Thurs…if wishes were horses

echo eggebrecht

Not only do I wish I could see these paintings by Echo Eggebrecht, I wish they were mine.

(opening at sixtyseven today, yes in NYC)

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Tyler is breaking out all over the place. You should check out his thoughtful piece on Lari Pittman in the recent issue of BlackBook. He’ll be at the 92nd Street Y giving lectures before we know it!

Actually the piece by Irvine Welsh interviewing Damien Hirst is quite good too, a chat about about what happens in life after drugs. Kind of a their version of Behind the Music.

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On guard. Modern Kicks lets the cat out of the bag regarding his past as a museum guard. More stories please!

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This post is becoming a little too East Coast-centric today, but I just came across the recent Finch piece on artnet. Finch reviews the new Bellwether space in Chelsea. What a nasty man, hitting below the belt in his insults of gallery owner Becky Smith by proclaiming her,”Jocular, sardonic, self-interested and fleshy; also calling her “the lumpy persona of Becky Smith” . I always thought they were the strongest gallery in the Greenpoint and then Williamsburg area, and of course haven’t seen the new space (nor will I anytime soon), yet I can’t imagine what action would warrant such insidious commentary on behalf of Mr. Finch. Ah, yes, the tiny small world of the NYC art scene.

Amy Sillman

amy sillman in philly

Sillman Ramps.

Thank you Roberta and Libby, as always for posting such great content!

I like the bit about Laura Owens at her Fabric Workshop lecture.

“I accepted this information as sincere and not in the least evasive, and I add that comment simply because if I had read that an artist had said that, I would have assumed they were being disingenuous.”

Having Words in Portland

jahn

Jeff Jahn– referee

Having Words. In conjuction with the Portland art fair (Affair) that is occuring this weekend six artists go to bat for the discussion of art.

And more words…tune in tonight-

Aaron Brown is Going West this week, that means he’s in Portland tonight. Silly me didn’t know he was broadcasting from Seattle last night.

Will he or will he not report on the Portland Art Scene this evening? At this point, it is looking good.

Stay Tuned.

[and indeed PDX galleries got their spotlight. News at 11]

Platform Gallery

fenandez

Before too much time goes by, I have to mention a great show that is up right now at Seattle’s new Platform Gallery. They are exhibiting Carlee Fernandez & Keith Yurdana until October 14th (which means extra time for viewing than your usual monthly cycle).

I am especially taken with Los Angeles artist Carlee Fernandez work. Some people I guess have found her work disturbing, but I think her taxidermy embellishments are beautiful. Her sculptures are strange extensions of what you might find in a Natural History museum.

Here is an excerpt from the Spring 03 West issue of Modern Painters article by Mat Gleason:

“A planned protest by the American group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) at a Carlee Fernandez exhibit fizzled out. There is a certain anticlimax in her materials being purchased from a taxidermist. The dirty deeds done to the animals in her hybrid works was most likely perpetuated by Mother Nature, preserved only afterwards by humans. With apologies to McLuhan and Morrissey, the medium is not the message: there is no meat, so there is no murder. Fernandez is no vegetarian or activist, but in an interview with Germany’s Arte Channel (viewable at under her biography as a QT link) she did happily grant that satirical bulls in her work could point to the inherent hypocrisy of the non-hunting carnivore.”

Two more things about Platform.

1) They are participating in the Portland art fair AFFAIR this weekend.

2) They will have artist flat files on their premises.

Flatfiles have became a popular format for galleries to show affordable works by artists. Probably best known by the successful Pierogi gallery in Brooklyn, but also seen in Boston at the Boston Drawing Project, Manhattan at the Matzo Files, and Chicago’s Flatfile. I am sure there are many more I don’t know about.

To Leave A Mark = Nice blog! Check out Canadian Mark Dixon’s art blog, where he posts on going works. That was my original intent for my own personal blog and have some how strayed from the idea….intend on working my way back to it. See his beautiful paintings as well under his Portfolio link, the Online sketchbook is his blog.

And Ah Ha! 2004 Stranger Genius awards- the cat’s out of the bag.

Neo [Beat] Geo

the beat goes on

Leo Krikorian, 81 is distributing a life’s worth of paintings around his N. California town of Mill Valley.

Krikorian doesn’t much discuss why he pursued geometric painting.

“It’s something I could do,” he said.

Something Krikorian couldn’t do is sell many of his paintings.
“People don’t buy geometric paintings,” he said.

I’ve frequently thought about the ridiculousness of a painter’s life- us who continue to haul around large canvases and look with envy at writers who can neatly store everything in crate-able journals or a computer chip.

Studio Visit/ works & conversations

works + conversations

I’ve recently been introduced and/or have been reminded of some on-line publications that focus on contemporary artists and their work. The immediacy of placing something on the web versus the not-so-timeliness of the print world reminds me again the freshness of the digital world.

Studio Visit (SV) is an on-line magazine in PDF form with a singular focus of showcasing one artist at a time, essentially an on-line studio visit.

Iván Pérez, the artist featured in the current issue, lives and works in Spain. He’s a photographer interested in a strain of voyeurism that photography captures so well, the crowd as a subject. The photos included in the issue are all from a residency he held this year in New York City where he frequented the city’s zoos and gardens specifically to photograph the visitors.

Each issue features an introduction to the artist followed by images of their work and then followed by the artist’s CV. All work showcased in the issue is for sale through kmap, an art company which works in conjunction with SV.

Who is kmap?:
kmap represents and works with artists, places work with collectors, develops exhibition and curatorial projects, provides advisory services, and publishes the online periodical SV .
I find the PDF format interesting. The design is intended to let you download each issue onto your computer to keep handy. One advantage for the artist, images in PDF format aren’t as easily (ok currently) reproducible as your standard .jpeg will allow. I have found still though patience is a virtue in letting a PDF load.

Other issues of SV have been dedicated to Satch Hoyt who does sculpture and drawing, Lucio Pozzi, who paints beautiful watercolors and other 2-D works and my personal favorite of the bunch, Peter Dudek a printmaker whose suite of Dream House prints I particularly like. Painter Marilyn Minter is in one of the older editions that focuses on a photographs originally created for purposes of source material for a series of paintings (included are studio shots of Marilyn working on a painting). I noticed with the exception of Iván Pérez, the artists showcased are New York City-centric, undoubtedly in part because kmap is stationed there.

Like I mentioned above, I think this is an exciting experiment in what a periodical can be, and look forward to what else they have up their sleeve.

Works + Conversations

Last week when I walked into City Lights bookstore, I found a new copy of works + conversations, a magazine which I thought had ceased publication. Technically, although they do not have the content of their latest issue on line, I definitely consider them a digital periodical, as large selections of their archives become available when they publish a new issue. I was a little out of touch, as I was also unfamiliar with issue number 7 which is dedicated to Los Angeles. Similar to SV, interviews and studio visits with folks in the art world is the concentration of w+c’s content. Based in Berkeley they maintain a focus on California artists. There is however a rather interesting interview in the current issue with Ursula von Rydingsvard, a Brooklyn based sculptor who has been making art since the 60’s. The interview in issue #8 that I found most satisfying is with Ann Hatch who is founder of The Capp Street Project. Hatch has some interesting ideas to bring to the table as far as what the current state of the art world is in the Bay Area:

And also when going to museums, I was very struck that there are no young people. They’re not using these resources unless they’re on some forced march from school, which doesn’t happen so much with public school kids anyway. And the museums are really sort of hollow places….in the Bay Area it just seems we have these massive, beautiful buildings and these multi-million dollar budgets and its not working for the full spectrum of people. It’s kind of a self-aggrandizing club of folks that go to museums. It needs to be much more inviting to kids, and has to be more meaningful for them. And so I thought, well, what happens in their education? And I realized the relation with art is getting quite whittled away.

Ann Hatch founded The Capp Street Project in 1983, after getting out of the apple business. CS is, as their mission statement reads a “visual arts organization dedicated solely to the creation and presentation of new art installations”.

works + conversations is published in hard copy format, which you can order from The Society for the ReCognition of Art, or keep your eyes open for occasional newly installed on-line content.

Tiki Art Now! at the Shooting Gallery

san francisco 9.17

Here is a small gallery of snapshots I took at a gallery opening I went to last Friday at The Shooting Gallery.

This was a crammed to the earlobes event for the exhibit: Tiki Art Now!. I hardly pretend to know everything about San Francisco, but the theme seemed pretty appropriate considering SF boasts an amazing still in tact Tiki lounge in the Fairmont Hotel called the Tongo Room (which I imagine is considered by the locals a huge tourist trapezoid, but I like it)– and allegedly originated those now defunct Tiki theme restaurants (Trader Vic’s).

I had been eating dinner in the general area and thought it would be fun to see what goes on at a Friday night gallery opening in S.F. I missed navigating myself to any other galleries during my visit, so I am glad I popped in.

hearts

I saw a few of those heinous “I Left My Heart” sculptures littering sidewalks. One included for referential purposes.

Experiment from San Francisco

Good morning, I am drinking coffee, eating a bagel and posting this from San Francisco, my experiment for the weekend.
I had the opportunity to visit SFMOMA yesterday, the Beautiful Losers show at YB Gardens and I saw so much art that I thought my head would explode, which is exactly what I wanted and needed. I hadn’t been to SF MoMa since the first year they opened their new building (1995?) so I had forgotten how fantastic it was. Lots of art- only $10.00. The collection is fantastic and very thorough, not just little smidgens of this or that.
There is a Robert Gober landscape installation that was originally exhibited at Dia I think back in 1992 that I finally got see (In my first trip to New York we arrived before Dia opened that day and I never saw it) and the Pop Show that is coming down in a few days was largely impressive. The beauty of this museum is their collection has not of course neglected the West Coast. I saw my first Jess. Ed Ruscha is looking real good. There is a Kienholz in the Pop show directly across the room from the Thiebauds that made my day.
The Beautiful Losers show was an exuberant exhibit of youth culture. I went mainly to see the Margaret Kilgallen and there are many works in the show that compliment her style well.
Anyway, I am punchy from walking all over from here to creation in what I deemed a kind of hot day for San Francisco yesterday.

2 Comments »

The URI to TrackBack this entry is: http://dangerouschunky.com/notebook/wp-trackback.php/195

  1. Are they still thin on Diebenkorns? When I was last there they had only one up.Comment by Tyler Green — 9/20/2004 @ 3:05 pm
  2. Yes, SFMOMA still thin in Diebenkorns, there were only two. We only get two Parks as well.Comment by Carolyn — 9/21/2004 @ 6:40 am

new and improved – we hope!

home sweet web

I’m no code jockey.

But, I’m an impatient person. Our shingles haven’t even been put on the roof here, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I’ve obviously got a lot of work here to do, putting up archives, relinking stuff, but I thought it would be fun to see what would happen if we made this a more organic kind of project, mainly because it’s taking a lot longer than I thought it would….kind of taking me weeks to put up what amounts to almost four years of archives and really, what the hell, who reads archives anyway? Well for completionist purposes they will get up there eventually. Meanwhile, welcome to my new home. I’ve been putting off moving to more legible software for too long, so that’s why I’m itchy. Might try an experiment or two this weekend. Thanks for being a faithful reader!

SAM Olympic Sculpture Park

Like a two car garage, both Seattle papers today report on the initial public art works slated to be installed in Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, scheduled to open in 2006. As a bonus,the Seattle Times publishes images. While the usual suspects such as Di Suvero and Serra are on the roster, there are some interesting projects included, for instance Mark Dion’s greenhouse piece titled “Seattle Vivarium”. Dion has made previous Vivariums, such as this one shown at Tanya Bonakdar last year.

Last winter Artdish wrote a well done and extensive piece on the park’s background and outlay, which can be located here.

The longer I live here and see condos creeping into the periphery of everywhere I look, I am glad someone decided to preserve this 8.5 acre waterfront piece of land from being trampled by developers.

Visual Arts Portal

I don’t know, what do you think about this one:

Dear artist, I would like to draw your attention to the creation of www.artannouncements.com – the first trilingual European art portal providing individual visual artists working in all media with an Art Deadlines newsletter for art events in Europe and the USA. Additionally we provide two more lists with valuable information: the Slide Registry Programs list and the Ongoing Portfolio Review Programs list. You can visit our website at www.artannouncements.com for further information or email us at info@artannouncements.com. If you have any question regarding our service please feel most welcome in contacting me here at art announcements. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely, Kelly Young art announcements – the visual arts portal

URL: www.artannouncements.com

e-mail: info@artannouncements.com

(the fine print, it’s a $30.00 annual subscription fee)

The life of a museum guard

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the just cynical enough installments from Todd Gibson’s From the Floor, where he discusses his life as a docent.

Artnet just featured Eve Wood’s account of being a security guard at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and I came across this Time Out New York report from a MET night watchman who details the unthinkable: “What’s the weirdest thing you encountered while working there?”

When I was young and naive I thought being a museum guard would be the most perfect job, just standing there all day, responsibility free except the occasional “step back from the art” comment. I once even spent an entire day trolling around the MET to see if there were actually any woman guards hired, which by the end of the day was affirmative. I have since heard standing looking out into the air, dead silent all day every day is excruciating.

LikeYou.com, a Swiss art web portal?

Very nice-a redesign for Bare and Bitter Sleep.

Core Sample: Portland

The Clear Cut Press publication: Core Sample: Portland Art Now is profiled in this week’s Stranger.

“Feeling overlooked by 2003’s Baja to Vancouver, a survey of West Coast art which was shown at the SAM, Portland artists took matters into their own hands last October, organizing a citywide, artist-run survey with more than two dozen exhibitions over 10 days.”

Core Sample’s website is an extensive documentation of the event itself.
I find it pretty spectacular that something of this nature could be organized so well and is more proof of the city-wide vibrancy of Portland’s art world we keep hearing about up here.

Creme

 

Eric Doeringer, famous for his Bootlegs and Smoke Filtration Systems has just put out a call for entries for a new web project he is working on that he says is “fan site dedicated to Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle. The project will explore fandom’s relation to the contemporary art world.”

Here is the official press release:

Call for Entries:

Artists (all media), writers, musicians, and video/filmmakers are invited to submit works based on Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle for an online exhibition (and possible gallery show).
Submission Guidelines:
* Artwork: Up to 5 jpeg or gif files (no larger than 1024 x 768 pixels each) or web URL. *
Writing: Fiction, nonfiction, or poetry may be submitted. Please include the text in the body of your email and as a separate attachment in any standard text format (Microsoft Word, txt, etc.).
* Music: MP3 file (no more than four minutes ? longer music files can be sent if accepted) or web URL.
* Film/Video: Quicktime or Flash movies (no more than three minutes ?longer videos can be sent if accepted), web URL, or still images (up to 5 jpegs, no larger than 1024 x 768 pixels each). Please include contact information and a brief statement about your work.
Submissions should be sent to cremasterweb@yahoo.com

I missed out on the world of art blog speculation last year when Cremaster analysis was flying left and right. I have my own thoughts on this of course. Last Fall I dragged my sidekick to a double feature of Cremaster I & II, to finally see what all the hubbub was about..

I found the first installment the most excruciating thing I have ever sat through in my life. It seriously made my feet itchy. Cremaster II I liked much better, especially the parts with the guy from Slayer and the bees. I was expecting Sidekick to have his eyes permanently rolled to the back of his head over the whole episode, and it turns out he absolutely loved the whole thing. You never know.

A short Bumbershoot Report

There is some art to be seen this year at the annual local Labor Day brouhaha that is termed Bumbershoot.

My recommendations:

Aperture at 50- Photography Past/Forward

A big deal show that has been moving in installments across the country. Seeing swarms of kids react to the photography was interesting, an argument for the informal venue. A representation of most well known photographers can be found in this tribute to 50 years of Aperture : Cartier-Bresson, Welty, Arbus, Model, Plachy, Weston, Meatyard, just to name a few. Mark Klett who has made a career of photographing the West, amused me with his tribute to Thomas Moran at Yellowstone (it’s exactly what you think when you’re there):

mark klett: yellowstone (editor: most of the photos have been lost to the digital ages)

And his other contribution to the exhibit: “Rebecca Making Coq Au Vin Near the Site of Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Salt Lake UT” is equally satisfying:

The Bumberbiennale: Consumables

Matthew Kangas, who files all of the Art In America reports from this region curated the visual art roundup titled Consumables. This is his 11th Bumbershoot offering. Good range of stuff from the local compadres and some famous additions from Lichtenstein and the likes of Claus Oldenberg and his huge ceramic pie, keeping the consumption theme in tact. Our lovely Yvette has a painting in the show as well as Portland painter Michael Brophy who I have raved about before. More of him in a minute. There was also a Vancouver B.C. painter whose name I neglected to note who has a damn fine painting of a car in the exhibit, and no it’s not the same car painting noted in the Seattle Times. I asked if I could take photos and was denied, which miffed me.

Clear Cut Press booth
[in the literary small press exhibits section]

More Michael Brophy. Clear Cut Press, is an Oregon small press responsible for some wonderful publications that are beautifully printed , focusing on NW artists and writers . They basically kick ass. Last year they published a book on Brophy and have picked up some great writers like Charles D’Ambrosio. I asked if they had yet published any [as promised] Wes Wehr and we found he has a selection in their new compilation: The Clear Cut Future – a small but potent chapbook [which I couldn’t resist]. Later while doing a preliminary leaf through I was surprised to find a suite of gouache paintings by Brophy amongst other drawing and photographic inclusions. Art for your pocket.

The Clear Cut Future

 

Cooper-Hewitt

I will do a little short term pining. Here is something I do miss very much from NYC- being able to go to the Cooper-Hewitt. They have an exhibit opening next week titled the very wordy: DESIGN is not ART: Functional Objects from Donald Judd to Rachel Whiteread.

Included in the line up: lamps by Richard Tuttle, basalt ware by James Turrell, carpeting by Rosemarie Trockel, more lamps Jorge Pardo, another rug by Barbara Bloom and so on…[Rachel Whiteread designs a daybed, hmmm chairs by Judd]. . The Cooper-Hewitt always does a great job of showcasing useful objects in a new light and I think it would be really interesting to see the included artists work in the functional arena. Looks like they have another artist made wallpaper show up as well, which they do occasionally.

A Whole New World….

Platform Gallery opens their door tonight. I am most curious what will be shown here, and am excited to see a new gallery focusing on Contemporary Art in Seattle. This is a commercial space, but run by artists so should be an interesting combo. They are featuring Flat Files at their gallery, inspired directly by the highly successful Pierogi flat files in Brooklyn, as you can see by the lead quote on that page. They are also kicking off a print portfolio project, so out of the gate they are attempting ambitious waters.

Stranger article profiling the gallery pre-opening from 6/04.

Two of the gallerist have web sites of their own:
Carol Bolt
Blake Haygood (he’s scheduled for a Platform show in January)

I hope they do well.

Tonight is First Thursday, with a bunch of new shows, and gallery reopenings down in Pioneer Square. Gallery4Culture amongst others have new shows up, including an interesting lightbox show at Gallery 110, which I must say is also a commercial space run by artists.

 

The Inevitable Cycle of Gentrification…in China

“Then artists began to move in, attracted by cheap rents and stunning spaces.” – yes also in Beijing ( today’s NYT)
The Factory….798.

Here is a far more fleshed out story with accompanying visuals on the China Pictorial site. Does this sound familiar:

“Appearing first in Guangzhou and gradually shifting to Shanghai and Beijing, the Loft-Living Phenomenon has represented the accumulation and maturation of youth culture in this new era. “

Life is Elsewhere is a Chinese art blog out of Beijing. Song Li says it’s just from an ordinary Chinese person, yet I am appreciative she is going to the trouble of writing in English. I’m at a complete loss when I pull up a site such as this. (found via jill/txt who asks the interesting questions about Western formatting).

Tonight is the unofficial kick off of the Fall art season here in town with the free Opening Night Gala for the Visual Art exhibits at Bumbershoot. I am bummed I will not be able to attend.