group crits

With Kris and Jeffrey 10/10/10

with Jeffery, Brittney, and Devon Keene 11/26 (i think)
plus two crits with painting class.

studio visits with nathan, kim, michael, vanessa, andrew (visiting), harmony, others..

plan on applying for residency/internship next semester, nathan said that this was fine.

Thesis?

My work is beginning to investigate the process of creating images and interpreting information. I think I will have much more information in the coming days.

Emerging Market: Christine Mehring

On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 9:45 AM, Jennifer Nugent  wrote:

A brief history of the commercial art market, this article explains the trends and changes of the art fair from the 1960's until now. It mainly centers around the KUNSTMARKT fair. Mehring cites the dealers motives for starting the art fair, mainly to boost the german art market, but also criticizes the national exclusivity of it.  I'm not sure if it was reading off of a screen that was difficult, or the way the piece was written, but I had some trouble getting through it. The content is not very dense, I think it's just sentences like these: "Thus, building a new and broad collecting base became the driving force behind the founding of KUNSTMARKT, effectively co-opting for a capitalist cause the pervasive calls on the part of leftist student groups to make art more accessible to everyone." Also, when she recalls the first counter-fair, with the artists all posing in front of a painting most likely made by Richter, I gather that it is a portrait of their dealer Franz Dahlem, but it took me a bit to get that. The counter-exhibitions seem to be the most important part of the events, even from the beginning, when Dalhem had his, and was invited the following year to join KUNSTMARKT, and with the more recent example of a protest with Jorg Immendorff and Nam June Paik, Zwirner is aware that the art is relevant and important. 

1. I will be sure to pay special attention to the counter-fairs around basel. 

2. I bet the city of Miami is very excited about this time of year. 

3. Interesting how a duo setting out to fill a void in their city, and make some money while doing so, were able to construct the model for almost every other modern art fair, including the one we will be attending next week...  

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Roberta Smith nyt

A New Boss, and a Jolt of Real-World Expertise

Who Needs a White Cube These Days?

Anti-Mainstream Museum’s Mainstream Show

I like the constant questioning of the function of a gallery or a museum. These articles are relevant to some of our other readings as well as the work we all do. I also think the history of the New Museum is a perfect example of an alternative space, idea, or organization that starts out filling a void and providing something new and fresh, but its success is ultimately its failure. The Skin Fruit show curated by Jeff Koons, using work form the collection of Dakis Joannou proves this. Altohugh I'm sure the exhibit had some wonderful work, Joannou is on the board of trustees at the museum, and koons is a superstar-high-production-ultra-mega-rich artist. ugh. And then about Jeffrey Dietch getting hired at lamoca is a similar story of insider connections making the deals. But isn't it always like this anyway? Whether or not the people are super hip and famous and have lots of money, friends and groups seem to define trends and dominate scenes on all scales.

The Birth of the Bg Beautiful Art Market - Dave Hickey

Markets imitate each other. Hickey uses the car market to represent commercial objects functioning like art in order to persevere in a post-industrial world. People eventually must buy more than one. The hierarchy in all markets has been constructed over time. 

Has the idea of a utopian experience replaced the painting of Christ? 

How can you now begin to break down the hierarchy? 

Was is the next step?

Contemporary Art Explained by Jack Burgess

This is a cute video.
It is fun to make fun of art.
It is fun to see art.
It is fun to think about art too.
Who is this guy?
I like Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
I will try to think about going on dates with art.
What would we talk about?
I wonder, if I was a art? Would I have an art boyfriend or girlfriend? Or would I sleep around with other arts? What would it be like?

FrontLine Digital Nation

There are so many things to talk about here! My flight is boarding so I can't really concentrate on this, but I know that I've thought a lot about multi tasking since I've watched it. Also one of the speakers, Douglass Rushkoff, who Jeffrey pointed out to me is someone worth looking into. I can't stop thinking about the talk he gave. It's really so right on point!

I strongly urge you to watch this video. It's probably more important to watch than the frontline video, which I did thoroughly enjoy, by the way.

http://rushkoff.com/videoaudio/diy-days/

questions to come later. I'm traveling through time now.

RUMSFELD'S UNKNOWN KNOWN, OR IRAQ'S INITIATION INTO DEMOCRATIC PRACTICE by Slavoj Zizek

Culture within the US practices a strange way of voluntary torture through methods like performance, hazing, television shows, etc. Torture functions within the military in the same way, humiliating the victim, however in this case, it is not voluntary. Zizek argues that it works on a widespread level because this is a common American practice, that Americans would antagonize and force an action out of the opponent, only to use that action as an excuse of self-defense. Then they would also argue that the treatment (torture) would be a better fate than death. Zizek says that is an especially dangerous to not worry about the "unknown knowns", the things that we allow ourselves to do but choose not to see.

1. I am about to board a plane
2. When I purchased my coffee I accidentally knocked over the half & half, but they were nice about.
3. "I don't feel like dancing" by the scissor sisters is playing throughout the airport.

Among the Inept, Researchers Discover, Ignorance Is Bliss By Erica Goode

I am constantly fearing that I don't know where I stand!
This article is about the discovery that the same qualities required for competence, are the same ones required to recognize it. I read this article in the studio program and I'm not sure why but it seems to come up in conversation with Patrick fairly often.......

1. Is anyone reading the blogs?
2. How can you run the test on yourself?
3. Why is all the crappy food in airports so expensive?

Sound of Music / Central Station Antwerp.

This is a public intervention in a train Station in Antwerp. The caption reads that the stunt is a promotion for a television program. I think that this is more of a spectacle, and is a tool that can be used successfully in fine art, but in this case, I think the point of the act doesn't seem to go far beyond brightening a stranger's day and advertising. 

Also see:

www.improveverywhere.com

I love unexpected art, and especially when it involves reclaiming a public space. 

1. Is this art? ( I vote no, because they do not claim it as such)

2. In what way could an act like this be seen as something offensive or unwanted?

3. What are some examples of the ways that artists can use spectacles involving the public, but also introduce larger ideas and questions? 

Zizek on Crossdressing to the Sound of Music

In this 2 min video clip, philosopher Slovaj Zizek discusses the movie The Sound of Music and its representation of Jews and Nazis. He asserts that the nazis represented in the film are for the most part not soldiers, but carry the image of "exquisitely dressed, decadent, cosmopolitan, corrupted Jews" creating a mirror image of the culture that it wanted to dominate. At the same time however, he states that this can also be seen as the opposite which is "honest fascists resisting decadent Jewish takeover". The Austrians that play the central role in the film are seen as small minded and anti-intelectual creating a role-reversal for Nazis and Jews.
I'm not sure that this video changed anything about my studio practice, but Zizek's other writings may have more of an effect on me.

1. In the case of this film and argument, who is the "other"?
2. Do individuals (or individual artists) try to fill a cultural void?
3. When attempting to dominate a person or group of persons, is it unavoidable that you would assume their characteristics?

How Marina Abramovic’s Red-Velvet Rope at MoMA Works Mark Byrne

Summary:  Not everyone has a fair chance at sitting across from the goddess that is Marina Abromovic. Famous people, friends, and family have priority.

 To me, this is a large part of the work. Although Abromovic has created an intimate experience for the viewer who sits across from her, the line-waiters are equally as important. Does the participant sitting with her become the priviledged? Are the queued the proletariats in this situation? I don’t think that is what the work is intended to present. To paraphrase Jeffery: if you had a performance at a museum, you would want your friends and family to see it. I agree, however, this seems to be different. It seems to me that she has broken her own rules just by having this museum show (maybe just changed her rules). Her older performances, which often involved self-inflicted pain, or audience participation, had social and political implications very relevant to the time and place of them. By having a show where actors recreate some of those works, seems to change them entirely. Although I still would have loved to be there to see them and her.

And after copying this into the blog, I would like to retract everything and rewrite. 

Claire Bishop Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics

Claire Bishop discusses artists that utilize what Nicolas Bourriaud has identified in his essay as “Relational Aesthetics”. Through artists such as Rirkrit Travanija, Liam Gillick, Bishop explains that relational works have the ability to be so open-ended that in the end, they can be superficial, as the situations are constructed for an audience that isn’t able to get to the question of ‘what for?’

“What for? If you forget the ‘what for?’ I’m afraid you’re left with simple Nokia art-producing interpersonal relations for their own sake and never addressing their political aspects.”

This is a quote from Bourriaud that Bishop uses to prove a point about Tiravanija’s work. Artists that utilize relational aesthetics tend to create “microtopias” rather than utopias, where a situation is constructed for a specific audience to become involved in.

“’It seems more pressing to invent possible relations with our neighbors in the present than to bet on happier tomorrows’ (RA, p. 45). This DIY, microtopian ethos is what Bourriaud perceives to be the core political significance of relational aesthetics.”

Bishop argues that within a fully successful democracy (which these ‘microtopias’ aim to illustrate), antagonism, defined by Bishop as conflicts and instabilities inherent to any society or community, is necessary to sustain possibilities of "radical imagination." She uses Santiago Sienna as an example of an artist who achieves this. Without antagonism, you are left with an authoritative order. According to Bishop, the works that do not contain “relational antagonism” do not consider political and social aspects and are therefore lacking in relevant content. 

statement

My drawings and paintings are time capsules with sparse content. I am exploring the way that I specifically find and retain information. The imagery is created by literally tracing information from materials such as photographs, newspapers, and audio files.  Although I begin with a very specific location, the imagery becomes obscured and abstracted. In creating the overall picture I begin to rely more on my own intuition, attempting to relate myself to the environment. It is both a mental and literal landscape.

Walter Benjamin “The Work of Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction” 1936

This essay examines two types of modern art forms, “the reproduction of works of art and the art of film”. Benjamin explores both a manual and technical reproduction of art, as well as how the two are viewed and received. Photography and film are the dominant subjects of art reproduction in the essay.

When art is reproduced the value is depreciated. (Or the quality of its presence)

“That which withers is the ‘aura’”

The aura (of art objects) is in jeopardy because of “the increasing significance of the masses” and the desire of the mass to bring objects “closer”, accepting an age of reproduction and limited uniqueness.

Is this similar to the way that our generations, and the ones before and after, raised with the Internet and television, are the first to experience most of the world through a screen?

Just seeing images, and not actually experiencing most things first hand?

What effect does this have on younger artists who are “image-makers”?

Over time, art objects become increasingly portable. 

The Death of the Author, Roland Barthes 1977

Through various ideologies, a great amount of importance is placed on “the author, his person, his life, his in the man or woman who produce (the writing)” as if it were “the voice of a single person, the author confiding in us.” However, it is the language that speaks, not the author. Barthes gives an example of the surrealist ‘jolt’ of automatic writing. “… by accepting the principle and experience of several people writing together” the system of language cannot be changed by an individual, only altered. This is because text is a “tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.” Nothing that comes out of a single person in the form of text or language is truly original.

An artist can create something, and then attribute influences or ideas into the creation of the work. The ideas do not simply come from inside the artist. Personal histories and interests, political and social ideals, education, cultural backgrounds, religious and philosophical beliefs, all work together to form the artist or author into a filter. She or he becomes a filter for everything they know, so although they can learn through artistic expression, they do not actually create anything from nothing. 

Growing up, my grandmother told me that I was an artist. I believed her and that began my artistic career. I’ve since grown to think of the title as something you earn, rather than happen upon as I did. I also think that art represents a kind of freedom that many people don’t have in their lives. It’s a freedom that everyone deserves, but for whatever reason, maybe fear, it escapes people. This freedom, as it manifests itself in fine art, is one that allows for anything and everything. It’s excitement and experimentation. This is what led me into an art program, and the freedom to work for yourself, is what lead me into a fine art program.

            My thesis idea isn’t set in stone yet. My ideas have recently been intertwined with tracing. I am interested in histories, both personal and otherwise and somehow this has surfaced into drawings and paintings that obscure information. I like the idea of becoming a filter for information. 

semester Plan

I am working on a few different works this semester. I have been making brightly colored abstract paintings using imagery of the neighborhood that I live in, views from the street and above. This neighborhood is very close and similar to the ones I grew up in here in Sarasota. To make the pictures, I either use the outlines of the landscapes to produce something like an abstracted map, or overlay the imagery until there are few recognizable images. In this series, I use mostly acrylic paint on canvas, but also use pastels, pencils, markers, and inks. In each painting something new comes up, some things are intentional, others not. Regardless, I end up with paintings that I enjoy. Because I use a neighborhood that has been undergoing gentrification, there are social, economic, race, and political issues that concern me while I make the work. The paintings that I end up with, do not communicate any of this, but to me, it is still important.

I am also working on a series of graphite drawings on Mylar. Each drawing is a tracing of the New York Times front page. It began August 22, and is ongoing. I don’t not have an end-date yet.  In both works I am tracing. In this case I am meticulously and painstakingly rendering the front page of the newspaper. (Each drawing is not a full page; some content is missing from each one. This has to do with the amount of time I spend on each one, I do not have the full 8 hours per day it takes to render a complete page, but I also do not have enough time to read an entire paper, look up the words that I don’t know, research the history of what I haven’t learned, and keep it all in my memory, everyday.) In the painting series I am projecting images and tracing them on to a canvas even though I am obscuring the original imagery. By tracing them I am literally replicating the image, but I am also rereading and rethinking the history of what is happening today. It is in such a literal way, that I find humor in it. What good does it do to hand trace newspapers? Why not just photocopy, or print from the Internet? It’s an archaic method for recreating a dying and convoluted form of communication. By turning the newspaper into a drawing, the words are less important, they become lost, by leaving out parts, although this isn’t really a conceptual choice, blocks of information are missing, just as they are missing in the original media (and by this I mean, who can actually trust their news?). I am a filter for the information, in the same way that everyone is able to choose what to read or believe.

My timeline is to work on the drawings everyday, and to produce a minimum of one painting a week. Studio visits are welcome at any point. 

chelsea new york, documented by my cell phone.

Michel Auder at Zach Feuer

lichtenstein at Gagosian

lichtenstein at Gagosian

lichtenstein at Gagosian

lichtenstein at Gagosian

lichtenstein at Gagosian

lichtenstein at Gagosian

Ragnar Kjartansson at Luhring Augustine

Ragnar Kjartansson at Luhring Augustine

Ragnar Kjartansson at Luhring Augustine

Ragnar Kjartansson at Luhring Augustine

Ragnar Kjartansson at Luhring Augustine

Ragnar Kjartansson at Luhring Augustine

Dana Schutz at Andrea Rosen

Dana Schutz at Andrea Rosen

Sterling Ruby at Andrea Rosen

Sterling Ruby at Andrea Rosen

at Andrea Rosen 

Jil Weinstock

Jil Weinstock

Martin Schoeller

Martin Schoeller

Martin Schoeller

Andy Warhol, The Last Decade The Brooklyn Museum

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/andy_warhol/

Kiki Smith, Sojourn Brooklyn Museum

  

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/kiki_smith/