Review
Professor Emeritus Faith Ringgold mentioned on
Exhibit tells of shared struggle and success viewed through the eyes of ‘Black Women in Art’
http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2012/feb/19/the-story-of/
By Jill Renae Hicks for the Columbia Daily Tribune on February 19, 2012
”..."These are stories for all of us." That is the core proclamation of "Black Women in Art and the Stories They Tell," a new exhibit at the University of Missouri Museum of Art and Archaeology. Social injustice, the great heartbreak of countries and citizens, is everyone's story. In the exhibit, this narrative is told through the lenses of black women — whether they are the artists or the art subjects. The small but bold collection incorporates strong works from the museum's holdings with a few pieces on loan, and the works strive to convey different threads of an overarching narrative, said Mary Pixley, curator of the exhibit. "Some of them tell the same story in different ways. Social injustices, political injustices and slavery are some of the most racially charged issues in the exhibition," she said. "And then there are some pieces that are just personal stories of beauty."... One lithograph, by Faith Ringgold, actually is an adaptation of a very large painted quilt Ringgold produced, titled "The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles." The lithograph is part of a longer narrative: A black woman named Willia Marie Simone, Ringgold's painted alter ego, takes some of the great female voices of civil rights — Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, Mary McLeod Bethune and others — on a tour of Paris. In "Sunflower Quilting Bee," the group stands in a sunflower field, holding up a sunflowered quilt. To the right of them is the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, holding a vase full of the same flower...”
Read more at: http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2012/feb/19/the-story-of/
Manny Farber, Patricia Patterson, Teddy Cruz, Ruth Wallen, and Alumni Nina Katchadourian and Sheryl Oring
Athenaeum celebrates the fresh and formidable at reception Friday
La Jolla Light, February 15, 2012
From Local Reports
Artists of all ages are expected to attend a reception for two new exhibitions at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 17.
In the Rotunda Gallery, The Bishop’s School student exhibition, “Exploring Expression,” runs through March 1. The second show features works acquired by the Athenaeum after September 2009, which will be on display through March 24 at “Recent Acquisitions.”
Every two years the Athenaeum showcases acquisitions in its wall art and artists’ books permanent collections. Works from California fine presses and artists with San Diego connections were recently added, including those from Scripps College Press and local Bay Park Press.
The library acquired books by Joyce Cutler-Shaw, Sara Rosenbluth, Viviana Lombrozo, Alberto Blanco (poet-in-residence at UCSD), Sally Hagy-Boyer, Sheryl Oring, Mary Ellen Long, Ruth Wallen, and James Hubbell.
With support from members, it also collected books by international artists, Hanne Darboven, Dieter Roth, and Candida Höfer. Of note was the completion of its collection of Salon Verlag’s Édition séparée; the Athenaeum now boasts all available numbers.
Also important were additions of books by Mikhail Karasik, an aficionado of artists’ books produced by the Russian avant-garde movement in the early 20th century, and books by Ed Ruscha, Ida Applebroog, Allen Ruppersberg, Stephen Curry, Dave Adey, Althea Brimm, Omar Martinez, Gail Roberts, Zandra Rhodes, Shawnee Barton, Teddy Cruz, Manny Farber, Patricia Patterson, Alberto Blanco, Nina Katchadourian and Einar and Jamex de la Torre.
In “Exploring Expression,” Bishop’s students share the importance art has in their lives, both on and off campus. The visual arts department at Bishop’s provides students in grades 6 to 12 with four studios: Photographic Arts, Ceramics, Stained Glass, and Drawing & Painting. A variety of techniques are taught, including printmaking, sculpture and video.
If you go
What: Two new exhibitions, ‘Exploring Expression’ and ‘Recent Acquisitions’
Public Reception: 6:30-8:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 17
Where: Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, 1008 Wall St., La Jolla
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday
Phone: (858) 454-5872
Website: ljathenaeum.org
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Original story on the La Jolla Light website at:
http://www.lajollalight.com/2012/02/15/athenaeum-celebrates-the-fresh-and-formidable-at-reception-friday/
Alumni Deanna Erdmann, Danny Jauregui, and Suzanne Wright, and Lecturer Abel Baker Gutierrez
Tilt-Shift: Queer Art Moving in Different Directions
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noel-alumit/queer-art_b_1283105.html?ref=los-angeles
By Noel Alumit for the Huffington Post on February 16, 2012
"...Tilt-Shift at the Luis De Jesus Los Angeles gallery is an intriguing show, exploring queer bodies and space. It's an eclectic exhibition with many voices, deliberating on homosexuality that isn't based on overt sexuality (no images of erect penises in sight!). What is offered is an array of images ranging from the austere to the fabulous....In its press material, Tilt-shift is described as being comprised of "artists and artworks that resist the boundaries presented by in-your-face sexuality in favor of a broad range of ideas concerning the politics and aesthetics of marginalized bodies, cultures and identities..."
Danny Jauregui, Mac's Bath (corner), 2010, gouache on canvas, 59 x 46 1/2 inches
Tilt-Shift closes February 25.
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
2685 S La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90034
310.838.6000
www.luisdejesus.com
(Photo by Noel Alumit)
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noel-alumit/queer-art_b_1283105.html?ref=los-angeles
Teddy Cruz
Gallerina: This Week: Must-See Arts in the City
(http://culture.wnyc.org/blogs/gallerina/2012/feb/15/week-must-see-arts-city/)
By Carolina A. Miranda for WNYC's Arts Datebook: February 15 - 21, 2012
"...Rethinking architecture during a time of recession, the myriad ways in which artists create prints, drawings that chart unusual histories, a feminist examination of war and abstract paintings that brood. There is some heady stuff going on in the city this week. Here's what we've got in the hopper:
Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream at the Museum of Modern Art If the economic crisis has a bright side, it's that it has slowed down construction of the unsustainable sort: sprawling mega-developments that eat up land and require massive investments in municipal infrastructure (roads, roads and more roads!!). With new building at a stand-still, the architecture and design department at MoMA has taken the opportunity to study ways in which urban planners might think differently about the way they build cities. Five teams visited five depressed areas around the country and brainstormed what could be done: from changing zoning codes, to building mixed-use developments to creating more intimate communities that could be navigated on foot. All around, excellent food for thought. Opens Wednesday, in Midtown..."
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Original story on the WNCY website at:
http://culture.wnyc.org/blogs/gallerina/2012/feb/15/week-must-see-arts-city/
An Interview with Ela Boyd
Jusxtapoz Magazine, February 15, 2012
Expanded Space from ela boyd on Vimeo.
Ela Boyd is a Los Angeles native, currently working in San Diego. She creates immersive installations that fragment and decentralize our understanding of space, time, and the self in reference to the subjective qualities of perception. Her installations have been on view at various spaces including the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego alongside the Pacific Standard Time exhibition Phenomenal. By choreographing the viewer’s experience, the installations involve the viewer in the space, reordering their understanding of common phenomena that are easily overlooked. Unconventional concepts of time emerge in spatial and visual experiences that prompt the viewer to question whether they know what they are seeing at all. Boyd’s influences range from the artists of the California light and space movement of the 1960s as well as experimental filmmakers such as Maya Daren and Chris Marker that tackle disorienting investigations of perception and reality. —Max Karnig
MXK: You’ve noted experimental film as a specific influence to your work. What themes or continuities seem to emerge between the two?
EB: As an example, Maya Daren’s Meshes of the Afternoon plays with themes of multiplicity and multiple selves and how time becomes interchangeable and inverted. This idea of simultaneity is a theme that emerges in my installations as multiple perspectives and images occur at once that aren’t necessarily caused but are simply occurring at the same time, bringing into question our understanding of causation in time and space. I’m also inspired by artist’s like James Turrell and how they created perceptual anomalies. His piece “Afrum (White)” in particular is fascinating in the way that you can’t tell what is two or three-dimensional. Although there is an illusion of a cube, it is purely two flat projections in a corner, which makes the viewer question what they are seeing from their limited vantage point.
MXK: In regard to your cinematic influences, it is interesting to see how they translate into spatial installations. What are some moments in these films that inspire your installation work?
EB: Within Daren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, there are many different visual planes. With the way time is used, there is not really a causal structure. It's the same in the installation. While looking at the installation, questions arise such as, “Did the reflection of the refraction cause the other refraction?” In the films, simple moments of the figure being reflected in the window or walking in the door and seeing two of herself in the dining room are inspiring in the way they confuse the viewer to whether this is a dream, parallel moments overlapping or multiple iterations of the self.
MXK: Can you explain some of your thoughts behind your approach to installation?
EB: I like to spatialize the image rather than reading the image. The strings in the space become components of the image as a three dimensional drawing. Where a cinematic screen collapses space, the installations extend it. The various Mylar panels open up the space and expand it rather than compress it. In the installations, the space is confused- am I seeing a 3d form, an image, something tangible or intangible? These layered images also relate to consciousness in the sense of dream, memory, and how we bring forms into being by talking about them, thinking about them, or even googling them. Having the internet constantly available, forms are continuously traveling through media existing in multiple places at once. In the installations a varying combination of projection, string, video and apparitions of figures in space decentralize the object and confuse what it actually is. With the participant's position in the matrix of planes, along with their shadow silhouette, reflection and image in live feed video they become enfolded into the overall composition visually. Additionally, their movements trigger videos of bodies in space. Overlapping panels of bodies in space form ephemeral dynamic compositions. As the participant moves within the space they experience occurrences of parallax–the abstract geometric shapes change shape. These strategies are meant to generate a causal inversion of spatio-temporality. Are these ontological shifts instantiated in our consciousness or are the forms revealing themselves to us simultaneously as we focus on them?
MXK: How do the figures function in your work?
EB: The figure goes beyond image and acts as a body in space along with the participant in the installation. Moving forward I might use more cinematic images instead of ambiguous apparitions to move toward content that is more focused and specific.
MXK: There seems to be an ongoing disorientation of the perception of reality and actuality in your work.
EB: While reading about Kant’s theories of actuality I was particularly interested in the idea of misperception. There are moments we may dismiss as misperception that are therefore assumed as not actual, but Kant claims that in the moment of apprehension the illusion is actual for you. These things are actual because they are empirical and perceptual; they exist in the real world. My work is not creating a simulation, but referring to actual phenomena that are part of our reality.
MXK: Your work has many similarities with the California space and light movement in the 1960s. What differentiates your work from this movement?
EB: The images within the installations can never be recreated. The people in the space become part of the composition. As people trigger videos and cast shadows within the installation they generate the piece by engaging with it. Utilizing new media and theorizing about a decentralized presence that spans time and space vis-a-vis media and consciousness goes beyond “seeing the self seeing” or becoming aware the self in space.
The light and space artists have more reductive methodologies whereas I work additively, combining layer upon layer to confuse one's visual perception. I also take on issues of representation, positing the image as an actual presence (non-symbolic) as opposed to stripping any representative elements that might distract from proprioceptive phenomenological experiences.
MXK: Any new directions or projects in mind?
EB: I’ve recently been making prints based on the images created within the installations. The prints are supported on top and bottom by beams and illuminated by little LED lights on specific spots of the image. I’d like to push what the print is and combine the various mediums of video, print and sculpture together. Moving forward I’d like to create sculptural video installations that are more cinematic and involved with time, continuing to push the notion of an object that transcends itself and creates a decentralized form.
MXK: Tell me a little about your process in creating these works.
EB: The work becomes very reflexive. I take photos. Then project them. Then photograph the projection of the photo, and then project them on the Mylar and photograph them once again. It continues to recreate itself and then it becomes about how there is no real discrete object because it keeps transforming and mutating between image object and light. As it moves from actual light to an image of light then back to actual light as it's projected, it brings into question what is real and what is representational. There is a constant back and forth between what is the image and what is tangible and what is intangible.
I write a lot about how these forms exist digitally, in our consciousness and as well as in the physical version. I think there is this whole paradigm where we see this fixed object and we have this one to one ratio of perspective but we're actually in the middle of the object. That's why I like some of the James Turrell immersive installations wherein you are inside the object but because it's about your own perception–the object is also inside of your own consciousness. You're in the object and you can’t tell exactly where the object is.
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Original story on the Juxtapoz Magazine website at:
http://origin.juxtapoz.com/Features/an-interview-with-ela-boyd
Art and Science Have a Chat in ‘ANOMALIA’
(http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/features/art_and_science_have_a_chat_in_anomalia/)
Erick Meyenberg, De Española y Negro sale Mulato, 2010. Courtesy of the artist and Galería Caja Blanca.
By Sheena Ghanbari for thisweek@ucsandiego on February 14, 2012
In scientific research, an anomalous finding can be cast aside because it falls outside of the typical and does not fit cleanly in a normal distribution curve. This very deviation is the premise for the “ANOMALIA” exhibition at the University Art Gallery Feb. 16 through May 18. The show’s title stems from the Latin root for “anomaly,” or irregularity. The exhibition brings anomalous findings to the forefront and features four international contemporary artists whose work engages scientific models of research and representation: Charles Gaines, Erick Meyenberg, Erick Beltrán and Jorge Satorre.
“ANOMALIA” is organized by distinguished independent curator and former Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego associate curator Lucía Sanromán, specifically for the University Art Gallery and the UC San Diego campus.
Sanromán said she is interested in the “opposition of aesthetic rapture versus scientific practice,” explaining that the subjective nature of the arts has an interesting contrast to scientific research, which generally “asks human for objective observation and judgment.”
The featured artists employ empirical systems in their practice, including ethnographic data research, cognitive modeling and systems theory, but Sanromán says she is not aiming to teach the viewer about the intersections of art and science. Instead, she said, she is interested in “the various ways by which the work of these artists suggests that by bringing together science with aesthetics, both orders are interrupted and this creates a space for dialogue.”
Participating artist Erick Meyenberg, for example, presents a four-dimensional diagram of the genetic coding of Mexicans, from the colonial period through today. Using 22 individuals as subjects, Meyenberg calculated the percentage of indigenous, white and black “blood” in each individual to create a three-dimensional genetic diagram. By plotting these findings the artist generates an immersive colored light and sound installation that is a symbolic reflection of the socio-economical structure that prevails in Mexico and other countries. He interprets important scientific findings, but the end product functions as an art piece.
The University Art Gallery has organized complementary events to reveal abstract concepts embedded in the works on display. On February 15, from 6:30 to 8 p.m., participating artist Charles Gaines engaged in a lively discussion with Rafael Núñez, associate professor in the department of cognitive science, to explore the cognitive underpinnings of his work in “ANOMALIA.” Gaines is a celebrated conceptual artist and CalArts professor, and his work provides an important theoretical and historical context to the younger artists. His interest lies in how mathematics can function as a language and the exhibition presents two bodies of work Gaines created in the 1980s: “Landscape: Assorted Trees with Regressions” and “Numbers & Trees.” These series combine photographic images and photo-realistic drawings with text and question the means by which images are read, understood and experienced.
The exhibition’s opening reception was on February 16 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. At the opening reception, participating artists Erick Beltrán and Jorge Satorre presented a talk titled “Modeling Standard: A Guided Tour.” Beltrán and Satorre take a departure point from the theory of the “Standard Model” in particle physics, which states that everything is made of 12 fundamental particles. During the reception, the artists created a jam-packed graphic novel containing personal histories and allusions to historical characters, which will nowremain on display in “ANOMALIA.” The exhibit also features new material created by Beltrán and Satorre in response to a special interview between them and renowned professor of psychology and neurosciences Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at UC San Diego.
Sanromán designed the exhibition with the campus community in mind: “I hope this exhibit will appeal to UCSD artists and scientists alike,” she said, “and generate conversations across departments.”
The exhibition is free and open to the public and also welcomes the broader community. To learn more about “ANOMALIA” and its participating artists please visit: http://uag.ucsd.edu/exhibitions/Anomalia-LuciaSanroman.shtml
Erick Meyenberg, Mexican Genealogy, 2010. Courtesy of the artist and Galería Caja Blanca
Professor Emeritus Faith Ringgold
Artist withdraws name from planned Harlem museum
The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press on February 13, 2012
NEW YORK — A proposed Harlem children's museum will no longer be named after an artist who created a 9/11 peace quilt with children...Faith Ringgold told The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/yupeDP) she withdrew her name because the nonprofit behind the project couldn't guarantee security, insurance or storage for art...Ringgold said she wasn't interested if the museum was going to be "just a playpen."...
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Complete story on The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press website at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/AP9bb19640b32841a0b575c6fa5620b121.html
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Information from: The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com
Professor Teddy Cruz
"Foreclosed" Reopens the American Dream
At New York's Museum of Modern Art, Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream proposes five solutions to the disconnect between the housing Americans need and the housing America offers.
By Fred A. Bernstein for the Architectural Record on February 13, 2012
"...At 2,500 square feet, The Museum of Modern Art’s Robert and Joyce Menschel Gallery, site of the exhibition Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream, is about the size of the average suburban house. But while that may be too much square footage for the typical family, it is too little for a show this rich. MoMA should consider rehousing “Rehousing.” ... The theme of the show, which opens February 15 and runs through July 30, is the disconnect between the housing Americans need and the housing America offers. It opens with an installation by Estudio Teddy Cruz on the absurdities of the McMansion. From there, it turns to presenting new options for America’s inner-ring suburbs, overlooked by developers and abandoned by the affluent for more urban, or more rural, locations...">
Read more: http://archrecord.construction.com/news/2012/02/Foreclosed-Rehousing-the-American-Dream.asp
Haim Steinbach installation photo featured on
Chicago's MCA debuts 1980s exhibit
By Caryn Rousseau, Associated Press, Deseret News, February 10, 2012
"...A new exhibit about the 1980s is opening at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, featuring interpretations of icons like Ronald Reagan, Andy Warhol and Jesse Jackson, along with pieces that reflect on important issues from the decade: drug use, nuclear proliferation, AIDS and feminism...."This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s," opening Saturday, includes about 140 paintings, photographs, movies and sculptures by some of the biggest artists from the era: Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, Robert Mapplethorpe and Julian Schnabel....Exhibit chief curator Helen Molesworth, of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, said the financial crisis of 2008 reminded Americans of Black Monday in 1987, priming a look back at the earlier decade. A sequel to the movie "Wall Street" came out in 2010 and chart-topping pop star Lady Gaga channels some of the audacity of 1980s darling Madonna..."It was time to revisit this period and think what happened then and what is its legacy for us now," Molesworth said..."
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Complete story on the Deseret News website at:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700223943/Chicagos-MCA-debuts-1980s-exhibit.html
Lev Manovich
Playing Guarde:
Music Metacreation and the Vanguard
By Alan Ranta, PopMatters Contributing Editor on February 9, 2012
"...The goal of metacreative artists is to endow computer programs with creative behaviors, to create computer algorithms that have the same ability to make artistic decisions within certain frameworks as human beings. To this end, metacreative artists employ the tools and techniques of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the same used in cognitive and life sciences....Lev Manovich’s major contribution to the discussion was his 2001 book, The Language of New Media. Where Greenberg focuses his discussion on poetry and painting while largely ignoring film and music, and Bürger more or less follows suit while largely denying or ignoring entire movements such as Dadaism and Futurism, Manovich approached the theory of the avant-garde with an absorbing contemporary mindset, placing new media within the context of “the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan”...In The Language of New Media, Manovich does not focus his analysis on the concept of the avant-garde but outlines the development of what he refers to as “new media objects”..."
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Complete story on the PopMatters website at:
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/tools/full/153360
