosted a book discussion on your site regarding Ray Oldenburg’s The Great Good Place and the concept of so-called “third places.” Do you see natural spaces in art centers as potentially adequate third places?

NS: Sort of. Certainly cafes and courtyards are fabulous places for people to relax and chat during a visit—I suspect most visitors talk to each other more over a meal than at any other time during the museum experience. So yes, there is definitely that kind of casual use of the cafés. However, a “third place” as Ray Oldenburg defines it is really about people, not location or context. I think most museums would like to see the café and outdoor experience as more contextualized, not less. In that way it becomes more of a social programmatic space and less the kind of carefree hangout Oldenburg described.

MF: I currently live in Massachusetts and I’m a huge fan of the Worcester Art Museum’s annual Flora in Winter show. The concept is really simple – every February the museum invites local florists to create arrangements inspired by works in the permanent collection. The selection of artwork is always varied and the exhibition is spread throughout the museum like a floral treasure hunt. Flora in Winter is one of the most popular events at the museum, as it ushers in spring colors to break the monotony of winter, it encourages visitors to reinterpret old favorites or discover previously overlooked pieces, and it seems to relax everyone to more freely voice opinions no matter the level of art historical background. The exhibition essentially turns the whole of the museum into a garden. From a participation point of view, how do you read successes like this one? Would you encourage programs such as this for established cultural institutions that don’t have the luxury of gardens, or that lack the money and space for extensive expansions to incorporate more greenery?

NS: There are lots of successful shows like this around the country and the world – here in the Bay Area, the de Young Museum hosts a Bouquets to Art show that has similar impact. While I’m enthusiastic about their success, I wouldn’t give all the credit to the specific use of gardens and flowers in these shows. I think what makes them successful is the connection of the works to another part of human life — one with which gives many people joy in a different way. I think you could just as successfully stage a show that pairs artworks with recipes, or rock songs, or pets. When you can connect art to things that people love and are part of their everyday lives, they are able to more comfortably and knowledgeably “loosen up” and share their impressions about the works themselves. It also brings together more diverse audiences, which encourages cross-pollination of ideas and new conversations and connections to emerge.

The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists is the kind of book an artist would eat up in a single sitting. It is about the STUDIO — the spaces of artists. Edited by Mary Jane Jacob, executive director of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Michelle Grabner, artist, writer, and founder/director of The Suburban artist-run project space in Oak Park, Illinois. In its own words:

The Studio Reader pulls back the curtain from the art world to reveal the real activities behind artistic production. What does it mean to be in the studio? What is the space of the studio in the artist’s practice? How do studios help artists envision their agency and, beyond that, their own lives? This forward-thinking anthology features an all-star array of contributors, ranging from Svetlana Alpers, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Storr to Daniel Buren, Carolee Schneemann, and Buzz Spector, each of whom locates the studio both spatially and conceptually—at the center of an art world that careens across institutions, markets, and disciplines. A companion for anyone engaged with the spectacular sites of art at its making, The Studio Reader reconsiders this crucial space as an actual way of being that illuminates our understanding of both artists and the world they inhabit.

This book dissects the notion of the studio space and takes you on a journey of discovery. If you’re an artist, when you are done with it, you’ll feel the urge to get up and put it to work by re-orienting yourself in your familiar surroundings. If you’re a curator, a critic, or someone who indulges him/herself in studio visits regularly, The Studio Reader will inform your visits both physically and intellectually.

It is a useful tool that got me thinking quite a bit about the kind of artists’ studio visits I do here, as well as my about own studio space in Athens and the way I utilize it. In 2009, Inside the Artist’s Studio set out to discover where some of today’s art is being made. A book like The Studio Reader takes us forward on our quest.

So I have The Studio Reader in hand, back in a familiar place which almost feels like home – the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and specifically the Summer Studio residency program at the Sullivan Galleries, where I’ve been an artist-in-residence for the past two months working on a research-writing project.

The Summer Studio occupies a vast, open 20,000 sq. ft. space on the 7^th floor of the Carson Pirie Scott building in downtown Chicago. The truth is that it is not the work itself that activates the Summer Studio, nor the “stuff” that fill up the space, but it is the intellectual wealth each of us brings into this communal setting. And that became evident as I studio-visited my peers throughout this two-month period. Artists do have a creative aura that’s manifested in physical space, and the space one inhabits is determined by one’s own creative ambitions or limitations. So how much room does an artist’s creative energy take and how does a residency program achieve creative balance within such a space? Well, that’s the challenge at hand.

Assistant Curator of the Sullivan Galleries Kate Zeller tells us more about the program and the way in which the studio boundaries at the Summer Studio were being pushed all summer long. In addition, she discusses the Process in Product: Work from Summer Studio exhibition (August 28 – October 2), best described as an open invitation for rethinking the “studio” in its entirety.

It is my pleasure to end the summer in the company of Mary Jane Jacob, Michelle Grabner, and Kate Zeller.

Georgia Kotretsos: Within the first few lines of The Studio Reader preface, your words speak of a condition that sum up the essence of the artist’s studio: “Even when the making is not so visible, it is always present.” Is it that “presence” that Tehching Hsieh is exhausting by keeping a studio space without having made any kind of art for over a decade as we read in Barry Schwabsky’s essay, The Symbolic Studio?

Mary Jane Jacob: When I said that “the studio is more than a physical place and even more than a mental space; it is a necessity of being,” I intended to convey that making art is an omnipresent thing; it works in consciously, semi-consciously, and in unconscious ways. It is always just below the surface, if not right there — in the head and hand. Yes, one can also think of this as non-studio practices that are less material and in The Studio Reader, we have such discussions of Tehching Hsieh or Kimsooja’s thought that her body is her studio. But it is also true for the painter, the sculptor, the printmaker, and we could go on with this list; it is not media specific.

How we locate an idea for art, a solution to an artistic problem, and especially the development of a work and of an ongoing practice is by living art — and this happens in the very being of being an artist. So when I speak of consciousness, I mean that we bring to our work a certain perception and mindset, and that also is present in our life. The relation of art and life is not just a 20^th-century, modern, or avant-garde position; it is an essential art condition. Cultivating a deep and wide consciousness is important to many artists because, then, that just-below-the-surface state can be called into operation, seamlessly, and with this openness or permeability, a natural flow can occur that can contribute to the making of art in the studio that we take on our back.

GK: I appreciate an introduction that offers insight and a cohesive historicity on a subject, such as the one you wrote about the studio in The Studio Reader. Your closing sentence — “Critical, ironic, sentimental, and practical, the practiced place of the studio is no longer the fixed space of inspiration that Poussin laid eyes on four hundred years ago” — wisely makes room and gives reason for the rest of the book to unfold. So, what is the studio today? What does The Studio Reader tell us?

Michelle Grabner: I believe that the idea of the studio today is unambiguously foundational to the complications and contradictions of contemporary art practice.

At its most pragmatic, it is simply a necessary space of production and display. After researching the multitude of shapes and forms comprising the contemporary studio, they are no more fascinating than oil stick, video, clay, or canvas: the studio akin to a medium. However, the studio can also be a subject. And this is where it gets interesting and I hope The Studio Reader points to conditions in contemporary art production that can be sussed out through the lens of the studio.

For example, the many artist’s contributions to The Studio Reader are intriguing and insightful accounts into day-to-day studio engagement, yet it is only in their collectivity that one can start to assess how the space of production, invention, creativity, and meaning are being culled by artists today.

I think one of the most interesting disagreements in contemporary art exists between the totalizing embracement of the studio and art’s democratization: “People just make things. And so I don’t know whether it’s so necessary to ‘reveal’ anything anymore,” writes Cory Arcangel. With a swift retort, Houston-based critic Mary LeClere writes, “The question isn’t whether it’s art, but whether it needs to be. Why hold onto the name if it no longer refers to something that has a cultural, and therefore shared, meaning?”

So why the need for studios? Here within lies a complex web of contradictions that configure contemporary art and culture. The contemporary studio lays the foundation for new research into those long disparaged notions of authorship, talent, and métier.

GK: Since July 1 at the Summer Studio residency program — within the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, within the Sullivan Galleries, within individual open studios – there is art-making taking place. Besides the obvious Russian doll effect, do the conditions of the program push the studio boundaries further and if yes, in what direction?

Kate Zeller: To me, the Summer Studio activates in practice many of the conceptual arguments regarding the nature of the studio in contemporary practice, as presented in The Studio Reader. As the essays in the text examine and upend romanticized notions of the studio as the private site for autonomous production and reconsider ideas of a conventional studio, the Summer Studio program requires its participants to confront such notions in their daily practice. The physical configuration of the space itself already disrupts the idea of studio as private space. None of the 19 studio spaces have a door, let alone four walls. Each has a least one side completely open into the gallery, allowing for all passers-by to have a glimpse into their workspace. Many of the studio spaces even include tables that serve as links between walls and shared work surfaces for the artists. Thus, the physical layout of the studios themselves require the artists-in-residence to consider their practice not only as something other than happening within a private, closed-off space, but to recognize how it relates to that of others. And it is the variety of practices within this residency that begin to make evident the variants in the definitions of “studio” as articulated in The Studio Reader.

But, as you mention, these individual studios situated within this internal community [comprise] just one layer of the many in which Summer Studio is a part. One that I feel most begins to push boundaries of the studio — or perhaps requires us to consider what those boundaries are and when they are present — is when we add to these layers [that of] the viewing public. At the end of the Summer Studio, the work from these residencies will become our fall exhibition titled Process in Product: Work from Summer Studio. The artists involved have been asked to present their work, their space for display, leaving up to them the details and format of the installation to be on view. It is this conflation of the site of production and site of exhibition that seems to further question the nature of the studio, but also requires response through a product. Decisions about their presentation call into consideration what it means to put such a space on view. As discussed in The Studio Reader, with essays that address installations of artists’ studios, such as Francis Bacon’s in Dublin and Constantine Brancusi’s in Paris, such displays may serve to reinforce certain myths of the relationship between the artist and the studio. While other essays present the studio as a site of attention and a state of mind, it can be questioned as to whether or not such spaces can still be considered a studio if the artist is no longer working in them. By looking at the studio through the lens of the exhibition, such queries as considered in the text are played out in practice. All involved provide their own examination of and thoughts on [the question,] what is the nature of the studio today?

* * *

Overall the Summer Studio program has had, for a lack of a better metaphor, quite the Tetris affect on my own studio/writing practice. Each block that fell filled up a gap and made a straight line, which then instantly erased itself by making room for more blocks to come. I could not have asked for anything more.

And, that’s a wrap!

Amid the parking lots and barely passable maze of streets just west of Chinatown, Jolie Laide, the gallery that opened in July, has lots of big plans. The plans are short term and long term.

The gallery property is owned by the same people who own SAAW, Inc., a hip design firm that does interiors for retailers. Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie are two of their retail clients, but the firm does corporate spaces and residential ones as well.  Jolie Laide Gallery Director Travis Heck worked there as an artist and a designer.

That professional sense of space shows in the gallery’s exposed brick and fancy plaster finish on the walls (venetian plaster if you must know). And it showed in the first show with chair- and architecture-themed art. This month, their show includes fragile what-is-its with encrusted surfaces from Fabienne Lasserre (contributor Emmy Thelander recently wrote about Lasserre’s show in Brooklyn), and dark narrative paintings from two artists–Joel Dean’s torutured figures in abstract tangles and Leslie Smith III’s ordinary, even cheerful, pictures of menace. Lasserre was the stand-out here, with her not quite people and not quite furniture.

Jolie Laide’s big gallery space is a beachhead for a virtual compound. In the long term, the gallery has a couple of project spaces, one right across the street and another in the works. And this First Friday, to augment the opening reception for a show of work by Robert Horvath, 6-9 p.m., the gallery will take over the surrounding, never-used streets with performance and installations from an exciting crew, including recent Penn MFA Heather Ramsdale and suddenly-he’s-everywhere Tim Eads. Plus it looks like a terrific party. There’s more incredible stuff coming up the next evening (8-10 p.m.) by another recent Penn MFA, Jacolby Satterwhite, whose video/performance blew us away at the Penn show at the Ice Box. Music, too!

What I’m getting around to, however, is that with Jolie Laide, the Chinatown art scene has achieved critical mass.  Most of you know this, but for those who don’t, the neighborhood includes all the galleries in 319 N. 11th (Vox Populi, Marginal Utility, Grizzly Grizzly, Tiger Strikes Asteroid are the main players there right now), Space 1026 and the Fabric Workshop and Museum both on Arch, and the Asian Arts Initiative on Vine (I keep hoping their art program revives to equal the glory days; right now they seem more focused on performance and I have to assume that’s where there’s more funding money is available, a reflection of what’s wrong with the world of non-profits).

First Fridays has become delightfully impossible for us. Should we go to Chinatown? to Frankford? to Kensington? to NoLibs? or to dear old Old City? The city’s inaction in encouraging a gallery zone has had a happy result. All of these nabes are getting a boost. But this wealth of goodies means we are missing great stuff. And it has forced us to have lots of interns, fanning out across the city to cover each of the neighborhoods. We can’t do it all. But we want to.

After savoring some of the best Thai food I have had in a long time in Smile’s downstairs café, I headed upstairs to their gallery.  The small but well utilized space is currently hosting Bangkok and Blacklight.  The show combines urban, graffiti style artists from the Trenton area with a well renowned contemporary artist from Bangkok, Vichoke Mukdamanee.  The gallery has been divided into two rooms, one with bright white walls and full lighting for Mukdamanee’s glistening works, while the back room has been drenched in blacklighting, showing off some color popping works.  Together, they flood the space with differing light, colors and textures, evoking a Postmodern/Pop vibe.

The blacklight show at Smile Gallery is actually a continuation of the recent UV Urban Blacklight Art Experiment in Trenton, presented by Albus Cavus and Sage Collective.  The participating artists are Leon Rainbow (co-curator with Dr. Debra Miller), Mike Ciccotello, Joe Iurato, Josl, Luv 1, Aja Washington, Jim Hancocks, Papermonster, David Orantes, Demer, Kortez, Jon Conner and Will Kasso.

Vichoke Mukdamanee was brought into this show due to the curators’ desire for “the reconfigured [UV Urban Blacklight] show to be global, to include as a counterpart the latest work from a popular Thai artist, who was the teacher and mentor of Smile’s owner, Ken Tutjamnong.”  Mukdamanee’s series focuses on depicting the human face.  More specifically, this collection seeks to record his memories and associations with his friends, family and acquaintances.

All of the works are mixed media, except two that are etchings from the same impression.  Rather large sheets of aluminum (most at least 3 ft. high), holed and stamped with small circles, play the role of canvas for these works.  Layers of paint and glitter texturize and soften the work, giving personality to an otherwise cold surface.

In person, one can’t help but sense the emotion present in these works, as if you are being introduced to Mukdamanee’s loved ones first hand.  Photographs really do not do these works justice.  While here light is being reflected and magnified, the other side of the gallery feels as if it’s absorbing the light right out of the air.

Joe Iurato’s two-piece work, Watering Can, sets the tone of the room with his use of a paint-dripped signage style graphic.  The use of neon oranges and greens seemed to be most prevalent.  Will Kasso beautifully commanded delicate, warm-orange highlights in his work, Chinese Democracy.

Smaller works included painted spray cans, a cartoon-ish raindrop work by Leon Rainbow, two squid and jellyfish themed works by Lank (Jon Conner), and two tribal inspired masks by Kortez.  The masks, one mostly pink and the other green, are one of the first objects to catch your attention when entering the blacklight space.  Their glow and detail are impressive.

Bangkok and Blacklight is perfect for Philadelphia with its strong graffiti community and the Mural Arts Program.  This is a rather rare chance to see visiting work from a great Thai artist and exciting blacklight works from some very talented urban painters.  Just to experience the viewing environment that Smile has created is reason enough to check out this show.

The show will be open until September 6^th, and gallery hours are Monday-Friday noon-2:30 and 5-9 pm, Saturday 5-9 pm, and closed on Sundays.

Christmas group show, with new works by artists such as D*Face, Chloe Early, Marcus Jensen & Shepard Fairey amongst others.
http://www.stolenspace.com

Hope Springs Eternal
By San Francisco's Needles and Pens Gallery
From the ashes of San Francisco's "Dot Com Bust," arose a quiet new cultural vitality. The partial collapse of big business and subsequent vacating of studios, lofts, and apartment buildings temporarily halted the displacement of artists, breathing a new life into the city. This rebirth, marked by the momentary pause of economic progress in the city's business sector, subtly ushered in a new era that allowed it's artistic community to flourish. Creative types could once again afford to remain in San Francisco.

For the last five years, at the core of this post-dot com era, has been Needles + Pens - a space that's mission has been to offer the artistic community of San Francisco a venue in which they can display and sell their creations (hand-made clothing, self-published zines, and visual artwork) to the public. In that time, N+P has evolved into a key grass-roots hub of the city's thriving arts scene, that today, attracts an international scope of artists.

Among the throngs of talented artists that have been involved with N+P over the years, Monica Canilao, Bill Daniel, Chris Duncan, Mat O'Brien, The Polaroid Kidd, Kyle Ranson, Sara Thustra, and Paul Urich most faithfully represent the spectrum of influential work to come out of San Francisco during this period of time. - A soulful aesthetic fundamentally built upon of the do-it-yourself ethos of punk rock, graffiti, skateboard culture, folk wisdom, and an inner-being that thrives upon contributing to the world around it. Their work in essence, embodies the revitalized spirit of San Francisco.

Hope Springs Eternal will showcase ink drawings, paintings (solo and collaborative), prints, photographs, and a site-specific installation. In addition the exhibition will be accompanied by a zine (released in a limited-edition of 200) created by the artists.


opens thursday . Feb 28 . 2008 . 7-9 pm
show runs 29th February – 23rd March . 2008
gallery hours th - su . 2 - 6 pm
96 Gillespie

Solo Exhibit by Herakut
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 12, 2008, 2008, 8 PM – Midnight
Exhibition Dates: April 12 – May 4, 2008

Carmichael Gallery of Contemporary Art is proud to present Streichelzoo, a solo exhibition featuring the artwork of German street art duo, Herakut. The occasion will mark Herakut’s first solo show in the United States. Artwork featured will include a combination of spray paint with charcoal, watercolors, and other paints on a variety of media, including wood, canvas, and paper. The gallery will be transformed into a work of art in itself, as Hera and Akut run wild and create a large scale installation in the space. Streichelzoo will be on view April 12 through May 4, 2008, with an opening reception held on April 12, from 8 p.m. to Midnight.

Streichelzoo (‘strAIkel‚zu:) means “petting zoo” in German, an apt label for a showcase of the quirky cast of creatures about to enter Carmichael Gallery. The artwork in the show embraces a brand new phase in Herakut’s artistic evolution, as they continue to take risks and blend their signature styles into one unique, refreshing urban voice. “We have started to create little Frankenstein creatures,” says Hera of their masterfully offbeat character paintings, which consist of two essential ingredients: Akut’s painstaking photorealism and her own raw, nimble brushstrokes. “We usually combine these two elements in a freestyle way, and do it right at the wall, right in the gallery.” Ideas flow organically in this manner; nothing can be predicted when Herakut enter an empty space, armed with spray cans, brushes, and body parts ranging from arms and legs to dog heads sprayed on canvas – “there is no telling what will come out of this pile of limbs in the end.” The fluidity of their inspired unions of ill-fitting extremities is impressive – heavy muscular arms protrude comfortably from the torsos of slender, sensual girls. Having contributed so much to each and every one of their pieces, “we feel like Mommy and Daddy to all of these little odd and ugly kids.”

Herakut follow a rather idiosyncratic process of creating their works of art, communicating only intermittently in a private dialogue until they collectively feel they have contributed all they possibly can to the wall or canvas. Their process of shift work – Akut will paint a head in one area while Hera creates a background or begins a body – allows for both autonomy and synchronization. The artists draw upon their understanding of the balance between compromise and individuality, learned as members of larger graffiti crews, to overcome potential conflicts of opinion in this precarious form of painting. “I think for people, and especially for artists, it’s a great way of therapy,” muses Hera. “We tend to be self-centered control-freaks, don’t we?”

Conceptually, Herakut’s work has followed a trajectory that echoes their own relationship, as they approach their fourth year working together and persist in exploring novel modes of expression. The artists flavor their pieces with natural, earthy tones, professing an affinity with these hues that makes them feel safe and empowered. Generally avoiding political themes in their work, Herakut prefer to paint what they genuinely know and feel. Dogs frequently recur in their pieces, often with sly grins painted on their faces. To quote Akut’s analogy as to why they do so, “Street artists are dogs. They leave their shit everywhere.”

www.carmichaelgallery.com

PURE EVIL GALLERY presents THE 1980 CREW SHOW



The first in a series of Exhibitions at the PURE EVIL GALLERY ... some will be upstairs, and some will be down in the BASEMENT ROOMS , 3 d**kensian chambers that were discovered by accident about a month ago and I have been renovating.. Because the main room down there is completely rough as a badgers bottom and open to the elements its a perfect street/gallery environment for showing new art from global street artists...

coming next :

March 27th deadbeat donny : Dora from POW and Johnny Stretch rocking it in the basement.. installing things and bringing their unique dystopian vision to the pure evil dungeons

April 3 : PURE EVIL SOLO SHOW NEWCASTLE at elektrick sheep

April 17th : Jack Clifford (scrawl collective) installation in basement space

May 1st : Group show at the Jobcentre in Bristol

May 8th : Martinez crew Barcelona in the Basement galleries Ovni, Tom 14, Pez, Uri, Nuno

May 22 : The Krah in the basement

June 5 : Sten , Romes finest in the basement

June 26 : Tinsel in the basement gallery

July 4 : Pure Evil Show Brighton at the Ink'd gallery

July : Pure Evil Show at Choque Cultural Sao Paulo

thats it, thanks....

If anybody fancies a preview of the downstairs space , pop in and say hi...

PURE EVIL

For more information contact:
Pure Evil Gallery,
108 Leonard st,
London EC2A 4RH
Phone 07805 420771
cue@sofuzzycrew.com
Gallery Hours:
10am - 6pm daily
or by appointment.