This Winter while the art bubble woopie cushion was quietly deflating galleries faced the always awesome task of maintaining a bottom line and intellectual integrity – at least that’s what we like to think. One humble example of this was Tony Labat’s relational aesthetic piece "Bulk" featured at Queen’s Nails. The gallery (and it is a gallery not an art space thank you) was transformed into a social club that encouraged interaction and community among its members. The work ostensibly existed as a plywood bar where you could get cheap cans of Tecate for six-weeks or more but was intended as a space for social dialogue. As the exhibit wore on successive visits revealed that this human hamster cage began to get a little ripe and that the only notable dialogue to emerge seems to be the impression that an SFAI faculty member exploited an embattled reputation of an adventurous gallery space. This is not to say it wasn’t art worth experiencing but it did reassert the pervasive presence of risk in artistic experiments. In this experiment the result merely confirmed the second law of thermodynamics which says an ordered system tends to disorder. And as Rirkrit Tiravanija has said in so many words before. You sit waiting around for something to happen and then nothing does.
Enter Maximo Gonzalez. This May show ironically for the time features paper cutout images constructed from devalued Third World currencies. In addition to this there are sculptural exhibition carts called Changarrito featured as readymade vending platforms. These carts are intended to feature work by emerging artists and spoof the art market touting an alternative economy. This paradigm is an intellectual toy in the same space with Gonzalez' currency art. The reason for this seems to be that the Changarrito is not really that interesting given the past 150 years of economic history and the simple fact that tons of street artists have already done it in some context or another – If you’ve gone into the 49 Geary street galleries during 1st Thursdays you might have passed a portable gallery set up out front which has the same presence if not intent. Is it that it’s from the third world?
Anyway the assembled cutouts are presented in a traditional Mexican mural format featuring tanks and trees. The subject deals with how third world countries are still bankrupted by their colonial past of resource acquisition and military oppression – not a particularly fresh idea since the neo-colonialist World Bank has been around for more than half a century but the familiar theme is charmingly portrayed using inexpensive money. In the back room the cutouts [ in a word ;) ] exploits the portraiture on some bills to create semi grotesque-erotic figures using the heads of Freud, what looks like Jordan’s King Hussein, others figures. The addition of a leafless tree seems out of theme with this wall but echoes with the front room tableaux. One wonderful piece in the Changaritto room is a book that has been cut into revealing sections of pages in layers. Since the book is a compilation of designs each exposed surface creates a rough hewn yet seductive three dimensional relief. All parts of this show are beautiful bohemian expressions - some poetic and some, ummm... povera.
Wandering by the Ryan McGinley images on the wall at Ratio 3 there are a couple good scenes to take in. The content emulates fading polaroids or yellowing ektachromes taken on what appears to be a nudist camp vacation. Most carry with them an ambiguous sentimentality and others a humorous absurdity. A young guys head nestled in the arms of a towering bear literally in one photo by the door over promises on what the rest of the show delivers in the end. A nude couple on roller skates careening across one photo titled "Dakota Crashes" also aspires to greatness but when it comes down to it – my date said it best – it’s great but it’s like any snapshot once you’ve seen it your done, like reading a magazine.
My own critical ambivalence brought me to survey a well known collector to see what he thought. He felt that while it reminded him of what he used to do in the 60’s the images themselves looked like nobody was having any fun at all. After echoing the trueism that good art is something the viewer must love we both agreed their was no love here and if you were looking for anything it wasn't going to be free.
The tenor of the exhibit shifted slightly when the Mayor showed up with his g-friend in tow but soon it was time to go.
Despite being lodged in a zone between A Happening and 90’s neurotic realism this work has a unique strand of un-frightening creepiness. If you remember what you felt watching a Jodorosky movie or recall the Freudian confusion of discovering your parents having timid sex that’s sort of what sits in the distant background for me at least and what I can walk away with. Other than that… pphhht!
James Gobel’ s work is less a gender specific vision than the evocation of a broader aesthetic truth. These felt paintings intermix vivid color, plush material, brittle glam and flannel plaids so intensely they could almost be expected to herald the resurrection of Freddy Mercury – be sure to add a pinch of Botero though.
Even if your personal awareness derives from a 'straight' perspective there is a distinct familiarity that reaches out to the viewer. Pop-cultural music references are made on t-shirts worn by the painted subjects and a hyper-sentimentalized male gaze anchors the themes for anyone.
Gobel’ s most frequent subject is a bearded man with “dandied” eyes, holding candles like a torch, and claid in plaid. This character is referred to in gay circles as a Bear but he for these purposes appears highly idealized, vividly permed, and wanly looking off into some romantic distance. The text references to pop culture are names of bands with some gay fan-based artists like Madonna as well as, surprise, surprise, Motorhead – while Lemme is unquestionably a rocker he is also a man’s man.
The pop-to-gay crossovers of the bands that appear on the t-shirts also speak to the role of this artist as an “other” who is able to express an idealized personal truth. To couch this in the language of South Park: These pictures of "Big Gay Al" matter to us all and create new takes on noticeable themes. After 100 years of a naked woman walking down a staircase a big bearded dude instead ascends in “Someday You Will Find Me” fully clothed and holding a candle. The absurdity of a seated, pink-gloved figure wearing engineer boots in a plushly appointed drawing room creates engaging cheese.
The meticulous illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley created tableaux both absurd and seductive coalesced into a fantastic vision. In James Gobel’ s seems to be accomplishing the same brilliant result in felt. Shapes are cut and assembled into a composition plan similar to how a paint-by-numbers canvas might be divided then glued to a canvas. This felt surfaces are augmented with either stenciling or airbrush to increase the depth and create the lighting effects. Mining territory often reserved for Keane, Sad Clowns and the Velvet Elvis – some would argue the third ring of dante’s inferno of creative atrocity – Gobel elevates the materials without stripping it of its previous uses. This in turn gives vibrancy to surface of the object itself.
You can see this work at the newly renamed Marx & Zavaterro (formerly Heather Marx Gallery) 77 Geary Street (@ Grant Avenue), 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94108
Sad to say great dialogue about ideas at gallery openings are hard to come by. No worries mate, the SFAI spring lecture series and Glen Helfand bring exceptional and interesting thoughts to the table.
The latest highlight was a remarkable presentation by artist Jill Magid. During her talk the one word she used the most was “intimacy”. The work described in detail at an intricate website (her name dot net) was illuminated by the narrative of last wednesday's presentation. The creative strategies she adopts are not exclusively linked to surveillance media but pervasive to say the least.
In an early example at MIT in Cambridge, MA, she hijacks a closed-circuit monitor in a student union to project images from a button-hole camera inside her clothes. A normally passive announcement screen is then transformed into a video-noir performance vehicle. As she stands in front of the monitor dragging the "spy-camera" across her body people walk through the public space watching the progress of the camera. In a video documenting this the audience does not realize she is the subject of the physical examination even while her hands oddly move under her sweater and pants. At the end of this video she explained that the resulting appearance of dumbfounded police and guards provided inspiration for future work.
In Europe after unsuccessfully proposing an art project to a Dutch police station artist Magid creates a security consultancy to convince the authorities to let her decorate their video cameras with colored rhinestones.
Following this adventure she travels to England where she makes a legal request to Liverpool authorities to retrieve her image every day for 30 days as she appears on cameras around town. This flowers into a direct interaction with observing police officers who eventually, as Magid explains furnish her with a microphone to communicate with her observer in real time. Cinematic elements emerge as she directs the operators to zoom in on her, choose angles based on “film theory”, and guide her around travel around a town square with her eyes closed. The culminates in a finale ride around the city on the back of a police motorcycle which ends with Magid and her horseman riding into the sunset off the surveillance grid.
The second frequently used word during her lecture was “romance”. It seems the implication here is romantic love: love from afar, honorable love, etc. Combined with intimacy in this context Magid seems to be (consciously or not) attempting to impart a seduction of her would be Panoptic lovers. The Panopticon is a prison design by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham [1785] which allowed a warden to observe all prisoners without them being able to tell whether they were being watched. One pop culture idealization of such a place would be the short-lived TV series the Prisoner. The difference here is that the prisoner draws the warden in not to so much to escape but to feed back the observations. Other surveillance art calls into question the effectiveness or viability of omniscient surveillance but the melodrama surrounding these pieces create a very legible atmosphere.
Magid’s M.O. is to first subvert the veil hiding the observer then turn the act of observation into something less solitary. In an even more recent work she returns to the post-911 America and this time it's even more personal or intimate. Approaching a homeland security officer she convinces him to "teach" her his job. Elements of danger, intrigue, and also banality infuse the process and resulting pieces (pictures and a book) entitled “Lincoln Ocean Victor Eddy” - "LOVE" using the phonetic radio alphabet. Here she forges a complex relationship documented in a narrative diary whle she sits with this cop on his stakeouts at New York subway stops to guard the tunnel entrances.
Becoming a subject within her work is an important element and best exemplified in the work “Auto Portrait Pending”. This piece will not be fully realized until Magid’s death when she has planned to have her remains turned into a diamond. The sentimentalism of this bizarre yet feasable context is upended by a requisite contractual relationship between her and the diamonds potential future owner transfomring Magid into pending property. The romantic and imtimate are so interestingly fused that if I manage to live long enough I’d want to own it/her.
Let’s hope SFAI continues with these very interesting talks.
For more information about Jill Magid go to www.jillmagid.net
The SFAI lectures are being held throughout the spring mostly on Mondays and Wednesdays at 7:30pm for more information go to this website.
http://www.sfai.edu/Event/Events.aspx?navID=261§ionID=7
In December, Al Farrow’s show of sculpted churches, temples and mosques built from guns and ammo at Catherine Clark was top-notch. Maybe it was scheduling or just the right somber time of year for it but it seemed like this show deserved to capture more eyeballs than a winter show normally does. The winter season still though is appropriate to a feeling as basic and mute as death itself.
The weight of the steel and aggressiveness of a single gun's metal heft is magnified in these conglomerate architectural models. The mood is poignantly supplemented by bones housed inside. In front of the gallery during the exhibit a full cathedral sheltered a human spine. This wasn't initally apparent but the familiar miniaturization draws you in like any scale model into the context of a crypt or memorial. One wonders where the bones come from and making the anthropromorphic connections to these remains you find yourself entombed psychologically, if only for a moment.
While marveling at the construction of any of Farrow's works there is also obviously the inescapable scent of violence piggybacked by a frail feeling of immortality. Is this a projection of the artist's own personal tragedies or a comment on the dead-hand of religious empire's “desert prejudice”? With the bones they function as reliquaries – equally memorial and creepy.
If you're wondering why the hell Triple Base was replaced by a travel agency step into the kiosk space and book a flight to Baghdad. Yes, Baghdad. The exuberant female voice-over describes what you will see there: cradle of civilization, etc, etc. As you stand in what looks like a cross between ATM booth and quick-stop self service booth.
A closer look invites you to the kiosk's booking screen amid printed brochures and backlit lucite signage glowing with the airplane logo of Abidin Travel in magenta, white and deep blue. The website alows you to book flights, ground transportation and cars. Four color travel brochures are available for the taking as well as a variety of color promotional posters of sights in and around the city. Each are emblazoned with the tagline "Welcome to Baghdad" with additional fineprint at the bottom of the abidintravels website as well as the artist Adel Abidin - http://www.adelabidin.com. An image of someone playing the bongos wearing a gray "ARMY" t-shirt, a sniper's nest in a guard tower, or a man with a bandaged jaw are included here.
On the wall around a corner a video these images were lifted from plays showing gunshots to the head, cars in flames and various elements of military or insurgent carnage. The intell or skinny on this whole venture is that Triple Base with CCA made this happen. Like most new media setups, it invites a level of interactivity with residual rewards for taking the printed materials or clicking through the presentation also online http://abidintravels.com/.
What makes it extra special is the context of having it as a store front in the San Francisco Mission district instead of part of an art show where you are liable to expect this sort of mayhem. The level of public interaction this space has with the street cloaks as well as magnifies the irridescence of the work. The mundane action of walking into a store front instantly becomes a surreally creative act on part of the viewer. The pile of posters stacked against one wall emulates Felix Gonzales-Torres work of black and white posters in that they are of everyday images of war and they are available for the taking. The fact that everyday images of war have repenetrated the vox populi adds a new direction to this method of presentation. Here the act of taking away more thoroughly integrates the banal with surreal resulting in it marking you just a bit as you leave. This is engaging, interesting, disturbing and in the words of George Tenet "A SLAM DUNK".
Ratio 3 and Triple Base were pretty crowded on opening night last month and as with other venues continue to demonstrate how vital the Mission is to San Francisco’s art scene. Yeah there are a few hits and misses in other places but even the expected misses like Lincart can have a good show or two – this month isn't too bad. There are a couple times I get exasperated walking into that space but when that happens again here are some antidotes.
Ratio 3 is a real breath of fresh air down in the Upper Mission. Last months show was a traditional group exhibition with a mix of very enthralling works ranging from 2-d to sculpture but it has gotten more exciting. This months show with Takeshi Murata is literally a visual ooze of video delay, color and appropriation that is presented as cinema. Two abstract programs are presented separately in the large and small room with a title reminiscent of album titles by Japanese bands like Masonna, Merzbow, or Hanatarashi. Much like those musical constructions Escape Spirit VideoSlime is basically an abstract piece. The first vid you see walking in includes footage of primates. These slowly moving figurative and portrait studies melt like purple, pink and green butter before your very eyes. The effect itself looks something like a cross between slow key framing and digital delay . If you’ve watched a digital video you might see less severe version of key framing artifacts appear. For example you might see a section of a movie where pixels from two frames overlap like layers of peeling paint. In the second room the primate images are switched with images or Sylvester Stallone in Rambo or Predator (I don’t recall which) that begin to crumble into a video blue and electric red strobing spot that seemingly threatens to burn a nice toasty hole into your retinas.
The music of Richard Beatty accompanies these churning miasmata of image and color very well creating a fully integrated piece. After some well spent time with it on the bench provided you can walk away with a nice cold ethereal buzz. Go for a visit open your eyes and pour it in.
Walking into the last show at Triple Bass the room was filled with more people than installation. Returning during the day when nobody is around reveals the installation elements more clearly. Part of the drywall was removed and plaster mounds and impressions were added to the other sides. Other sections of wall were painted with a soul sucking shade of charcoal black, decorated with flowers or broken pieces of drywall shaped into the form of mountains or sconces holding more charcoal. Random clatterings syncopate with a couple flashing lights from an ipod lying on the floor. Above the head in one corner float mini plastic gummy clouds which jutted from the wall a few inches.
Called a Dialogue between Sound and Space this installation by Drew Bennett is intended to confront the traditionally anti-social nature of visual art.
Sounds interesting right? Maybe it might have been but this is the closest to 2-d an installation could ever be. Sitting on a stool provided in the middle of this nearly empty room the wall dressings only appear slightly decorative lacking the enveloping presence stated in the release. Don't believe my assessment look at the picture on the website. Half the people in the room look board, even with a band in front of them.
Stronger visually was the view of people passing the empty doorway on 24th street going about their business in the Mission. There is potential here but not this month.
Ratio 3 is nestled away on Stevenson Alley between Valencia, and 14th street
Triple Bass is located at 3041 24th Street near Treat Street.
It's hard to avoid reading when looking at Richard Nagler's photography especially at his show at George Krevsky Gallery this month. Less didactic and more integrated into the image than say Krueger's photo statements Nagler waits for his images to take on their final structure in real time. A word on the side of a building whether it be stencil or graffiti can serve as the seed for a picture. The ambiguity of commercial signage is also used as part of an image created by waiting. Where Bresson's photos might be considered a more kinetic version of image-hunting waiting on a street corner for the someone’s presence to interact with the visual concrete of a word can understandably require the patience of a Montana fly fisherman. Begun in 1977 Nagler’s linkage of text tags to figures range into the present day. They capture people and parts of Oakland who are no longer there as well as places in Miami. A black and white from 1981 shows a shadow of man in a hat floating under a sign reading "Downtown". This combination creates an alienating but noir-ishly haunting composition. From this year a man stands at the opening of a chain-link fence adorned on top with razor wire to the right of "VICTORY" emblazoned on the back of a one-story white building. Is this “Mission Accomplished on the home front? While an interaction with text and figure may seem like an incidental setup each photo captures more than simple verite. The character of the figure functions as the centerpiece of a narrative which includes a call-and-response dialogue with the text. For example a woman walking past a store front in a bright red coat has her head framed by a circle with the word "special" painted in it. Like winning the lottery this woman for a split-second has become a red-clad angel only because she just happened to be walking by and be of the right height. In photography, waiting yields meticulous result and Nagler continues to illustrates how many possibilities are generated in a simple arrangement. This is a quiet show with a great return. George Krevsky Gallery is located on the 2nd Floor of 77 Geary Street - downtown San Francisco.
While I was standing at the SFMOMA book shop a week back I heard a woman talking to her friend how draining a trip to the oakland galleries can be. Saying she goes over there with some hope of seeing but never achieving that goal. Consequently this anonymous person told her friend she never goes over there anymore. I've heard this from others but hey you never know what you'll find if you look right?
Not to be confounded by naysayers in the world as well as the voices in my head I rode over to the Telegraph and Grand area to see what was shaking. Having learned my lesson at the last Murmur I avoided everything on Grand Street armed with my new rule - sorry Mercury 20. Never go to see art in bars or gift shops. Despite those challenges one show stood out on this non-murmur Friday trip.
At the Johansson Projects two different approaches to sculpture by Nathan Lynch and Michael Meyers as well as drawings by Amanda Hughen fill the space. Nathan Lynch a ceramacists teaching at Mills attempts to subvert expressions of social and psychological power by creating a trophy room of abtracted waterfowl. The artist's bullshit aside he successfully recreates the lameness of duck decoys, trophy rooms and taxidermed prey. If you've ever been to one of those naturalist art shows featuring pictures of people fly fishing, sculptures of bears and wooden fowl the feeling can be demoralizing. The intention isn't completely realized until you see the big moose head in the back.
Meyers' sculptures reach in a similar conceptual direction but towards the aim of creating abstracted readymade forms. With plaster, wood and chords they look alot like the ends toothpaste tubes out of which solid yet sensual looking blobs of hardened plaster (molded in a balloons) ooze forth.
Drawings by Amanda Hughen round out this grouping. These pair with Meyers' constructions as either organic or fantastically technological but in more of a pointless abstract finished way. Flurries of honeycombs, dots and rays form a kaliedescope of plankton or diatomic forms that are both intricate and colorful. The sheer assault of line work while ambiguous results finally like the sculpture in very active decorative form.
Other highlights of my trip to Oakland?... none.
Accept... Ego Park which sported a locked door and an inanely patronizing artist statement by Miriam Wolodarski and
Jeff Stratford which out of my own personal frustration yielded these words of commentary...
(Mind you This is an unedited spew about a show statement so it is a rant - I feel it's justified since the gallery wasn't open when it should be though. ...And if you're going to run a gallery, keep it open for fuck sake so people can come in from out of town and have look when they expect it will be open... sheeesh! - ok here goes...)
The show I didn't see is about the "adaptability and grace of birds." What the hell does that mean really?
Its moments like these where it makes sense that any venue looking to show art vets artists' work by asking for a statement. Not sure why this one passed jury. It suggests in some half-assed Whitman flourish that
birds are more honorable creatures than primates. "BIRDS!! Where did they come from, in a blink of the universal eye?" Asking these obtuse questions doesn't help your art monologue. Especially when someone has come out to see the work and the gallery door is locked. More to the point though this is obtuse reasoning.
Why??? Well because if an artist statement exists as a form of discourse isn't it unnecessary for it to ask naive questions without any indication that some other discourse (science) has attempted to answer it? Frankly it's patronizing and stupid. What is more graceful about birds than humans? They're basically the runty feathered remains of the great Dinosaur race which carry mites and harbor a similar reserve of ferocious aggressiveness as humans just smaller. The rest of the statement spews a holistic jumble of ideas that wants to go everywhere but can't even get the birds idea off the ground. Guess it would have shed more light if I got to see the show. You think?
I am curious to see how a show "wonders about photorealism, addition"... (sic???) ", ambition, the irreversibility of time, the disappearing Artic, the beginning of the creation of God, memory of existential adventure, looking as a moral act, absolute aesthetocracy, spontaneous structural evolution, and women" Without seeing this show I can imagine there will be a bunch of different shit on the walls and floor leaving me to sort out the flim flam being thrown my way.
As I finished scanning this bogus handbill a very stressed guy walked by complaining into the empty lot and my ears that he was an outcast in the place he grew up and that the people taking away his home and community should leave. I gladly obliged and headed back to San Francisco.
To be fair I did return the following week to have a look at the show. It included a couple references to the conflicts in the middle east. An image painted on the wall depicted a woman crying over here husband's lifeless head. On the baseboard paper hearts were dropped. Facing that was another Abu Ghraib reference whose depiction included pencil scrawlings of the memetically expanding icon that spilled out from the wall in repetition. Sort of like a dot matrix printer spewing the same image - commentary on the continuous render of the image? In the window dollhouse-small folders sit in tiny boxes with writing on them. Other highlights include almost featureless grayish paintings measuring about an inch by 3/4 inch. These go for $200 and might appeal as a decorative element. Other similar paintings adorn the walls of slightly larger size. Further back are more colorful and denser drawings including figurative and abstract references. Not a whole lot of birds are referred to imagistically nor is there any relationship made between the pedestrian war imagery and the intricate book illustrations in the back. ???
The only conclusions I can draw here is that Oakland art galleries like the part of town it is in is still a work in progress.
Johansson Projects is on 2300 Telegraph Road in Oakland California
Ego Park is a couple doors down on 23rd street
Links
Wondering where you can see alot of the great sheet I'm w...
on Nothing to See Here Folks?