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by Kevin Freitas
If you haven't noticed, we're making a few changes to the blog. Now's the time to shoot me any suggestions you might have. For example, things you want to see more of - or less, ideas for articles, areas we're not covering, or just more of the same. Let me know. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks.
Gaslamp Art Showcase
Sunday, March 29 - Noon to 5pm
by Richard Gleaves
MOCA's current show consists of two unequal parts:
To anyone considering a visit with hungry eye or mind, consider yourself forewarned: the former makes the latter feel like a long string of late-night TV commercials (notwithstanding the occasional Glenn Branca score).
It's not every day — or decade, for that matter — that one can spend quality time in a roomful of Rothkos. For this, go.
But as for the half a museum of Graham, it left me in a state of anesthesia to a degree I've never before experienced from a major museum show. Out of profound respect for and affinity with conceptual art — good conceptual art — I'm considering a return trip to try and determine whether, as the museum claims, anyone's home.
UCSD NEWS RELEASE
Media Contact: Tiffany Fox, 858.246.0353, tfox@ucsd.edu
'Version' Online Arts Journal to Experiment with Content, Viral Publishing
Reception to be held April 2 at the gallery@Calit2, UC San Diego
San Diego, Calif., March 24, 2009 — A new online journal based at the University of California, San Diego, is experimenting with Web 2.0 sensibilities to explore the space where art, viral publishing and multitasking collide.
Titled Version, the journal features short-form writing, photography, video and other media work limited to 500 words, five images or 50 seconds in length. Co-editor Jordan Crandall, an associate professor in UC San Diego's Department of Visual Arts, says the publishing constraints are intended, in part, to accommodate an increasingly crowded online world, where content must compete for the attention of users who are already bombarded by constant media feeds and the demands of social networking.
"The idea behind Version is to avoid publishing long academic essays that require a substantial investment of time," Crandall explains. "Instead, we're interested in work that you can read in conjunction with the other things you're doing on the Internet. In this way, Version lends itself to a kind of multitasking space, where the content stays agile, mobile and re-mixable."
The public is invited to celebrate the launch of Version at a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, April 2, at the gallery@Calit2, located in Atkinson Hall on the UCSD campus. The reception will include a presentation on the history and development of Version. Calit2, otherwise known as the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, is producing the journal in conjunction with UCSD's Visual Arts Department and its Division of Arts and Humanities.
Although the journal's content will initially be published within the confines of the Version Web site, co-editor Caleb Waldorf imagines it will spread by way of 'viral publishing' — a means of sharing content among users until it ultimately lives in a multitude of spaces online.
"We purposely designed our content modules to be the same size as the advertising blocks you see on most Web sites so that they can reside anywhere on the Web," says Waldorf, who is a Los Angeles-based artist, former UCSD Visual Arts graduate student and researcher with the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts at Calit2. "The way we title the content is flexible enough that it can be recognizable in other places, almost like a code string."
A Version essay about the deadpan humor of conceptual artist John Baldessari, for example, is titled "Illuminations.john+c+welchman.deadpan.022609," reflecting the journal content category ("Illuminations") the author (UCSD's John Welchman, professor of modern art history), the title of the piece ("Deadpan") and the date of publication. When displayed in a Twitter feed or as a Deli.cio.us bookmark, the titling mechanism serves as a marker of Version's brand identity, but is also understandable to users who have never visited the Version Web site.
"Eventually," Crandall predicts, 'Version could become a decentralized journal. We hope our identity will carry through as the content gets forwarded and resides in other places, but perhaps it will mutate, and maybe that's interesting, too."
While the majority of the journal's initial contributors are faculty and affiliates of the Visual Arts Department, Crandall and Waldorf say they are especially interested in transcending disciplines and genre divides and welcome contributions from anyone up to the challenge.
"Our idea is to publish work that is based in anecdote and allegory: Stories, scenes and encounters that happen in everyday life, things we can all relate to," Crandall says. "Although there is a certain experimental element behind this project, it's not a grand philosophical argument. It's about the texture and richness of physical experience. It's about that sensory charge you get when something resonates with you.
"With good art, you want to pay attention to the infrastructure and form, yes, but also the content. And in order for this journal to work, the content has to be compelling, evocative, rich and full of life."
gallery@Calit2
UCSD Department of Visual Arts
UCSD Division of Arts and Humanities
by Richard Gleaves
Where to be on a Saturday night?
All look great, but no can do.
Decision regret — make your choice.
(click for larger image)
nineRooms
LIVEArtINSTALLATIONS
THURSDAY MARCH 19TH 2009
ONE NIGHT ONLY 5:00-9:00 PM
INSIDE
444 SOUTH CEDROS AVENUE
SOLANA BEACH, CA 92075
“nineRooms, LIVEArtINSTALLATIONS” features nine artists and their processes on exhibit for one night only. Curator and artist, Melissa Stager of Susan Street Fine Art Gallery and the South Cedros Property Owners Association have joined forces to reveal the extraordinary underlying talents of live artists in San Diego. The exhibition will include installation and performance pieces by MiraCosta College professors, Yoshimi Hayashi and Anna O’Cain, and San Diego Artists Chris Warr, Hollis Swan, Benjalmin Eldworlds, Jessica Gannon, Joshua Bellfy, Justin Morrison, and David White, founder of Agitprop art space in San Diego. The Installations are diverse and will vary between live performances of interactive process; artists creating in solitude who can be viewed through peepholes; artists who are presenting installations documenting site-specific performance pieces. Artist, David White will be providing free legitimate tax preparation services for any viewer that comes with the required documents in hand. Musical entertainment will be provided by the engaging Pacific Northwest’s indie rock, low fi/country/folk band, ‘The Gift Machine,’ whose performance will be sandwiched by eclectic San Diego DJ, Nick Gaby. “nineRooms, LIVEArtINSTALLATIONS” is a one-night event from 5pm–9pm that is expected to draw a large diverse crowd from both the San Diego and North County areas who are coming together to explore the engaging multi dimensions of live art. This exhibition is in partner with Cedros Third Thursday Gallery Walk Night and the Cedros Blooms festival and will take place inside of 444 South Cedros Avenue in the heart of the Cedros Design District in Solana Beach, CA. For further inquiries, please contact melissa_stager@yahoo.com
nineRooms
LIVEArtINSTALLATIONS
THURSDAY MARCH 19TH 2009
ONE NIGHT ONLY 5:00-9:00 PM
INSIDE
444 SOUTH CEDROS AVENUE
SOLANA BEACH, CA 92075
STATEMENTS
MELISSA ANNE STAGER
Melissa Stager is currently a gallery assistant at Susan Street Fine Art Gallery in Solana Beach and the curator of nineRooms, live Art installations. She has an AA from MiraCosta College and a BA in Applied Design from SDSU where she emphasized in Sculpture and Furniture Design. She is currently in an exhibition at MiraCosta College. Although she is not presenting a piece for this exhibition, her own work revolves around the family and ideas of the home and self. She primarily works in wood, metal, textiles and spackle. Recently she has been exploring video and projected imagery as a part of her sculptural installations. She has assisted with, curated, and prepared many art exhibits over the last seven years and thoroughly enjoys facilitating creative expression.
YOSHIMI HAYASHI
Yoshimi Hayashi is the head of the sculpture department at MiraCosta College.
“I often find that rather than absolutes, I am more and more fascinated by the decisions that force us to leave our idealistic polarities. Humanity seems to exist somewhere in the difficulty of these departures, and it is there that I feel closest with the viewer of the work. I must force myself into these obsessive repetitive behaviors all the while attempting to mentally be in harmony with the action. Although I would like to be hit with some Zen like awareness, the work reminds me of how punishing the actions are and how susceptible I am to cognitive dissonance. It is only after years of attempting to reach some higher mindful state, that I am left with what is the true awareness: honest failure. The works are the residue of the attempt, a by-product of truly not getting there. I believed at one time that the greatest art was one that stood the test of time, but now, I feel that in my work, the best never existed in the first place and never will. Therefore, more and more, I enjoy the fugitive aspects of my work; as if they themselves are suppose to wrinkle along with its creator and the viewer. Perhaps the attempt to grasp is really the definition of mindfulness”.
ANNA O’CAIN
Anna O’Cain is a San Diego, California based artist who was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi. She is a studio art instructor in drawing, design and sculpture and the art department chair at MiraCosta College. She studied visual art at the University of Okalahoma, received a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego where she continued to work with hybrid media, experimental processes, and installation. She has been a recipient of grants from California Arts Council and Art Matters in New York. Performance actions taken from daily life, i.e. mending clothes, making pies, sewing felt covers for books in a library, and cataloging stories are elements in her installations work. Found objects used in her work often provide historical sources from which to begin the art making process. Sound, interactivity and electronic technologies are combined with more traditional media in her work. Questions about learning, memory and record keeping (how we know, how we learn, what we remember, and what we forget) are at the center of her research and practice. With one foot in both physical and virtual worlds she is still amazed and excited about the hybridization of traditional and electronic media. Anna finds events, materials, and the speech of everyday life to be the most vibrant source of inspiration. Her multi-media installations have been exhibited all over the United States and in parts of Latin America. They address how we learn things, what we remember, what we forget, and what we reconfigure in our personal stories.
HOLLIS SWAN
“Life is a gradual learning experience; one cannot render the speed of this process no matter how hard they try. To truly understand, know, and be part of a whole one must take in the entirety of that situation. By not having control of ones patience, valuable lessons are destroyed in the search of what is sought after. Spending the first twenty years of my life in rural Alaska has shaped my views of the world and my work. My work surrounds tradition, experience and awareness of our surroundings”.
CHRIS WARR
Chris Warr is an artist from San Diego, and one confused individual. He often retracts statements directly after making them, or immediately presents the opposite perspective as if it were his own. The fact is he owns nothing and everything owns him. He is a tool, you must use him. Chris has a BA from SDSU and works in a variety of mediums including photography, painting, sculpture, performance and most recently video. Work most often begins with a process of heavy self-examination or a search to "feel good”.
BENJALMIN ELDWORDS
Storyteller.
“bemjalmin eldwords is. a bumbaccalaureate of the Art, for the paper tells me so. vagabonded to infinity, everywhere else, ever after, ever ever. come from a womb, then a bubble, then a tree. old in the soul/chin, young in the heart/gut, home in the betweens. a figment of your imagination. square becomes blobby, amen. love, bem.”
JESSICA GANNON
Jessica Gannon, 27, graduated from SDSU in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in studio art. That same year, she presented her work at Osaka University of Art. She has been showing her work in San Diego for 6 years. Typically, her work responds to natural forms and processes. For the nineRooms exhibition, Jessica is doing a combination of installations referencing simple scientific process with nature-based drawings. This will include the live creation of a "Dirt Drawing," made using dirt, tea and other natural dyes.
DAVID WHITE
David White has a BFA from The Ohio State University and is currently working toward an MFA at UCSD. David has also spent time in Germany studying traditional stone working techniques and in Brazil studying Art and Technology at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo. Currently, He is the founder of Agitprop, an art space conceived of as a tool for enabling neighborhood connectivity and engagement. He is also the Artist in Residence at North Park Main Street, a position he proposed as a method to help facilitate the mutual benefit and relationship of small business and art practice in North Park. David's work uses art historical conventions as a method of engaging individuals or groups at the scale of the neighborhood. Through the recontextualization of these conventions, he creates forms and situations that encourage, whether individual or participatory, open systems that can advance new interpretations of the everyday and public discourse. These forms and situations may be as diverse as small marble sculptures of everyday objects to video documentation obtained through the use of a bicycle taxi.
For nineRooms:
Title of piece: Engaging in Aesthetics is a Taxing Enterprise
Description: for this event I will hire a tax preparator to assist people in filing their taxes.
JOSHUA BELLFY
I come from Detroit, Michigan.
I attended the College of Creative Studies.
http://www.joshuabellfy.com/
JUSTIN MORRISON
"Justin is a performing artist, dancer and teacher based jointly in San Diego and Amsterdam. He pays the bills by getting technology to play nice for people."
http://justinmorrison.net/
by David White
Discussion starts 9pm
Agitprop
2837 University Ave. (University and Utah)
North Park
619.384.7989
“Security for All”
Opening reception: Saturday, March 21st, 2009
6-9 pm
Agitprop
2837 University Ave. (University and Utah)
North Park
619.384.7989
by Héctor Ivan Delgado & Judith Pedroza
2:44 AM
There´s nothing more insecure than the security.
2:45 AM
The security also is a myth.
2:46
The myth is founded in rituals.
2:47
…The energy and the principles.
The pieces/participants:
Waiting for the Title / Héctor Ivén Delgado (Mx)
There is a house by the sea / Judith Pedroza (Mx)
South / Rodrigo Sastre (Arg)
Structures of protection / Orlando Díaz (Mx)
Mexico City
The artistic life in the City is very active with a perfect environment for production. We believe that we can almost achieve every thing: take the streets, take a space, and talk without fear of not being PC. The chaos and disrespect is totally validated in the open spaces of discussion. Uncomfortable situations and violent discussions could exist but there is always time to share a taco after the fight or conflict. “Everything is possible”: stealing software, cloning movies that haven´t even been shown at the theatres. Why? Just for our cultural necessity of having ground, ample experience, a cosmopolitan atmosphere, discussion, and criticism (or at least that inducement comforts¨ us). In other words, the artist has a big laboratory in The City to experiment and carry out alternative lifestyles being that space is not governed by laws or private policies. The social classes are very close and come together in blind spaces to share and connect regardless of ones class (The artistic scene, the University, the museum, the party). In these spaces, we destroy philosophical and stiff discourses and propose new cultural rituals with the security to be able to work with ones own ideas.
The artistic world in the city is rich, with a lot of potential. It has the security that lends itself to the creative act, because of the presence of hope that art exists. This involves a life based on looking at a cultural group like a convention that gives distinction to other social groups with which we exchange life.
The reality demands creativity like an obligation for the producers in the City. We are missing resources, but our security is based on no regulations, no controls, no specialization and such little disposition of “adequate spaces” in the cultural ground for “the artistic” distribution. So we exchange “haciendo de tripas Corazon.” This means that we resist with our own resources. The limits are the economic and ideological borders based on cultural myths about the understanding of the global idea of art.
Art: Cultural Myth
The cultural institutions, education, market, and distribution circuits that have been passed on to our generations and magnified are the things that we call “culturally safe mythologies.” These mythologies are the existing, mainstreamed, and standardized statements used by markets and curatorial platforms. Art Now and Contemporary art Museum explain a safe process of production and a promising successful career for the emergent artist. However, this is a cultural myth – an idea - that can be transmitted and is transmitted daily. This cultural myth is like a safe way of thinking that structures and validates rituals, laying the foundation for cultural models. These myths are strange vices of energy, bent and chaotic elements that support the artistic activity. In other words, our “resilient artistic community” is supported by a box that sits on top of a ball which at the same time, is stuck together with tape and pushes open the door that tightens the cable so that the signal is not interrupted. And like this, everything fits and functions…
(click for larger image)
Saturday, March 21 / Panel Discussion - Videos
7:00pm
ART Produce Gallery
3139 University Ave.
San Diego, CA
619.584.4448 or 619.200.8297
by Richard Gleaves
Evolutionary Origins of Art and Aesthetics
A Free Public Symposium
@ The Salk Institute
March 20, 2009, 1-5 pm
Sponsored by the Salk/UCSD Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA)
For more information contact:
Amy Patterson
(858) 246-0848
apatterson@ucsd.edu
by Kevin Freitas
"Flotsam and Jetsam" - Marisol Rendón
A little inside information is necessary. I chose the title “Faite comme d’habitude or the Culture of Me Me Me” for this essay as a direct reference to the usual suspects and typically unsurprising decisions that are made within the art world - San Diego included. This involves friends, colleagues, and golden opportunities that are not as far reaching as they seem or should be. “Faite comme d’habitude” roughly translates into “Do as you always do” and is taken from the French artist Ben, a colloquial junkie of sorts who would fill entire gallery spaces with these non-sensical expressions that contained a deeper meaning about society and its suspect practices. The culture of "Me Me Me" is an obvious reference to Brian Dick’s recent exhibit of the same name at Luis de Jesus Seminal Projects a few months back.
Doing as you always do I think, implies a certain apathy, a rather rote way of thinking without taking personal responsibility or action. I see some of that lack of responsibility in the quality and content of the artwork produced and shown in this city. I believe this burden rests entirely on the shoulders of the artists who are making the work and showing it in galleries. There is too much reliance these days on the gallery to carry content, meaning, and authority in a work of art. The faith an artist puts into the “original” idea for a work of art and the stubborn belief in its ability to communicate, grows disproportionally as the investment (time, money, materials, and the message) increases. Meaning, the farther an artist gets along with transforming an idea into something concretely visible as art, the more reluctant they are to alter it, recognize its faults, or let it fail and start over. Art’s power to intellectually or emotionally move someone, to inspire wonderment or even fascination is being circumvented by the over reliance on an artist’s original idea that is more often than not, poorly executed and presented in galleries that condone the work without questioning its relevancy or importance.
"Tejido de metal disñado a partir de la perseverancia de un ladrón hambriento" - Marisol Rendón
Daniel Ruanova’s sculpture at Seminal Projects is an example of what I’m talking about. And to some extent Marisol Rendón’s and Allison Wiese’s installation work currently on view at Southwestern College. Unfortunately for Allison Wiese (also a San Diego Art Prize winner), she could have improved upon a less than impressive installation of bales of hay arranged in a sort of impromptu amphitheater. Her work dominates the space with its silly presence that has no relation to Rendón’s subtler yet not much more appealing sculptures, contained in a space neither has transformed or muted in any way, that vie for equal attention and the public’s eye. The experience leaves the visitor with a less than polarizing aesthetic experience and the artists, too much space to fill. This is unfortunate.
At the age of 24, Marisol Rendón had already acquired the title of Specialist in Semiotics and Hermeneutics of Art from the National University of Columbia, Colombia where she was born and raised. She continues to impress us even now. Rendón has a Janis Kounellis “Arte Povera” sensibility and a flair for large installations. She can be as fastidious as Wolfgang Laib when she is in control of the space. For example, “Todas las calles de todos los pueblos conducen inexorablemente a la iglesia o al cementerio” (All the streets of all the towns lead inexorably to the Church or cemetery) is an installation containing park benches covered in top soil complete with church bells ringing in the background or “Mine Field”, charcoal covered burlap sacks sitting within a perfect partitioned field of black squares and lines intersecting to form a grid, proves Rendón’s Specialist degree and subsequent training in the arts, has served her very well.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Semiotics is “a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals especially with their function in both artificially constructed and natural languages”. You might not think of the common refrigerator as a symbol in any language we speak, though you could see it as a larger symbol, an icon of sorts that has a universal meaning and usage – keep food cold – that may not have the same use or meaning in another country as Rendón demonstrates with this newer body of work. If this is indeed the case, and a refrigerator only coincides within a vernacular particular to the U.S., then it could be transformed into an artificial language, a symbol or non-functional object if properly appropriated or re-interpreted. And if Rendón’s language is visual, than she would only need to find a component or device to express this meaning – an object’s specific and intended use vs. its use by say for example, a consumer - which she manages to do rather didactically by using the image of a refrigerator as a metaphor for what she explains is an existence of repeated illusions and “daily things or concepts with which we coexist or we have to coexist”. One of those “things” in Rendón’s world is a refrigerator. It might also be an albatross around her neck. One person’s ceiling is another person’s you might say.
Most of the works on view at both Noel-Baza and Southwestern College are large exquisite charcoal drawings of refrigerators in various states of functioning or abandonment: door slightly open or off, left on a beach, incased in a wall or shot full of bullet holes. The images are bathed in a chiaroscuro light that give them an air of mystery and religious fervor – a Divine light flooding through the crack of the door or the holes in its exterior. Like a ventriloquist, Rendón transfers her feelings, emotions and expressions onto the refrigerator, carrying it around as an integral and inseparable part of her being, from exhibit to exhibit. In fact, several of the sculptural works on view were modeled directly from the actual refrigerator that was peppered with buckshot, and now has been converted into a rather eerie and morbid upright coffin, lined in white silk with pillows to relax upon should you care to climb inside and close the door. All the puns to keep someone on ice aside, this is powerful work for its literalness and clear message.
Rendón will tell you the need for a refrigerator in Colombia is not a crucial necessity, as is true in most European countries today, given the abundance of fresh food and markets and a culture inclined to prepare what is only necessary for each day’s consumption. Compare our monstrous ice cube dispensing television equipped magnet attracting behemoths here in the States, and you’ll quickly realize the importance and stature the icebox has in our homes over theirs. A nagging question however remains, “Why a refrigerator?” Is it a more recognizable object than say a car, a T.V., or a microwave? Or is the refrigerator something particular or uniquely personal and symbolic to Rendón?
She might also point out that the refrigerator, though not always utile is considered a luxury item and status symbol for some Columbians. The problem occurs when the burden and functionality of these appliances outweighs the practicality and ease of using them. So, instead of throwing it out, one’s refrigerator is often converted into a storage unit not for food but for other important items such as clothes or any other item one needs to store. Rendón grew up witnessing this transformation in her own home.
I can see the importance of turning one object into something entirely foreign to its intended use as purely practical – nothing more nothing less. Certainly there is no lofty intent to make art in doing so. I’m not sure however, even symbolically, how an undesired coexistence influenced by a product’s introduction into a culture, can be re-contextualized and in the case of Rendón, turned into art no matter how personal a jest it is. The difficulty for me is that it winds up being totally anecdotal. I understand when she refers to those “daily things” and “concepts” that we are obliged to live with that can at any moment become something else: “need, illusion, self-deception, poverty or hopelessness”. I get that a refrigerator could potentially represent the human condition depending on how it was treated and utilized; recall the drawing with the shot-up refrigerator abandoned on the beach with clothes strewn about. However, I question the longevity of using such an idea to communicate effectively over and over again. Some older drawings from 2007 at Southwestern College of Las Vegas slot-machines hybridized into both a gambling instrument and an appliance makes me wonder if the idea hasn’t already gone bust.
It should be noted after viewing both Wiese’s and Rendón’s exhibit together, it is crucial galleries and museums start taking a larger pro-active role in the presentation of an artist’s work and the information it disseminates to the public for its understanding.
"Serenidad Gold" - Tania Alcala
Tania Alcala creates large colorful gestural works in the spirit of Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hoffman, Rothko and other modern abstract painters. There is a debt owed to these past greats, they have given us the tools and the eye to recognize the importance and value of their works. Alcala is no copy cat though; she understands the value of the lesson and tries to take her paintings to another level. I don’t always like how Alcala paints, it sometimes verges on the syrupy and carnival-esque with too many neon and pastel colors clashing on the surface. She’s bold and courageous with the paintbrush though, her ability to create swaths of rich layered color and texture, produce atmospheric clouds of light that blend and bleed into one another. It usually makes up for any miscues she might experience within the work. I am still unable to determine whether or not the final layers of urethane she applies to the finished paintings, makes them richer, meaning adds more visual depth, or somehow freezes them like the fly in the ice cube trick rendering them uniform and static.
I want to see more tension within the painting’s surface, areas that are better defined while letting other parts dissolve into nothingness – more energy, more contrast. Perhaps Alcala can add a hint of some underlying form or image that floats to the surface only to disappear back down, playing tricks on us as we peer down into the surface of the painting and the unknown that churns below. It might be time for Alcala to decide where her interest lies: on the surface taking the risking her work remains too overtly decorative – too glossy and eye catching – or will it be in the harmony of the color and forms that can produce stronger works of art. She’ll need to decide soon.
Robert Pincus, the San Diego Union Tribune art critic, comments on Matt Stallings paintings in a recent review of New Contemporaries II by saying, “They fit neatly within the Juxtapoz school”. He is of course, referring to the magazine of the same name and the genre style of its painters coined as “pop surrealist”. I can hear Breton turning over in his grave. I have recently read somewhere though, the magazine allegedly has the largest circulation of any art magazine in the United States. This should tell you something about its popularity and massive appeal to younger artists trying to break into the scene. Even San Diego is under the influence as evidenced by a current exhibit at Oceanside Museum of Art entitled LOWBROW Art: Nine San Diego Pop Surrealists of which three of its artists, Jason Sherry and Pamela Jaeger - last year’s Art Prize nominees and Jen Trute this year’s – are all involved. Kelly Hutchison aka Dark Vomit, would have been rightfully included in this exhibit as well - why wasn't he I ask.
"Mc-Ickey" "The Lies About Lying" "Land of Dreams" - Matt Stallings
Stallings work in an ironic twist of fate might be more representative of the art scene here and its art making practices, than any “contemporary art” being made in San Diego. What is frightening is how the Juxtapoz school of art has defined itself as a movement to be reckoned with. Highly exhibited and collected, it has done so by out running the contemporary art world’s grandiose vision of itself being the only true and valid art form. I don’t think the pop surrealists even care that they are not part of the brotherhood – contemporary art practices and theories be damned! It’s clear they have firmly established their network and chain of command with plenty of inductees waiting in line and plenty of opportunities to be had.
Stallings is an odd choice for the Art Prize for the reasons above. He has in some respects, replaced last year’s nominee Andy Howell, an older mature artist of the avant-garde type who has been defining the board skate culture and its artistic roots for over twenty years now. Stallings work doesn’t have anything to do with Howell’s inroads into defining the development of a Juxtapoz style or that of the magazine’s founders; it just means the movement is wildly popular and mainstream, allowing other artists like Stallings to make art without owing anything to its origins, quality or relevancy. Stallings work like many before him has been Fairey-ized with the benediction of its Pop ancestors. Stallings appropriation of pop culture, Walt Disney, and what appears to be a slew of deer killing beer drinking “good ol’ boys” imagery painted in a simple graphic illustrative style with a few blasts from the aerosol can, may not be paint by numbers, but it sure is a helluva lot of fun to look at. And I think this is the point. For that reason alone, Stallings work deserves more than a cursory glance – then you can move on.
Jen Trute can paint. The only other painter I’ve seen lately with a tad bit more artistic prowess than she has, is the young figurative painter Jesse Mockrin from UCSD. Wow good stuff. Trute oil paints using traditional techniques according to the artist, “on linen with multiple layers of glazing, scumbling and transparent optics … reminiscent of Old Master paintings”. Indeed, her piece entitled “The Drone’s Last Extraction” has all the makings of a Great Master work – sword, horn, shield, and Mother Nature but with one peculiar addition, a vampire bat. Trute is also considered a Pop Surrealist but is also quite capable of doing rather straight portraiture (Movers and Shakers exhibit, portrait of Dennis Paul Batt) and Rocky Horror Picture Show imagery filtered through a Dali-esque eye. But why? Not why paint, but why expend so much time and obvious heightened technique on such banal pictures?
"The Drone's Last Extraction" - Jen Trute
It would seem to me with the special gift Trute has, she could deliver on a more profound and personal imagery, a much better narrative than clichéd Barbie dolls, zombies, skeletons and portraying man’s hell-bent destruction of his environment. Pop surrealism is already toxic enough by itself. How about a little originality from time to time?
As part of the nominating committee of the San Diego Art Prize this year, and allowed one vote with no anointing power for the final selection, I was pleased my choice of artist Michele Guieu was respected. Guieu is far from being the introverted artist feverishly toiling away in the studio with little to no social skills and only stacked up paintings to show for her efforts. She is quite the opposite. Guieu possesses an enthusiasm and passion for anything art rarely seen these days by her peers; it is infectious, endearing and sometimes just plain over the top. This is good.
Her paintings paradoxically, are carefully controlled and produced, pared down to their most minimal appearance. Typically figurative/landscape works they are reduced to a shadow of themselves, flattened silhouettes that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle on the surface of the canvas. The problem that arises from time to time is that you need to complete a puzzle to enjoy its full beauty – any missing pieces are like a hole in the fabric of the painting. Completing this puzzle was the key to the most compelling and dynamic work I've seen yet by Guieu.
"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" - Michele Guieu
(click for larger image)
Working from photos of friends and family, Guieu removes from them as if she was peeling an onion, virtually any detail, texture, color, and recognizable image through a repetitive Photoshop process that creates polarized studies and amoeba like shapes of contrasting lights and darks. She then inserts these shadows into an equally bleached-out background that is sometimes made up of hand-stamped lettering recalling current world affairs or personal diary entries. The results are bold, graphic works subdued by a rather softened pastel palette Guieu uses to fill in the various forms and background.
The five works on view in New Contemporaries II have evolved for the better from Guieu’s typical and a bit formulaic treatment of limiting herself to black and one or two other colors. Instead we find in the new pieces, the surface of the painting coming alive as layers of color and image blend and collide, creating pockets of interest and susceptibility to failure as the artist searches for a cohesive image by relying on an artistic resolution as opposed to a computer the computer generated one. "Ricardo the Gardner" I believe has everything Guieu has to offer as an accomplished artist. My only request and hope is she stops using her family as subject matter and inspiration. It pushes the work into sappy clichéd images that remain too decorative and sentimental for my taste.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
-- From the poem “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus
Omar Pimienta as I mentioned in the beginning, could be the dark horse in this year’s NC2. I’m not sure you would immediately understand what Pimienta is up to, after seeing 12 identical scaled down replicas of the Statue of Liberty standing on a Pre-Columbian pyramid arranged neatly in the back of the gallery. But a video to the left of the installation is a crucial element to its comprehension as well as its subtle yet biting commentary. There’s an irony to be found in such expressions of liberty from a French sculptor Frederic Bartholdi, designer of the Statue of Liberty, and Tijuana-San Diego artist Pimienta, creator of “Lady of Libertad” that might have its origins in France’s own motto: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (a creed based on Napoleonic Code in accordance with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen). More importantly, what do these words mean: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity and how do you go about assuring every man, woman and child obtains those inalienable rights. Isn’t this why people flee oppressive doctrines or governments and seek out the new world or land whatever the case may be? Bartholdi imagined this possibility, world citizens I suppose from different cultures, laws, and traditions living harmoniously together; he even conceived and produced a “sketch of a Pre-Columbian pedestal for the statue’s base” in accordance to his vision of equality.
"Lady of Libertad" (detail) - Omar Pimienta
What then would inspire another artist in some bizarre six degrees of separation, to cast and replicate Bartholdi’s original drawing into actual statues, if it wasn’t to document and bring to our attention, a forgotten but no less tumultuous frontier that isn’t as friendly or welcoming perhaps to the huddled masses as is its Atlantic friend? Pimienta’s statues are cleverly I believe, “to scale” of the level of expectation the people of Mexico have of ever hoping to flee its teeming shores and make a better life for themselves in America.
"Lady of Libertad" (detail) - Omar Pimienta
Watching Pimienta’s video you’ll soon discover another reason for the cast plaster statues. It is a satirical yet poignant look at the history of Colonia Libertad, a border crossing town between Mexico and San Diego. It is also the story of the Libertarians, a very small group of family owned businesses that cast and sell plaster replicas of Hollywood icons and Disney cartoon characters like Snow White and then sell them to American tourists. Once a very profitable business in the sixties, there has been a steady decline over the decades in the number of manufacturers, as well as the types of replicas being sold; recent immigration and border control laws certainly have had an effect on the industry’s bottom line and commercial appeal. The video is also part info-commercial done up in a style promoting Mexican tourism in Colonia Libertad as well as promoting the latest Libertarian best-seller, the “Lady of Libertad,” accompanied by a series of documentary photos of Pimienta’s sculptures photographed in the streets, on the sidewalk, and in front of shops.
"Lady of Libertad" (detail) - Omar Pimienta
There is a defining moment in the video when Pimienta videos the storefronts along what I assume is the main drag in Libertad, á la Edward Ruscha, making a direct reference to the iconic work, “Every Building on the Sunset Strip” – a once depressed boulevard of despair. Meanwhile, as the video draws to a close, we hear several voice-overs of someone reading Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus” and other various recitals about oppression, the first immigrants to America, quotes from Bartholdi, and the Declaration of Independence. We listen as the video films actual plaster characters being poured and then painted, interspersed with images Pimienta’s statue captured in a wide-angled view along the US/Mexican border. It took me a while to realize that Pimienta might also be criticizing the commercial aspect of most galleries and what passes for art these days, by hocking bad Tijuana replicas in a border town of rich American art lovers. I wonder - LOL. Pimienta is by far one of the most refreshing and interesting artists I’ve seen to date. I thank him for his insight and compelling fresh work.
"Lady of Libertad" - Omar Pimienta
(click for larger image)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I would like to end with a few thoughts and to clarify my position on the open letter to Kim MacConnel. First, let me say anyone can stir the pot. To create a controversy or needless drama as some have called it, is far too easy for even the most naïve of individuals. I have no interest in these things or the extra attention. The real drama would be to continue ignoring a problem that works for some at the expense of others. A compromise was established by the San Diego Art Prize in good faith and in earnest to help those who thought they might need an out. They were the established artists who from the start had no confidence perhaps, in their younger protégés and wanted to be sure to have the final say. This is an enormous amount of power left in the hands of so few. But it worked flawlessly for two years without anyone actually needing to say no to a group of aspiring artists until Kim MacConnel right or wrong, did.
"The Sun Shines on Both Sides of this Line" - Gustabo Velasquez
By choosing Brian Dick and been given the loophole to do so, MacConnel confirms that we’re really not interested in art outside of the comforts of our home and friends, whether they be colleagues or our social network. This of course, is not surprising. It is the basis and foundation of the art world in recent decades and the law of supply and demand, regulated by those doing the offering. The focus on the quality of the work being produced these days has shifted; it is squarely put on the artist’s persona or the space doing the showing as proof of credibility. It surely should be the other way around. I’m not here to argue the merits of either one of these artists or the quality of their work. This can be hammered out some other time. What I am saying is to believe that one show, two artists, and the work on view is justification enough to exclude an even larger and broader potential lying dormant in 13 other artists is foolish and short-sighted.
The problem operating in this manner, especially in San Diego, is that it actually hurts the community and its artists more than it helps them. There are so few opportunities here to be written about as an artist let alone have a place to show. By choosing inside your own network, you do little to expand the base of potential artists that have yet to be seen. This is not the goal McConnel has in mind clearly, but it is one of the goals of the San Diego Art Prize to showcase emerging artists in a series of spotlight exhibitions. The mere fact that you have nominated these artists demonstrates that you have faith in their work. Logically, they would benefit more from the exposure than the established artists. Neither MacConnel nor Dick needs the extra show here in San Diego. They both have had extensive local, national and even international exhibits which have introduced their work to thousands. The whole point is to create opportunities for artists not limit them. The art scene here shouldn’t need to function within a musical chair framework or hierarchy.
Equally, I am absolutely astounded that there has been no reaction from the 13 artists involved in the New Contemporaries exhibit or this is the result of each artist’s fear of questioning a larger yet arbitrary hierarchy that is believed to have some control over their careers. I do hope this is not the case, and while I do not expect a revolution from them or to chop down the tree of support by which they are swinging, I can only conclude that their goals and intentions lie somewhere else. I would like to hear from them as their voice is the most important in building a stronger and viable artistic community. Their involvement should go beyond just exhibiting, by creating a framework of exhibition opportunities themselves, establish their own press and outlets, and create sales through promotion and materials – i.e. catalogs, brochures, documentation etc. A larger opportunity for freelance curators as was recently suggested to me would necessitate a willingness on the part of local galleries and museums to provide the infrastructure, but it could furnish an abundance of rich talent, ideas, and different ways of doing business and an opportunity to move things forward.
Moving things forward is what I want to do. I want to put the focus back on the artwork being produced here and talk about its endless meanings and interpretations. I want to hold myself and others responsible for the work we furnish everyday so that it is the best we can provide and not just for us alone. This responsibility is no longer contained to our assigned roles as artist, critic, collector, dealer, teacher et al. and should now encompass all these domains and the public into a larger collaboration where each one of these individuals provides the support needed. It is to the advantage of everyone involved. Unless of course, you like it the way it is.
by Naomi Nussbaum, Mario Torero, Cheryl Nickel, Synergy Art Foundation
To - Attendees of the December '08 Artspace Meeting
At last!
Attached is a link to the Survey for San Diego Artists and Arts Organizations. We are sending this to all who attended the Dec '08 Artspace presentation, and others who have expressed interest in the fate of the Arts in San Diego. Please forward this survey link to anyone you think may be interested. We hope to have 3,000 responses by deadline of April 15 '09.
If you are not an artist or a representative of an arts organization but wish to be involved or informed, please send a return email with your name and contact information. Iif you are interested in volunteering to help with the project , please let us know your area of interest. We will be organizing a "task force" to help with the many aspects to address - Finance, Politics, Research, Community, Philosophy, etc.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=DDEBzMDXs_2f0wf3yK_2fcYr8Q_3d_3d
Thank you for your support,
Naomi Nussbaum
Mario Torero
Cheryl Nickel
Synergy Art Foundation
Agitprop
Saturday, March 14
7 - 10pm
2837 University Avenue
San Diego, CA
Home to the MCANP
agitprop.events@gmail.com
619.384.7989
from the press release
Intimate Simulations / Simulaciones íntimas
Grand opening of Lui Velazquez 2.0
Saturday March 14th / Sabado 14 Marzo / 7-9pm
Featuring the work of:
Susy Bielak
Dream Addictive Lab
Elle Mehrmand
Zac Montanaro
Priscilla Lázaro Rabago
Co-curated by Katherine Sweetman, Micha Cárdenas and Felipe Zuñiga
Lui Velazquez
Calle José Maria Larroque #273.
2do Piso, Int. 6, Colonia Federal.
Tijuana, Baja California.
Mexico, C.P. 22 300
directions at: luivelazquez.com/directions
// Intimate Simulations //
In contemporary western society, we have developed an intimate relationship with our simulations. Both simulation and reenactment have become part of our daily lives, and we are familiar with their logics. Simulation is so deeply embedded in our thinking, that many of our most important decisions are made based on simulation, such as the dropping of bombs. Yet simple, personal decisions in our daily lives are also made on simulations, such as weather simulations. In our homes at night, we watch the news and see reenactments of crimes. Our political struggles are influenced by the reenactments of the lives of historical figures and moments. Scientists rely on the logic of simulation to inform their decisions and conclusions, making the most sacrosanct act of ‘proof’ in our society, based on a simulation of, for example, biological behaviors. Legal decisions depend on reenactments such as in the assassination of JFK. In Simulacra and Simulation Baudrillard quotes Ecclesiastes saying “the simulacrum is never what hides the truth– It is truth that hides the fact that there is none. the simulacrum is true.” Today this idea still holds great significance as new forms of simulation and reenactment work themselves into our most private moments.
Artists are directly engaging with the logics of simulation and reenactment, using their vernaculars and exploring their dimensions and implications. In this show, we are presenting a number of pieces which deeply engage with simulation and reenactment. In Suzy Bielak’s “Quake/Temblor”, a reenactment of the Mexico City earthquake of 1985, we witness a reenactment of a moment from her personal history, using the technologies of scientific simulation. Elle Mehrmand’s “w3eks..” simulates her memory of 3 weeks of her life, providing an intimate reliving of her experience. Priscilla Lázaro Rabago’s performance and video both contains and recreates a puppet show, creating a nested topology of copies and simulations of humanness. Zac Montanaro’s “Missing Priest Puts Focus on Cluster Ballooning” reenacts a political act of communication through low tech border disturbance gestures. While Dream Addictive’s Untitled_Mood is a simulator of a virtual mirror with a memory, in which the viewers intimtate experience of their own image in the mirror is fractured and doubled through the memory of the mirror itself. These pieces explore multiple trajectories of simulation and evoke its place, embedded in our lives, between us and ourselves.
More information about Lui Velazquez and past shows at luivelazquez.com
// Simulaciones íntimas //
En la sociedad occidental contemporánea hemos desarrollado una relación íntima con nuestras simulaciones. Tanto la simulación como la recreación se han convertido en parte de nuestra vida cotidiana, estamos familiarizados con su lógica.
La simulación está tan arraigada en nuestro pensamiento, que muchas de nuestras decisiones más importantes se toman basadas en la simulación, tales como el lanzamiento de bombas.
Aún las más simples decisiones personales en nuestra vida cotidiana dependen de las simulaciones; un ejemplo de ello es la influencia que tienen los pronósticos climáticos. En nuestros hogares por la noche, vemos las noticias y observamos las recreaciones de crímenes. Nuestra actividad política también está permeada por las re-elaboraciones tanto de momentos históricos como de la vida de personalidades emblematicas.
En nuestra sociedad, el acto más sagrado de la “prueba” o la “evidencia” está fundada en la simulación. Los científicos se basan en la lógica de la simulación para informar sobre sus decisiones, hallazgos y conclusiones, por ejemplo: las simulaciones acerca de los comportamientos biológicos.
En los Estados Unidos, las decisiones judiciales dependen de las reconstrucciones como en el caso del asesinato del presidente J.F.Kennedy. En el texto “Simulacra y simulación” de Baudrillard cita a Eclesiastes diciendo que “el simulacro no es nunca lo que oculta la verdad - Es la verdad, la que esconde el hecho de que no hay tal. El simulacro es lo verdadero”. Hoy vemos que esta idea todavía tiene peso.
Los artistas en esta exposición se involucran directamente con la lógica de la simulación y la recreación, utilizándolas como lenguajes y explorando sus dimensiones e implicaciones. En este programa, presentamos una serie de piezas que se relacionan profundamente con los conceptos de simulación y recreación. En la recreación del terremoto de 1985 que azotó a la Ciudad de México Suzy Bielak nos hace testigos de la re-elaboración de un momento de su historia personal en las que emplea las tecnologías de la simulación científica. La pieza “w3eks..” Elle Mehrmand simula la memoria de 3 semanas en su vida cotidiana, proporcionando una íntima experiencia del “volver a vivir”. El video y performance de Priscilla recrea un espectáculo de marionetas de sí misma, elaborando una topología de copias y simulaciones que pretenden capturar la “humanidad” de su persona. Zac Montanaro el “” recrea un acto político de comunicación a través del uso de gestos tecnólogicos “low-tech” implementados para la perturbar las fronte.
by Richard Gleaves
by Kevin Freitas
Daniel Ruanova - "FUCK OFF" (painting), "Untitled" from the FUCK OFF project (sculpture)
The San Diego Art Prize now into its third year has taken no one by surprise. The lack of enthusiasm may not be the organizer’s fault as much as how it is felt in the work of the 13 artists dubbed “emerging”. New Contemporaries II is the sequel to last year’s New Contemporaries exhibit which was held in the now defunct Simayspace Gallery downtown. In comparing the two exhibits, NC1 is far better and not for the quality of the work shown but for the dark horses that ran in it. Lael Corbin was one of those contenders, his much deserved win of the coveted Art Prize made it that much sweeter for us to savor.
There are no bets to be made or won in New Contemporaries II and the recent fiasco concerning Kim MacConnel’s arrogant choice of an artist outside this year’s nominated pool, has narrowed the odds even further. However, Omar Pimienta might be the one to watch, even though I sincerely doubt Richard Allen Morris would ever consider him as his running mate. More on Pimienta later.
So what is it about NC2 that makes it so peculiar? First, the works on view are markedly diverse (what you would expect in a group show) but strangely insular in their very narrow range of styles, mediums employed, and taking risks. Kimberly Tomney’s exquisitely beautiful aluminum amalgam and ink drawings on paper are like UFO’s that have landed in a freshly tilled row of artist farmland. I own one of Tomney’s pieces and they demand a certain amount of private contemplation and adequate light, of which they have neither, hanging amongst an installation by Marisol Rendon. Tomney’s use of motel and outdoor pool imagery just might have more to do with Southern California than a whole room of San Diego artists.
Kimberly Tomney - "Pool Lounge Chair"
Two other artists, David Adey and Yuransky, made choices to show work previously seen or hardly seen as is the case of Yuransky. He has a gallery filled with his “Zedist” style works in Normal Heights (more info here), but chose only to show a portrait of his daughter. Adey on the other hand, fresh from a solo exhibit at Luis De Jesus Seminal Projects a few months back, opted to show older works that would not be in conflict with De Jesus just blocks away from Noel-Baza. You may not think this is important enough to mention and I would argue their choices have not impacted the show’s outcome in any way, it does however, potentially limit these artist’s public appreciation and understanding of their working methodologies. They deserve better scrutiny. Like Tomney, both Adey and Yuransky have strong personal styles that may not tell us about our contemporary times but nonetheless make decisive works that are also strangely out of place in this exhibit. Another level of dedication to their craft puts these three artists, even though I’m not always a huge fan of Yuransky’s, into another category beyond what is being done by their contemporaries.
Yuransky - "Knitting Machine" (panel 2)
Finally, Tara Smith could learn something from Tania Alcala about color and surface when it comes to using large swaths of pigment in an open field of canvas. Alcala could also learn something from Smith that could give her paintings a more graphic, bold, and convincing look. But more on Alcala later. Smith for the most part, is not a very good painter. She is somewhat deft and technically proficient with watercolor, but like her large canvases, they remain stiff, clichéd illustrations of what the artist refers to as “political and social geographies that challenge our relationship to our environment”. This is manifested through juxtaposing recognizable landscape imagery, architecture, semi-diesel trucks, figures, soldiers and pretty pastel colors into a hodgepodge of conflicting scale and contrasts that add nothing to their interest and content. I was not convinced by her recent showing at the Cannon Gallery in Carlsbad nor am I now with this body of unenergetic painting.
Tara Smith - "When You Are Lost"
But then, things started to get interesting…
Daniel Ruanova - "Defend" (detail)
Daniel Ruanova and Gustabo Velasquez are both art prize nominees who also have a show together in the aforementioned Luis De Jesus Seminal Projects as part of a number of satellite exhibits, designed to market and promote the art prize and its artists throughout San Diego. Ruanova creates an interesting dilemma that has more to do with his work’s placement in the context of the two galleries, then any conceptual underpinnings and metaphors implied in his bold yet harmless manifesto titled “DEFEND: SECURITY - Constructs Of A People Fearing Society”. At Noel-Baza, we are greeted with an amputated metal sculpture that is a precursor to the larger one you’ll see at Seminal Projects. Next to this maquette is a very large painting emblazoned with the words “FUCK OFF” in bright red on top of a painted version of these prickly constructs in metal – actually, they’re sheet metal studs used in construction.
The word “fuck” has certainly lost its ferociousness over the decades - less offensive I doubt it - but it certainly is over used and over rated as an expression of venomous hatred against someone and for anything deemed cool. George Carlin’s classic and iconic skit from 1972, “The Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV,” is far more subversive, repugnant, and disturbing by what it says about society than it does about the words it uses. Something Ruanova will never be able to claim with this painting. Ruanova’s works in both galleries depend so much on context and a contrast of readings that they are unable to survive as individual works of art. It brings to mind my own personal experience of living in France and hearing the word fuck used abusively and out of any cultural context – I think we can acquaint the word with America – which was downright shocking and offensive to me. The word had nothing to do with France’s culture; it was simply imitating someone else’s. So is Ruanova’s painting, an imitation of outrage, violence, and fear presented in all its non-offensive quaintness. Being told to fuck off in a gallery is like being told to believe in God while attending Mass – both rather uneventful experiences.
Ruanova may have redeemed himself at Seminal Projects though with a large canvas painted in grays and blacks in an Op Art style of crystalline like shapes that form pyramid structures interlocked together, rhythmically propagating across the surface reminiscent of some of Ruscha’s best atmospheric word paintings. And indeed, perhaps Ruanova did take a page out of Ruscha’s play book by incorporating into the fractured surface a barely visible, camouflaged guardian of sorts, by painting the word SECURITY in the same manner as the painting’s background. It is a stunning work that is much more effective than his one-liner Fuck Off. However, Ruanova may have other problems that are made apparent in this show. His mammoth metal sculpture entitled “Defend” is nothing more than a parody, a jungle gym of a mess that would have been much more effective in the cramped quarters and low ceilings of Noel-Baza. It wouldn’t have fit, but it sure would have been menacing instead of comical.
Daniel Ruanova - "Security" (click for larger image)
Here’s why: From the press release:
Violence has long been part of our way of life and, by many accounts, is one of the most obvious attributes of contemporary American life. Daniel Ruanova’s new installation, DEFEND: SECURITY - Constructs Of A People Fearing Society, speaks to a growing sense of insecurity—the constant threat and fear of violence, a state of continual crisis—and the idea that violence in the 21st century has permeated our individual lives, psyche and everyday world to such a degree that it shapes not only the way we live but may even define who we are. It has become a part of the status quo, an integral—albeit, subversive—characteristic and component of our normal way of life. Tragically, it has also come to define the Mexican-American border experience, one of the world's most trafficked international boundaries that is at the center of the global debate on immigration, free trade, human smuggling, drug-trafficking, and cultural integration.
DEFEND invades and occupies the space with a ferocious power and impenetrable posture. It is both an explosion and an implosion—a geometry of chaos, which, taking the form of a monstrous, multi-spiked barricade (or bomb frozen in mid-detonation) is a metaphor for the destructive forces and the institutionalized violence that converge under pretense of law or tacit consensus—that pits law and order against anarchy and revolution.
Gustabo Velasquez unfortunately, may have been short changed in both galleries through no real fault of his own. This is too bad whether he chose the pieces or not - a bad curatorial eye perhaps but nonetheless, Velasquez’s work does not survive very well as individual pieces, part and parceled as they are from larger installations he's mounted. It puts too much unnecessary focus on individual pieces and what I would call their “rag doll” aesthetic of abandonment and lost/reunited memories watered down by their shoddy and sometime arbitrary union of materials. The pieces are just parts of a larger whole, they shouldn't have been turned into a representative product or for sale. However, it’s obvious the works themselves are purposely and cheaply made – scrap wood, plaster board, refuse, discarded objects and materials, pipes, suitcases and anything that he can get his hands on it seems. His exhibit entitled “Pecador y Santo” (Sinner & Saint) at Seminal does not fit together cohesively enough at all, to warrant the extra attention either. It's clear by some of the larger installations he has done in the past and that can be seen on his website, that Velasquez is striving for a broader aesthetic and encounter with the public. I would have gladly flip-flopped Ruanova’s sculpture into the smaller space and given the larger gallery to Velasquez’s more subtle and intuitive works.
Gustabo Velasquez - "Imaginary Line"
Fortunately, one work holds up very well. “Observe the Observer” is a quirky and whimsical assemblage of a magnifying glass positioned over a circle of shiny and reflective metal thumbtacks with a large phallic and menacing pipe sticking straight out just below it. Reflective materials are not lost on Velazquez and can be found throughout his work: from salvaged lane dividers, to cheap Ikea imitations of 70’s decorations employing multiple mirrored surfaces molded in plastic. However, if you want a closer inspection of your image reflected back at you from the surface of the tacks, you need to confront the pipe that is targeting your throat while you move in closer. The piece is wonderfully simple and deliciously perfect! It is disturbingly violent and erotic at the same time. Velasquez is an artist who I think has some originality and can hopefully, survive the emerging artist branding and escape the confines of sterile galleries.
Gustabo Velasquez - "Observe the Observer"
Gustabo Velasquez - "Observe the Observer" (detail)
Q: Is Pop Art easy art?
A: Yes, as opposed to one eminent critic's dictum that great art must necessarily be difficult art. Pop is instant art.
-- Robert Indiana, quoted in Art News, November 1963
I would hazard a guess that the self-proclaimed founder of the Pop Zen Institute, Keikichi Honna, would agree with Indiana. In Honna’s Pop Zen Manifesto he claims, “… my work, as visual analogy and pun, can be my own accelerator, in which I observe the effects of collision of different things, concepts, and images”. Nothing more, nothing less it seems if we take a look at what’s presented by Honna in New Contemporaries II. So what does it say about the work? Well, while not being incredibly interesting, it can comfortably move between styles and supports, certain techniques, creating happy accidents of sorts – a collision of things – and doesn’t need to take responsibility for its final outcome. It doesn’t matter if the work is good or bad, it just is. While a certain amount of experimentation and “what if” is healthy in any art making process, Honna comes off looking like a jokester through his visual analogies that end up being a Pop blender of styles from Indiana to Fairey, Peter Max, Warhol, ad nauseam. Can’t we be done with this type of work? Laziness or nothing to show for the Art Prize, a quick survey of his website demonstrates he is more sophisticated than he is showing us. Thank Buddha.
Keikichi Honna - "Eagle-Fly II"
to be continued...
by Richard Gleaves
Opening: Saturday March 7, 2009
6 - 10pm
Art of Framing Gallery
3333 Adams Avenue (Normal Heights)
San Diego, CA 92116
619.563.9770
Dear Kim MacConnel,I hope you don’t mind if I address you as Kim. I feel like I know you already so please allow me to do away with any pleasantries and formal servitudes. Discarding obligations and formality, rules and regulations if you will, seems oddly appropriate in writing this letter to you. It might be that we have something in common, something interdit. Ironically, breaking the rules has never been my forte. I’m too conservative, too scared generally. Maybe I lack a spine. Authority still impresses me. You impress me with your long artistic career, your days of “P & D” and subsequent successes. But this is not why I’m writing to you today. No, not in the least.
Well, here goes nothing. I’m sorry but you blew it Kim. Please excuse my frankness but you didn’t do the right thing. You threw away the one chance to prove to all of us you were different from the rest of the art world’s artists of unwavering and sometimes unflattering complacency. “Faite comme d’habitude” the French artist Ben used to say. And indeed you did. All you had to do was choose one artist, just one, from the 13 artists selected for this year’s San Diego Art Prize. Was it really that difficult a decision to make? So difficult a decision that you turned a blind eye on a group of artists, who like you, fell gleefully into the arms of the temptress of creativity with abandon and passion? Was it really that important to do the contrary for the love of God and Country and your art?
Were they not worthy of your jaundiced eye?
You were once a young artist, full of vim and vigor ready to conquer the world. At some point in your career, you were also emerging no? And how about now, did you grow up all alone without any recognition or hope? I don’t think so. But perhaps, the spoils of success came with a price. One that renders us callous, blind like moles, living in the darkness of our all too familiar surroundings that we no longer see the work we make, the good or evil we wage, or the opportunities we were given and lost. So Kim, without regard, without just a little compassion, without - c’mon a little love - and without your eyes to guide you, you felt about the room for the one thing that you knew the best – yourself, and couldn’t find the things that are much more important: desire, curiosity, passion, interest, camaraderie, trust, and 13 artists waiting in the wings.
Yes I know Brian Dick is a fine choice you’ll say. But an easy choice I reply, last year’s contender, but nonetheless a fine artist. I agree. But this is not the point. Even if we are given a magic wand to change the world, we do not change it to suit our liking. Having been given the “get out of jail” card as an option – just in case – shouldn’t I believe, have emboldened someone like you to use it. At least, any reasonable person would not have done so, given that they accepted to play the game with the intent of picking this year’s best player, or in this case the best artist from a group selected by the very same group of committees that selected you. Did you know I was one of those members? I regret but I did not choose you.
What now? What do you say to these artists who believed they had a chance to show with someone of your caliber? Who in good faith entered into this show with high expectations and quality work only to be snubbed? I pray your colleague; Richard Allen Morris, will not make the same error. How do you explain that you found nothing of interest in the show? If the work did not suit your needs, if at all possible, seems a rather weak excuse. I would strongly encourage you to explain why you made the choice you did with all the respect and courage you can muster. In doing so, you will have honored these artists as they have honored you, and given them back the dignity they deserve. It’s a tough spot you find yourself in; you can’t argue that there was a lack of artistic incompatibility/sensibility within the group with what you do, since there was plenty to choose from and as varied and diverse as your own work with lots of it frighteningly compatible, so I can only imagine there is another reason. There must be something else. It really isn’t about finding the best, the new or the emerging now is it? Of course not. Your reluctance justified or not, endangers the credibility and the integrity of the Art Prize, its members, supporters, selection process, volunteers and most importantly, its artists as well as the validity of your selection of Dick. It is a loophole that should be sewn shut forever.
Am I overreaching, assuming too much, am I unjust? Are my claims unfounded, unwarranted – yes, no, maybe – what difference does it make? You could have made a difference though had you wanted to. I’m sure come April, spring showers and all, your exhibit with Brian will be just fine. Will it make a difference, change the status quo, stop us from watching our full bellies rise and fall, will your show upset the apple cart – who knows. I hope so. But I have to wonder Kim, from one newly acquainted friend to another, imagine the difference you could have made in the lives of those 13 artists. Think about it. There really is no good reason for what you did.Sincerely,
Kevin Freitas
by KAI ONE
It really pisses me off when I’m running out of ideas and people around me are coming up with gold. Usually I would be bitter and spiteful but in this case the brain that came up with the idea belongs to my good buddy Andy.
I found myself jobless wandering the halls in the U of A art museum checking out some free entertainment. Engrossed in the apocalyptic 26 panels of the 15th century Altarpiece from Ciudad Rodrigo by Fernando Gallego and his cronies I was thought about how magnificent the series is and how there were no good ideas left for my generation of artists, when the stillness of the room was broken by a familiar voice in the uptight corridors of the museum. With a straight face Andy fleshed out the details of work of art he has been working on for the last few months.
The work involves constructing a giant box and then painting the inside of the box while in a “trance like state” and in total darkness. He will not view the work in the light of day until the rest of the world does; in a few days at a fundraiser for the U of A arts college. At first I was a little dumbfounded because I tend to prefer visceral over conceptual and assumed that it was his idea of a put on. The more I badgered him the more rigorously he defended his ideological viewpoints and stuck to the hypothesis that this process may be a way to remove the vision out of the equation and to truly allow “non-illusionistic painting” directly from the unconscious. I brought up the idea of blind painters and we discussed all the odd concepts in our quantum multiverse. Andy’s concept for this work and his whole oeuvre has obvious ties to surrealism, which is a perhaps the most underappreciated genre and philosophy in the burgeoning minds of many hungry young artists. The popular culture vultures have no problem breaking down and reforming existing dogmatic pictorial imagery and remixing and replacing existing works of art and design but it’s hard to get creative when all the good ideas are gone and it’s just a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy…
Even in my own art I sometimes feel stymied by the constant need to refine images in an illustrative form due to my graffiti upbringing. It sometimes feels like my brain is so overwhelmed by existing signs and logos that I cannot collate the vast web of convoluted semiotics within my own brain or the world. All the avant-garde artists that I kick it with and that I admire seem to realize the debt they owe to Warhol or Picasso, but what about Magritte and Duchamp? Why are we even making art at all? When Andy told me his idea I had been thinking a lot about the art of myself and my friends and how we fit into our own niche as well as how we fit in the ongoing dialogue of art history.
The influence of pop art cannot be denied, but what about our link with the Abstract Expressionists, the Dadaists, and the Surrealists, but we’re not high fructose pop surrealist lowbrow Justapoz rip-offs. We don’t paint super clean hundred hour detailed oil paintings of characters with huge anime eyes. If we do illegal art in the streets it’s going to be graffiti not fucking street art. So what is our style? We are attempting to convey deep feelings and esoteric emotions while at the same time invoking recognizable symbols and themes. The postmodern art critics lied to us when they said that Abstract Expressionism is diametrically opposed to Pop Art. In fact shit is all mashed and mixed up just like the real world. Sometimes things on TV seem more real than actual life. Sometimes all the advertisements we’ve been subjected to wash out our brains ability to create our own imagery. I remember a hearing about a survey where people could identify Mickey Mouse than the president. This doesn’t surprise me at all. So what do I call this style? Well if I was forced to pigeon hole it I think Popstract Subconcexpressionism sounds good. What do you think? A little douchey? A little pretentious?
Andy hooked up a lot of photos from his archive so good looking out, and make sure to watch this kid because he has way too much talent not to blow up.
P.S. I was over at Andy’s house for a BBQ a few nights ago and saw his box outside covered with a tarp to protect it from rain. It was like a present under the Christmas tree that you couldn’t unwrap. The suspense was eating me. I could see bits of paint peeking out through cracks and I asked Andy in earnest if he had peaked at his work. He replied that he hadn’t but I still don’t believe him. Perhaps some people have stronger willpower then others.
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