October 20, 2010 – January 23, 2010
235 Bowery, between Rivington and Stanton streets
New York City, (212) 219-1222

Surfing through Free is analogous to spending hours at the computer, reviewing this bit and that byte until cross-eyed and overloaded. Interesting ideas fight to remain present in the midst of all the other flotsam accumulated along the way.

First and foremost, Free explores the following aspects of the internet: how artists engage with the public space it provides; how artists negotiate the pros and cons of the immediate availability and broad circulation it allows; and how it serves as a contentious territory that individuals, governments, corporations, etc. use as a tool to both control and elicit change.

But wait, there’s more: The essay “Dispersion” by Seth Price serves as a touchstone for the exhibition. Price’s thesis meanders around several topics: First he explains how Conceptualism managed to sabotage itself by being too esoteric instead of emphasizing its accessibility.  From there, Price explores the disparity between the archive of high culture (museum, galleries, art historical texts, etc.) and the archive of popular culture (in this case, the internet).  His view is that to be a part of the former, art must still be discussed and contextualized before it is archived, while at the same time, it must evolve and exist via modern media to have a foothold in the latter.  Dispersion (2008) is presented in the exhibition as a printed document, reproduced in large format with ropes tied in knots embedded in each page. The knots seem arbitrarily thrown at the page, but upon closer inspection it’s obvious that they are placed near or on top of key points made in the text.

Curator Lauren Cornell, Executive Director of Rhizome (an online art forum dedicated to artistic practices that engage technology) and Adjunct Curator of the New Museum, in her essay “Walking Free,” looks at three themes that bind the works on display. The first is how identifying where your ideas end and another’s begin is infinitely harder in a space where everything is shared and reproduced ad nauseam—remarking also that this open-source medium calls into question what one can justifiably appropriate. The second theme is exploring—and here Cornell uses the rambling phraseology of Donald Rumsfeld—“unknown unknowns.” What is hidden, what is repressed, what are people more likely to say or admit under the cloak of anonymity the internet provides? The third theme, in the vein of other works that acknowledge the expansion of public space provided by the internet, is Free’s recognition of the “free culture” movement, which argues that the access to information made possible by the internet—through its commitment to openness—should be embraced as an opportunity for greater sharing rather than as a threat to our privacy or way of thinking.

The ideas behind Free are captivating, but with 22 artists attempting to illustrate them, the exhibition is exhausting. In some cases the art objects themselves do very little to engage. Amanda Ross-Ho’s You and Me Findings (Rotated 90° CW) (2009), is comprised of earrings found on eBay through searches for “earrings.” Interspersed across a black canvas, they take on a constellation effect through which they are supposed to lose their function as jewelry and instead become abstractions.  For The Skies The Limit (Leave Me Alone) (1998–2009) she uses a previous work (in this case an enormous t-shirt with the words “Leave Me Alone” in large type) to be a symbol of a lengthy process of metamorphosis and reuse. The t-shirt was used in an exhibition in 1998, and a photograph of it was later merged via Photoshop with an image of a tie-dyed T-shirt. For Free, she tie-dyed the original shirt and mounted it on a canvas, as a way of printing or making tactile her experiments in Photoshop, therefore making prominent the potentially endless process of versioning and redefinition allowed by technological means. All well and good, but as objects these are not very interesting to look at.

Other works included in this category are Pangea (2010), a boudoir installation piece by Lizzie Fitch that intends to blur the line between public and private spaces, and riverthe.net (2010), a video projection of the website of the same name by Ryan Trecartin and David Karp that comes off as a kind of chat roulette in a museum setting.

In contrast Kristin Lucas’s Refresh (2006-7) documents her petition to legally change her name; the catch is that the name she wants is the same name she already has. The intent, she tells the judge, is to refresh herself as if she were a web page. The idea that the intangible soul can be versioned is absurd for sure, but Lucas pleads her case politely and concisely to the point where it’s a convincing argument. The transcript includes the judge’s patient but perplexed agreement to grant the name change (“The court is not in the business of humor”), along with the signed approval form and crudely-rendered drawings of the court proceedings by Joel McKay. In a play on the “publicness” of technology, Lucas provides the court transcript as a public document, free to be inspected by anyone who cares, while the drawings emulate the colored pencil and wash depictions of high-profile courtroom cases where photography is not allowed. As documentation, these vestiges prove the event occurred, but did anything really happen? It is a question echoed every time a page is refreshed with no visible changes.

In Legendary Account (2006-7), Joel Holmberg turns Yahoo! Answers on its head. Holmberg used the online forum, typically visited for such arcane questions as, “How do I remove a splinter?” to instead ask existential questions such as, “How does it feel to be in love?” and “How do I best convince someone I am an artist?” and “How do I occupy space? The funny part is that people actually answer. The work exists both online, in a series of answers on Holmberg’s Yahoo! Answers account, and in the museum space where printouts of the questions are installed as scrolls against a background that matches the background of the Yahoo! Answers site. The piece aptly questions our sources in the search for answers these days—is it enough to “Google” something to find a suitable answer?

Other works that function well here are C-print photographs by Trevor Paglen that illuminate the locations, sources, and characters that inhabit and study the “black world” of secret military operations; Alexandre Singh’s multimedia installation The School for Objects Criticized (2010), which imbues personality into objects, gives them voices (literally, voice recordings are played as if the objects were actors in a play), and allows them to analyze the strange criteria humans use to criticize art;  and Martijn Hendrik’s Untitled Black Video (2008), which recreates the leaked cell phone video of the execution of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. In his video, the screen is black, and the typed comments of various chat forum participants who watched the video online are shown in white text, their subtitles providing anonymous commentary and an alternative documentation of a historical event.

There is more to say, certainly, with at least ten other artists included. To that end several visits are required (taking the time to hear the entire dialogue of The School for Objects Criticized is highly recommended).  One last boon: the benefit of this exhibition’s connection to Rhizome is the free online catalogue.  You may find that the essays outshine the art, but at least you can surf the show from anywhere and avoid the flotsam with just a click.

The post Surfing the Flotsam: Free at the New Museum appeared first on artcritical.

The Dumpster is the first of three commissioned projects that will be displayed at Artport and Tate Online in February and March 2006, each one meant to showcase net art as central to the conception of the museum as a networked, virtual institution. The text that follows is the first in a series of articles discussing each project.

The Dumpster is a portrait of romantic breakups that uses postings extracted from real blogs (short for “weblog” – online journals kept up by multiple commentators and meant for general public consumption), where teenagers’ relationships were discussed and in which one person has been “dumped” by another.

“Portrait” requires slight redefinition in this context, however. Net art is rarely representational, and in combining the romantic woes of over 20,000 web users, one can hardly expect a composite portrait of all of them. Yet a composite is exactly what Levin and his collaborators offer. Using interactive features combined with abstract imagery, The Dumpster illuminates the similarities, differences and patterns in these failed relationships resulting in both an analytic and sympathetic view of romantic hardship.

Upon entering the project, bubbles in shades of red, orange, brown and black float on a chiaroscuro background that fades from mauve to black. Click on a bubble, and an excerpt from a blog appears in a text box on the right-hand side of the screen.

The bubbles recall champagne happiness, celebration, even giddiness. They are cathartic in their movement, like a lava lamp. The bubbles convert to combinations of bright colors when the mouse cursor hovers over them, but the over-all color scheme is intentionally reflective of the Valentine’s day holiday – the date on which this project launched. Yet, the text reveals the opposite of revelry. Some of the language is angry (“me and tre are broke up f*** him I am finished with boys”), while some is more resigned or passive (“oh well what can you do about it?”). Ironically, one entry even recounts how a blogger was dumped via e-mail.

Each successive click on a bubble displays a new text box that appears underneath the last, and there is a string of dots connecting each text box to its relevant bubble. These connections and succession of boxes create a stream-of-consciousness dialogue. This digital art work shows us how all of us are linked together by our personal experiences of romantic pain.

The Dumpster uses ideas and themes common to net art. User interaction is essential to the work’s success, collaboration essential to its creation (Levin developed most of the interface while Kamal Nigam completed the data mining and analysis and filtering. Feinberg developed the server-side backend of the project.). Additionally, the work uses technology to explore social concerns, specifically, the process of the “social search” and its revelations as they relate to both the individual and the general net community.

In his critical essay “Social Data Browsing” which analyzes The Dumpster, Lev Manovich, Professor of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego and a Director of The Lab for Cultural Analysis at California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, questions whether computer media can be used to create artistic representations that “link the individual and the social without subsuming one to the other.”

The question is relevant as it relates to current trends in the internet search field. Both Yahoo! and Google have launched test versions of applications that allow a “social search.” With these applications, users can create a personalized knowledge base or search engine by bookmarking and caching copies of their favorite sites and assigning them to categories in a structured way. Users can also search among their contacts’ knowledge base to obtain information that is more relevant to him or her personally versus mining information from a general internet search.

News reports published on news.com on June 28, 2005 explain that the new Yahoo! and Google applications were created to address three problems facing the online search market: Search engines like Yahoo! and Google have a limited ability to answer opinion-based queries (What is the best MP3 player?) with responses that capture the opinions of friends and authorities. Compounding this is their inability to interpret the meaning of a user query (i.e. search for Apple Records – the Beatles’ label- and you’ll likely get results for the more popular Apple Computers.)

Additionally, the new applications will connect users to new items that would be personally relevant, which today’s general searches cannot accommodate. For example, if a user has a history of searching fishing web sites and searched on the word “bass”, the search engine would return fish-related results; if music is the forte, the “bass” search would return information on musical instruments. Moving from the general to the specific, the personalized engine creates a portrait of the user and returns results reflective of the user’s interests.

Like Google and Yahoo!, The Dumpster takes a hefty amount of data search engine material and allows the user to whittle it down to something relevant to his or her own interest.

The data used in the project was provided by Intelliseek (a company that provides services that help other companies derive business and marketing strategies from data analysis) and mined using its BlogPulse search engine. Words and phrases indicative of break ups (i.e. “broke up,” “dumped me,” etc.) were entered into the engine and using custom language analysis software, the text of each post was evaluated to determine different characteristics of the break up.

Users navigate this data not in a structured manner, but horizontally, vertically and diagonally between the particular and the general. Gathering and displaying data in this fashion allows the user to navigate between the intimate details of both individual experiences and larger social groupings. Clicking randomly allows for exploration of individual experiences. Clicking on bubbles of a certain size or color exposes the experiences of a group.

The result is not only a portrait of teenage angst or a glimpse into the sociology of teenage romance; it is also further proof that consumer technologies and daily life have intertwined in complex ways.

The post The Dumpster: Golan Levin with Kamal Nigam and Jonathan Feinberg, 2006 appeared first on artcritical.

“The Battle of Algiers” is the second of three commissioned projects that will be displayed at Artport and Tate Online in February and March 2006. Each project showcases net art as central to the conception of the museum as a networked, virtual institution. The text that follows is the second in a series of articles discussing each project.

“The Battle of Algiers” re-composes scenes from the 1965 film of the same name by Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, which retells the story of the Algerian guerrilla struggle against the French colonists in the 1950s. It concentrates on the period between 1954-57, when freedom fighters regrouped and expanded only to succumb to systematic attempts by the French to dismantle their organization. Using algorithms to represent the logic of the nationalist tactics, the piece presents clips from the film in a varied pattern based on specific instructions and rules.

Monochromatic stills from the film fill squares of different sizes on the screen in seemingly random overlapping patterns: Algerians being shot in the street by soldiers, portraits of the main characters in the film, scenes from a cafe destroyed by the guerrilla’s bombs, rioting masses in the streets and the tanks meant to quell the violence.

Get past the violent imagery, and visually, the piece echoes minimalist artworks such as the grid and monochromatic palettes. The layering of images creates a kind of perspective and depth.

Various sound bites play in a loop as different images appear: sirens, machine gun fire, the wailing of Algerian women, jeep engines revving, explosions. French General Matheiu, the man with the plan for rooting out the rebels, repeats this important phrase over and over: “The structure of the Organization is a pyramid with sections composed of triangles.”

In the film, the general goes on to say that the purpose of this geometry is “that no partisan knows more than three members of the organization; his superior and two subordinates.” This structure makes it difficult for the French to determine who the masterminds of the Organization are. They must start at the bottom and piece the pyramid together, cell by cell, and work their way up to determine who is really in charge. The fact that the guerrillas are anonymous and unrecognizable in a crowd makes identifying participants and the connections between them that much harder.

Showing the incongruity and multiplicity inherent in the Organization’s pyramidal framework and cinematic processes in general is Lafia’s and Lin’s aim.

The artists use Pontecorvo’s piece precisely because it does not follow one character or one specific story, for the film’s entirety. Film as media provides the basis for their investigation. In a critical essay that accompanies the piece Daniel Coffeen, professor of rhetoric at UC Berkeley, points out that in a sense, films are computational. “Film is a database of images run together; images are chosen by a network of people – directors, editors, producers, screenwriters, etc.” he says. “We don’t see the modalities of the moving image, the multiple and varied directions implicit in film” because there’s only one screen and one story is projected.

The film does provide a timeline of events, and the general theme is Algeria’s struggle for liberation, but as it proceeds it reveals layer upon layer of overlapping characters and story lines that express a balanced and disquieting ambivalence towards acts of war.

At its beginning the film leads you to believe that this is a story about Ali la Pointe, one of the top three organizers of the nationalist Organization. As the film continues, the foci multiply – we are introduced to the Organization’s central players, those that interact or are impacted by it and the French Army. La Pointe’s story comes and goes; his eventual capture is anticlimactic and is not really the point of the story. Initially, we are lead to believe that la Pointe is the hero who opposes Mathieu the scoundrel, but concepts of good and evil are blurred. The nationalists and the French alike commit unspeakable acts for their cause, but at what expense?

As the French focus on individual triangular cells within the Organization, Lafia and Lin use individual film stills that echo the story lines and the structure of the Organization. The general timeline is removed and the “story” is determined by algorithms. There are connections, however. What happens in one part of the screen affects what happens in another, but the connections are not obvious because their sources are buried in code. A barrage of images and sounds is really all that remains – a commonality in the cinematic recreation of any war. Coffeen states, “[B]ecause the story line has been banished, [it] doesn’t mean the pathos of war is any less obvious.”

The post The Battle of Algiers: Marc Lafia and Fang-Yu Lin appeared first on artcritical.

June 23 – September 10

Why is it so difficult for internet art to become part of the mainstream, when the internet itself is so ubiquitous? Maybe it’s the ubiquity that’s the problem. In her book Internet Art (Thames and Hudson, 2004), Rachel Greene hypothesizes that net art is difficult to see as Art because the tools used to make it – websites, email, games, blogs, etc. – are so omnipresent: we can’t perceive them outside their pragmatic context. We spend so much time in front of computers that we look to more traditional forms of art making as a break from the everyday. Additionally, she says, “Artists who make internet art are sometimes self-identified as programmers. This means they can’t be ‘real’ artists.” After all, how can code be identified as art?

Other hurdles that net art must overcome are commercialism and the ephemeral nature of internet art. Commercialism surrounding the internet is a turn off to purists who firmly believe in the separation of art and commerce (ironic considering that nofirm market for internet art exists.) Email forwards, downloads and hits are the indices that determine internet art’s success – not exhibitions, reviews, or auction records (although this is changing.). These abstract measurements of success and the fact that net artists do not produce any tangible objects for buyers to obtain, isolate the audience for and makers of net art.

It is important to remember that the internet functions as a public space for the display of art, unlike privately owned galleries or museums, which only display art hat has been absorbed into the official history of art. Net art rarely appears in galleries or museums. Net art explores many of the same themes explored by artists using traditional media, while relying on the internet’s media specificity for emphasis. Net artists explore the technological, economic, and social implications of the internet, which is a form of organization and consciousness on a global scale. Singular exhibitions or performances in a museum or gallery cannot do this.

Net artists are influenced by art historical figures and movements. Obvious nfluences are Duchamp and the Dadaists – particularly their ability to turn art away from pictorial representation – and conceptual art, with its emphasis on audience interaction, event-based works, and use of text and networks. These are by no means the only influences. Depending on the work, one finds varied source material, some of it pre and some of it post-Modern.

For people who are unfamiliar with (or wary of) net art, or for enthusiasts who want to take a trip down memory lane, Rhizome.org has organized an historical survey of Net Art. Rhizome.org, one of the premier internet art organizations, was founded in 1996 as an on-line forum for artists working with new media across the globe. The exhibition allows visitors to investigate a large and varied sampling of internet works from its online archive, known as the ArtBase. Curated by Greene, former executive director of Rhizome and the current one, Lauren Cornell, the exhibition is presented at the Rhizome.org website (), and at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in Chelsea. Comprised of forty selections from the ArtBase, the exhibition includes influential pieces by early net artists as well as contemporary pieces from today’s innovators.

Works are grouped under ten themes – Dirt Style, Net Cinema, Games, E-commerce, Data Visualization and Databases, Online Celebrity, Public Space, Software, Cyberfeminism and Early Net.Art. An exhibition with this many themes and works makes assimilation difficult and exhaustive. But that’s the beauty of an online exhibition – viewers can revisit the art at their leisure and as often as they likeat no cost and without getting on the subway.

Internet art has its origins in late-1990s Europe and Russia. As Greene notes, “The internet in these locales was emblematic of the increased access to information in these regions and the opening of international borders.” The Early Net.Art section of the exhibition highlights some of the artists working during this period, who provided the context for the internet art practices we see today.

Alexei Shulgin’s Desktop Is, 1997 began as a homework assignment given by fellow net artist and teacher Natalie Bookchin to her students at the  University of California at San Diego.  At Shulgin’s prodding, Bookchin agreed to allow artists to complete the assignment as well. Shulgin was able to turn the assignment into a group project that utilized the computer desktop as a platform for collaborative, yet highly individual, artistic production. Shulgin invited different artists (via email and web postings) to experiment and create a work using the desktop as their canvas. The piece includes Shulgin’s own poetic musings on the desktop such as, “desktop is the face of your computer; desktop is your everyday torture and joy; desktop is your own little masterpiece,” as well as links to the desktop portraits created by each artist. These works are evidence of the possibilities of artistic collaboration in a community connected via the web. Each one is a work within a work, generates dialogues that are both personal and cross-cultural.

Dirt Style refers to works that use outdated technologies (read: old as dirt) to either resist the concept of technological progress, to spark nostalgia, or to reinvent outmoded processes by using them in new ways. In GOODWORLD, 2002 Lew Baldwin asks users to enter the name of a website into his interface, which then turns the images and text on that site into a simplified, abstract work of art.

This transformation of websites can be compared to the wrappings of Christo, whereby familiar structures are wrapped in bright packaging, masking their actual purpose or importance and forcing people to look at them differently. The more links and pictures a site has, the more radical the transformation becomes. Enter www.cnn.com, and the CNN logo becomes a phantom of itself in a block of yellow and magenta. Subordinate headers become blinking boxes in shades of gray or primary colors, while all the surrounding links are translated into the word “Good” and text is turned into a robotic “*____*” happy face. The site becomes a barrage of blinking, nervous energy, a sort of Stepford version of the Daily News, as if it is trying to force a good vibe on you. The fact that users can easily pull up the real site in a new browser and do a side-by-side comparison with Baldwin’s minimalist interpretation emphasizes the advances in web page design and technology. At the same time, it makes obvious the mainstream media’s attempt to play down the fact that most news is really bad news. One can even explore this theme on a global scale by entering another nation’s CNN equivalent to determine if the effect is the same.

Data Diaries, 2003, by the American artist Cory Arcangle, is included in the Net Cinema grouping. In this work, Arcangle explores the theme of memory; not his own memory, mind you, but his computer’s. Data not readily used on a computer (the leftovers) is sent to the hard drive via a core dump (trash dump). In Data Diaries, Arcangle has fooled the computer into reading all of this leftover data as a video file and effectively turns the data into home movies of the old files. Streams of pixelized squares run in seemingly randomized patterns across the screen while a screeching handshake – the noise that occurs when modems connect – serves as a soundtrack.

The effect of watching these “movies” is cathartic. The streaming imagery sparks nostalgia for the early days of computers and video games when everything existed in squares of color and moved in jerks and spits. It mesmerizes and sucks the viewer in – much in the same way that web surfing does. This art work has a hypnotic effect on the viewer, suggests a layering of consciousnesses – the computer’s, the artist’s and the viewers. The data is stored in the computer’s memory, but it’s the artist’s use of the computer that has built up that memory. Considering these things, the viewer becomes acutely aware of his own computer, his own memory, and then his own consciousness. What at first appears to be a robotic, cool technological interpretation of human phenomena brings into sharp focus the fact that computers influence all levels of our consciousness.

Motomichi Nakamura’s visually stunning and psychologically disturbing pieces are worth spending time with, as are the exploits of the brokerage corporation ®Tmark, whose antics have drawn attention to activism via the internet by addressing capitalist ideologies through a subversion of the very rights and tools that corporations use to protect their own intellectual property.

While valuable in the context of this exhibition, some works demand more time than even the most patient web devotee has to spare (Every Icon, Fenlandia, 1 year performance video), though they do make their point that time is still an ongoing theme for artists in general. Other works emphasize the net’s propensity for documentary and cinema (Bindi Girl, Super Smile), but they would work just as well in a gallery or museum, while other works, particularly Flesh&Blood, by the Dutch artist Mouchette, in which the artist invites the viewer to lick the screen to determine if they are real and to tell the artist what they taste like, is ridiculous.

In these works, the technological and social implications of the internet are put to effective use and showcase the internet’s relevance as an artistic medium. What the exhibition points out is that at this point historically the web should be as familiar to viewers as traditional modes of visual art are. Once this point is grasped, it is not so difficult to perceive internet and new media works as Art. While accessibility to subject matter may be challenging at times (this is true of any new art), accessibility to the art itself is not.

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6 December 2003 to 29 February 2004

The “feminine” used to be equated with fragility, delicacy, and quiet refinement. Polly Apfelbaum’s works are all of these things while also revealing the artist’s capacity to subvert such equations and redefine “women’s work.”

Her midcareer survey curated by Claudia Gould and Ingrid Schaffner and organized by the Institute for Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. Currently to be seen at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, the exhibition showcases a remarkable range of material in works from the late 1980s to the present, from Daisy Chain (1989/2003) in identical 8 ½-foot rectangles made up of wooden shamrocks, flowers and club shapes to her latest contribution, Oblong (2003), an installation of wallpaper covered with one-inch ovals in a repeating sequence of rainbow colors.

But it is Apfelbaum’s “fallen paintings” that most captivate attention. These pieces, velvety fabric dyed with blotches of vibrant color, ooze across the first floor of the exhibition. Painstakingly pieced together by hand, their distinct patterning is similar to a quilt. Even the more chaotic Reckless, or Split (both 1998) have an organic rhythm that suggests Mother Nature had a hand in their creation. With titles like Bubbles and Blossom, Apfelbaum’s work is playful, girlish and feminine with a capital “F.”

But “feminine” as a concept encompasses so much more than smooth fabrics, handiwork and delicacy. To be feminine can also mean sensual, sexual and sly. It begets intelligence and strength. It means pushing the boundaries of one’s position and being-or at least trying to be-all things to all people.

To convey these ideas successfully, Apfelbaum indiscriminately pulls from, questions and builds on the traditions of postwar abstraction: the drippings of Pollock, the stained effects of Frankenthaler and Louis, the repetition and serialization of minimalism. Apfelbaum tears down the modalities of media. She calls her floor pieces “fallen paintings”, but their structures and placement are akin to sculpture, while her process is more like printmaking. In this, it is as if Apfelbaum has created work that really is all things to all people.

Apfelbaum injects into traditional abstraction materials, shapes and words that have personal and emotional connotations. Pocketful of Posies (1990) is a splotch of cartoonish, 1960s-inspired flower cutouts made of steel and placed in a group on the gallery floor. The material is minimalist; it’s cold and manufactured. But the flower shapes provide the organic element that makes the material warm, the shapely curves prominent making the piece playful and sexy; more Austin Powers than Carl Andre.

This balancing of the playful and the serious is a big part of what makes Apfelbaum’s work so interesting. The seriousness comes from her technical skill, the careful choice of materials, and her arrangement of parts to create a comprehensive whole with many meanings. The playfulness often comes from the shapes she chooses and punning titles.

Title Page (2003) is installation wallpaper that lists in rainbow colors titles of some of Apfelbaum’s works. The enormity of this display – the wall is two stories high and about twenty feet long – forces you to take it seriously, to view it as a list of accomplishments or rolling credits. (This image is reproduced on the inside cover of the exhibition catalogue). But the playful nature of the titles like “Lady and the Tramp” and their cotton candy colors beg us not to take anything too seriously and remind us that even intelligent art is, to some degree, decorative.

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I’m Saul Ostrow’s first official guest in his new apartment, and he’s happy to be cooking for someone other than himself. Saul has just transplanted from New York to become Dean of Fine Arts and Chair of Painting for the Cleveland Institute of Arts. His wife, the painter Shirley Kaneda, helped him move in, having just started teaching herself at the Pratt Institute after moving back from L.A. The couple maintains a loft in New York, and he returns there every three weeks. As he labored over his northern Italian version of pasta rustica and bean salad, we talked about his ideas for revamping the Institute.

“I’m still trying to figure out my job. My predecessor emphasized abstract painting, but figurative styles are the stick at CIA.” Billed as America’s only five-year college of art and design, the school is known for its industrial design and medical arts programs. “Cleveland has real world programs that actually lead to gainful employment,” he says. His goal is to sustain the prestige the school has earned in that respect, but to bring it up to date by incorporating more cutting edge art theory and techniques to the studio practice. “We’re still trying to decide whether to call it visual arts or studio arts,” presumably to get away from the stuffiness of “fine arts.”

When asked why the CIA chose him, he responds quickly and confidently. “Because they know that studio art is informed by criticism and theory. That has been my focus, and they are serious about rethinking their program along those lines.” So why did he actually take the position? “I like to accrue titles. ‘Dean’ and ‘chair’ were two that I didn’t already have!”

Eventually, he says, “I want CIA students to be coveted by graduate schools. I want to turn out students who paint because they have made the decision to paint, not because they view other forms of contemporary art as inauthentic.” As chair of painting, he teaches the fifth-year painting class and an elective course that includes third- to fifth-year students. He says, rather surprised, “these are really bright kids, and they’re hungry. I’ve completely confused them though, I’ve ruined their lives because I’ve made them think.”

He knows there are differences in approach among the faculty, but his ambition is to keep that diversity. “We’ll all know who the best students are, but for different reasons.” A big challenge is introducing technology into painting, “letting the painters know that [technology] won’t replace the painter.” Sculpture will also be a big focus. “I have fifteen fifth-year painting students versus six sculpture students. I want to know why sculpture is not appealing.”

“There’s a tradition of fiefdoms,” he says. “I want them to refer to themselves as visual arts students instead of ‘painting students’ or ‘sculpture students.’ Whatever direction we feel our culture is going, that’s the reality. The lines between disciplines are blurring.”

He speaks most emphatically about revising the school’s approach to art history. “The liberal arts program at CIA is good, but it’s not geared toward the studio. The focus is more geared toward connoisseurship or genealogy, whereas I’m interested in how the studio has been conceived. It is not always pristine, the relationship of artist to studio to the world shifts. Artists don’t shroud themselves in their studio and then deliver their gifts to the world. That’s a mystique that started in the fifties that still exists, and that why changing the approach is important.”

As we carry our feast into the dining room and sit down to eat, our conversation turns to his other major projects: the book series for which he is editor, called “Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture” (Routledge Publishing of London) and an exhibition he is organizing for the Paine Webber Galleries in New York, scheduled to open in the fall of 2005.

For his next curatorial project, Ostrow is looking at what he describes as “those artists caught between Greenberg’s formalism and minimalism. People like Ann Truitt and Lyman Kipp, really early Olitski, Ray Parker. Artists who were working in more of a pictorial formalist style rather than color field.” He explains further that unlike their color field counterparts, these artists still held onto composition. “These artists all used a really weird palette. Most of them appear to have chosen their colors from an interior decorator’s manual. Weird beiges, muted cadmiums, avocado greens,” he says with a laugh. “These are artists who were working from about 1956-1974. I wonder what these artists look like now? These artists couldn’t create a dialogue of their own, so they fell back into what they were comfortable with.”

There’s a lesson in this for his students. “I want them to understand that the internal dialogue an artist has isn’t always linear. They have to take risks. Pollock’s drip paintings were risky, but they also weren’t the only paintings he made.” This is the other problem with teaching art history to studio students, he explains. “They can’t grasp the concept of change.”

The post Saul Ostrow appeared first on artcritical.

Imagine an art school that functioned like no other. Located far from the bustling art scene of New York, it was nestled remote North Carolina, miles away from anything. Here, the student decided what classes to take and how long his course of study would last. A school that could not afford to pay its professors a cash salary, but was so popular that teachers came anyway, ready to use their cars for lodging in lieu of being part of the spirit of community the school fostered. A school that had no endowment, operated on a shoestring budget from year to year, and conferred no degrees, but that saw its graduates go on to attend the prestigious graduate programs at Columbia and Harvard.

There was once such a place, and Black Mountain College was its name, and it was the hotbed of experimentation in the visual, musical and literary arts from 1933 to 1956. A whole generation of artists, writers, dancers and musicians cut their creative teeth here, and their legacies live on to this day. Black Mountain: Experiment in Art, edited by Vincent Katz, examines the history and influence the college had on the artists and teachers who emerged from its uncommon ground, and in doing so, it leaves no doubt as to its importance in the greater scope of American art history.

Black Mountain: Experiment in Art is the exhibition catalogue to “Black Mountain College: Una Aventura Americana” presented at the Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, which Katz also curated. Katz’s opening essay, which shares the title of the book, presents a condensed but in no way incomplete survey of the people events that secured the college’s place in history. The history of the school, what could easily be boringly encyclopedic, is light and interesting, allowing the reader to move breezily from one profile to another. The text has a yearbook feel, as if these were our classmates, rediscovered again for the first time in years. The stories lend themselves to a quixotic notion of the artist, but they are not melodramatic for these collaborations were not born out of romanticism, but out of practicality and experimentation.

Founded by John Andrew Rice, Black Mountain was a school where experimentation was indeed the focus; one where the students would constantly question, and the teacher would foster the discussion, not provide The Answer. Calling Black Mountain College an “experiment in art” is therefore appropriate in this context. Rice gathered a group of like-minded colleagues each irritated by the rigid structures at other universities, and started a college run entirely by the faculty, where the students were free to create independent patterns of study. As Katz notes, “these organizational principles were adhered to for the duration of the college’s existence. They proved its great blessing, its difference, and its difficulty.”

The school officially opened in September of 1933, fifteen miles from Asheville, North Carolina in an under-utilized YMCA building. It would later move to property purchased at nearby Lake Eden- 667 acres with sixteen buildings and an artificial lake. From the beginning, because it was so small, one was required to be part of an integral unit at the college, so close that it took on the character of a large family. Rice, convinced that the arts should play a central role in college education, reasoned that an artist should head up the college. Physics instructor Ted Dreier (nephew of collector Katherine) suggested contacting Philip Johnson, then director of the department of architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, for a recommendation. He suggested Josef Albers, and thus began Black Mountain’s venture into experimentation in art and in art education.

In its twenty-three years, Black Mountain College produced some of the most important collaborations and ideas in the twentieth century. Teachers included Lyonel Feininger, Ilya Bolotowski, Walter Gropius, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Jacob Lawrence, Beaumont Newhall, Ben Shahn, Robert Motherwell, Elaine de Kooning, Franz Kline, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Harry Callahan, and Aaron Siskind; that’s just the short list. Big names in literature were also drawn to the campus -Thornton Wilder, Henry Miller, Irwin Panofsky and Anais Nin. It was that sense of community, the freedom to experiment, that drew of them to this sometimes exhilarating, sometimes lonely place. It was the only place many of them did not hesitate to try.

A school as small as Black Mountain provided the perferct breeding ground for cross-disciplinary collaboration. Katz explains that John Cage’s 4’33” -possibly the composer’s most famous (or infamous) work wherein the composer sits at the piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds but plays nothing-was derived from Robert Rauschenberg’s White Paintings. Cage saw Rauschenberg’s paintings (multiple planks of white, painted in subtle textural variations) as a gutsy experiment, and as such, ventured to create a musical piece based on similar ideas. Katz notes that Cage had been afraid that the piece would be taken as a joke. In any other environment it might have. By stepping into this realm, Cage was then able to take his ideas one step further. It was at this point that he created Theater Piece No. 1-widely accepted as the first “happening.”

That specific works are splendidly reproduced is another strong point of this text. Using descriptive analysis to show exactly where pivotal developments lie, Katz provides the reader a link between idea and practice. He explains that de Kooning’s gestural style and “typically de Kooningesque palette of ‘weak’ or ‘offbeat’ colors” were discovered in 1948 while teaching at Black Mountain. Asheville was painted in that year, and indeed it reveals what we know to be “de Kooningesque”, “active color rhythms in compressed space, though still relying on the linear definition of partially bounded areas.” By including a section on recent work from a handful of Black Mountain artists, Katz offers insight into how their work has evolved over time.

One area where the book falls short is in its explanation of exactly why the school failed to endure. Without a board of directors or an endowment, the school’s financial stability was always in question. Albers did much to keep things going despite this. He arranged for guest lectures, for slides for presentations, and ensured the variety of artistic viewpoints evidenced by the range of artists who taught at the college. He urged friends and alumni to donate art books to the library.

Albers left the school in 1948, and it was at this point that the poet Charles Olson took over. With a writer now in charge, the focus shifted naturally from the visual arts to the written word and became the same kind incubator for literature that it had been for the visual arts only five years earlier.

Olson studied at Wesleyan and Harvard, worked for the Office of War Information during World War II and worked on FDR’s reelection campaign of 1944. He made a name for himself in 1947 with Call Me Ishmael, his study of Melville, but his years at Black Mountain from 1948 to its closing in 1956 were the most critical to his career as a writer. Most memorable was the 1950 publication of his essay “Projective Verse”-composition by field, where the page was a canvas on which words could be dropped in a variety of positions, not just one after another. Another key aspect of Projective Verse was the demand that it be made in the moment, one word or thought was meant to spur the next-it is not a meditation but an abstraction, like a Pollock on paper. Olson also made his mark by urging authors to publish their own works. Under his direction, the movement known as the Black Mountain School of writers was formed, which included Robert Creeley, Fielding Dawson, Robert Duncan and Joel Oppenheimer, among others.

Olson was an imposing figure, both physically and intellectually. Robert Creeley’s essay “Olson and Black Mountain College” sheds light on the complexities of person. As Creeley puts it, “It was hard not to come under his spell and he was finally bored by those who did.” Olson’s methods were challenging. His way of teaching was curious. He taught late at night, with classes lasting sometimes into the next morning. The structure that Albers had instituted was clearly erased.

When Olson took over in 1948, attendance at the college was at its peak. But what exactly led to its decline? Was it Olson’s domineering personality? Dorothea Rockburne, only seventeen when she came to the school in 1951, said, “it was strange and wonderful place, but it was very sexist. Olson was extremely sexist, and I’d never experienced that before.”

Was it slipshod management? By Creeley’s account, and within the essay by Kevin Power, “In Around and About The Black Mountain Review: Robert Creeley and Company,” it would appear that Olson spent too much time on his own writing endeavors instead of public relations and fund raising. In 1952, a prospectus for the school reported a 1:2 faculty to student ratio, and by 1954, there were only seven students enrolled. There was no science class, and Olson urged Robert Creeley, who had no knowledge of the sciences, to teach it. Creeley told Olson, “Biology was the one class I never took.” Olson’s reply, “Terrific, you can learn something.”

Was the small campus suffocating? Ilya Bolotowski found it too isolated, “a lively place, but very much inbred. And that finally became stifling, like living in a small room with mirrors; nothing else exists, except endless reflections.” Or were the teachers themselves to blame? Six of de Kooning’s ten students left the same year he did. When asked by Albers if he knew anything about that, de Kooning replied, “Sure. I told them if they want to be artists, they should quit school and come to New York and get a studio and start painting.”

In 1955, the college lost the land surrounding the school and the remaining buildings were practically in ruin. Robert Duncan described the main building as “a derelict piece of modernism-nothing looks more rundown than an art moderne building ten years later.” A very desperate end for something that once had so much glorious promise. Even so, this text leaves one with a feeling of inspiration and with a hope that art, inspired by experimentation, is useful and can still change our perception of the world.

Black Mountain: Experiment In Art
Edited by Vincent Katz with essays by Martin Brody, Kevin Power and Robert Creeley.
MIT Press, 2003

The post Black Mountain: Experiment In Art Edited by Vincent Katz with essays by Martin Brody, Kevin Power and Robert Creeley. appeared first on artcritical.

When I decided to leave New York City for the flatlands of central Ohio, my friends and acquaintances wondered if I had lost my head. “Why,” they asked, “would you leave New York City if you want to write about art?” As if no good art worth writing about existed outside Manhattan. Why Ohio? Other than the draw of cheaper rent, I already knew that great art could be found here. The state’s three major cities-Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati-may not be widely acknowledged as cultural and artistic trend setters like New York and Chicago (at least, not yet anyway), each in its own way has built unique and expanding arts communities that continue to bring in (and produce) the best and the brightest artists and exhibitions.

Cleveland
Possibly the most liberal location of the three C’s, Cleveland once was referred to as the “mistake on the lake” -a name borne from not only its proximity to Lake Erie, but also due to its roughshod economic history and an infamous chemical fire on the Cuyahoga River. This “mistake” reversed its reputation by creating a downtown scene that turned Cleveland into a model of urban rebirth.

Three art venues top the list in Cleveland. The first is the Museum of Contemporary Art or MOCA (formerly the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art). Founded in 1968 by gallerist Marjorie Talalay and Nina Sundell, daughter of Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonnabend, the venue had access to cutting edge art from the start. It remains committed to presenting major shows of current art by the artists who frequent the pages of Art Forum and Art in America. The oldest art venue in the city is The Cleveland Museum of Art, established in 1913. In the throes of its own major expansion designed by architect
Rafael Vinoly, the museum is focusing on smaller, more frequent exhibitions. “The History of Japanese Photography” and the “Charles Isaacs and Carol Nigro Collection of American Photography” are the most recent, with latter highlighting the recent acquisition of 22 images that range in date from 1850 to 1911. The collection includes an 1850 montage of daguerreotypes from Southworth and Hawes titled Medallion Portrait of a Woman. This is a unique piece indeed, with an oval-shaped central image of a woman surrounded by various profile views. Given the rarity of the daguerreotype, finding multiple images in one piece is a unique example of the technical excellence and unique approach honed by Southworth and Hawes during photography’s infancy.

In an effort to put more focus on contemporary art, The Cleveland Museum of Art has instituted its first contemporary art curator. More significantly, the museum created a small gallery space for rotating exhibitions of current art. Titled “Project 2.4.4” the space’s exhibition schedule is kept flexible so that it can respond more immediately to current art. The most recent show was titled “Metascape” wherein contemporary artists dealt with the traditional theme of landscape in completely untraditional ways. Works included pieces from artists such as Benjamin Edwards who also participated in “Painting as Paradox” at Artists Space last fall and Julie Mehretu, whose work was also included in “Drawing Now: Eight Propositions” at MoMA QNS last winter.

Where to find the most contemporary of the contemporary in Cleveland? Why, at SPACES of course. SPACES was founded in 1978 by artists who, like many artists at that time, either lacked the credentials to show at major venues or the commercial draw that warranted gallery exhibitions-or both. Designed to help artists who are new in their careers, are experimenting with new ideas or are under-recognized, SPACES is often the first place to show an artist’s body of work. With a miniscule budget of around $400,000 per year, SPACES originates six shows per year-three of them curated and three non-curated group shows.

“Elements: Matter, Body, Mind and Spirit,” the venue’s current show, features new work by four artists who “attempt to visualize the metaphysical” through works of sound, video projection, sculptural installation, weaving, and translucent works on paper. One artist who approaches this theme in the most literal manner is Deborah Carlson. With ideas rooted in Hindu spirituality, Carlson weaves, binds and hangs richly textured and colored works of wax, wood and fiber such as Wonder Drop (2002). These works evoke the sacredness of scrolls, tapestries and other handmade or primitive religious symbols. The physicality of their materials reminds us of the role symbols play in our attempt to connect with the supernatural. These are spectacularly crafted. Which is not to say that the works of Jee Sun Park (her sculpted, repetitive and phallic wood forms resemble the work of Eva Hesse) and Peggy Kwong-Gordon (delicately powerful paintings on translucent paper) are not crafted just as marvelously, only that they require a different interpretation of “metaphysical” -a definition that is more about the abstract nature of time versus the supernatural.

Columbus
On June 2 The Columbus Dispatch reported that AmericanStyle Magazine ranked Columbus as one of the top 25 arts destinations in the United States. Finishing at No. 12, Columbus placed ahead of Pittsburgh (No. 13), Cleveland (15), Baltimore (23) and Atlanta (25). Topping the list of favorite venues for Columbus was The Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts, which regularly showcases the work of prominent contemporary artists and hosts lectures and symposia by influential critics and artists of recent years. Examples include the recent exhibition “From Pop To Now: Selections from the Sonnabend Collection” and lectures by performance pioneer Marina Abramovic and art critic Carter Ratcliff. Also mentioned were several galleries in the city’s popular Short North Arts District: the Rebecca Ibel Gallery which features the work of established U. S. artists in all media, the Hawk Galleries
and its amazing, technically resplendent works in glass, and the Riffe Gallery, which showcases the work of Ohio’s artists and curators and the collections of the state’s museums and galleries.

Forced to reduce exhibitions and staff due to budget constraints, the Columbus Museum of Art is still producing quiet, but stimulating exhibitions as well. The current exhibition “By George! Columbus Celebrates American Master George Bellows” is one such exhibition. Born and raised in Columbus, Bellows (1882-1925) is considered one of the finest artists of his generation, and the museum is the world’s foremost repository of works by the artist. This tribute exhibition showcases its collection of the artist’s paintings and lithographs. Divided into four themes:Columbus, New York, New England and sports, 60 works demonstrate the diversity of Bellows’ œuvre.

In Polo at Lakewood (1913), the swooping gestures and suspended motion that identify Bellows are evident-the handling of paint will be familiar to those who already know of the diagonal energy in his more widely-known image Stag at Sharkey’s (1909, Cleveland Museum of Art). Also present in Polo at Lakewood is Bellows’ use of blue and white for intense, almost gleaming light. White horses bounce off undulating green pastures, bright white spectator’s dresses flip-flap in the wind. This image demonstrates Bellows’ move from a Social Realist approach to a modern approach given his exposure the European trends displayed in the Armory Show of 1913. Through this and other glowing canvases, the exhibition is a sentimental homage to one of Ohio’s favorite sons.

Cincinnati
With a rather tame exhibition schedule at the Cincinnati Museum of Art, and the Taft Museum’s renovation, the biggest buzz in the Queen City is the grand reopening of the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC). The building, designed by architect Zaha Hadid, is the first and only major museum expansion project designed by an independent female architect. Now a freestanding structure, the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art provides spaces for temporary exhibitions, site-specific installations, and performances through its distinct role as a kunsthalle. The new galleries are of varying sizes and ceiling heights that allow for connections and interlocking designs that offer numerous spatial configurations meant to accommodate the sometimes-enormous scale and diverse media of contemporary art.

Recognized contemporary artists such as Vanessa Beecroft, Janet Cardiff and Yinka Shonibare are featured alongside established and emerging artists from around the globe in the CAC’s reopening exhibition “Somewhere Better than This Place: Alternative Social Experience in the Spaces of Contemporary Art.” To better explain the premise of this lengthy title, the CAC’s press release quotes philosopher Michael Foucault: “There are…in every culture, in every civilization, real places….in which all the other real sites that can be found within the culture are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted,” he wrote in 1976. Labeling these sites as “heterotopia”-specifically the territories defined by institutions such as birthing centers, prisons, fairgrounds, and mental hospitals-these sites are spaces in which people can analyze and critique troubling aspects of society, and consider
possible alternatives.

Foucault? In Ohio?
Setting a certain standard for ideas in art in this very conservative city is noting new for the CAC. The Center established itself as a leader in 1940 as one of the first American institutions to exhibit Picasso’s Guernica. The Center continued its pioneering tradition by featuring the work of hundreds of renowned artists early in their careers including Laurie Anderson, Jasper Johns, Louise Nevelson, Nam June Paik, I.M. Pei, Robert Rauschenberg, Kara Walker and Andy Warhol. Most notably, the Center was at the center of an important First Amendment legal case in 1990 when it successfully defended the right of Cincinnati’s citizens to view an exhibition of the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe.

The idea behind this grand reopening exhibition is clear and the building is spectacular, but the exhibition can be a tad overwhelming. Works inhabit all six floors, each serving as an exploration of the relationships among society, place and art and encouraging direct interaction between the Center’s audiences, works of art and the building itself. A sense of order is conveyed by arranging works according to four key themes: the social construction of identities; discourses of social order; changing patterns of social relations; and social encounters organized around shared experiences of the sublime. The works reflect the role of contemporary art museums as places distinct from all others, in which “outside” culture is both represented and critiqued, and unique social activity is created.

With so many works and so many ideas, the exhibition functions as a contemporary historical survey. Oxymoronic for sure, and with so many works in so little time with so many ideas and references, one can get lost in the intellectual soup. But hey, at least we’re thinking.

Cheap rents there may be, but cheap experiences these are not. All over the state, unique art experiences can be found, and you don’t have to fight the subway crowd to get there. Call them “cow towns” if you will, but Ohio’s cultural centers hold their own against larger metropolitan cities. The art is beautiful. . . wish you were here!

The post Greetings from Ohio. . .Wish You Were Here! appeared first on artcritical.

When I decided to leave New York City for the flatlands of central Ohio, my friends and acquaintances wondered if I had lost my head. “Why,” they asked, “would you leave New York City if you want to write about art?” As if no good art worth writing about existed outside Manhattan. Why Ohio? Other than the draw of cheaper rent, I already knew that great art could be found here. The state’s three major cities-Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati-may not be widely acknowledged as cultural and artistic trend setters like New York and Chicago (at least, not yet anyway), each in its own way has built unique and expanding arts communities that continue to bring in (and produce) the best and the brightest artists and exhibitions.

Cleveland
Possibly the most liberal location of the three C’s, Cleveland once was referred to as the “mistake on the lake” -a name borne from not only its proximity to Lake Erie, but also due to its roughshod economic history and an infamous chemical fire on the Cuyahoga River. This “mistake” reversed its reputation by creating a downtown scene that turned Cleveland into a model of urban rebirth.

Three art venues top the list in Cleveland. The first is the Museum of Contemporary Art or MOCA (formerly the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art). Founded in 1968 by gallerist Marjorie Talalay and Nina Sundell, daughter of Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonnabend, the venue had access to cutting edge art from the start. It remains committed to presenting major shows of current art by the artists who frequent the pages of Art Forum and Art in America.

The oldest art venue in the city is The Cleveland Museum of Art, established in 1913. In the throes of its own major expansion designed by architect Rafael Vinoly, the museum is focusing on smaller, more frequent exhibitions. “The History of Japanese Photography” and the “Charles Isaacs and Carol Nigro Collection of American Photography” are the most recent, with latter highlighting the recent acquisition of 22 images that range in date from 1850 to 1911. The collection includes an 1850 montage of daguerreotypes from Southworth and Hawes titled Medallion Portrait of a Woman. This is a unique piece indeed, with an oval-shaped central image of a woman surrounded by various profile views. Given the rarity of the daguerreotype, finding multiple images in one piece is a unique example of the technical excellence and unique approach honed by Southworth and Hawes during photography’s infancy.

In an effort to put more focus on contemporary art, The Cleveland Museum of Art has instituted its first contemporary art curator. More significantly, the museum created a small gallery space for rotating exhibitions of current art. Titled “Project 2.4.4” the space’s exhibition schedule is kept flexible so that it can respond more immediately to current art. The most recent show was titled “Metascape” wherein contemporary artists dealt with the traditional theme of landscape in completely untraditional ways. Works included pieces from artists such as Benjamin Edwards who also participated in “Painting as Paradox” at Artists Space last fall and Julie Mehretu, whose work was also included in “Drawing Now: Eight Propositions” at MoMA QNS last winter.

Where to find the most contemporary of the contemporary in Cleveland? Why, at SPACES of course. SPACES was founded in 1978 by artists who, like many artists at that time, either lacked the credentials to show at major venues or the commercial draw that warranted gallery exhibitions-or both. Designed to help artists who are new in their careers, are experimenting with new ideas or are under-recognized, SPACES is often the first place to show an artist’s body of work. With a miniscule budget of around $400,000 per year, SPACES originates six shows per year-three of them curated and three non-curated group shows.

“Elements: Matter, Body, Mind and Spirit,” the venue’s current show, features new work by four artists who “attempt to visualize the metaphysical” through works of sound, video projection, sculptural installation, weaving, and translucent works on paper. One artist who approaches this theme in the most literal manner is Deborah Carlson. With ideas rooted in Hindu spirituality, Carlson weaves, binds and hangs richly textured and colored works of wax, wood and fiber such as Wonder Drop (2002). These works evoke the sacredness of scrolls, tapestries and other handmade or primitive religious symbols. The physicality of their materials reminds us of the role symbols play in our attempt to connect with the supernatural. These are spectacularly crafted. Which is not to say that the works of Jee Sun Park (her sculpted, repetitive and phallic wood forms resemble the work of Eva Hesse) and Peggy Kwong-Gordon (delicately powerful paintings on translucent paper) are not crafted just as marvelously, only that they require a different interpretation of “metaphysical” -a definition that is more about the abstract nature of time versus the supernatural.

Columbus
On June 2 The Columbus Dispatch reported that AmericanStyle Magazine ranked Columbus as one of the top 25 arts destinations in the United States. Finishing at No. 12, Columbus placed ahead of Pittsburgh (No. 13), Cleveland (15), Baltimore (23) and Atlanta (25). Topping the list of favorite venues for Columbus was The Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts, which regularly showcases the work of prominent contemporary artists and hosts lectures and symposia by influential critics and artists of recent years. Examples include the recent exhibition “From Pop To Now: Selections from the Sonnabend Collection” and lectures by performance pioneer Marina Abramovic and art critic Carter Ratcliff. Also mentioned were several galleries in the city’s popular Short North Arts District: the Rebecca Ibel Gallery which features the work of established U. S. artists in all media, the Hawk Galleries and its amazing, technically resplendent works in glass, and the Riffe Gallery, which showcases the work of Ohio’s artists and curators and the collections of the state’s museums and galleries.

Forced to reduce exhibitions and staff due to budget constraints, the Columbus Museum of Art is still producing quiet, but stimulating exhibitions as well. The current exhibition “By George! Columbus Celebrates American Master George Bellows” is one such exhibition. Born and raised in Columbus, Bellows (1882-1925) is considered one of the finest artists of his generation, and the museum is the world’s foremost repository of works by the artist. This tribute exhibition showcases its collection of the artist’s paintings and lithographs. Divided into four themes: Columbus, New York, New England and sports, 60 works demonstrate the diversity of Bellows’ œuvre.

In Polo at Lakewood (1913), the swooping gestures and suspended motion that identify Bellows are evident-the handling of paint will be familiar to those who already know of the diagonal energy in his more widely-known image Stag at Sharkey’s (1909, Cleveland Museum of Art). Also present in Polo at Lakewood is Bellows’ use of blue and white for intense, almost gleaming light. White horses bounce off undulating green pastures, bright white spectator’s dresses flip-flap in the wind. This image demonstrates Bellows’ move from a Social Realist approach to a modern approach given his exposure the European trends displayed in the Armory Show of 1913. Through this and other glowing canvases, the exhibition is a sentimental homage to one of Ohio’s favorite sons.
Cincinnati

With a rather tame exhibition schedule at the Cincinnati Museum of Art, and the Taft Museum’s renovation, the biggest buzz in the Queen City is the grand reopening of the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC). The building, designed by architect Zaha Hadid, is the first and only major museum expansion project designed by an independent female architect. Now a freestanding structure, the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art provides spaces for temporary exhibitions, site-specific installations, and performances through its distinct role as a kunsthalle. The new galleries are of varying sizes and ceiling heights that allow for connections and interlocking designs that offer numerous spatial configurations meant to accommodate the sometimes-enormous scale and diverse media of contemporary art.

Recognized contemporary artists such as Vanessa Beecroft, Janet Cardiff and Yinka Shonibare are featured alongside established and emerging artists from around the globe in the CAC’s reopening exhibition “Somewhere Better than This Place: Alternative Social Experience in the Spaces of Contemporary Art.” To better explain the premise of this lengthy title, the CAC’s press release quotes philosopher Michael Foucault: “There are…in every culture, in every civilization, real places….in which all the other real sites that can be found within the culture are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted,” he wrote in 1976. Labeling these sites as “heterotopia”-specifically the territories defined by institutions such as birthing centers, prisons, fairgrounds, and mental hospitals-these sites are spaces in which people can analyze and critique troubling aspects of society, and consider possible alternatives.

Foucault? In Ohio?
Setting a certain standard for ideas in art in this very conservative city is noting new for the CAC. The Center established itself as a leader in 1940 as one of the first American institutions to exhibit Picasso’s Guernica. The Center continued its pioneering tradition by featuring the work of hundreds of renowned artists early in their careers including Laurie Anderson, Jasper Johns, Louise Nevelson, Nam June Paik, I.M. Pei, Robert Rauschenberg, Kara Walker and Andy Warhol. Most notably, the Center was at the center of an important First Amendment legal case in 1990 when it successfully defended the right of Cincinnati’s citizens to view an exhibition of the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe.

The idea behind this grand reopening exhibition is clear and the building is spectacular, but the exhibition can be a tad overwhelming. Works inhabit all six floors, each serving as an exploration of the relationships among society, place and art and encouraging direct interaction between the Center’s audiences, works of art and the building itself. A sense of order is conveyed by arranging works according to four key themes: the social construction of identities; discourses of social order; changing patterns of social relations; and social encounters organized around shared experiences of the sublime. The works reflect the role of contemporary art museums as places distinct from all others, in which “outside” culture is both represented and critiqued, and unique social activity is created.

With so many works and so many ideas, the exhibition functions as a contemporary historical survey. Oxymoronic for sure, and with so many works in so little time with so many ideas and references, one can get lost in the intellectual soup. But hey, at least we’re thinking.

Cheap rents there may be, but cheap experiences these are not. All over the state, unique art experiences can be found, and you don’t have to fight the subway crowd to get there. Call them “cow towns” if you will, but Ohio’s cultural centers hold their own against larger metropolitan cities. The art is beautiful. . . wish you were here!

The post Greetings from Ohio. . .Wish You Were Here! appeared first on artcritical.

I would venture to guess that your average person regards photography as the instant capture of reality simply because real places and things are often photographed, and because the resulting image is documentary in nature. But the document is not necessarily real. Once the picture is taken, time moves on, thereby making what was real the past and the now-the real real-something else entirely. Thus, photography can be described not as the capture of reality, but rather, as an abstraction of time and place. What may have been real now only exists on paper in the swirl of chemicals and fixatives that hold it in place.

What then of the photographic image that is in itself abstract? What if the abstract real (as I have just defined it) is really abstract? Does our focus (no pun intended) shift from the recognizable, indexical form, to composition, tone, line and the intent of the artist? More than likely. But what if the photographer gives us both? What if the artist presents a real, recognizable form in an abstract presentation? The results are much more complex than in abstract painting because the eye is conditioned to read photographs by their surface, to take it for what it is, and therefore not question more than what the eye can see.

These are the questions and assumptions I had in mind as I wandered through “Abstraction in Photography” at the Von Lintel Gallery. Using the works of sixteen artists, the show was subtly divided into three sections deemed as “general paths to abstraction.” The front gallery was dedicated to photographs that captured recognizable subject matter in an unusual way. A good example is Andres Serrano’s Bloodscape V (1989). The slick, plastic red surface is actually a Cibachrome image of a pool of blood, taken close up so that it is abstracted into not only a rich study of line, but also a heavy viscous wave of damned if I know what.

The middle gallery is given over to non-objective abstract photographs that derive their imagery from a non-recognizable subject. Roland Fischer’s Lucas Ave. L. A. (2002) from far away looks like small gray and black squares generously spaced in series across a large white surface. Grays fade into strips of black at the bottom of each rectangle, the rectangles dot the surface in a grid. Up close, the pattern starts to make more sense, and it is obvious that this is a wall somewhere. The high-key white of the wall surface contrasts sharply with the shadows of the rectangular holes, giving the image a sunny feel. The serial pattern of the squares conjures up notions of the digital, blinking cursors on a computer screen. This brings it into the present, but combined with the twelve-part Sean Scully piece Art Horizon III (2002) on the adjacent wall, Fischer’s work calls to mind the seriality and cleanliness of minimalist abstraction.

In the final gallery, we are offered works that eliminate the use of the camera altogether. Winfred Evers dominates here with Master Altar and Moving Still, both from 1998. These gelatin silver prints have gelatinous, biomorphic shapes created by merely manipulating the surface of the paper. Like jello that has been wiggled, the images move by their own sinuousness, their black and white shadows creating contrasts that evoke the architecture of roller coasters. Very classy, and very fun.

Vik Muniz’s After Yves Klein (From Pictures of Color) by far outpaces all the other images in its double capacity to capture both the abstract real and real abstraction. For that reason, I will dwell on this remarkable image in some depth.

By way of Klein, Muniz calls authenticity to task and in different ways projects a very mindful artificiality with a slight twinge of dishonesty. This Cibachrome image of little blue Pantone squares is in reference to Klein’s own ultramarine blue-I.K. B. or International Klein Blue. Klein used the blue to connote the boundlessness of space and the spirituality space evoked. The blue’s powdery texture (created with the use of a special binder) expanded its optical qualities. Klein painted his monochromatic blue canvases with a roller-just as one would apply your run-of-the-mill house paint-a nod to the commodity culture burgeoning the 1950s and its repetitive nature, which in turn, became a reference to both authorial presence (the hand of the artist) and the commercial nature of that which could be readily reproduced.

By using the medium of photography, Muniz draws attention to its optical qualities, namely, the idea that what is represented in a photograph is also an optical illusion-what you see is not real, although it appears so. Is it really monochromatic? The squares all look to be of the same hue, but if one reads the actual names of the colors, it is obvious that they are not identical. Reflex Blue U is not the same as Blue 072 U. Again we’re dealing with an optical illusion: the abstraction (or refraction) of light as it bounces off the surface of the squares, their perceived color actually a mixture of the colors Muniz lays out for us at the bottom of the image: Process Cyan U, Process Magenta U, Process Yellow U, etc.

Muniz’s photograph can also be interpreted as a play on Klein’s Yves Peintures an illustrated booklet from 1954 wherein the plates were not photographs of paintings, but sheets of commercially inked paper. In his homage to Klein, Muniz gives us a photographic reproduction of commercially inked sheets (again their repetition emphasizing their function as a commodity). Muniz’s presentation twice removes the viewer from the real thing. It is the abstract real (blue photographed) in an real abstraction (a photograph of a reproduction of blue).

Muniz’s image illustrates concisely what the exhibition as a whole was designed to prove: it documents the fact that distance between reality and abstraction is in fact, very minute.

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