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Saturday, April 10, 2004

Art from the Easter Bunny

 

When I stopped into Wexler Gallery last week, gallerist Bobbie Ann Tilkens told me that the paintings upstairs by Katey Cooper were part of a plan, not yet written in stone, to make 2-D art a regular feature upstairs, perhaps every two months. I failed to ask if local artists would be on the agenda or not, but I got the sense the plan is still evolving.

What brought me to Wexler in the first place were the ceramic sculptures by Dirk Staschke, who's all of 33 years old and is fired up about the state of the nation. His work, beautifully formed figures about subjects like starvation in the land of excess, the pressure to conform and go along with the program, or deterioration in the land of excess sometimes tips into hardcore polemics, but given his subject matter, that's no surprise.

The surprise is in the melding of classical technique and classical iconography to communicate these kinds of thoughts.

And where the pieces work, they work really well. My favorite was "Baroque 2" (shown top), the Buddha pose of the starving boy suggesting endurance and unreasonable expectations of society all at once. I also admired the stance of Baroque 3 (shown next), with its swayback and distended belly beneath prominent ribs.

The other series I found interesting was "Entropic Family," slightly dorky people with modern, doughy bodies and faces, parts of them destroyed by application of a blow torch. The resulting, uncontrolled explosions of the clay leave the figures pocked with holes and dents.

The strength of these pieces is they don't trumpet their content, other than the inevitability destruction and erosion--of the human body and of ceramic pieces.

The pieces that brought me to Wexler in the first place, three George Bush figures, costumed as the Easter Bunny, Santa, and an army aviator, were beautifully done, but ultimately, felt like a one-note joke, too thin to sustain long-term interest.

Upstairs, "Ovals," a show of gold-leaf-and-black paintings by Cooper (left, "Muscle Building" detail), suggested a religious, meditative process in their creation--a process reminiscent of some early work I saw from Diane Pieri, then at More Gallery, many years ago, gold gouache symbols repeated over and over again in rows on blue fabric.

Besides Cooper's repetitive forms, mostly cellular and oval, that suggest a trancelike focus in their creation, the gold leaf pumps up a religious allusion to icons.

This being spring and Easter weekend, the cell-like ovals felt just right (right, "Muscle Building"). The gold leaf is sometimes washed over with color to change its strength and sometimes to add points of interest, but the overall impression is gold.






The strongest of these works are quite beautiful (right, "Duct"); a few of them veered toward decorative. All of them feel opulent and crowded with life and riches. But if Bush the Easter Bunny hid them for me somewhere in my house, I wouldn't complain.
permanent link  libby 6:41 PM
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Help! Less for art in Philadelphia

 
If you're a Philadelphia person, this email from Leslie Kaufman of Philadelphia Sculptors is for you:

Hi Everyone,

Here is a chance to make your voice heard on a topic of deep concern to all of us. If you are a Philadelphia resident, you know that Mayor Street is proposing to radically chop the city arts budget. This affects many cultural institutions, including Philadelphia Sculptors. We have received funding from the Philadelphia Cultural Fund for the past 4 years, and this will be in jeopardy if he gets his way. The mayor is proposing to reduce funding for the PCF from its current $2.5 million to $1 million. This is after we were promised that it would be raised to $5 million!

There is something you can do. The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance is spearheading a movement to fight this and is providing lots of information on their web site . There is now a simple way of writing a letter and sending it from the link they have provided. Show the unenlightened city leadership that the arts community is strong and vocal! Do it now!

permanent link  libby 5:28 PM
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The Hughes report

 
If you're wondering about the Robert Hughes lecture the other night (see previous post), it was great.

Steve and I met Libby and our friends Ava, Ann and Ed and we all enjoyed it. Libby may weigh in on the talk. Here's my take.

The critic, who speaks with dramatic pauses and orotund elocution like Rumpole of the Bailey, presented Goya as a genius modernist. His talk reflected the book quite closely.

(The book, called "Goya," which I'm about half-way through, is full of wonderful small anecdotes and occasional fiery prose -- it's a good read.)

"All modern paintings must be compared to Goya," Hughes said at one point. "He's unlike any artist alive."


Hughes said the artist, who died 175 years ago, has "a tremendous sense of style...and seems close to us."

Goya's focus on war and man's inhumanity seems particularly apt these days and Hughes, who showed lots of slides (although one wished they'd been a little larger and crisper) zeroed in on aspects of the famous "Third of May" painting which he called the first modern war picture.

Notice the soldiers (top image, detail from "Third of May" and right, detail from a "Disasters of War" etching) whom Hughes characterized as "machine-like in their mechanical precision."



Hughes said that Picasso was "obsessed with "Third of May" and that "Guernica" was influenced by it.

He pointed to the luminous shirt of the victim in "Third of May" (a kind of holy light soon to be snuffed out -- image) and compared it to Picasso's lightbulb and figure (bottom images, left and right) in "Guernica."



Hughes said "[Goya] wasn't an enlightenment guy -- he was more modern than we know."


Turning to our times, Hughes, who has lived in this country for thirty years, freely shared his own views about the current state of the war in Iraq in little asides he sprinkled into his talk.

He shared it with the right audience. Everyone in the almost full Irvine auditorium clapped after this comment:


"People don't look for life truths from painting any more. You get that from photography and the media. That's why Bush and company want to control the media. That's why we have embedded reporters. People believe photography tells the truth."
permanent link  roberta 9:15 AM
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Friday, April 09, 2004

No such thing as all used up

 

Lucky for me, when Roberta commented on "Used: New Work From Old Things" at the Painted Bride (see prior post), she mentioned only a couple of the artists.

This is a great little group show (curator, our contributor Shelley Spector, who shows her own art from reused materials at Sande Webster Gallery).

I have to agree with Roberta that the biggest surprise was Alex Querel's phonebook portraits. And for sheer visual pleasure, I'd choose Richard Metz's jackets as well.

But a couple more--Margo Mensing's giant images created with circles of pattern punched out from security envelopes and collaged onto masonite and Jerry Goodman's reworked porn magazine pages--made me look extra hard and long.

Mensing had two nice piece, "Eiffel Towers" and "Mt. Rushmore," but "Rushmore" spoke to me especially loudly after I had spent the morning listening to Condoleeza Rice testify about national security. Here we've got Mt. Rushmore, the republic represented by its greatest leaders, carved into permanence and prominence. But the security envelopes and national security at the moment seem flimsy at best, the rock layers unstable and erroding. What if some crazy person starts to carve "W" into a mountain side? Talk about errosion.

Mensing also manages to show off an astounding number of security envelope patterns.

Goodman's series is called "Confession of a Seventy-Five Year Old Porn Addict." I can't quite figure how he does these, other than to say he covers over pages from porn magazines, ultimately with a black coating, and then scratches (shown right, "Untitled"). The transformation gives elegance to a kindergarten craft technique and gives new meaning to graphic sex. It's also a nice reminder that 75-year-olds still have a life.

Some of Laura Hutton's dolls looked better in this show than they ever have before. The hairdos were especially witty, with curly hair from rubber bands, and in this image, dreads from ball-bearing chains.









And while we're working on women's self-images, Teresa Jaynes' "Rapunzel," with an enormous, braided rope tied around a tree-trunk stamped with spells from antiquity (I got that from her notes; I had trouble reading the words, and could only decode some Greek names like Pandora) is transformed from a princess saved by a prince into a mythic goddess with superpowers.

As for the rope, Jaynes mentions in her notes that she learned that the "age of the knot" was similar in significance to the Iron Age, but that perishable rope artifacts limited the scholarship. I must admit I was thrilled with this little fact.

Also in this show were some likable assemblages (left, "Clim B. Spiker") by Brian Marshall. The more he transformed his basic materials, the more mysterious they became.

permanent link  libby 6:16 PM
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Friday favorite things

 


I saw three shows recently that tickled me. They're big group shows and two involve out of towners and one is a local round up. The work all has a kind of forlorn edge to it, partly due to subject matter and partly due to materials.


Here's a peek, just some pictures to get you thinking about going to see them.

Libby wrote about the Russian Dolls show at Space 1026. Read her post. Here are a couple of my faves, in a show that transcends precious. Gary Fogelson's sexy dolls which had penis noses and lots of pubic hair and David Richard's beaked family (you know me and birds).



Broken Western at 222 Gallery is a riff on the desert by artists who either grew up there (in Arizona) or live there now. The gallery did a nice job of painting the walls and strewing desert ambiance in the space -- pebbles on the floor, wood posts on the walls. I've never been out West but I got a lot of cowboy trailer park Native American spiritual love and weirdness out of the show. The show's got video, painting, prints and it's all well done (although there were some glitches with viewing the videos).


I loved best the faux-wood painted coffins by Eamon Ore-Giron (image above is "Tank Coffin"). The coffins were cars and other vehicles, painted to look like they were made out of wood. There was a Flintstones affect that was appealing. They also had a knotty pine rec room trophy wall ambiance that I bought.

And for conceptual photography, I stopped dead in my tracks before Cody Cloud's untitled works (image left and below). I'm not quite sure what the message is but the sense of loss and yearning in this work, set against a huge blue sky and man-made objects (the starburst and a dirty bar of Dove soap) is something I could look at for a while and contemplate.

By the way, two things about 222 Gallery. They're open Monday-Friday noon-5 pm or by appointment. When I stopped in the other day, during their open time, there was nobody home. Luckily I had the Painted Bride next door with a great show, "Used" and they were open. After "Used," about an hour later, I swung by 222 again and they were back. So be forewarned. Call or email for an appointment -- or, as with Space 1026 -- check it out at the opening, a time you know for sure there'll be somebody home.

Secondly, 222 Gallery is media savvy and so is their website. Check out the gif-panning shots of the installation. Most wonderful.


Used at Painted Bride is artblog contributor Shelley Spector's curated exhibit of seven artists who make use of the used. Most of the materials these artists transform are things you might expect (there's a tree trunk, for example, by Teresa Jaynes; men's suit jackets painted by Richard Metz (image) and some nice old gadgets and tools in constructions by Brian Marshall).


You can tell what the materials are and you can see what the artist has done to them.

But the surprise of the day are those works made from materials that were almost obliterated in their transformation -- works like Alex Queral's carved telephone book portrait heads, which rise like the Phoenix as something completely new. (image)
permanent link  roberta 8:19 AM
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Thursday, April 08, 2004

Hidden art world

 
One of the wonderful things about Philadelphia, because its art world is so big, there's always some surprise hiding somewhere.

Last week, I stopped by Philadelphia's newest glass studio, which deserves our attention for its punny name alone (hey, auslanders, I guess I should explain that the gas company in Philadelphia is Philadelphia Gas Works).

It's the second such outfit in town, the other being Hot Soup in Old City. I wonder if glassmaking is a trend.

The place, in Powelton Village right off the Spring Garden Street Bridge, has glass-making classes for all levels of skill (a new round of classes is just beginning) and rents out its space to other glass artists. So far, they've attracted a crowd from ages 16 to 35, estimates Nate Purcell, the young glass artist whose behind the operation along with his business partner, Ian Kerr.

Purcell's currently working on a glass skirt (more word play for you) for a fashion show in New Orleans, but he makes a variety of things, including tableware, jewelry and sculpture.

Best of all, though, was the discovery of this block that seems to be artist central. The studio is next door to puppeteer Spiral Q, and another artist lives up the street. While we were talking, in walked still another artist, James Evans, who had space next door on 31st street.

Evans, who's got the gift of gab, reported that since he discovered real estate, he no longer needs to worry about how he priced his art. "Once you get comfortable, it's not about money no more." So now Evans can sell his beautiful wood sculptures, made from wood that the Delaware River offers up on its banks, at whatever price he wants. It allows him room to be "compassionate" some of the time, he said. But don't think he's selling these for a song. His prices are justifiably professional.

A spiritual man (shown above, a work in progress of Christ, singing), Evans said of his driftwood pieces, "I find them or they find me." They find him in more ways than one: "One morning I woke up and knew what one piece was."

Working with chisels--Evans is a former carpenter--he brings out the shapes that the raw driftwood suggests, and then rubs in paint to highlight the forms. "Putting on a door hings is just like doing a wood sculpture," he said, in explaining his technique.

Evans conversation is sprinkled with stories about helping a friend find Jesus and helping others from his old neighborhood nearby on Wallace Street give up crack addictions. A graduate of University City High School, he's not sure how he escaped the hard life that plagues so many of his classmates, but get him talking about his religion, his art work, or his belief in one nation, undivided by race, and he won't stop. I believe I found a truly happy man.


permanent link  libby 1:00 PM
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Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Another transmission from Adal

 
When an artist is as good at telling stories as Adal Maldonado, I always want more.

I asked Maldonado about the streak of anxiety about terrorism that runs through his "Blueprints for a Nation." He has invented an anti-terrorism aerosol spray and some fictitious bodega bombers who run around his "El Spirit Republic de Puerto Rico" causing trouble. (See my previous post on Adal, and see his website for more). (all images from Maldonado's website, top is "Auto portrait: Pelea de Gallos")


Both the aerosol spray (to attract love and combat terrorism) and the bodega bombers, seem in tune with the events of 9-11. I found their inclusion with the other tongue in cheek inventions somehow more poignant than the rest. (image left is "Santo Borroso (Saint Blurry)")

The artist told me in an email:

"A few weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 attack, Rev. Pedro (Pietri--the late poet with whom Maldonado collaborated in the creation of the Spirit Republic) told me that he was fed up with all the tributes that were being paid to all the people that had died...He told me that the Embassy (of the Spirit Republic) should pay tribute to the people who had survived. Then he proceded to tell the story of a member of his family who worked on the 89th floor of the first tower that was hit.

"On the morning of the attack she had a doctor's appointment and traded places with a friend who normally worked the night shift. So her friend died in her place. This woman was devastated, of course, and he wondered if we could do anything to help her through this trauma.


"I told him that we should incorporate her into the tribute for the survivors and that I would create an artifact and present it to her at the event. So I came up with the anti-terrorist aerosol spray. I presented it to her at the event and it brought some humor into her life that contributed to easing the pain."

Here's part of the prayer that appears on the "Santo Borroso Benedictum Spray" The prayer starts as a plea for help with love and ends..."keep me safe from all these jive time, crazy ass terrorist maniac motherfuckers terrorizing this nation....Amen."
permanent link  roberta 9:25 AM
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Tuesday, April 06, 2004

Private eye Fallon reports another find

 

I met Anne Minich several years ago at an opening at Gallery Joe. Anne is an artist and a friend of sculptor Stephen Robin, who introduced us. Since then, I've seen Anne at many artist's lectures and at openings around Philadelphia but I didn't know much about her art. It hasn't been shown here recently. (top image "Our Lady of Three Houses")


When Anne, now 69, called me up a couple weeks ago and invited me in for a studio visit I was intrigued. I didn't have a clue what I'd find -- pretty pictures of flowers? figure studies? Wissahickon landscapes? gestural abstraction? (image right and left are shots of Minich's work in her house/gallery/office/studio)



What I found instead was body of work focussed on spiritual and psychological states. The work is sophisticated, beautiful, accomplished and smartly crafted. And again I was left wondering why I hadn't seen it here. The answer is always complicated and in Minich's case has to do with success elsewhere (in Maine, she is represented by ICON Contemporary Art in Brunswick) that drew her energy and a lack of basic business skills to foster career-building in Philadelphia.



Minich calls her works painted constructions and that fits perfectly. She lives among her works in her house, which slips seamlessly between being abode, office, gallery and working space. She explained that she taught herself carpentry and that her process, which is a slow one, involves building the wood support, carving into it, embedding objects in the wood, then painting -- in a process that involves adding, subtracting, rubbing, scraping, sanding and glazing using tools that range from brushes to fingers. (image is two works in the studio)

The resulting surfaces, worked so lovingly, have the feel of sculptural patinas -- matte and lucious.


The works are iconic and spiritual. Using silhouettes of a figure (head and shoulders only) and an airplane (that looks vaguely shark-like) she suggests a realm of possibilities about states of mind and being. Transience, metaphysics and time seem to be subjects. The works are quiet and a little brooding. (image is "Ubu" by Tom Chimes, who also makes work with great, sometimes carved surfaces)

They're also surreal and darkly poetic with allusions to death. Minich acknowledges their darkness but prefers not to be locked down with one interpretation.



The spare imagery, dark silhouettes -- surrounded by a halo of small objects, reminded me of other surrealists' works -- Magritte (shown "Son of Man"), Thomas Chimes (above, "Ubu") and even the late Latino artist Ana Mendieta. (detail from "Silueta" series)

Minich has some training as an artist (she took classes at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) but she is a self-taught carpenter. She does her own carpentry, by hand, and is a perfectionist about it.



If somebody tells her something is "off" by a 32nd of an inch, she'll fix it. (true story)

Overall, the work has an austere feel, something the artist feels may be difficult in selling her work.


Much of the work refers to her life (the silhouette figures are mostly her and she titles them "Our Lady of ...Three houses or whatever) although distilled down to a symbolic silhouette that could be everyman or everywoman. (image with airplanes right and left are "Coming" and "Grounded")

So why hasn't she shown much in Philadelphia? Well, actually, she has, but not lately. Minich's work was included in a show at the ICA, she says, and she is among the first recipients in 1994 of a Leeway Foundation Bessie Berman grant for excellence in painting.



Linda Lee Alter owns her work, she told me. But somehow Minich, who is divorced and a mother of two adult children, was unable to parlay that success into a gallery affiliation in Philadelphia.



And when she found an audience for her work in Maine, she funnelled her time and energy into showing in that state. She's had considerable success showing and selling there. If Maine wants you, that's where you go. (image right is "My Philadelphia" -- which reminds me of a Giorgio Morandi still life)



"I'm not an academic painter. I invent all my own methods which is good because I don't want to be caught in a formula," she said.

Minich is thinking about seeking a gallery in Philadelphia. I can imagine a show of her work in any of a number of venues. I'd love to see it. (bottom image is "Under" with a found rock as the moon)

permanent link  roberta 1:08 PM
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Tomorrow's Hughes today

 
Read Robert Hughes' Guardian article on Lucien Freud in which he calls Freud, 81, younger than Damien Hirst and sexier than Tracey Emin. This may be an old boy talking about another old boy but it's an interesting thought. (Hughes speaks tomorrow at Penn, part of the Locks Foundation distinguished artists series. Read my earlier post about how to get free tickets.)

Then check out this amusing ancillary story that says a Freud postcard image (Girl with White Dog, shown) has knocked the pre-Raphaelite "Ophelia" (1851) by John Everett Millais out of first place in sales in the Tate Modern's giftshop! Tate director Nicholas Serota implies the British citizenry has grown up in its art appreciation, calling "Ophelia" a striking image and "Girl" a challenging one.
permanent link  roberta 7:29 AM
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Monday, April 05, 2004

Color, family and politics

 


Friday night was supposed to be Cascarones night for Libby and me. But when we tried to get to Abington for the auction fundraiser organized yearly by Marta Sanchez, we were foiled by bad traffic, bad weather and non-functioning traffic lights and never made it. So we did our First Friday looking on Saturday. I went to Spartaco, Artjaz and Union 237 and got a load of color and politics, something I'm always up for.

First stop Artjaz
Kathryn Ogilvie's work on paper -- portraits annointed by repeat patterns that in some cases weave their way into the face and body of the subject -- are beauties. Imbued with a kind of human-centered spirituality, the large and small works, made with watercolor, pen, pencil and collage, are icons of family. The artist's brother -- a young boy wearing a cowboy outfit -- is portrayed, as are her grandmother and others who, if they're not family must be friends. The artist's hand is so much a part of the work the pencil marks, obsessive patterning and decoration become like caresses. (top image "Woman in a circle")

The patterns, black and white shapes, mostly organic (eggs, eyes, whirlpools, zigzags), reminded me of African cloth or ceramics patterns. Their use in every work adds up to a kind of recurring motif bringing the family together and connecting them all to an unseeen realm of cosmic interweaving. (image right, detail of "At Peace")


Ogilvie, who grew up in the suburbs outside Philadelphia with a Caribbean father and a European-American mother went to school at Howard (BFA, 92) and the Chicago Art Institute (MFA, 1997). While her work shows reverence for human life in general what is interesting is that this young artist is so in touch with issues of age. Time and again, the images were of grandfather or grandmotherly faces -- or, in the case of "Present" an aging hand and arm. (image left)


It's beautiful work, pristine in its crisp line (although several passages of white out deflated that pristine affect in one or two cases. It might have been better just to leave the unwanted line in evidence).

Tanking up at Spartaco

Gallery owner Terrence Laragione was working on an oil portrait of two children when I walked up the steep steps to the gallery across the street from Artjaz. Laragione, who started the gallery with his father Joseph was showing the work of two brothers, Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala. "Days on end," is an anti-war installation that brought out the big gun in the small gallery -- literally. The cardboard tank gobbled up the space but for my money, the better tanks were its little brothers, the tanks on pedestals in the corner which seemed made with boy-like love of toys and, perhaps memory of playing with G.I. Joe and all the mixed emotions that would bring back. I loved "little brother" and "not as big brother." (top image is "Big Brother" image left is "Little Brother")

Although the peephole environment in the big cardboard tank -- ink-drawn cut out figures, nudes, and a periscope, had a Piccaso-oid quality that was unexpected and nice. In fact, I could see a whole lot of peephole environments like those placed in small tanks made of cardboard and decorated to death--like Faberge eggs. Now that reverberates -- in the war-as-commodity department.

The Dufala's message seemed an overt anti-war message. It reminded me that last fall Moore College brought in Sara Beck who also brought a tank into the gallery -- along with a catalog and product line conflating war and business and fashion -- a different and more nuanced approach to things, less overtly anti-war and more about the culture.

Urban Renewal

My first trip to Union 237 which opened in the fall (I'm so embarrased that I haven't been in there) was a great one. The show upstairs has street smarts by two Los Angeles grafitti artists, Mear and Marka27, whose colorful, spray paint paintings and other work showed amazing control over a slippery medium.


Both artists have a lot on their minds, although I found Marka27's work spoke to me more about culture and people and Mear's work seemed hone in on graffiti culture as its subject -- although there is a great political work showing Bush. (image right)

Born in Mexico, Marka27 (nee Victor M. Quinonez) was a grafitti artist in East Dallas before moving to Boston on a scholarship to the Museum School of Fine Arts. I found his work, which included a nice spray paint portrait of Miles Davis, evocative of hip hop culture, Mexican altars and religious iconography.

His altar to Che Guevara, enhanced by empty liquor bottles into which pencil portraits on paper had been inserted as the offerings/message moved me. (image left)

What really mesmerized however was the video projection of the two artists creating work. The piece, put together by Union 237's production team, had music, quick action, and ended with a commercial for Marmont restaurant which, if I understood what Brian Brown, gallery director, told me, has been providing refreshments at the openings in exchange for some production work. Anyway, the video is great and worth a trip in and of itself.

Downstairs, two artists, Slope and Dave Cramske also worked the street beat. Slope, whose work I had seen previously at Asian Arts Initiative, makes use of arrows and nice color shifts to bring abstract grafitti indoors in easel sized works.

Cramske, who invents cartoon-like characters and sets them in voids of colorful space, was the more interesting and endearing artist. His characters, a combination of Elmo and Sponge Bob, made me smile. (image left)

All the gallerists I talked with said they had big turnouts Friday night, in spite of the pouring rain.
permanent link  roberta 8:41 AM
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First Friday: A pair to see

 

I saw two really swell shows that opened on First Friday. I went with my daughter Minna and her friend Sigal, and we all pretty much agreed on what we liked and what we didn't.

The paintings by Olivia Schreiner in her show, "Fly by Night," at Vox Populi are beautiful and thoughtful.

The work puts a nice twist on the picturesque landscape tradition of juxtaposing the man-made with the natural. The bit of temporary construction fencing edges the bottom of skyscapes with dotty suggestions of birds (shown, "Cinemascape" above, and "Chicagoland"). The edge of a slide cover, a pattern of lights transform what might be ordinary landscapes or overhead views into our relationship to the mothership earth. Three thumbs up.

Also showing there were well-done drawings by Nils Karsten with a kind of creepy affect, a noisy tribute installation to heavy metal music by Robert Chaney, manipulated photos of woodland scenes by Kelley Roberts and video by Rob Craigie.

The other strong choice was the Russian nesting dolls at Space 1026. Three thumbs up.

It's one of those concept shows where someone has an idea of what everyone ought to decorate. Usually those shows don't work out so well. But that's not the case here, maybe because the dolls themselves are intrinsically delightful and they have an underlayer of meaning--pregnancy, inside/outside, diminution, the kernel or seed, perspective--that immediately lift most of the artistic ruminations and give them greater meaning.

Even Ned Vena's gangsta dolls dressed in do-rags with Japanese-brushstroke-like faces automatically, by the multiple sizes, raised questions about how the culture is raising its younguns, turning out little gangstas by the gross.

My favorite doll was Shawn Gurczak's family, a great big dad in conservative shirt, the teenage child with sweetheart locked in an embrace, the gorilla emblazoned with "m's" (from Micky D's?) flashing the bird, the cheerful little brother and the little itty bitty grandpa, looking like he's gonna have a cow, man, any second now, he's so angry and so powerless. But he's the one who started the whole family, and he's at the heart of the matter.

But so many of them were beautiful and interesting to look at. I loved Matt Leines' Persian bearded weird guys (shown at top), even though I wasn't sure what size had to do with it all.

I loved the way a number of artists subverted the interlocking quality of the dolls, although maybe Melinda Beck, with her insect people, went so far with it that the graduated sizes became pointless.

Kristine Cortese's diamond-eyed people got reduced in the smallest iteration to nothing more than an eye, a sort of artist's self-portrait of herself as all eyes.

There was lots of flat-out swell drawing, including Kozyndan's series that hit on the bright and dark sides of human nature and Gary Fogelson's multi-gendered cartoon people (below) represented by a closer and closer, smaller and smaller perspective. There's all kinds of ways to shrink down.

For painting, there was Kevin Cyr's beautiful transportation series (not shown). Then there's Chris Yormic's approach of putting ladders underneath, so that each doll, no matter how different, ends up the same height. Are we talking about equal opportunity and leveling the playing field or what?

The invitational show from curator Eddie Martinez included 38 animators, skateboard designers and graffiti artists as well as traditional fine artists. Martinez gave each artist a blank set of the dolls. I don't mean by naming the artists above that theirs were the only noteworthy work. I'd say another dozen or so turned in some great-to-look-at work.

We also stopped by the new Highwire Gallery space on the same floor as Vox Populi. At the moment, it's a little hard to find it. The space is beautiful and paintings looked better here than they did in the old space. In the member group show in the front room, I have to give the best name for a painting prize to George Shinn's painting of four guys: "It's My Turn You Went First the Last Time." Sigal liked an installation with some little cast caterpillers that you can buy for $5 (I'll have to get you the artist's name). Go know.
permanent link  libby 8:02 AM
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Sunday, April 04, 2004

The spaciness of Adal

 

The day Laurie Anderson spoke at Meyerson Hall (see Libby's post for more on Anderson) I went up to Taller Puertorriqueno to see New York-based Puerto Rican artist Adal Maldonado's "Blueprints for a Nation" and "Coconauts in Space." As I listened to Anderson, the newly-appointed NASA artist in residence, and heard former ICA director Janet Kardon introduce Anderson and reminisce about how she (Kardon) curated the now famous exhibit of Robert Mappelthorpe's photographs, I realized there was common ground between Anderson and Maldonado -- and that some of it was in outer space. (top image is the Domino 1 space craft from "Coconauts" and below is Commandante Adal, captain of Domino 1)



For starters, the two artists are spacey, and I mean that in a good way. They share an orientation to the world that is integrative, other-worldly and full of big thoughts about social issues. (For more information on Maldonado, see his website.)

Then, there's an outer space connection. Anderson's NASA involvement, which is a little undefined, allows her access to Hubble space telescope imagery. In her talk, she showed slides illustrating how she proposed to integrate space imagery into a Japanese garden.

In "Coconauts," Maldonado, too, uses NASA material, altering shots from the 1969 NASA moon landing and integrating them into a little invented history -- of a prior lunar landing, in 1963, by Puerto Rican astronauts, himself included.



Both artists use electronic media in their work. In her ICA show in 1983, Anderson created a sound sculpture that required the viewer to place her head on a pillow to receive a message. In his "Blueprints" piece, Maldonado -- who told me he had no knowledge of the Anderson piece -- created an altar to Saint Anthony (Marc Anthony) that invites the viewer to kneel down and place her head on a pillow to receive the soothing music of Saint Anthony. (image below)


Here I'll bring up Mapplethorpe, whom Kardon spoke of in her introduction. Maldonado, who is a trained photographer and master printer, was Mapplethorpe's printer early on and helped that artist develop a printing style. (left is image of blurry Nuyoricans from "Blueprints")

And that's as far as I'll take this comparison between Anderson and Maldonado, except to say that they're both great.


Here's more on Maldonado and his show, which I highly recommend. The multi-media artist uses video, audio, performance, digital manipulation of photography, sculpture and text.

His work, which is included in the show of Latino art from the MOMA collection at Museo del Barrio is about the state of being Puerto Rican in America, a condition so unempowered, so disenfranchised he calls it "blurry" or "borroso." (image above left is altar from La Santa Iglesia de la Madre de los Tomates)


Maldonado wants to empower the blurry citizenry and to that end, working in collaboration with the late poet Pedro Pietri, he has created a new sovereign state, "El Spirit Republic de Puerto Rico." It's an alternate universe that celebrates the condition of being Puerto Rican in America. "Blueprints" offers a bodega's-worth of products for this new republic, everything from passports, money and postage stamps, to an official state church, "La Santa Iglesia de la Madre de los Tomates" (Holy Church of the Mother of the Tomatoes). (image above right is suitcase which contains video piece merging West Side Story images and a dolorous chanteuse who sings of her longing for Puerto Rico)


"Coconauts'" invented history is uplifting material for the citizens of the spirit republic. Maldonado suggests that unless you tell the tale, history will forget you.

While the work bears no physical resemblance to the work of Russian emigre artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, its spirit of serious play with social and political underpinnings is similar. I'd also like to say that the myth making and story aggrandizement reminds me of work by other artists who also seem to be trying to correct the record of history. Pepon Osorio and his "Casita" is one example (see my June 20 post. Kara Walker is another. But even young artists like Amy Cutler and Clare Rojas are creating alternate -- empowering -- universes which seem to be sticking it to traditional white, male visions of history.


Maldonado, a self-described "country boy" or "jibaro" who grew up in the island's mountainous interior, posits that every element of the pre-New York experience is clear and that it's only after arriving in America that the Puerto Rican becomes blurry. The artist offers as evidence photographs and videos of his native land that are crisp and clear documentation of a rural lifestyle.

Crediting his jibaro roots for his ability to tell tall tales and use humor in his art the artist explained in an email

"Country folk from all over the world are known for spinning far out yarns...that incorporate subjective realities, mysticism and humor. This reminds me of an account of what happened in my home town during hurricane season when I was just a boy. An old lady was seen flying through the plaza (she got swept up by the strong hurricane winds I guess) but all the townfolks swore she was a UFO. This would probably be thought of as surrealism by art scholars but to us it was our normal everyday experience."
(image left is a bodega bag declaring the annexation of New York city to the Spirit Republic)


On the creation of his spirit republic, Maldonado says "lately I've been thinking that people could construe El Spirit Republic as another example of the reconstruction of the Garden of Eden (Walden Pond, Shangrila, Atlantis, Xanadu, etc) --a failed project from the start...My position is that there can be no Garden of Eden, no Shangrila once you put two people in the same environment.. Because we have free will and we perceive differently, there is going to be conflict and eventually dissent...and learning how to resolve these [conflicts] helps us transcend our condition by tapping into the spirit within. (bottom image shows video from the non-blurry homeland -- the slaughtering of a pig for a feast to celebrate a holy day)

permanent link  roberta 11:41 AM
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