blog.christinewongyap.com

blog.christinewongyap.com
"Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Open Studios"
October 15, 2010
Author: Christine Wong Yap

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Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Open Studios

The EFA has a building in midtown Manhattan with six floors of studios rented by established and emerging artists. There's also a project space, as well as a print shop. The whole building was a hive of activity for Open Studios; it reminded me of being an Affiliate Artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA, where I opened my studio to the public many times (Visit the Headlands' Fall Open House this Sunday, October 17). EFA had a similar cross-section: a few big names; many interesting, under-recognized artists; and a cadre of East Asian artists with crafty or pop/anime sensibilities. There were lots of painters and few video artists; meticulous, feminine papercuts (by Amina Amed and Jaq Belcher); and a few very commercial enterprises balanced by a few wacky conceptualists and performance artists. I was surprised to see that some artists had large etching presses or Vandercook letterpresses in their studios. (You see how important elevators become when your studio is 5 or 6 or 9 floors up.) I was most excited about these artists:

Saya Wookfalk makes paintings, installations, performances and videos in Hello Kitty hues. She works with cognitive scientists and dancers, and teaches herself theater lighting. Need I say more?

Kristian Kozul makes kinda bad-ass sculpture. In his studio, he's working on fantastic militaristic busts dripping in rosettes and covered in a glossly black resin.

David Greg Harth's immensity can't be captured here, but I'll try: weird, painful, simple, public interventions, like collecting autographs in a Bible, tumbling down public steps, and opening a kiosk that only sells newspapers with horrible, 300-pt. headlines. Provocative, hilarious and wince-worthy. I liked that the artist was complicit in his projects about human folly: his willingness to humiliate and hurt himself was in plentiful evidence.

Dane Patterson can draw like crazy; but many steps—performance, sculpture, and photography—lead up to it.

Of the painters, I was attracted to Patty Catuera's and Gary Petersen‘s work. Both make hard-edge, brightly colored, super flat abstractions. If you said that these paintings appeal to my design sensibilities, you'd probably be right, and I see nothing wrong with that. Patty's work seems especially vibrant and sweet in its simplicity. The imagery originates in landscapes, and with the large expanses of flat, abstract space, there is room to push and pull the volumes and imagine a narrative unfolding.

I also liked David Storey's mildly figurative mid-mod abstractions. They're cheeky. They make me think of Mad Men interiors and knowing smiles.

Hong Seon Jang had some terrific lichens cut from National Geographics, and forest scenes made out of cellophane tape. Nice!

Noah Klersfeld's videos were weirdly mesmerizing, partly from the sheer technical prowess, like stained glass come to life from pedestrian, single-camera shots.

Jihyun Park's large punched-paper and burned-paper works are really beautiful. I'm not especially compelled by the imagery, but the craftsmanship and perceptual experience are fantastic.

I admired Yuken Teruya's paper sculptures in graduate school. I also love the graphic quality of batik, so it was a special treat to visit Teruya's studio and see his most recent dye-resist paintings.

Hank Willis Thomas' work is clean and super provocative; if, like me, you were most familiar with his advertisement-based work, he's been busy with lots of text-based signs and lenticulars as well. I'll leave it at that, since I've been helping out my fellow CCA alum.

Brian Whitney set up four mirrors to successfully merge two images into a 3D image; he's also figured out a way to print photographic images on mylar. Jealous!

I also really enjoyed talking to Jimbo Blachy and his guest, who I assume to be his collaborator, Lytle Shaw. They had the skeleton of a boat set up in their studio, a whole lot of boating and Brit-ish ephemera, and they were wearing matching striped sailor shirts. That is, until you looked closer and realized that one of the shirts was actually a white t-shirt with stripes painted on it. That kind of geniality and jokiness immediately appealed to me. Later, I passed by their studio again, and saw the two of them alone, busy cracking each other up.

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Nena News

Nena News
"BIR ZEIT: PALESTINE STATION"
October 2, 2010
Author: Ilaria Lupo

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BIR ZEIT: PALESTINE STATION

English Translation of the article is below.

Bir Zeit, Ramallah, 02 October 2010 - was held in the village of Bir Zeit, the second edition of the international workshop organized by Al-Mahatta Gallery. Al-Mahatta means "station" and the name comes from the gallery space, a former underground car park at the center of Ramallah in management entrusted to a collective of young artists who are engaged since 2008 in various exhibition projects, education and awareness of the local community the visual arts. Al-Mahatta was also featured for the implementation of public art in and for the involvement of several European organizations in its activities, including residences of foreign artists. The experience of Bir Zeit is allowed accession to the Triangle Arts Trust, a global network of workshops for young artists welcomed by non-profit organizations active in contemporary art. In the Near East, the network includes - in addition to Al-Mahatta - including the artist run space Makan AIWA based in Amman and Beirut.

Twenty young artists Palestinians, Americans, Africans, South Americans and Europeans have therefore worked in a group dynamic participating in various activities of local knowledge and local contemporary art, interact with the community and create projects related to the context. Last year the first edition of the workshop met a changing reality, the village of Bir Zeit in full Riwaq intervention for the rehabilitation of urban and architectural heritage of Palestine. The plan includes the restoration of the historic center of fifty villages in the West Bank into a state of abandonment and reintegration of the population. The artists had therefore stressed the need for reclaiming memory that is causing the strong socio-cultural imbalance of Palestine.

So the Anglo-Saxon Douglas Laing had hit the old mill with the projection of a panoramic video taken from the central water tank at Bir Zeit - which dominates the surrounding area as the Israeli settlements and checkpoints are raised above the territory - and the while reviving the site with a performance by drummers from the village, almost creating a counter-movement, a chorus of voices underground - from an original and symbolic - to spread an eco conscience and rebellion.

The American artist of Jewish origin David Greg Harth had put his safety in the hands of the villagers, who were invited to hold him back with a rope and prevent him from falling into a ravine. The responsibility of his own life was entrusted to the unknown Palestinians. It was a demonstration of absolute trust of the Palestinians beyond the stereotypes associated with his Jewish upbringing and Western education.

Always in direct relation with the local community, the golano Salama Safadi had installed new street signs in which Israeli Arab names of places are now Hebrew names transliterated into Arabic. Scope of work was to make the residents of West Bank Palestinians share the problems experienced by the 1948 and the daily humiliations that they submit a racist regime. But the initiative has been misunderstood and the furious reaction of the citizens has sparked a real riot, the signs have been undermined by violence and the police intervened and seized the work that is still "in prison."

This year the presentation of the work took place in the old town largely restored. The Turkish Seçil Yaylali worked with residents of the small refugee camp at Bir Zeit. The project started on the idea of children who have themselves made of recycled materials on site. This is a "box of dreams" contains texts on their dreams or objects that symbolize them. The artist - engaged in interactive projects - says that the meeting with the Palestinians could not rule out the exchange with the inhabitants, of which it intended to offer a positive outlook on reality despite the extremely harsh living condition.

Tom Bogaert, Belgian currently based in Amman, but has conducted research on Israeli settlements. Playing on homonyms of the settlement of Ariel and the popular soap, he installed an old house in a Palestinian construction of pieces of soap boxes in question on an expanse of fragrant white powder. The effect is all the more ironic and aroused the hilarity of the Palestinians who have taken a parody of an invader who builds artificial paradises on what has been looted and destroyed.

Jeremy Hutchison has focused on the limits of mobility in Palestine and has created a performance at Al Manara Square in Ramallah, where a car repeats the circular tour around the monument's central square. The artist presents his work thus: "A Palestinian is a drive through Ramallah. But going forward continues to gather at the starting point. The poor man simply can not move."

Artists: Laura Arena, Benedikt Partenheimer, Ramzi Hazboun, Rafael tondi, Dirar exploration, Edward Salem, Jeremy Hutchinson, Sundus Abdel Hadi, Seçil Yayalali, Mohammad Abdel Karim, Maisa Azaiza, is Saheen, Tom Bogaert, Khaled Jarrar, Anja De Klerk, Shadi Al Hareem, Johanna von Den Driesch, Malin Lennstom, Mo'en Hassouneh, Mohammad Abu Afefa.

Please note: The list of artists published at the bottom of the article is incorrect.

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BreakThruRadio.com

BreakThruRadio.com
"Art Uncovered"
April 20, 2010
Interview by: Piera Tocci

Listen on breakthruradio website or listen below.

Art Uncovered

Transcript coming soon....

Interview contains dialogue divided by music. You can fast forward through the music to each dialogue part. Below is the playlist.

00:00 Art Uncovered with Piera
02:03 Tonight I Have to Leave - Shout Out Louds
05:37 My Little Brother (live) - Art Brut
09:13 Harth on Art Uncovered
11:43 Girl I Love You - Massive Attack
16:40 Harth on Art Uncovered
20:14 Banquet - Bloc Party
23:36 Feel.Love.Thinkin.Of - Faunts
26:44 Harth on Art Uncovered
29:30 No Cars Go - Arcade Fire
35:10 Conscience Killer - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
38:53 Harth on Art Uncovered
41:49 Art Uncovered with Piera (Patty Lee - Les Savy Fav)

From BreakThruRadio.com

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BushwickBK.com

BushwickBK.com
"The Real Thing"
March 15, 2010
Author: Stephen Truax

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The Real Thing

Ingraham Street in Morgantown is filled with semis sitting eerily in open garages, garbage dumps, graffiti murals, vinyl siding, and brick factories. Like its pronunciation-unfriendly name - Ingram? Ing-ra-ham? - it isn't tremendously welcoming to strollers. There was almost no signage announcing an exhibition, with the exception of the SITE Fest "YOU ARE HERE" poster and an 8 1/2 x 11 in. inkjet printout of the press release stapled to a small poster board on the sidewalk, which parenthetically instructs you that the show is (in the alley.)

In the summertime, said alley is decorated like an outdoor Italian villa/restaurant, but is now a bleak parking lot without cars. This is the home of Brooklyn FireProof, a multifunctional space that plays host to music events, art happenings, and drunken nights out. The abandoned look of industrial park Bushwick breaks immediately to an intimate, packed bar. After wading your way through the crowd, you enter a large industrial room which might have been a storage facility or perhaps a meat locker.

Video monitors are set up throughout the space, glowing ominously, on tables, folding chairs, mounted to the walls at various heights. The two-day-long exhibition of You Can't Do That On Television, 2010, curated by Joe Nanashe, presented in conjunction with Arts in Bushwick's SITE Festival, is comprised of 15 artists and artist groups, 13 video monitors and miles of extension cords. The setup is casual, makeshift even: plywood tables, metal folding chairs, inverted buckets as seats, duct tape.

The space is enormous, whitewashed with gray cement floors, where the only light is from the monitors and one naked light bulb by the door. The videos are all documentations of performance, including acts of sex, violence, absurdity, and behavior that's downright weird. A single sentence serves as the press release: "Absurd, strange, transgressive, confrontational and confusing performances for video." Included in the impressive roster were widely exhibited artists Nina Katchadourian and Type A. The installation was refreshingly spare, and the work uncomfortably personal.

"Explorations of [the] personal are the only things that can really make people uncomfortable in any substantive way," offered Nanashe.

Marni Kotak and Jason Robert Bell's new work, Our Year, 2009, depicts Kotak in an awkward home-video format, in intimate bedroom lighting, from the stomach up, engaged in coitus. She moans and cries dramatically as her breasts bounce vigorously in time with her endless humping. The cuts in between scenes are almost invisible, so she seems to be having sex constantly. The credits list "orgasms by" Kotak and Bell.

Nina Katchadourian's Mystic Shark is quieter, a video made on a digital camera which depicts a closeup portrait of the artist in a maritime environment of which you get only a sliver on the left side of the screen. She very slowly goes in and out of focus as the handheld camera struggles to get the close-up. She carefully places, one-by-one, shark's teeth in between her lip and her gum, while maintaining an almost Abromovic-like seriousness.

Artist team Type A (Adam Ames and Andrew Bordwin) sit around a campfire drinking Budweiser with a friend in Mead, experiencing the natural environment and the intimacy of comradery. David Greg Harth's What Ate the Black Man? shows a young white man, shirtless, biting a shirtless young black man over and over again. Biting was a consistent theme throughout the show, especially when done repetitively, and was included in three or four different videos.

Nanashe's casual approach to curating actually lead him to several interesting observations on the nature of performance. "[What] I became increasingly aware of while I was gathering the work, was the vulnerability expressed in all the works," said Nanashe. "This very personal, individual exploration of the body with humor, absurdity, cultural constructions."

"My initial idea became distorted by what I couldn't help but be attracted to," he continued, elaborating on his process. "Of course there was sex and breasts and shouting and juvenile behavior."

Throughout the research period, he became more and more interested in how these seemingly unrelated performances actually revealed something about culture with their similarity.

"There something so revealing about the frailty of the body and the act of performance," Nanashe remarks. “The earnestness of the amateur act. Like those people who beg for another chance on American Idol auditions."

How did this curator get these heavy hitters (mid-career artists represented by major Chelsea galleries) to participate out in Bushwick, on an industrial street, down an alley, behind a bar, on the most important art weekend of the year, in an exhibition that was up for only two days? By asking them!

Nanashe was interested in curating a show long before he had a list of artists or a venue. He found out about Brooklyn FireProof through a friend, and they conveniently had just finished renovating the back room and gallery space. The managers were receptive to his idea and immediately slotted him for their inaugural exhibition, which drew an estimated 300 visitors over the weekend.

Nanashe is an artist first and foremost, but his practice as a project-based conceptualist is closely related to the work of a curator. Going forward, he intends to refocus his energy in his own studio, where he makes drawings and videos.

After a week of art fairs, which present a different kind of makeshift and oppressive environment, this show and venue's rough aesthetic is familiar. However, unlike the Armory and Independent, Joe Nanashe's You Can't Do That On Television at Brooklyn FireProof seemed like the real thing.

You Can't Do That On Television
Curated by Joe Nanashe
March 6 - 7, 2010
Brooklyn FireProof
119 Ingraham Street Brooklyn, NY 11237

Artists: Marc Aschenbrenner, Laurel Jay Carpenter, Crystal Curtis, Amy Day, Ruthie Doyle, David Greg Harth, Nate Hill, Wayne Hodge, Mike Jones, Nina Katchadourian, Marni Kotak & Jason Robert Bell, Yeon Jin Kim, Jorge Rojas, Type A

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Congress.org

Congress.org
"When dollars call for change"
March 1, 2010
Author: Emma Dumain

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When dollars call for change
Many activists have found a dollar bill makes a cheap and effective billboard.

Looking for a cheap way to get your message out? Consider putting it on a dollar bill.

From fringe groups to more established advocates, many activists have found that scribbling or stamping messages onto money is an inexpensive way to spread the word about their cause.

The tactic -- you could call it dollar billboarding -- has been used by groups across the political spectrum, although it tends to be more popular with those on the outskirts of the mainstream.

Atheists arguing for the separation of church and state have crossed out the word "God" in the motto "In God We Trust." Conservatives who disapprove of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner have stamped the words "tax cheat" over his signature. Supporters of marijuana legalization have pointed out that George Washington grew hemp.

Though the federal government frowns on defacing currency, few activists who go this route end up facing legal sanctions. In the meantime, their messages can spread pretty far.

With a lifespan of close to 18 months , a typical $1 bill passes through hundreds if not thousands of hands and can travel pretty far around the country. Using a popular dollar-tracking website, WheresGeorge.com , a group of mathematicians determined that a single dollar bill can travel between 30 and 500 miles across the United States over a period of nine months.

Generally, stamping dollar bills does not attract much media attention -- unless it's done by a more mainstream group.

In Canada, an environmental organization drew a lot of attention for its use of one-dollar coins which feature the loon, an aquatic bird.

The Dogwood Initiative wanted to publicize its campaign to protect wildlife from oil spills. Its solution was to affix stickers of an oil-soaked loon to the back of the coins.

Since the campaign first launched in early 2009, over half a million coins have been stamped and circulated, said communications director Charles Campbell.

"For the first months of the campaign," said Campbell, "you were likely to encounter a few of our coins in any given week."

He said the project's big draw was that it allowed activists outside the organization to get involved. It costs the Dogwood Initiative 10 to 20 cents to print each sticker, which they then sell in batches of 42 for a total of $10.

"What was exciting for us was that, while we printed these decals, we weren't sticking all of them on the coins ourselves. We sold them on the website, or gave them away in the beginning. It was a really good way of allowing people to give voice to their concerns," Campbell said.

In the United States, advocacy groups periodically create rubber stamps which are then sold online to like-minded activists.

Not all efforts are as organized. New York artist David Greg Harth has been creating his own stamps since 1998.

"I have multiple rubber stamps with different messages, and then I send them to people in other cities, friends, or strangers who have contacted me through the site," Harth explained. "If I stamp one thousand singles, I exchange them for one thousand unmarked singles, then stamp those."

Through this cycle, Harth says he has facilitated the marking of over a million bills. But whereas the Dogwood Initiative integrates its message into the design of the currency, Harth uses the bills more as literal vehicles for his messages.

Some of his slogans have included "I am HIV Positive" and "I am HIV Negative," which he stamps on separate bills. When they are put into circulation, their random distribution reflects the distribution of the virus itself.

And around election season, he marks bills with the words, "I am voting," and for the anniversaries of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, he stamps, "I am not terrorized."

"I wanted to get politically involved through my art," Harth said of how his project originated. "I'm not one to go to a podium and speak out vocally. The point is to start a dialogue. It would be great if two strangers were both looking at a bill, wondering about it, talking about it."

For many activists, the mild form of civil disobedience involved in altering U.S. currency is part of the thrill. But technically speaking, it's not against the law unless perpetrators deface the currency "with intent to render such bank bill(s) ... unfit to be reissued."

In other words, as long as the bill is still usable, it's OK. Cutting, gluing, or changing the numerical value of a bill could lead to a fine or up to six months in prison, however.

Still, defaced currency cases are reported so rarely that law enforcement officials were not immediately certain whose jurisdiction the issue falls to.

The Treasury Department's Bureau of Engraving and Printing referred a reporter to the Secret Service. That agency, which typically handles counterfeit crimes, recommended the Justice Department.

Ben Friedman, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office for the District of Columbia, said he was not aware of any recent cases.

"I don't know of any cases of defacing currency that have been brought in our office, at least not of the type involving the scratching out something on a bill or anything like that," said Friedman, who has worked in the attorney's office since 1998. "It may technically be a crime, but it's not something our office has ever prosecuted."

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Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Open Studios

BIR ZEIT: PALESTINE STATION

BIR ZEIT: PALESTINE STATION

Art Uncovered

The Real Thing

When dollars call for changeMany activists have found a dollar bill makes a cheap and effective billboard.

When dollars call for change
Many activists have found a dollar bill makes a cheap and effective billboard.