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Posted by roberta

pulsing o
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

A friend told me of his son's second birthday party. Adults stood around talking and munching near a table laid with some nice food and drinks and cake. The children huddled around a small table set with a bowl of Cheerios -- their kind of party food. (top image is Tom Moody's animation from the O Show. Click the picture to see it bigger.)


Children draw heads that are big O's. Children love Spaghetti-o's and Life Savers. Those are all flat O's with holes in the middle that may not mean much when you're two but when you get to that existential age when you start worrying about why and what if and why not the O of Alice's rabbit hOle becomes the pOrtal to that mystery realm where maybe life's big questions get answered and maybe nOt.

(image above is a big kid drawing, Rob Matthews' "Sofia" from the O show)


Some O's are puffy and voluminous, ballOOns, say, another mystical mysterious friend of children everywhere. Ebullient, airy, bubbly and party-like, these O's are less about mystery and more about fullness, abundance and bOuncing and bOunding arOund.

(image is Mark Shetabi's "Airport Parking Garage" peephOle environment in the O show)

Then there are flat O's which might not make you feel the jOy but they do make you think the big thOughts. That Big O, the Ocean? That's a flat O in my bOOk and sO mystical, wOndrous it makes me shiver.

"O," the shOw curated by Christina Vassalo and Matt Fisher of Mat-CH art that Libby and I saw at SICA and that opens at Kresge Gallery Foundation at Ramapo College on March 30 (through May 3) is a flat O show about the mystery of the O cOnnection.



The O's there, by and large, are the down-the-rabbit hOle variety although some, like John Phillips' Friends of BOb are wicked fun. (image is Phillips piece, which I couldn't help connecting to the "Mr. Bill" clay animations from Saturday Night Live back when it used to be good)



Mostly this is a meditative shOw into which you hunker down and think and muse and disappear into the questions asked. NO answers required, just think the thoughts.

(image is Mike Smith's "Vendocart" installation whith twirly whirly umbrellas from Parts to the Whole)

ROb Matthews' O drawings are spOtlight O's. Spotlights in the sense of being on the spOt, in the spOt, spOt on. See and be seen.



Tom MOOdy's pulsing animated O's are the rhythm of life -- breathe in, breathe out, and gO dOwn to the next level and repeat.

(image is Nami Yamamoto's installation from Parts to the Whole. Interestingly, her bubble installations are included in both shows.)

Bubble O's


Vox Populi's Part's to the WhOle, guest-curated by Elizabeth Grady is an exuberant, bursting to OverflOwing O shOw. It's a show you want to embrace because, with one wall-wrapping piece after another, it embraces you. Not all the works are of the same exuberance, but mostly the puffy, airy, lovely, pretty eggy, feathery exuberance is enough to make you giggle.

(image is detail of Jae Hi Ahn's installation from Parts to the Whole)



This show closes soon but tomorrow, Sunday, Jan. 29 at 4:30 pm, Curator Grady* will give a talk about it. And that will be an excellent Opportunity to see the shOw and imbibe the vibe, gO with the flOw. (image above and below are details from Pete Goldlust and Julie Hughes' installation which interweaves with Charley Friedman's (eggs) installation at Parts to the whole)



That's it. Here's Libby's post on the O show and here's her post on Parts to the WhOle.



These two exhibits -- curated by young energetic people with thoughts and some urgency about new art for new times -- are two of the best I've seen of late. While both exhibits brim with ideas, neither is ponderous. And both are forward looking -- Onward and upward and here's to mOre such smart fun in the future. (see more O show pix and WhOle show pix.

--------------------
*Elizabeth Grady is working as Curatorial Assistant at the Whitney Museum, Special Assistant to the Estate of Diane Arbus, and Adjunct Professor of Art History at F.I.T.-SUNY in New York. She recently curated Structuring Perception at NURTUREart in Brooklyn and has several forthcoming essays, on Stephen Nguyen in NY Arts , on Gary Simmons on the website of the Whitney Museum, and on the politicization of public art opinion in Berlin in the Weimar Republic, in a book on the political economy of art edited by Julie Codell. She has also published essays on Franz Ackermann, Matthew Ritchie, Alexander Ross, and Terry Winters in Elisabeth Sussman, Remote Viewing: Invented Worlds in Recent Painting and Sculpture . New York: Whitney Museum, 2005.

permanent link   roberta 11:50 AM
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Posted by libby

It's true that Stuart Netsky's work is about time. But what he's saying is more complicated than that, and those complications are what make his work resonate (image, one of Netsky's nail polish on wood panel pieces from 1998, 5 3/4" x 5 3/4").




Netsky, whose 20-year retrospective, "Imitation of Life," is at the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, by using the body as a metaphor, does indeed explore time. But he also explores the relationship of what's on the outside, be it skin or fashion or nail polish or a vacuum cleaner cozy, to what's on the inside. And as he gets older, he has added to his arsenal of what ravages the body. These days, it's not just disease, specifically HIV, but also age and sunburn (image, "Japanese Rock Garden," from the Philadelphia Museum of Art's collection).




Our vulnerability is expressed in all that focus on skin, and reflected in the fragility of the media--the peeling edges of the paint, the unreliability of foundation makeup and sunscreen, the instability of Valium caked to form a cherub's face ("Cherub," Valium, 2 3/4 inches (diameter) x 1 inch, 2006).




If you know his work, you know that Netsky also explores sexual identity. This is not to say that he's a gay artist, although he is gay. He is an artist who uses that gay identity to explore just how slippery human identity is, another surface not to be trusted. His series of "What Should I Wear?" photos, in which he poses in different gender-bending outfits is classic work that still delivers its shock--and its joke (from the "What Should I Wear?" series, silver print, photo by Jim Graham--sorry about the horrible reflections).

That sense of fun is as much a hallmark of Netsky's work as the sadness underneath. He knows how to put one over.



He holds on to that sense of humor in his knit and his sequin riffs on the most macho of artists. He delivers the shimmer of Mark Rothko's transcendent pools of color with billboard flickers (giant sequins) fastened so they move with the air currents--Rothko in drag. He has a go at ultra tough-guy Barnett Newman's hard-edged zips, converting them to cuddly knits. I finally decided of the two nods to Newman in the exhibit--the afghan and the limp scarf--I prefer the afghan, slouching like a body in a chair. He even pokes his knitting needles at mister muscle himself, Richard Serra ("Newman’s Vir Heronicus Sublimus," wool, 1989).



But even recently, in a couple of paintings of enamel paint poured over aluminum, he whips it out and has a pissing contest with Jackson Pollack. Gotta love it. But his affect, some of his forms and his colors are Pop. And Netsky retains the issues he loves--the gorgeous surface with body issues suggested underneath (untitled, 60 x 60 inches, 2006).



I know Roberta's going to be writing on this show--I bumped into her and Rob Matthews chatting at the gallery--so I'm stopping here. But I need to blow the guy a great big kiss. I think he's a hoot and I take him very seriously (image, "Yarmulke," 1995).

P.S.

A Netsky show is also on tap at Locks Gallery, Feb. 3 to 28.

permanent link   libby 11:33 AM
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Posted by libby

The ramp at the Institute of Contemporary Art continues to be the most challenging space to do anything meaningful in, but lately, there's been some good success--this lates success being the work of Ingrid Calame, who's the eighth artist to tackle the space (image, detail of ramp installation with arrow indicating Calame, who is talking about her project to ICA members).

Calame's history of art making is in tracing stains, like oil stains, on pavement, and using the shapes to create her work. Most recently she has been using just the outlines of the tracings, layered into lacy images. This time, however, she took the tracing concept in other directions, and the result is great to look at, energetic, and coherent in any number of ways.

In the ICA members walk-around, just before the opening Friday, Calame said that when she took a look at the space, she realized lacy tracings weren't going to hold up. So she added bold swatches of color to the mix.

She used a sign paint called "One Shot,"--highly toxic but quick-drying. The colors are spectacular.



The undercoat is made of loosely applied areas of bright color. Then the top coat, a vivid shade of brown, allows the traced shapes she drew from along the Los Angeles river to show through. She was thinking childhood scratch drawings, with the top coat of black crayon removed to reveal the colors beneath(image, another detail of ramp installation with arrow pointing to Calame).

The shapes include tracings of layers of graffiti. After the election, she said, she became interested in the words. "Oh, this is a conversation happening in front of me," she recollected thinking. "People were writing over what others have written and changing it to something else."

The result is graphic enough to hold up in the difficult space, which is exactly what graffiti does, competing with the frantic urban landscape.



The shapes of the murals are another layer of tracing, based on the shapes of the windows and the angles of the ramp and how the shapes appear in the window reflections (Calame's installation reflected in the windows).

Calame also was especially interested in how the murals appeared from outside. "This is a diorama, a little shoe box," she said. "It's best viewed from outside." (There's a specific parking meter across the street from which the view is tiptop).

I also liked the trope of graffiti, an outdoor phenomenon, going indoors and then again outdoors via the windows.

Calame, who's jaunty with a fountain of fair dreadlocks, compared her creation of the piece to preparing for Thanksgiving. "It was months of preparations. And then we did it like that, in a week."

Yum.

...On another ICA subject,

I added to my post on "Holiday Home" that it was funded in part by Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, which deserves a share of the praise. Roberta also added a tidbit on "Holiday Home," here.

permanent link   libby 10:09 AM
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Posted by libby

A hunt is on for former students of the late Warren Rohrer. Our fellow blogger Martin Bromirski at anaba, who went to UArts and studied under Rohrer, is seeking fellow travellers in Warren's footsteps and any other UArts classmates with whom he has lost touch (image, Rohrer's "Point One").

The post also mentions other UArts alums like Christine Hiebert, Joe Fyfe and Phong Bui.

Here's a link to Bromirski's post.

permanent link   libby 9:44 AM
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Posted by libby and roberta

First the cure: If you're looking for something on artblog and can't find it on the artists index, try google. Put in the subject plus the word artblog and if we have it, there's a pretty good chance that it will turn up.

Now the woes behind the cure: We mention this now because we're having a devil of a time with our artists index. It's gone from glitchy to witchy, and has been on the fritz since some time in December. When it's back on track, we'll let you know. --r&l

permanent link   libby and roberta 3:59 PM
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Posted by roberta

Last week I told you about my meeting with Carlos Basualdo, new Curator of Contemporary Art at the PMA. Here is more from my interview with him:



When I met Basualdo at the PMA for our interview, the youthful curator bounded down the west lobby steps to greet me and in spite of his jet-lag from returning from Venice less than 24 hours before (he’d been at a conference) he chatted with me for more than an hour. His cellphone rang repeatedly and apart from checking once to see if it was his wife calling (it wasn’t) he didn’t want to answer. He wanted to talk – and listen -- and was completely engaged in our conversation.

He could have sat comfortably behind his big desk but he picked a chair across from me at a small side table where we talked across a pile of video cassettes and books. The office is austere except for the piles on the table.



Basualdo, as you know, is helping the museum make some contemporary artart acquisitions like Thomas Hirschhorn’s “Camo-Outgrowth (Winter)” 2005. (See here for picture of the piece) He was also instrumental in the musuem’s purchase of Gordon Matta-Clark’s “Conical Intersect” (1975) an 18-minute film of a project that carved a cone-shaped hole into a building in Paris that was going to be destroyed anyway. Here's a little more about the piece.

(image above and two below are still frames from Matta-Clark's video showing, from the inside, the outside and from the street-side, the hole carved into the building. You can see the video in quick time here. )

Q. Tell me about Notations.

A. I’ve been brainstorming with Anne (d’Harnancourt, PMA Director) and with Michael (Taylor, Curator of Modern Art). Especially with Michael. He’s my most direct interlocutor. We’re interested in how to shape the passage from modern to contemporary that is most productive. Think of the dialog between modern and contemporary art. [Contemporary art is generally thought of as art from 1960 forward. Art from the first half of the 20th Century is Modern art.] We want to retell the story and say how the dialog was across cultures and boundaries. We’ll do that mostly looking at our collection. When the museum reopens with new space. I want it to be like the modern (collection).



Q. All this costs money.

A. We have to work with friends and find as many new friends as possible.

Museums are great public institutions where memory is housed and reflected on. Memory is what we put to use. It allows us to make decisions. Especially in our museum. The contemporary and modern collections are so unique here.



Q. Do you really think so? The modern is unique with the Duchamp and Brancusi and everything else. But do you think the contemporary is all that unique?

A. Contemporary can’t measure up to the modern. It’s always developing.

Q. Will Museum Studies (a project organized by Basualdo’s predecessor Ann Temkin which brought in international artists like Christian Marclay and Rirkrit Tiravanija to mine the collection and make something new) come back?

A. Notations comes out of Museum Studies. It doesn’t replace it. It’s inspired by Ann Temkin whom I respect tremendously. You can say Museum Studies will continue in another form. It has morphed into Notations.

Q. Will you include Philadelphia artists in the Notations sketches?

A. We are in the process of doing that . Outreach for us is very important. What we need is more walls! People think we don’t have many contemporary works but the contemporary works in the contemporary collection count in the hundreds. But we can’t put them all out there. Of course Philadelphia artists will figure in to Notations.

Q. About walls, have you thought about having shows off site – in a warehouse someplace or another space with walls?

A. Why not? I hope that would be the purview of our friends. In order to fully flesh out our ideas we need our friends. We work with our friends. But we must always think of quality and substance. You have a responsibility. Have to show things with proper lighting, security, etc.

Q. I see references to video art and cinema in your background. Will you be doing video work in Notations and will it be in the video gallery? You mentioned seeing a William Kentridge piece in Miami. Would you like to work with him?

A. We see the video gallery as an opportunity. There’s fantastic video art in Kazakstan, Ramallah, Tel Aviv. That could be one of the ways for telling stories. I would love to work with Kentridge. I need my friends to help.

Q. There are a lot of local video artists.

A. Video is a way to look very widely and also to look at very young artists whose work won’t necessarily enter the collection. It allows us to learn from the outside.

Q. I understand you know Osvaldo Romberg (artist, Penn faculty and one of the founders of Slought Foundation)?



A. Osvaldo is a friend. I met him in New York a long time ago. Fabian Marcaccio was his studio assistant. Fabian’s a good friend of mine. (image is Marcaccio's "Paramilitary Paintant" 2005. The artist calls his mixed media paintings mutant paintings, or paintants. For more images see here.)

(Here I say something about Marcaccio being a wild man, meaning I’ve seen his art and it’s wild. Basualdo demurs saying Marcaccio’s not a wild man at all. But then he agrees on the art being kind of wild and calls him an “Argentine hurricane.”)

Q. What did you study in school?

A. I studied literature. I always wrote poetry. I do write also through my shows.

Q. They say that poets make the best writers about art.

A. I believe there is a close connection between words and works. I don’t think there’s been anyone writing better essays about Rodin than Rilke (poet Rainer Maria Rilke). Baudelaire also wrote about art. I’d like to be a historian and a poet. They’re not incompatible. Experiments with words allow me to enter art works in a way that’s productive.

Q. Do you collect art?

A. No. but I live with art in my house….things given to me. I don’t think I could live without it.
Q. Will you be buying art for the PMA?

A. We do have a budget and we need our friends. I bought something in Miami.

Q. Can you tell me what you bought?

A. You’ll have to check with the PR Department about that. There’s a meeting soon and then check with them. (The piece he wouldn’t tell me about was the Hirschhorn piece).

WHAT OTHERS SAY
Paula Marincola, Director, PEI

He was a panelist for PEI in 2002 but I had known his work before. He was a really great panelist. He’s really engaged, interested in all the little to big things in a generous way.

I asked him to write an essay for the PEI series. He wrote about biennials. The unstable instable institution. I tshould be out in a couple months. The essay’s already published in the journal manifesta. Manifesta Journal for Contemporary Curating. www.manifesta.org. issue #2 winter 2003

We have an amazing curating community….It’s unprecedented.

Carlos brings an international perspective and a particular orientation in curating. We haven’t had someone expert on Latin America. He was on the team for Documenta 11 and Venice 2003. that gives a curator a point of view. At the same time he’s is extremely approachable and interested in becoming a part of the community.

He’s aware of international and interested in the local. It’s the kind of thing that makes me excited about funding exhibits.

It’s a great time to be in Philly.

Brian Wallace, Exhibitions Director, Galleries at Moore College

I’m very excited for the museum and for the city. What can I say? He’s very clear about what he’s thinking and saying. He’s terrific in ongoing discussions about Artur Barrio. He’s been an intermediary between us and Artur all the way through. The show’s logistics are a nightmare. And every once in a while Carlos will have a great comment that will get things going.



Carlos seems to be having very interesting conversations with lots of people. I hope people don’t think he’s only a Latin American curator because he’s not. He’s clearly got a grasp on Latin American art but his perspective is global. He did the Tropicalia show which was at MCA Chicago and is now in London (at the Barbican Gallery opening in February).

(image is the Tropicalia catalog, edited by Basualdo.)

permanent link   roberta 10:17 AM
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Posted by roberta

iglerlessarddet.jpg
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

This week's Weekly includes my review of "Whisper Down the Lane" at Klein Gallery and a sketch of the Fleisher Challenge 3. Here's the link to the art page and below is the copy with some images. For more pictures see my Whisper set and Fleisher set at flickr. And here's Libby's Fleisher post

Working on the Chain Gang
An unconventional method of curation has excellent results.

"Whisper Down the Lane" at Klein Gallery is a show with a curious premise: Grow an exhibit by chain reaction, asking one artist to select another, who will select the next and so on. Thirteen artists and some months later, curator Amy Adams had her exhibit. Adams set the chain in motion by asking Stefan Abrams to participate. Abrams selected Jeff McMahon, who selected Joe Begonia, who selected Buy Shaver, who selected Jeremiah Misfeldt. The genealogy skewed the gender mix, with guys mostly choosing guys. That's not a complaint-just a comment on friendship. The resulting show is heavy with photography and photo-based imagery, and pregnant with longing for a better world.



(image is photo by Abrams, the alpha piece in the show. blue light reflected in glass is from Shaver's piece which sits across the gallery. Top image is Sabrina Lessard's nest egg and Aaron Igler's oil drum)

Two works stand out for their linkage as an art pair: Sabrina Lessard's Untitled wall sculpture and Aaron Igler's Untitled conceptual assemblage. Igler invited Lessard to participate, and whether they talked about what they'd put in the show, their works-which sit side by side in the sequentially installed show-are like a one-two punch that describes an ecologically endangered planet and proposes redress.

Lessard's cast resin and silicon rubber piece is an oversized bird's nest sitting on a tree branch. The branch is white and dead. The nest is translucent blue and holds several enormous waxy eggs that are deformed--round as globes. The piece, made with unnatural materials, is an icon of death.

Igler's assemblage is a large metal barrel propped on a wooden armature accompanied by two plastic jugs containing a dark liquid. The artist's description takes the piece from ordinary to conceptual. It's a "drum to hold the estimated amount of WVO (waste vegetable oil) needed to drive from the artist's home (Philadelphia, Pa.) to the residence of George W. Bush (Crawford, Texas) in a fuel-system-converted '83 Mercedes-Benz 240D. Action upon arrival yet undetermined."





The veiled threat of action is at first laughable (this is conceptual art after all), and yet its hint of terrorism and DIY-ism speaks to a level of frustration with the world that makes sane people commit rash acts.

Serendipity doesn't always produce a happy outcome, but here, when friend chose friend, it did. Other artists in the show are Norm Paris, Jackie Hoving, Dominique Rey, Chris Curreri, Balint Zsako and Natalie Matutschovsky. (image is Matutschovsky's photo, the last piece, the omega of the show)

"Whisper Down the Lane"
Through Feb. 25. Esther M. Klein Art Gallery, 3701 Market St. 215.966.6188.


sketches
Island Records



Focusing on the human, the artists of Fleisher's "Challenge 3" discover we're old as Moses and new as tomorrow's tabloid superstar. Susan Bank's black-and-white photographs of tobacco farmers in Cuba are beautiful and compassionate. Unstudied shots of people who live in thatched cottages and till their fields with ox-drawn plows, the photos portray small moments with dignity and grace. (image is one of Bank's photos. The artist told me at the opening that she stayed with this woman while she was in the village)



Phyllis Gellmin Laver's monumental charcoal portraits evoke Leonardo and Eakins and the age-old dialogue between artist and model. (image is detail of one of Laver's drawings)



Performance and installation artist Roxana Pérez-Méndez inserts politics. Filling the gallery with an array of video clips, interactive props and a shrine, the artist fabricates a myth about a glamorous woman astronaut in the Puerto Rican space program PASA.

(image above and below are from Perez-Mendez's installation. Above is a detail of a table-top piece that is a model of a radio-telescope that sits atop some mountain in Puerto Rico. The artist substituted music for the static sounds of space waves usually coming in. What you hear is something like those boom box beats you might hear from someone's car stereo when they've got the bass cranked up. I hope I got this explanation -- told me by Fleisher's Warren Angle -- right. Someone correct me if I mashed the details. Below is the artist's video showing the artist/astronaut tumbling through space and right out of the picture. Perez-Mendez's videos are what make the installation for me. They are lyrical, well done, adventurous and sweetly loopy.)



There's critique here of Puerto Rico's second-class status in the world, and some finger-pointing at Americans who may have visited the island for vacation but presumably don't understand much Spanish. (The installation is in Spanish with no English subtitles). The artist asks the viewer to crawl inside her Puerto Rican skin, and that's a great exercise in exploring human identity.

Through Feb. 11. Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, 719 Catharine St. 215.922.3456.

permanent link   roberta 6:50 AM
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Posted by libby

Rock-star-status video artist Cory Arcangel, who has work at the Temple Gallery's "Mix Show," will be talking at the Arden Theater tonight at 6 p.m., to be followed by a reception for the artist.


"Mix," a show of recent videos by six artists with strong music influences (see Roberta's post here), is one of those rare shows in which the whole is greater than the parts. And one of the best parts is a collaboration between Arcangel and Frankie Martin that had me laughing out loud (top image from Arcangel and Frankie Martin's video, "414-3-RAVE-95"). .

The talk is the first in a series of three by "Mix" video artists. The others are Phyllis Baldino, Monday, Jan. 30, and Tony Cokes, Monday, Feb. 6, both also at the Arden at 6 p.m.

permanent link   libby 3:45 PM
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Posted by libby

I was going to hold off writing about this year's Challenge 3 exhibit at Fleisher.

Oh, I have a reason--it's part of a discussion-group project that I didn't want to weigh in on in advance of the discussion.

But I my enthusiasm has gotten the better of me.

As usual at Challenge shows, I find the three artists--portrait artist Phyllis Gellmin Laver, installation/performance artist Roxana Perez-Mendez and photographer Susan Bank--seem to be having a conversation with eachother although their work is wildly different.

Who are we as human beings and what is it that we are doing in this world? they ask. And is there something that we should be doing differently?

The questions apply to the artists themselves, and, to their subjects. Ultimately, the questions from these artists are being posed to all of humanity.

Phyllis Laver



Laver walks the line between Academy representation and something larger. The scale of the drawings is cinematic, and their fascination reminds me of the tender up-close eye of the camera on a movie-star face it loves. But this is so much more personal. And so it cuts both ways--contemporary and old-fashioned (top image, "Black Coat"; image above, "Untitled").

Her subjects are heroic in their scale on large (43 1/4" x 29 1/2") sheets of paper, but they never lose their cross between vulnerability, imperfection and miraculous presence, by which I mean, Laver reminds us of how amazing and unique and varied from eachother and ourselves we are as creatures. The medium, graphite, is as anti high tech as it can get.

This heroic scale and basic medium reminds me of the large portraits of artist Qimin Liu, whose charcoal or painted portraits of homeless subjects reveal their dignity, individuality and humanity (see post).

In Laver's portraits, the lack of background information, the occasional cut-off head-top is a declaration that people are the answer, the subject, the purpose of it all. And the mark-making--a response to the subject, the graphite, the rough paper--are a reassertion of that central human intelligence, unmediated by the impersonal camera.

Roxana Perez-Mendez



Perez-Mendez's installation also expresses a vulnerability at the same time that she casts herself as the heroic space explorer of the Puerto Rican space program, PASA. The first piece on view entering the gallery is "Retrato," a shrine for sending up a prayer for the safety of our heroine in space, with a candle, flowers and a stack of little photo portraits (I took one home) of Perez-Mendez in her space suit (image, detail of "Retrato").

Our heroine is not in one of those sterile white or jaunty orange jump suits. She's pretty in pink, with rhinestone epaulettes, which hark back to her space video in "Mixmaster Universe" at Temple Gallery, where she polished her nails and read women's magazines during the boring, long hours alone in her imaginary space ship (see post).



She's mock-heroic. The humor with which Perez-Mendez brings the Puerto Rican flag to space--pictured on a plastic, cheesy, low-tech stereoscope--is mixed with an earnestness, a genuine plea for attention on the world stage. (Nor does she stick to the low tech; videos and DVDs are also part of the installation). At the same time she's questioning the hegemony of the dominant culture and its version of history and its version of values. She's calling out, and her voice from deep space is being captured on the little radio telescope in the "Tierra Incognita (Llamada y Respuesta)"--Land Unknown (Call and Response)--part of the installation. Can you hear her now (image, one of the stereoscope images in the piece "Noche sin Estrellas")?

Susan Bank



Perez-Mendez is not alone in questioning the hegemony of our culture. Bank, in her show "Campo Adentro (Deep within the country)" treats her subjects with acceptance and respect at the same time that she creates startling images of their hard lives in rural Cuba. Time and the dominant culture already have encroached--documented in the presence of black plastic trash bags used as tarps. But the black plastic delivers the suggestion of people making the most of what's available. At the same time, it's an artifact of the cheesy future to come (images above and below are untitled).



The photos are a pleasant reminder of what people really look like, with weather and hardship written in the lines on their faces and the strength of their hard-working bodies. They are mostly startling with their dramatic and velvety darks and light, attention to detail, and strong compositions, which startle as much as the people and their lifestyles.

The relationships of the people to their occupations and eachother come across dramatically in these black and white gelatin silverprints taken with a 35-mm camera.
The use of what's old technology in this digital age serves to reassert the values of the subjects.

permanent link   libby 10:47 AM
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Posted by roberta

Phong Bui
Originally uploaded by Bromirski.

Separated at birth?

This image on Martin Bromirski's flickr page (click the image to see bigger and to get to Bromirski's photos) is very like the architectural paper airplane made by Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos at the big cave, the Philly ICA. How can you not ask the question?

Mark Barry wrote about Phong Bui on ionarts last summer. Bui, is an artist, curator and publisher of the Brooklyn Rail. Bromirski's photo doesn't say where the picture came from*, but I assume Bui's installation lives in the real world right now in some gallery.

Bui's work looks less like a cave than the Holiday Home -- which is a complete Jetson by Star Wars module for lunar living.

See Libby's post below for pictures of the ICA installation. And I've got more pictures of the show online in my flickr ICA opening set.

*[Note: The post originally said Bromirski took this photo. He didn't, but posted it on flickr from artnet. The photo's from a 2005 exhibit in New York. Also, Bui is a University of the Arts graduate, says Bromirski.]
bui, phong
van berkel, ben and caroline bos

permanent link   roberta 10:19 AM
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