Look, See

7. Today in Iraq

 

 

 

7. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Two Iraqi civilians injured in car bomb attack on US convoy in Baghdad), 2005, HTML, 580 x 660 pixels

 

 

 

 

Studio visits

 

 

More NY studio visits:

Above: Popel Caumou from Amsterdam, showing her portfolio. She was staying at my B&B (or I was staying at her B&B). She makes tiny, flat maquettes with paper and clay of, typically, indoor scenes like a bed in an empty room, and lights and photographs them. Color, light, space, and a space evocative of an unknown narrative are important aspects of her work. (Arthouse, W. 28th St., New York, May 20, 2005, morning)

Above: Jenny Walty, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with her mobile sculptures. Her partner is Patrick May, who was on the New Museum panel last Tuesday evening. Jenny showed me around the Williamsburg area and we went to a few galleries. (Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York, May 20, 2005, afternoon)

The mobiles are fascinating and evocative: highly composed in terms of line, balance, and color, the found materials are used in ways that suggest themes and topics of political, social, sexual, and spiritual origin. The medium of a mobile for a serious art is surprising. The intersection of sculpture as collage and drawing is effective. The subject matter found in what at first appears to be crafty and, because of the use of found objects, arbitrary, instead holds meaning that is sharpened and deepened by a twist of misplaced and upended expectations.

Steve Karlik wrapping a painting in his Williamsburg, Brooklyn studio; there's a lot more work here than the camera can take in, which wouldn't do justice to any single work anyway. The paintings are reductive yet expressive, tactile, quiet, yet can suggest feelings of movement, soaring, placement, relationship, and deep space. (Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, May 20, 2005, evening)

 

 

 

 

6. Today in Iraq

 

 

 

6. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Car bomb kills two in Kirkuk), 2005, HTML, 340 x 740 pixels

 

 

 

 

Studio visits

 

 

There is absolutely no substitute for seeing art in the flesh, and it's even better, and a tremendous treat, when you get to see the work in the artist's studio. Sitting around, taking your time, talking, looking long and slow and looking at things that don't normally make their way out of the studio, getting the backstory- it's no better than that. In the past two days I've been treated to lengthy studio visits with George Rodart, Tom Moody, and Sharon Brant. Here are three quick shots; more to say later when it's not 2:45 a.m.

George Rodart (East Village, New York, May 18, 2005, late afternoon)

Tom Moody (Jersey City, May 19, 2005, late afternoon)

Sharon Brant (Jersey City, May 19, 2005, evening)

 

 

 

 

Weblog panel at New Museum

 

 

The Blogging and the Arts panel at the New Museum last Tuesday, May 17th, was a good event, interesting, great people, etc.

The enormous outline of my too-much-to-say talk is now available.

I've been running NY and have too many things in my head and too many things to say, so instead I'm going to take a breather and quote Joy Garnett's excellent capsule post from her weblog Newsgrist:

Last night's Blogging and the Arts Part 2 at the New Museum was fun. Nice to finally meet some veteran bloggers whom I admire, and good to see old bloggy/art pals. I offered an abbreviated version of the talk I gave in Sept '04 at Columbia (and later elsewhere) about that ol' frivolous copyright dispute hurled at me last year. Since I usually present this story in the context of open source culture, art and appropriation, fair use and copyright, survival skills for artists etc., it felt good to do so in light of the blog phenomenon--without which I would have had nothing much to tell in the first place. I put some nice screen shots together.

Liza followed with a condensed recap of her recent forays into the realm of activist blogging, and invited us to check out her new sister blogs and other new developments over at culturekitchen. She mentioned a relatively new  nonprofit org called CivicSpaceLabs.org that proffers an interesting model for building open source community software. She dashed in straight from their all-day Users Conference at The Tank in mid-town. That Liza's a busy one.

Next came Patrick May, who described the logic behind his experimental portfolio-cum-blog, hexane.org. He has written a program that publishes one's portfolio--just as it is organized on one's hard drive--as a blog while preserving things like categories. A clever publishing tool specifically conceived for visual artists, that allows them to avoid redundant tasks (like creating duplicate subdirectories and folders to upload images...yuck). And one ends up with not yet another static site, but a portfolio-blog that has feeds and can be aggregated. Very cool. Patrick is part of the artists' community OpenGround.

Last was Chris Ashley who took more time (it's nice being last), waxed philosophical about weblogs and their potential, and commented on how he (we) rely on weblogs as opposed to Art Mags for up-to-date information. Frankly, he could have gone longer and I would have been happy to keep listening. He also showed us some of his html work and its precursors, and talked about the contrary notion of art as an "open source" phenomenon. And yes, about how blogs function as test beds for artists and are part of a process-oriented mindset.

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 12:20 AM

5. Today in Iraq

 

 

 

5. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Iraqi police colonel assassinated in Baghdad), 2005, HTML, 340 x 740 pixels

 

 

 

 

ART)@*!WORK

 

 

New York, May 18, 2005:

Shots from ART!@*<>WORK May 2005, New York City -- Ignivomous, an arts organization dedicated to nurturing and developing new genres, art forms and mediums, together with 34 present ART!@*<>WORK, an art exhibition that explores the tension between the art of work and the work of art. The cubicles of a midtown Manhattan office space provide the backdrop for fifteen New York artists' pieces. Each artist has been allocated a cubicle to transform and exhibit projects inspired by work and work environments. Visitors will be invited to explore and interact with the space during "office hours." Cubicles will also be designated throughout the space for visitors to come and do their own work or eat their lunches.
Tom Moody, hard at work in his cubicle at "ART)@*!WORK." See Tom's weblog.
L: One of the curators, Elana Langer, hopes on the neighboring cube's work surface to rescue on of Irene Moon's pictures hanging by duct tape from... a duct. R: Cat Mazza's knitting machine for recreating "corporate logos with knitting, machines, and needlepoint."
L: Brian Alfred shows "a collage with a replication of all the tools used to make the work out of paper." R: I believe this is LoVid and Douglas Repetto, who "wired their cubicle with fans, motors, AV cables."
Elana Lange daydreams of a wood shingled bungalow, and realizes it à la Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters by hanging Post-its all over the cube. Correction: "Michelle Rosenbergâs reinvented her cubicle as a space for daydreaming."

See Lauren Cornell review at Rhizome

I saw this show on Tuesday late morning, the 17th, my first full day here. It's not far from where I'm staying, a small office suite on the 16th floor with maybe a dozen cubes. Each artist has a cube.

Most of the installations respond to the cube and the notion, situation, environment, drudgery, nightmarish idea of the office space, especially cubicles, where people hunker down in their spaces and try to maintain their little domain as a personal space, and also how the hours we spend at work are a drain that an attempt to compensate for with non-work work-- whether busy-work (organizing crap), outside work interests (like knitting, or art), or goofing off-- are a fight to survive the day that can be just plain boring or drive one positively mad.

Maybe half the installations are directly about work. Tom's performance-- being there on Tuesdays from 9-5 and from 12-6, is certainly about how an artist by spend time at work, although the pictures up on his cube wall would probably be kept away from the eyes of a supervisor.

I didn't take a picture of Tony Luib's installation, who, "transformed his cubicle into an abstract environment using office supplies." I knew that, for example, stacks of rubber thumbs, or latex fingertips, or whatever you call those things for fingers to make handling cash and other objects easier, just would't reproduce that well. Brian Alfred's table top of tools, books, and CDs all made of paper fooled my eye for half a minute, but then I saw they're roughly enough made that I shouldn't have been fooled.

Cat Mazza's installation actually seemed to me like a kind of more domestically located work brought to a place where it doesn't belong, and that actually her knitter belonged in a small spare bedroom with macrame on the wall, perhaps in a show called AT)@*!HOME in a house that's on the market. In that show Mazza's work would share a room with Jenny Walty, who I met Tuesday night, who makes mobiles, but not quite what you think that means.

 

 

 

 

A few art pics

 

 

New York, May 18, 2005:

This docent with a group of high school students at the Met looking at a Hopper was one of the best docents I've ever eavesdropped on. She was phenomenal- really good at asking open-ended questions which engaged the students in figuring out the : place and space of this painting; important structural and color elements; piecing together some history about fashion; and the viewer's position relative to the scene. It was a joy to listen in on someone who was this good, who spoke so directly to the students, had real enthusiasm and good energy, and to see these students all so totally engaged- they were eating from her hand.

Van Gogh's self portrait- truly an awesome little painting in an awesome room at the Met. I mean, it's an awesome little painting. In the sense that I was awed by it. I mean, it's just this little thing painted so directly, you can see Vincent's every move. This painting was a lesson in getting on with life, or something awesome like that. Screw N*ke, just do it.

New York, May 17, 2005:

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and so here is mine: this is the best painting at Damien Hirst's Gagosian show. Someone who can really paint worked on it: the surface is rich and telling, the color zings, the effects are wonderful.

As rough gemstones there's something in here more interesting than Hirst's stuff about death, dying, deterioration, abuse, whatever- something less cynical, less predictable, more beautiful. As gemstones, too, there is the idea of a commodity and all of that. And I'm probably overlooking something, there's probably some backtext: "these gemstones are all carcinogenic," or
these gemstones were all minded by a team of workers who were then immediately killed in a tunnel cave-in."

It's not a signature image, and so Hirst-free. If Richter painted one of his fuzzy realist paintings with the squeegees he uses for the "abstract" work then he might make this little, ahem, gem. Otherwise, this show is a moment in history, I can say I was there, and, uh, nice space there at the Gagosian Contemporary Museum in Chelsea.

 

 

 

 

4. Today in Iraq

 

 

 

4. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Iraqi army general assassinated in Baghdad), 2005, HTML, 560 x 440 pixels

 

 

 

 

3. Today in Iraq

 

 

3. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Two marines killed and 14 injured in bomb attack near the Syrian border), 2005, HTML, 540 x 500 pixels

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 09:53 PM

2. Today in Iraq

 

 

 

2. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Seventeen killed in car bomb attack in Shia market area in Baghdad), 2005, HTML, 360 x 680

Posted 9:17 EST

 

 

 

 

1. Today in Iraq

 

 

 

1. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Twelve killed in car bomb attack in central Baghdad), 2005, HTML, 380 x 640 pixels

 

Thanks to Tom Moody for the link