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.
