ART OR IDIOCY?

Bernese Nights

2011-09-12T08:30:00.006-05:00

I have been to Bern, Switzerland the past three summers for the Sommerakademie at the Zentrum Paul Klee, an intensive two-week residency for artists, curators, writers, academics and all of the above—“art people” as it were. First I attended as a Fellow in the Sommerakademie, returning as an Editor and Contributor to a book published by the Sommerakademie and as an Alumnus. The group of people affiliated with the Sommerakademie is kind of like a family that meets up in this Swiss city at the end of every summer for little bit of fun and formality. Each year it grows as new people become involved.

Bernese Nights. I have thought about that stupid title every year I’ve been in Bern. The idea being some sort of diaristic narrative, like George Orwell’s “Burmese Nights”. Maybe for no other reason than they sound similar. Every summer, late at night in Bern, what was originally a lame joke I made to annoy myself comes back to me and refuses to go away. What is a pretentious and clever title is also a device that suggests the content of the writing. Wandering around the empty stonemasonry that is Bern’s architecture I think, “I should totally write something called ‘Bernese Nights!’ That would be so stupid!” I’ve never read “Burmese Nights.” I did read, “Shooting an Elephant”, which is about being a policeman in Burma, though. And it is Burmese Days, not “nights.” I think I am thinking of Down and Out in Paris and London. Bern is neither Burma nor London or Paris. And rather than being down and out, which is pretty much how the other fifty weeks out of the year lived in Chicago have been, August in Bern is the only time I get to feel like my commitment to a life in the arts is amounting to much of anything. To be an international artist, how exciting! But also probably much less exciting than the life experiences of Eric Blair.

Bern is one endless picturesque vista, a quaint European city beautifully displaying its medieval origin. Paul Klee grew up here. Albert Einstein lived here. The Kunsthalle Bern was the site of Bernese native Harald Szeeman’s paradigm-shifting exhibition “When Attitudes Become Form.” The year prior he let Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrap the kunsthalle, their first building.

I like to say that Bern is a city founded by bears. Bern’s coat of arms is a fierce bear sporting enormous sword-like red claws and an equally red engorged penis. Medieval settlers came upon an area suitable for starting a village except there was a community bears already installed there. The King waged war on the bears and once victorious imprisoned the Bear King in a pit on the edge of town known as the Bärengraben. Nobody really knows how the Bern got its name. A popular tale tells of the Duke vowing to name the city after the first animal he killed on hunt. And since the 1440s there really has been a bear pit at east end of the Nydegg Bridge. Only now it is an historic site and the bears live in a natural habitat on the riverbank called Bärenpark. It is kind of odd then that this small old-world city is the capital of the cantons that make up the “Confoederatio Helvetica”.

When I mentioned this to someone in conversation, he replied, “Yes, but the economic capital is Zurich. And Geneva. And the cultural capital is split between Zurich and Basel.” Subjective somewhat I’m sure, but the opinion of a Swiss citizen nonetheless.
“But the actual power is here, right? The Bundeshaus is here.”
“It’s the political capital. But that’s a different kind of power.” Said as if to remind me that it is common knowledge that goes without saying that government is a showy and relatively meaningless formalism. It made me think about how this goes without saying in America, not because everyone realizes it as an essential truth, but because it is unapparent to most people. Most Americans think that government is the cause of, and solution to, all the nation’s problems. It should be bigger or smaller, more or less involved, stricter or more lenient; but never does the commanding role business plays come into question. Business, the economy, the marketplace, they are always spoken of as some sort of helpless thing that the government must regulate or free. This conception implies the government for better or worse is in control and the private sector is more like a wildlife habitat or a colony of bacteria. In reality, it seems apparent to me that in America, as in all Western countries, it is the private sector that dictates the agenda—and in a quite sentient, organized and efficient way. Capitalism is a form of government; the question of democracy, communism or dictatorship is secondary.

Europeans seem much more pragmatic than Americans, who are so idealistic. I feel much more optimistic about the future around Europeans because they seem to be generally more realistic about things: economic, social, cultural, whatever. But this can also lead to a kind of defeatism. Idealism is a quality that makes us Americans special; it’s what gave us the drive to achieve all the crazy awesome shit we’ve done. But Americans are now so idealistic about so many stupid, unrealistic things. It is also no longer positivist idealism, but a negative, destructive clinging to increasingly dogmatic ideals. In fact, the last person who said, “Yes we can,” has been vehemently opposed, attacked and undermined every step of the way. That is what commitment to ideals has become in America–a tunnel vision that is becoming ever more rigid, stubborn, unwilling and bitter. Most Americans spend a great deal of emotion and energy on socially conservative issues that don’t affect them personally while overlooking issues that actually do.

Europe has it’s own problems with rabid conservatism, but it is focused almost entirely on immigration (Muslims and non-whites). In America there are so many topics to choose from one can hardly pick. In addition to immigration and Muslims, we’ve got gay marriage, unions, abortion, taxes, government, that black guy in the White House. Guns. The Constitution. Christianity.

A far-right party in Switzerland funded by wealthy individuals and corporate backers has plastered the country with posters depicting a red field with a white cross over which trample the black silhouettes of countless feet. I thought it was an uncouth ironic sampling of a Nazi aesthetics to promote a youth oriented product or music festival until I read the message commanding me to STOP MASS IMMIGRATION!

The SVP's most adorable ad yet. They also have one with crows.

The Schweizerische Volkspartei (SVP) is the strongest party in Switzerland, and like its Republican and Tea Party comrades fears a weakened nation state, opposes government spending on social wellbeing and education, and has signed a "contract with the people". Like its "Red State" counterparts in the U.S. the SVP also favors decreased government spending despite having a large constituency of farmers that count on generous subsidies. This wave of increasingly vitriolic conservatism flooding the Western world is troubling but at least Europe has multiple parties. Let’s face it, in America the land of plenty we have to choose between Coke and Pepsi. And don’t even mention the Tea Party because it’s just Coke when they still made it with cocaine.

While they were present on my journey, I didn’t see any of those posters in Bern, nor were there demonstrations the way there is always something going on Washington D.C., adding to the understated almost secretive nature of the Swiss federal government.

So anyway, what would a “Bernese night” look like in a place like this, where a gorgeous river valley that cuts through the center of city and a nearby square features a relatively unassuming parliamentary palace? A more classic outing might entail eating fondue in a big group at one of the oldest restaurants in town. Being careful not to scrape through the growing crust of cheese at the bottom of the bowl with your fork, you end up with a solid crispy wafer of cheese and wine. It is a test of skill, collaboration and manners to see if you can produce the toasted a religieuse at the bottom of your pot. Then maybe you walk across one of the many bridges and look out into the darkness, listening to the rushing waters of the Aare hundreds of feet below.

For me, in town because of the Sommerakademie residency, every night is a social function of some sort with artists, curators and academics from around the world. People like to say how awful such things are. And receptions are indeed socially awkward but I also think they are great fun. And honestly, as an eager young artist, it’s quite exciting. It’s always fun because what starts as passed champagne and a few speeches always leads to a dinner that ends up a low-key dance party. Maybe Pipilotti Rist is on the dance floor shaking her bottom like a feisty child. And then later maybe Jan Verwoert ends the night playing his Sponge Bob guitar and singing “There Is A Light That Will Never Go Out.” After the annual dinner that marks the finale of the Sommerakademie, evening becomes night and a group of people winding around the quiet downtown looking for a bar open past 1am.

This year we ended up at Cuba Bar, right near the giant Zytglogge, an enormous mechanized clock complete with an astrological dial and animated figurines that strike gongs and pop in and out of doors. Cuba Bar sells fine Cuban cigars and has an enclosed glass room for smoking on a landing off the stairway down to the toilets. Pretty low key compared to last summer when we piled into a silver Mercedes station wagon driven by an overly enthusiastic Middle Eastern entrepreneur we somehow befriended.

Bern’s old city downtown is very small, but he drove us around in circles for a half hour wanting to take us to a great bar. He finally stopped a few blocks from where we met him. We all got out of the car and left him when his brother called to talk about a time-sensitive scheme to import a shipment of rugs. It was clear he had no idea about anything but he was very nice. Actually, he was nice in a threatening way almost. You always have to suspect people that willing and excited to be your friend. We wound up on the edge of town where the highway meets the train depot at Dead End. Behind a heavy black metal door like the entrance to an underworld hideout or a gulag prison cell, a pair of eyes peered out through a slit. The man that answered was tall, hairless, pail and skinny, like a snake with spider legs for fingers. He was a total sweetheart and everyone there was friendly. It was decorated with fiberglass stalactites and stalagmites, like a Chuck E. Cheese vampire cave for heroin addicts. This is the “seedy underbelly of Bern” which is made more bizarre given the sunny face of Bern.

When we left it was just me and a girl. The sky was turning into different kinds of blues. And as the sun woke up this little city we kissed in morning light.

Electric blue lights in doorways and alcoves make it impossible for junkies to find a vein and shoot up.

The only time I ever felt a little unsafe is when a group of us wandered into a real drug addict dive my first year there. In the bathroom a drunk old fuck invaded my personal space either wanting to make out or sell me some drugs. Or get some drugs off me. These prostitutes who were playing Pac-Man tried to get our attention. It was International Blue Velvet. A burned out woman tried to steal the last cigarette off the table as she stumbled by. I snatched it back and scolded her. I pointed at her with my finger and repeated a couple of times, “Nein!” We played some foosball before calling it a night. Outside was a city that literally does not have a scrap of litter to be found.

Near the Dead End there is a massive graffiti-covered squat beneath an overpass. It used to be a huge stable with a giant hall in the center where you could ride horses and take riding lessons. The complex is now a co-op of various groups that stage film screenings, music events, parties and there is probably a communist lending library.

It was night in a world that had ended in a nuclear apocalypse and we’d made it across wastelands to one of the last outposts where all the rebels, nomads, pirates and smugglers stop on their way to parts unknown. Standing sentry was a giant horse made of wood. In a surprising show of civility, the Trojan tree house horse had made it the entire summer without being torn apart by any of the revelers. It had been damaged once, but they got together and fixed it. There were probably open fires in oil drums or at least some torches and over a hundred of people massed. It was incredibly laid-back though because the squat is also just a place where you can go for a drink and sit outside biergarten style. We purchased our drinks and sat at one of the long wooden tables around the side of the fortress, first walking through a cobblestone passageway once traversed by horses and stable hands. In the sleeping medieval village above, the giant cuckoo clock in the towne centre rang a few soft midnight gongs.

Milestone

2011-07-15T17:08:00.004-05:00

Friday, July 15th marks the 30th birthday of our Founding Director & Chief Executive Officer for Blogging Operations. What other notable cultural icons share their birthdates with Erik Wenzel? Here is just a selection:

Inigo Jones, the first British architect of the modern era.

Rembrandt, who is like one of the best artists ever.

Walter Benjamin, who famously proved that photographs have no soul.

Jacques Derrida, inventor of the ironic air quote.

Ian Curtis, who was depressed.

Jan-Michael Vincent, Air Wolf.

Jesse The Body Ventura, who got killed by a Predator.

Adam Savage, Mythbuster.

Forest Whitaker, who feels things deeply.

ANIMALITY

2011-07-14T11:15:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow, Friday, July 15th, from 5:00pm—7:30pm is the reception for Animality curated by Zachary Cahill.
My video, Cat Painter (2009) is included in this exhibition.

Animality
DOVA temporary
5228 S Harper Ave, Chicago, IL 60615

On view through July 23rd, 2011
Gallery Hours: 12 – 5PM, Wednesday – Saturday

Contributors to the exhibition include: Marius Aleksa, Theresa Ganz, Sara Garth, David Giordano, Jacqueline Hendrickson, Pierre Huyghe, Samantha Jones, Stacee Kalmanovsky, Melanie Kassel, Hannah Leskosky, Jessie Mott, Jasmine Neal, Elle Opitz, Hannah Pae, Valentina Solano, Cassandra Troyan, Jan Verwoert, Erik Wenzel and May Yeung.

What is animal?

A sacramental deity, food, friend, or foe? Does the animal represent wild abandon or domesticated companionship? Is animality something (or someone) that is on the other side of humanity? Or: is it an element that wells up from the depths of humanity itself? Primordial and otherworldly, what is animal might be thought of as that which resists the symbolic chain of language, yet forms a link between sentient beings through varied modes of sensorial transactions and as such forms something of a peculiar kinship with the arts.

Animality, the exhibition, grew out of an interdisciplinary OPC seminar held this past spring that incorporated a series of visiting lecturers who discussed the subject of “the animal” in relation to their own work. The series included: artist, Pierre Huyghe; scientist, Dr. Roland Kays; media theorist & University of Chicago professor, W.J.T. Mitchell; and art critic, Jan Verwoert. Through the lecture series, discussions, films, and field trips seminar participants endeavored to question the orthodoxy that maintains the line separating humans from animals and the ways in which art itself figures into the debates surrounding animal life.

The exhibition is not intended as a didactic argument lodged in the field of animal studies, but is more of a messy thesis, one which is not hemmed in by the strictures of its own conceits, modestly seeking instead to comprehend something like an animal aesthetic. In keeping with its categorical blurriness or blurry categorizations (classroom as animal, exhibition as menagerie, education in/of the field), the show includes art and artists from beyond the territorial boundaries of the seminar that expand the definition of animality.

— Zachary Cahill

Animality: 2011 OPC Seminar & Exhibition, was made possible by the generous support of The University of Chicago Arts Council, the Department of Visual Arts, The Franke Institute for the Humanities, and the France Chicago Center.

Catch & Release

2011-07-08T14:04:00.006-05:00

Buttons passed out during Gallery Week in Berlin.

Last week ArtSlant published a discussion between critic Abraham Ritchie and myself on the detention and release of Ai Weiwei and its broader relevance to current events. What sparked the debate were remarks made by Dan Keegan, the Director of the Milwaukee Art Museum as to the uselessness of protests and online petitions. This comes at a time when MAM has opened an exhibition of 18th century art and decorative objects from the Forbidden City in direct cooperation with the Chinese government. Thusly it has been foregrounded in the art world’s soul searching on issues of censorship, free speech and the politics of cultural institutions in the 21st Century. Keegan had declined all interviews on the subject but responded to reporters on one occasion when he stated, “We don’t do protests…I would say very emphatically that we should not protest ever.”

Meanwhile, the infamous Change.org petition for Ai’s release was started by the Guggenheim and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art staged a 24-hour vigil. On Tuesday, July 12th the Walker Art Center is staging an event inspired by Ai’s 1001 Qing Dynasty chairs calling attention the repression of artistic freedom. And of course representing the other side of the spectrum, the Smithsonian National Portrait gallery has engaged in that very type of repression.

Our initial exchange on ArtSlant is HERE.

The discussion continues below.

ERIK WENZEL: I think I need to open up a little more about my personal reasons for what I said. Such as I feel totally guilty because I know that my interest will fade, and I will forget all those kept prisoner. It's just not possible to maintain a constant state of outrage. (Which seems like it is, or should be, an Onion headline: "Nation's Liberals, Conservatives, Wary of Maintaining Perpetual State of Righteous Indignation"). Also, I am not saying petitions shouldn't be circulated or vinyl letters shouldn't be affixed to Tate Moderns, it just seemed kind of silly. Every time I thought of signing the petition, I felt stupid. I asked myself, "What? Because he's a famous artist–and one whose work I like–is that why we art world people are now speaking up? Because he's 'one of ours'?" I just felt like a phony, I didn't have a good answer. I think you make really strong points, and that indeed the petition and other art world denouncements played a role. But it was a combined effort. And ultimately one that may well have played into the Chinese Government's hands. I remember thinking it's almost like a reverse-engineered act of benevolence: Release a high profile dissenter, look good and appear to listen to international calls for free speech. To begin: find a high-profile dissenter, detain them and wait for the attention. It's kind of bone-headed, but they seem like they are trying to play both good cop and bad cop and expecting us not to notice.

Obviously they were trying to silence Ai Weiwei a number of ways and finally took a drastic measure that brought a lot of negative attention. But they are still pretending to be good cops and hoping we'll buy it. A classic example of "saving face."

When I was speaking of ineffectiveness, I was particularly thinking of all the small-scale demonstrations I witnessed throughout the invasion of Iraq and during the Bush Administration. It seemed like little to no good was done. The consistent opposition from many different sources had no chilling effect on the administration whatsoever. This carries over into today: both Democrats and Republicans pay lip service to the voice of the people, but they pretty much just do as they please so long as corporate and upper class interests are met.

The internet (as is the case with everything) appears to be the most viable route. But I always wonder what the efficacy is of all the online petitions I sign. Everyday there is a new one for animal welfare, women's issues, disapproval of something political and net neutrality. I just wonder, "What's the point? Does this ever do any good or are we all just signing these things to make ourselves feel better while putting in minimum effort?" At least in the case of Ai Weiwei, a quantifiable outcome was reached.

Photo: Gao Yaun via ArtInfo

ABRAHAM RITCHIE: I think you are right to question the efficacy of online petitions, and you shouldn't feel forced to sign it if your heart isn't in it. To be quite honest, just yesterday I had to unsubscribe myself from Change.org's email list because I kept on getting too many notices about new petitions to sign, it's an unending battle. I'm sorry if Trader Joe's throws out its food rather than giving it to homeless and food shelters, but that's just a fact of capitalism, and it's not my fight. This is how we operate in a capitalistic democracy--you gather together a large constituency (a market) to agitate for something better (a new product). There are some of us who will tire of the constant friction once we get the main thing we've wanted and that's not wrong, it just is.

But I really have to doubt that the Ai Weiwei debacle played into the PRC's hands in any way, though. There's a renewed international call for the expansion of human rights in China as we've seen how tenuous they really are there. You know if Big Government.com, the tea party activist site from Andrew Breitbart, is bashing China on ethics than something is really noticeably wrong.

The important thing that is usually forgotten soon after someone is released is that human rights are always tenuous there; they just overreached this time by arresting someone who is too famous. Now people are starting to remember that they regularly arrest those who are not protected by their celebrity. I think you are right that by releasing Ai the government expected praise, but really all they got was a begrudging acknowledgment that they had finally done the right thing. Never mind that the PRC claims Ai owes them $1.85 million in "tax."

What the conversation should move to is the new reality is that Ai is "free" but he is really only half-free due to the conditions of his release. And this is a concept and reality that’s hard for the media to interest a broad audience in since on the face of it he is "free." Ai's freedom of speech has been essentially nixed, he's not allowed to talk to media about anything meaningful, he's not allowed to tweet or blog, his public voice has essentially been eliminated and that's a travesty not too many media outlets are picking up on. Additionally, Ai's freedom of travel has been significantly curtailed; he's not allowed to leave the country, which is a heavy burden for an artist of his stature. He cannot even leave Beijing without permission. Ai is now so far in debt to China that his labor essentially belongs to the government. So the terms of his bail seem to limit his art practice in very significant ways, not to mention the ordeal of the arrest itself and the fact that the Big Brother government could send him back there at any time for no real reason at all.

It seems the next question to ask is will and how will Ai's art change after this event? I hope he continues the work he has been doing but it seems the government is set on preventing precisely that. In this way the PRC can censor art before it’s even made by enforcing Ai into a regimen of self-surveillance.

Final Pilgrimage to Mt. Parnassus

2011-07-06T21:59:00.004-05:00

In remembrance of Cy Twombly (1928 - 2011) I've posted these images taken at the Hamburger Banhof in the Summer of 2009 where permanent collection works were pared with portrait busts and plaster copies of masterworks from the Staatliche Museen in Berlin.

2011-07-03T12:58:00.004-05:00

"One of the interesting things one learns in observing catastrophic events in developed countries is that the human toll can be quite catastrophic but economies are fairly robust and usually come back after a couple of months."

– David Weinstein, Associate Director of Research at the Center on Japanese Economy at the Columbia Business School

Head Building

2011-06-15T16:04:00.006-05:00

Erik Wenzel • Free to Choose • 2010 • concept drawing for unrealized project originally commissioned for the The University of Chicago's Festival of the Arts

An unrealized project of my is included in the archive of the Agency of Unrealized Projects which will be part of a group of projects organized by e-flux taking place at the Kopfbau in Basel this week.

June 15 - 18
11:00 - 19:00
Updates & directions on twitter

e-flux has been invited to develop a special project for the Kopfbau (head building)—the oldest building in the Messeplatz complex, slated for demolition later this year. In response to this invitation, artists Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle developed a constellation of projects situated somewhere between exhibitions of art and the concrete forms of sociality encountered in everyday life. Conceived as an independent universe with its own bar, hotel, shops, admissions, and so forth, this project operates in parallel, and as the inverse to the neighboring art fair: operating during alternative hours and in surprising and often paradoxical ways, and ranging in scope from the educational to playfully predatory and mercantile. Its component parts draw on a wide circle of institutions, artists, curators, and writers who have been involved with various e-flux projects over the past several years and comprise seven discrete projects, including:

Basel Pawnshop—both an exhibition and an artwork in itself, Basel Pawnshop mediates the complex choreography of art and money. As a fully functional pawnshop, it has an inventory of over a hundred art works, some made specifically for this occasion. Artists who have contributed to the Pawnshop include: Armando Andrade Tudela, Michel Auder, Michael Baers, Luis Berríos Negrón, Marc Bijl, Andrea Büttner, Annika Eriksson, Peter Friedl, Joseph Grigely, K8 Hardy, Christoph Keller, Annika Larsson, Kenneth Lum, Gustav Metzger, Darius Miksys, Gean Moreno, Bernardo Ortiz, Olivia Plender, Julia Scher, Tino Sehgal, Nedko Solakov, Eric Stephany, Jalal Toufic, Bik Van der Pol and Marion Von Osten among others.

A Guiding Light—Liam Gillick and Anton Vidokle stage and film Episode 2 of A Guiding Light, originally commissioned by the Shanghai Biennial and produced by New York's Performa in 2010. The project combines a theoretical text by Franco Berardi (Bifo) with the structural analysis of a1952 episode of the television soap opera, Guiding Light, to stage a production that shifts between analysis and self-critique. Captured by several cameras, the resulting film preserves the soap opera's signature stage blocking and repeated cuts, while highlighting the differences and difficulties encountered when attempting to capture the potential of art today.

Agency of Unrealized Projects (AUP)—a temporary office that exhibits a growing archive of several hundred unrealized art projects, comprising contributions received through an open call, as well those originally collated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and presented in the book Unbuilt Roads (1993). AUP presents works by Judith Barry, Heman Chong, Jimmie Durham, Yona Friedman, Philippe Parreno and many others.

Guesthouse Basel—a free, five-day residency for young artists, curators, critics and gallerists, organized in collaboration with Städelschule, Frankfurt, inspired by the legendary Gasthof event that took place in Frankfurt in 2004, during which Rirkrit Tiravanija and Daniel Birnbaum radically transformed the art academy into a free hotel for numerous young artists visiting Documenta in Kassel.

Time/Bank Currency Exchange—a Time/Bank outpost where time currency (designed by Lawrence Weiner) can be obtained in exchange for other currencies, biological time, ideas, services and commodities. Time/Bank proposes an alternative economy in which individuals and groups in the cultural fields can trade time, skills and commodities to get things done while circumventing money. www.e-flux.com/timebank

The Book Coop: e-flux journal & network—features art books, magazines and other types of publications from members of the journal network, a group of around 200 international art centers, art book stores and independent publishers that self-publish and distribute the print-on-demand e-flux journal.

Salon Aleman (the return!)—a rooftop bar inspired by the original Salon Aleman, the basement bar that operated from 2006–2007 in the basement of Unitednationsplaza, Berlin.

Special events:
Agency of Unrealized Projects—Hans Ulrich Obrist in conversation with special guests. Wednesday 15th, and Saturday 18th, 2pm, Agency of Unrealized Projects conversation room.

Salon Aleman (the return!)— Wednesday 15th to Saturday 18th, open to the public from 7-10pm. From 11-5am guests must RSVP to salonaleman@e-flux.com

Performance by Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai)—Wednesday 15th, 11pm, Room Luzern.

La Stampa concert—simple-drum-bass-guitar-rock-outfit from Berlin do high-energy pop songs. Featuring Jons Vukorep, Jan Verwoert and Jörg Heiser. Friday 17th, 11pm, Room Luzern.

Book launch—presentation of the newest e-flux journal reader, Are You Working Too Much? With talks by Lars Bang Larsen and Brian Kuan Wood. Friday 17th, 5pm, Book Coop.

“Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends”—an intimate Champagne salon-style gathering for writers, artists and gallerists, organized by Vivian Rehberg following her famous “Champagne Fridays” in Paris. Friday 17th, 7–9pm.

Art+Argument: Art fairs are today’s Grand Tour?—organized by Aoife Rosenmeyer, with Karen Archey, Adam Kleinman, Kilian Ruthemann and Juliane Von Herz. Saturday 18th, 4.30–6pm, Book Coop.

Impromptu presentations, happenings, conversations, etc.—organized by guests of the Guesthouse (specific content and locations to be confirmed closer to the events).

Ten for Ten: Ben Meisner

2011-03-01T23:27:00.028-06:00

2010 is over but we are still taking stock as we gingerly march into the new year. Art or Idiocy? has invited ten guests to each contribute a list of ten items. Earlier contributors include Steve Ruiz, Danielle Paz, Nicole Mauser, Thea Liberty Nichols, Marilyn Volkman, Anthony Stepter and Uriel Orlow.

Ben Meisner is an artist and co-founder of the project space GENERATOR. He spends most of his time in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Marfa, Texas. Meisner previously wrote for Art or Idiocy? about his experience meeting Agnes Martin.

Ten for 2010 in no particular order:

Blinky Palermo at LACMA

- Blinky Palermo at LACMA: It was nice to see a large group of Palermo works without having to travel to Europe. As much as I like the large series that DIA has in Beacon, I’ve always been a bigger fan of the funky shaped paintings, sticks, and cloth pieces. This show delivered.

- John McCracken Sketchbook: Though this book was technically released in 2008 (and the original sketchbook in “Sketchbook” is from the mid-1960’s), I finally bought my copy in 2010. This amazing facsimile document puts you inside McCracken’s head as he moved from his icon-type paintings to his classic planks and sculptures. McCracken continues to use the old sketchbook as a reference and it is nice to see the notations he has added to the original sketches over the years. Highlights include; lightning bolts around the first drawing of a leaning plank and comments like “s-h-i-t” and “blah” in reference to earlier notes and drawings.

- Charles Burchfield at the Whitney: For some reason I had always assumed that Burchfield’s psychedelic landscapes developed after his ashcan-y depression-era period. The show at the Whitney set me straight on that one with an entire room dedicated to the early vibratory landscapes of 1915-1917. Starting around the 40’s Burchfield went back and added on to some of those paintings, carefully splicing new sheets of paper onto the originals and creating masterpieces at the scale of Abstract Expressionist canvases. Also revelatory were the extensive archives Burchfield established to document the progression of each painting.

- GENERATOR: This past summer David Leigh and I established a new project space called GENERATOR in downtown Albuquerque. The space is small. There is no electricity or running water. The outside is painted with a mural owned by the city that we can’t touch. Our programming thus far has been (in my opinion) awesome.
www.generatorexhibitions.com

- Leslie Wilkes: This year Wilkes unpacked her dense, psychedelic gouaches expanding them into a series of large-scale oil paintings. My weekly email updates of her progress are at times heartbreaking (with subject lines reading “going, going, gone” and “Wiped-Out”), but the finished paintings are worth her struggle. Wilkes plays with pattern and nuanced color with the elegance of a 50’s Karl Benjamin and the funk of the Hairy Who.

Left: Charles Burchfield • Right: Leslie Wilkes' studio

- Steve Roden: I met Steve while he was an Artist in Residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa. Our shared interest in Frederick Hammersley and Myron Stout started a great dialog that has continued through the year. Roden’s recent 20-year survey at the Pasadena Armory has helped shine some light on his multi-faceted oeuvre. He is also a prolific writer on his blog Airform Archives, and following our visit to the Palermo show he wrote an insightful imagined dialogue between two artworks for LACAMA’s UNFRAMED blog.

- Sam Chung: Watch out for this guy. Chung pushes porcelain to new heights. His recent exploration of the properties of China paints and his rigor in relating the shape of the vessel to his applied lines and colors puts him way out in front in a field I know nothing about.

Top: Steve Roden • Bottom: Sam Chung's "Cloud Vase" • More Pictures

- Since it was quickly going out of print, I finally bought the monster 560-page catalog for the John Wesley retrospective at Fondazione Prada. The book gives a thorough year-by-year account of his activities and development via writings, quotes, reviews, and an “I don’t care if the image is pixilated we need it in the book for the record” attitude.

- Gamblin Fast-Matte: It is oil paint. It dries fast (real fast) and it is matte.

- Completion of Judd Concrete in-painting: For approximately 9 months I stood outside in the scorching heat, blazing sun, howling wind, and freezing cold while I color-matched new concrete patches to the original concrete surface of Donald Judd’s kilometer long sculptural epic at the Chinati Foundation. There was something oddly existential about flecking in faux aggregate along the edges of Judd’s cast concrete panels with a toothbrush as the antelope quietly grazed around my bicycle.

Ten for Ten: Uriel Orlow

2011-02-06T20:22:00.007-06:00

2010 is over but we are still taking stock as we gingerly march into the new year. Art or Idiocy? has invited ten guests to each contribute a list of ten items Earlier contributors include Steve Ruiz, Danielle Paz, Nicole Mauser, Thea Liberty Nichols, Marilyn Volkman and Anthony Stepter.

Uriel Orlow is an artist based in London.
More information on what he's up to can be found at www.urielorlow.net

The obsession with the new is of course old hat. A lot of the most moving, enjoyable or interesting experiences last year stemmed from re-visiting places, books, artworks, histories and ideas. So here are some of my rediscoveries from 2010 in no particular order:

* The tombs of Ti, Saqqara, Egypt (5th dynasty, around 2500 BC); forget the over-photographed pyramids at Giza - this tomb a bit further down the valley of kings, north of the stepped pyramid of Saqqara is an entire palace below the desert floor, complete with ornately decorated living quarters, food chambers and kitchen - all for the dead.

* Capital by Marx (1867), courtesy Althusser's and Balibar's excellent Reading Capital. Still relevant food for thought (and revolutions).

* Stripsody by Cathy Berberian (1966); I was reminded of this masterful and fun vocal comic strip by the work of a final year student at the art school in Geneva.

* Fassbinder's Fear Eats the Soul (1974), was as dark and unredemptive as when I watched it the first time.

* The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), recited from memory by Monica Ross in Mikhail Karikis' opera Xenon. Hearing it like this brings home how much of it has not yet been achieved http://www.actsofmemory.net/

* The missing people from Lebanon (1975-1991); presented in an exhibition inside the old, domed cinema in the centre of Beirut organised by UMAM to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the beginning of the civil war in Lebanon; rows and rows of donated photographs by family members of the disappeared. http://www.umam-dr.org/

* Avant-garde, neo-minimalist Japanese fashion from the last 30 years (1980-2010) by the likes of Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Junya Watanabe in the Barbican show "Future Beauty"

* It'll End in Tears / This Mortal Coil (1984) with Elizabeth Frazer's haunting vocals (amongst the top most played on my iTunes)

* The fantastic century-old Kunsthaus Zürich (built in 1910) and the refreshingly old-fashioned display of its collection

* The joke of the elephant and the little mouse (?)

Non-Objective Reporting

2011-01-28T16:19:00.007-06:00

Unfortunately Art or Idiocy? has been on an unplanned hiatus. Coming up we will be continuing our Ten for Ten series with some more great contributions including lists from Ben Meisner and Uriel Orlow. In the meantime, enjoy this gem by Kasimir Malevich. Today the Art Institute announced that it acquired the Suprematist masterpiece from the supreme art dealer Larry Gagosian, who was acting on behalf of Malevich's heirs.

Kazimir Malevich • Painterly Realism of a Football Player--Color Masses in the 4th Dimension
1915 • oil on canvas • ß27-5/8 x 17-5/16 in. (70.2 x 44.1 cm)
Through prior gift of Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection,
Art Institute of Chicago Acquisition Funds, 2011.1

For more details, read the in-depth press release.

Ten for Ten: Anthony Stepter

2011-01-10T01:02:00.006-06:00

For the end of 2010, Art or Idiocy? has invited ten guests to each contribute a list of ten items. Join us each week as a new list is published. Earlier contributors include Steve Ruiz, Danielle Paz, Nicole Mauser, Thea Liberty Nichols and Marilyn Volkman.

Anthony D. Stepter is an arts administrator. He moved to Chicago from Washington, DC in March of 2010. He is originally from Grand Rapids, MI.

I’ve met quite a lot of really great people involved with the arts since moving to Chicago. Unfortunately for them, my enthusiasm for meeting new people often results in awkward situations. This list could have been so much longer.

Top Ten Awkward Art World Introductions of 2010

Rowley Kennerk - I went to high school with Rowley's wife, and have been hearing about him for years. One day a friend said that she wanted to stop by one of her favorite galleries. A few minutes later I found myself standing in Rowley’s gallery, mumbling "you don't know me, but I know your wife and I've known of you for years." Instead of pretending the gallery was closed in order to get this weirdo out of his gallery (which is what I would have done), Rowley showed me around the place and we talked about music for a while. Later, because he knew I didn't have a job when I moved to Chicago and because he's one of the nicest guys in town, he offered to let me sit in the gallery on a couple of occasions when he couldn't be there during open hours.

Shannon Stratton - I ended up sitting next to Shannon on a bus after an opening one day so I introduced myself. As soon as she mentioned that she was Canadian, I excitedly told her how much I love Montreal. It was a true statement, but also sort of like meeting someone from Mexico and telling them how much you love Cancun. She totally pointed this out. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be allowed in threewalls anymore (they have a strict "No CTA Creepers" policy), thankfully I've been back a dozen times for openings, the amazing public culture lecture series, and of course the best parties in town!

Nato Thompson - While on a break from the sessions at Open Engagement in Portland this spring, a group of us were trying to decide what to do for the next 30 minutes when some guy in cowboy boots got really excited and started leading the whole group across the campus. When we got to where he was taking us, we found ourselves watching a Live Action Role-Playing (LARP) game going on in the park. Later I found out they guy in the cowboy boots was Nato Thompson. I think Nato might be the best, most innovative and thoughtful arts administrator in the country right now. He also apparently gets really excited by grown-ups casting fake spells on each other and brandishing swords covered in duct tape.

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle - He was speaking to a group of teachers at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I was helping set up the room for the presentation. I forget what the exact problem was, but we needed to block some light so he could use the projector. Iñigo came up with a solution: He’d tear the top off of a box and cover the intrusive light source. Since I was still eating the pizza the boxed contained, I thought he might be joking. He wasn’t.

James Elkins - Again at SAIC, I was prepping a room for a meeting and basically the whole 6th floor of the building smelled like butt. James Elkins came up to go to his office and asked me if I knew what the smell was. I had to simultaneously play it cool and pretend that I wasn't in the middle of reading two of his books and also convince him that it wasn't me or my colleagues that had made the whole floor smell terrible. What's the postmodern take on "He who smelt it dealt it?"

K8 Hardy - Like a pair of 12 year-old boys at spring training me and my friend Aimee ran up to K8 Hardy after a lecture and demanded that she take a photo with us. Since we are not 12 year-old boys and this was the Great Hall at Cooper Union and not spring training, K8 looked appropriately weirded out. She did take a photo with us though!

This is Aimee Buyea (runs SugarCity in Buffalo, NY), K8 Hardy, and me.

Theaster Gates - At the threewalls spring auction, I won dinner at Theaster Gates’ house. This was easily one of the best nights I’ve had since moving to Chicago. This one was actually more awesome than awkward.

Anne Elizabeth Moore and Fereshteh Toosi - I met both of them separately, but in both cases when I introduced myself, I totally pretended I wasn’t already following them on Twitter. #OMG!I’mYourBiggestFan!

Erik Wenzel - Long before I met Erik, I heard about his taste in t-shirts, his ability to go to all the gallery openings, and his run-ins with someone named “The Shark.” Imagine my surprise when I realized halfway through a panel discussion on art criticism, that the guy talking about cat videos on youtube was the same guy who occasionally wears his “Fuck you, you fucking fuck” t-shirt to his friend’s gallery openings.

Scott Wolniak & Erik Wenzel at Bob Jones An Object in the Woods at 65GRAND

Ten for Ten: Marilyn Volkman

2011-01-04T00:48:00.010-06:00

Marilyn Volkman currently lives and works in Chicago. Volkman’s work is often site specific and developed in collaboration with particular groups, collective communities and organizations.

In the last days of 2010 I asked Truckers from Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas for their picks of the best and worst things about 2010. This list is compiled from their answers.

2010 According to Truckers

Marilyn Volkman • Truck Terminal 1 • 2010
View these pictures and more from our Ten for Ten series in all their glory at Flickr.

10 Best Things about 2010

1. Fighting for our Freedom: “We are still fighting here and overseas because we believe in our freedoms.” -El Paso, TX—NTS Truck Stop

“We still have some freedoms. There is freedom inside the country and good people. I am from Serbia and this is in contrast to the way it was when I left my country. When I left it was bad.” -Lordsburg, NM—Love’s Gas

2. Trucking: “I am a vagabond and a loner. Trucking is a good job for me. The time on the road clears my mind.” -Lordsburg, New Mexico—Love’s Gas and Travel Center

3. DOT Regulations: “The Department of Transportation is now regulating the truck drivers weight and body mass. Your body mass has to be under 30%. It’s supposed to regulate how tired you get. The heavier and fatter you are the more tired you get. Its good because there have been accidents where drivers fall asleep. This year that number has gone down.” -Las Cruces, NM—Love’s Gas and Travel Center

4. Pulling out of Iraq: “I was in the military and I know we don’t have any business being there. Afghanistan was harboring terrorists, but Iraq wasn’t. The Middle East is totally blowing up now. Getting the troops out of Iraq is the best thing about 2010.” -Demming, NM—Truck Terminal

5. Obama: “He has made a lot of mistakes but he is a big man.” Tucson, AZ—TTT Truck Stop

6. November Congressional Elections: “When the GOP took over the house, America woke up to the fact that all politicians are liars. It was a small statement, but not a weak one.” -Lordsburg, NM—Pilot Travel Center

7. WAL-MART: “Wal-Mart lets us stay over night in their parking lots. You can always count on them. Anyone can sleep there, no problem.” -Demming, NM—Truck Terminal

8. Aid to Haiti: “The best thing about 2010 was the American peoples’ ability to come up with high standards for helping people—like in Haiti.” -Globe AZ, Shell Gas Station

9. Demming Truck Terminal: “The 24 hour restaurant at the Demming Truck Stop is amazing. It seems like a typical truck stop diner with early 90’s country music, but it is also a great place to stop for Indian truck drivers—and for anyone who wants the most authentic Indian food on I-10 for that matter. Just ask them for the Indian menu—they have Mah Dal, Raj Mah, Gazar Mattar, Kheer…” –Demming, NM—Truck Terminal

10. “The sun comes up and goes down every day.” -Benson, AZ—Gas City

Marilyn Volkman • Truck Terminal 2 • 2010

10 Worst Things about 2010

1. Healthcare Bill: “The Pelosi, Obama, Clinton connection and the passing of the healthcare bill are contrary to a country based on the freedom of choice. Now they are spoon feeding us like children.” -Las Cruces, NM—Love’s Gas

“The healthcare bill being passed costs the middleman more money. I have 5 kids and my job doesn’t offer insurance. I can’t afford it.” -Lordsburg, NM—Pilot Truck Stop

2. DOT/CSA Regulations: “With the passing of the new DOT regulations they are now blaming the truck driver for everything. Now all of the problems are going to the individual and not the company. If a light goes out on your truck, it is your fault.” -El Paso, TX—Pilot Travel Center

“The new CSA regulations are based on hours and service violations for Truckers. Government special interest groups like PATT (Parents Against Tired Truckers) and CRASH (Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways) are doing this. Last year was the safest year, but I’m an outlaw trucker. I used to take pills. If I had to get a load to Chicago I would pop a couple of pills. Now it’s recreational. These young guys start driving to make easy money so they can buy recreational drugs. It’s like the regulations come 20 years too late.” -Las Cruces, NM—Love’s Gas and Travel Center

“The trucking life and all the rules they are trying to implement—I am young but my co-driver is old school. He was getting 25 cents a mile in the 70’s and he’s still getting that now. It used to be fun, but it’s not fun anymore. You have to stay on the road all the time.” -Tucson, AZ—TTT Truck Stop

3. Obama: “Nothing is moving, I can’t pay my bills and this has everything to do with Obama.” –Fabens, TX—Fast Trak Truck Stop

“Obama has not done enough for the economy.” -Phoenix, AZ—Pilot Travel Center

4. The Economy: “Half the people I know don’t have jobs. I am not exaggerating. The good thing is I still have a job." -Fabens, TX—Fast Trak Truck Stop

“There are not enough jobs for everyone.” -Demming, NM—Terminal Truck Stop

“I’m not getting paid as much as I used to, there is just not enough work, and I am never home.” –Lordsburg, NM—Love’s Gas and Travel Center

5. BP Oil Spill: “The CEO of BP—what’s his name? Tony Hayward. He is totally out of touch. I haul BP’s product and how they do things is nothing but lip service. They set up programs to make it look like they’re doing something, but its window dressing from the bottom up.” -Globe, AZ—Shell Gas Station

6. Arizona SB1070: “Police Officers are doing racial profiling. I am a poor guy. I don’t have money to hire a lawyer. Drugs were planted in my brother’s truck. He had a permanent green card but didn’t have enough money to hire a lawyer so he was deported back to India. Now I have no trust for the law.” -Demming, NM—Truck Terminal

7. War: “America is policing the world.” -El Paso, TX—Pilot Truck Stop

8. Apathy: “Our continued ability to ignore people in need. This started with Reagan when he was governor of California and he threw people into the streets.” -Globe, AZ—Shell Gas Station

9. The Sharia Law: “Obama wants it to be okay for us to practice Islam. I am not okay with this.” –Lordsburg, NM—Love’s Gas and Travel Center

10. George W. Bush: “George Bush is still the worst person of the year because of him we are at war and the economy is bad.” -Fabens, TX—Fast Trak Truck Stop

Ten for Ten (with an asterisk)

2011-01-02T17:04:00.010-06:00

We will be publishing the next installment in our year-end project with artist Marilyn Volkman shortly. In the meantime, I wanted to direct you to my contribution to ArtSlant Chicago's Best of 2010. A sort of "Ten for Ten" with an asterisk.
Ten Mostly Musical Moments from 2010

Additionally, I am pleased to announce that Art or Idiocy? has been included in The Art Masters list of Top 50 Art Education Blogs.

"The Art Masters delves into the education side of art, with resources on the best in art education social media, art teaching resources, and so much more."

Ten for Ten: Thea Liberty Nichols

2010-12-27T15:05:00.024-06:00

For the end of 2010, Art or Idiocy? has invited ten guests to each contribute a list of ten items. Join us each week as a new list is published. Earlier contributors include Steve Ruiz, Danielle Paz and Nicole Mauser.

Thea Liberty Nichols is an arts administrator, independent curator, and writer who lives and works in Chicago.

Please enjoy this top ten set of songs I like to think of as "Beatles or Idiocy." All these tunes are slightly cracked and kooky in their own way; from a remix of an original, to an original run backwards; from operatic, mod, cabaret and big band style cover versions, to some barnyard animals and Tiny Tim thrown in for good measure. For the connoisseur of the awkward, happy listening! You can listen to them below, or have them to keep HERE.

Beatles or Idiocy?

1. We Can Work It Out • Jamie and the J. Silvia Singers

2. Ob La Di Ob La Da • Beatle Barkers

3. Can't Buy Me Love • Cathy Berberian • Revolution

4. Penny Lane • Better Beatles • Mercy Beat

5. In My Life/Here, There and Everywhere • Dianne Carroll • ABC Television Special

6. Esuaceb • Seltaeb • Sdrawkcab!

7. Girl •Tiny Time with Brave Combo • Girl

8. b--thd-y • EasyEW

9. A Hard Day's Night • Keely Smith • Sings The John Lennon/Paul McCartney Songbook

10. Help • Joah Valley • Beatle Songs (The New Wave Sound of Joah Valley - Maximo!)

Ten for Ten: Nicole Mauser

2010-12-20T19:46:00.013-06:00

Nicole Mauser is a painter currently living and working in Kansas City. She has an upcoming exhibition and teaching fellowship at The University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Arts in 2011. She is a culture-hungry carnivore.

NICOLE MAUSER: TEN IN TWO-K-TEN

1. Flamenco at the Berlin Philharmonie
On my way to a Rudolph Stinglel performance and installation at Neue Nationalgalerie, I crammed into the elevator with a group of French students. They were running late to a Flamenco performance in the same Kultureforum complex. They asked directions and I obliged. When I realized I had the month and day mixed up for the Stingel event (I forgot the detail that the day is listed before month in EU), I tagged along with them. The performance blew my mind. I was not expecting the dance to be such a language of fierce sadness. The final performer was channeling the character and death so deeply, she was moved to tears during the performance. It brought the house down. Just like working in the studio, being flexible to being waylaid can really pay off. Best $10 euro I ever spent.

2. The Red Shoes (1948)
Originally done in brilliant Technicolor, the film recently enjoyed screenings across the country as it has been remastered and released by Criterion after a seven-year effort. Based on the Hans Christian Anderson tale, this film is “quintessential backstage drama.” I wonder if we will be seeing Aronofsky drawing from it in the forthcoming Black Swan.

3. IMA 100 Acres
The opening day for this park was electric. I appreciated the unexpected austerity, integrated landscape, and local fauna of Alfredo Jaar’s contribution. The IMA curator in charge of this undertaking, Lisa Freiman, will be representing the US with Puerto Rican duo Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla at the upcoming Venice Bienale.

Berlin Philharmonie = Awesome Acoustics • Moira Shearer as Victoria Page in The Red Shoes 1948 • View from Alfredo Jaar’s Park of the Laments at The Indianapolis Museum of Art’s 100 Acres

4. Kathryn Andrews (Rubell Collection)
Andrews was one of those artists that if you don’t know the work when you finally encounter it, feel blindsided. Her piece, Baldessari, composed of mirror, steel, and reflection of Goya Series: THE SAME ELSEWHERE, 1997 by
John Baldessari was stunning.

5. Lesley Vance (Art Basel)
Pay no mind to the reproduction; these little paintings are sheer knockouts in person. I’m really interested in her dive into a specific period of painting’s history and usage of the photograph as mediator for still life and process.

6. Sigrid Sangstrom (NADA)
The first time I encountered Sangstrom’s work, it was a large-scale piece that attracted my attention yet ultimately underwhelmed. The next day we returned and the booth had switched up their inventory (as many did to stay
fresh to repeat customers). The smaller works slowed me down, posed more questions, and kept my attention. Long live landscape.

7. West Gallery (Art Basel)
This booth at Art Basel Miami was a smart and challenging site-specific installation by artist Jasper Niens. Inside, our reward was a series of strong formalist works by Jan van der Ploeg and other Netherland-based artists.

Kathryn Andrews • Baldessari • 2010 • mirror, steel & reflection of Goya Series: THE SAME ELSEWHERE, 1997 by John Baldessari • 75 x 60 inches • Leslie Vance • untitled (39) • 2010 • oil on linen • 16 x 12 inches • View from inside West booth at Art Basel Miami

8. Do You Read Me?!
Located conveniently near numerous gallery spaces on Auguststraße, I was repeatedly sucked back into this bookstore. A fantastic space to discover new periodicals such as Gentlewoman, and get caught up on the latest Text Zer Kunst (Btw- did anyone else read the Painting Issue?). It’s like a larger version of Chicago’s own Golden Age. Thanks to DYRM?! my new guilty
pleasure is, Apartamento. *(A top ten list is not going to even scratch the surface of painting in Berlin. The Gemäldegalerie left me awestruck after three visits in one week. If you have the opportunity, you must go.)

9. Indiana Dunes State Park: Escape from Chicago
The Dunes State Park has a serious, unique, and uncanny beauty. Spare yourself a toll-road drive and take the South Shore train straight to the park. Spend the day communing with nature and do the dune hike. This secluded park has immense and wild beaches squeezed between two steel factories pumping out bucolic puffy white clouds. It gives way to a decidedly apocalyptic mood. On the woodsy trails I felt as if I was in Mathias Poledna’s lush Crystal Palace piece. Enjoy!

Tobey Albright & Claire Michelson perusing periodicals inside, Do You Read Me?! • Indiana Dunes State Park • Everyday abstraction in KCMO

10. Homeless Abstraction, On Repeat, Blue Highways
I’m thrilled to be back in KCMO working on a new body of work and haunting my favorite spaces for nurturing art (Grand Arts, Dolphin, Review, Nerman, Charlotte Street, and many more). During my daily commute, I pass this painted image on the front door of a provisional church while listening to John McLaughlin’s Peace Piece. I am enamored by this architectural non sequitur. Does anyone else notice it? What was the urgency that caused it to pop up? Is it religious or political? Was it always there? It is part the fabric of everyday. A book that left a lasting impact this year was not theoretical but personal, somber, and multi-layered. If you are into Americana, philosophical introspection, and taking off on road trips in the face of disintegrating
relationships, then dust off this eighties best seller: Blue Highways.

More images on
> FLICKR

Ten for Ten: Danielle Paz

2010-12-10T23:22:00.025-06:00

For the end of 2010, Art or Idiocy? has invited ten guests to each contribute a list of ten items. Join us each week as a new list is published. First was Steve Ruiz.

Danielle Paz is a Chicago-based artist working in video, photography and installation. She believes watching movies everyday in the winter is a good thing to do.

2010 has been a year of reacquainting and reassessing.
This list is a sampling of the material and non-material that changed things around a bit …. a casual -sort of- chronological list of memorable stuff.

- A marketing executive giving a lecture for my piece, Devices for Illusory Space at Reception Gallery.

- On the Political Imaginary exhibition by Tania Bruguera at the Neuberger Museum of Art. Specifically, experiencing Untitled (Havana, 2000), 2000. Walking in the dark and smelling the dank, sweet smell of sugar cane and not knowing you would happen on figures later in the distance, unforgettable.

L: Danielle Paz • Devices for Illusory Space • 2010 • photographic slide lecture • R: Tania Bruguera • unititled (Havana, 2000)

- Trifecta of Thievery - Bike, wallet and smart phone stolen within two months of each other.

- Last Tango in Paris, again.

- DeerHunter’s Halcyon Digest So varied and thoughtful, it reminded me how satisfying it is to listen to a complete album, from beginning to end.

L: Marlon Brando & Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris • 1972 • Bernardo Bertolucci, director • R: album cover for Halycon Digest by Deerhnuter

- Divine Ms. M performances at the Continental bathhouse from the 1960’s on youtube.

- Pork rinds from one of Atlanta’s really great restaurants, Sauced. This took me back to my mother’s farming people.

- An Open Letter to the Frameworks Community from the founding editor of UbuWeb, Kenneth Goldsmith. I visit the ubuweb site all the time, specifically looking for certain works or even perusing. This letter defends and explains the short history of this comprehensive archive that seeks to give free access to all sorts of media-related artwork otherwise unavailable outside of an institutional setting. It does not seek to reproduce or lessen the value of the work, just merely provide a glimpse.

Pork rinds • The Carolina Chocolate Drops • Joaquin Phoenix

- Seeing the Carolina Chocolate Drops at the Park West in Chicago. This was a performance like none other. It was pure enjoyment in the act of playing music----A pair of dried cow bones used as castanets, c’mon.

- I'm Still Here Directed by Casey Affleck. Experimental film documenting Joaquin Phoenix’s transition from actor to rapper. Unsettling and hard to watch, there has been talk it was a hoax. Feels too crazy to be a hoax to me.

Ten for Ten: Steve Ruiz

2010-12-02T23:52:00.013-06:00

For the end of 2010, Art or Idiocy? has invited ten guests to each contribute a list of ten items. Top tens, worst of's, specific subjects, sprawling samplings, join us each week as a new list is published. First is Steve Ruiz.

Steve Ruiz is an artist and writer living in and around Chicago.
He makes paintings and writes about art, mostly at Chicago Art Review.
> ART
> REVIEW

Ten Things to Download

Like a lot of people, I spend a good amount of my day working on my computer. To make this time more pleasurable, I like to keep an eye out for software that lets me do things easier, faster, or just better. Here are ten applications which are nice to have around. Note that most of these are for Windows, but some are for Mac too.

Everything http://www.voidtools.com/
This tiny application delivers nearly instant results when searching for files on your computer.

Notepad++ http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
While Notepad++ is most useful as a tool for writing code, it's also open enough that you can use it as a very customized word-processing or note-taking application.

Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/
Dropbox is probably the most useful application I've ever used. It creates a local folder which is synced between all of your computers or devices - including phones - allowing you to pretty much re-gift your USB jump drives.

VLC Player http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
VLC does it all for video, covering almost every file type, and allowing as many display options as you can think of.

LibreOffice http://www.documentfoundation.org/download/
Windows Office is great, but if you want a free, constantly improving alternative, go for LibreOffice.

HoeKey http://www.bcheck.net/apps/hoe.htm
HoeKey lets you bind custom actions to any key-strokes, so it's great for reducing common, multi-step actions to a quick command, like opening a new e-mail with Control+Shift+E.

WinDirStat http://windirstat.info/
WinDirStat lets you see at a glance exactly where and how all of the space on your hard drive is being used up. Great for deleting big things you've forgotten about.

MP3Tag http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html
OCD about your music? MP3Tag makes editing ID3 tags on your music a breeze.

GIMP http://www.gimp.org
Everyone loves a good cracked copy of Photoshop, but if you're at work and need to do some visual editing, go for GIMP.

Google Chrome http://www.google.com/chrome
Fast, stable, secure, and very expandable browser. There's no going back!

I hope my networking is working.

2010-11-18T15:27:00.007-06:00

If you haven't made it over to see the Stockyard Institute's Nomadic Studio at the DePaul University Museum of Art during its long run, stop by before it closes this Sunday. My piece "Erik Wenzel's Bullet Points About Art" is currently on view as part of the exhibition's final theme: "Back of the Yards". Nomadic Studio has evolved and changed over the course of the last few months and has included several participants.

Erik Wenzel's Bullet Points About Art • 2009 (ongoing) • text (material manifestation variable, adhesive vinyl this instantiation)

The DePaul University Museum is located in the library building at 2350 North Kenmore, in Chicago.

> LOCATION
> EXHIBITION
> NOMADIC

Evening Academies

2010-11-09T11:30:00.008-06:00

Based on my experiences at the Sommerakademie at the Zentrum Paul Klee and the informal critique groups I have carried on with friends and fellow alumni from school, I have programmed a series of talks, discussions & conversations to co-incide with my exhibition Live A Little, Live Ennui at Harold Washington College President's Gallery.

The fourth and final Evening Academy is scheduled for tonight: Thursday, November 11 at 6:30pm
Ethan Breckenridge will present recent work for discussion.

Also > Seven Artists of the Week

Drawing by Ethan Breckenridge

Harold Washington College President's Gallery
30 E. Lake, Room 1105
Chicago, IL

FUTURE ACADEMICIANS:

Ethan Breckenridge
Thursday, November 11 at 6:30pm
TV Ad from 2006…A scientist, after driving his electric/eco friendly go-cart like car to an observatory, looks through his telescope to discover an apocalypse-heralding asteroid tumbling towards the earth. In a heartbeat he is online finding his nearest Hummer dealer, and then off in his go-cart to the dealership…

Breckenridge is interested in the presentation and rhetoric of social systems, originating from a curiosity and regard for not the pathology associated with these systems, rather how these systems are often subtle, but animated monologues for our pathologies. His purlieu with transitory places, objects and architectural motifs all facilitate a stylized encounter with the everyday, where the literal and metonymic locate and emphasize the metaphoric. In the end, the work never exclusively becomes a representation of an experience, or a literal object, rather, the division and displacement of both.

Ethan Breckenridge was born in Madison WI in 1977. Lives and works in NY, earned his BFA from the School of Visual Arts, and MFA from Columbia University. He has exhibited in galleries and institutions internationally and produced projects in, Berlin Germany, Santa Cruz Bolivia, and Bern Switzerland. Most recently he has exhibited at Mark Selwyn Gallery, Los Angeles CA, Derek Eller Gallery New York NY, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY. With upcoming shows at The Suburban, Chicago IL, and Portugal Arte 10, Lisbon Portugal, and was a 2010 recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation grant. Ethan has also been working on “Off The Record” a collaborative TV talk show based in New York that will be broadcast live over the now defunct U.S. Television airwaves…

> THE PRESIDENT'S GALLERY
> LIVE A LITTLE

ACADEMIES PRIOR

Marilyn Volkman
Wednesday, November 10, 5:30pm
"ANSWERS" offers a space for participants to discuss and explore the fate of the meaning of words within collective environments. In its upcoming installation, "ANSWERS" will be holding sessions within the administrative offices of Harold Washington College in downtown Chicago during normal working hours... with HWC staff.

Volkman describes the project as one that lessens the gap between realistic life and theoretical life by prompting philosophical introspection and dialogue surrounding language in the workplace. ANSWERS explores words integral to the collective mission statement of the institution, directing our attention toward the larger social issues therein.

Marilyn Volkman currently lives and works in Chicago. She received her MFA from the University of Chicago in 2009 and her BFA from the University of Arizona in 2007. Using art as a strategy for reconfiguring our use of language, images and objects, her work takes on diverse forms including object arrangements, paintings, social interactions and quasi-documentary video projects. Volkman’s work is often site specific and developed in collaboration with particular groups, collective communities and organizations. Her most recent projects have taken place in the commercial marketing firm Cutters, in downtown Chicago, at the U.S. Army’s Intelligence Center on Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and at the NATO Command Headquarters in Brunssum, Netherlands.

Diego Leclery
Wednesday, October 13, 6pm
For this, the second Evening Academy, Diego Leclery will be talking about God.
Diego Leclery is a French-Brazillian artist who lives and works in Chicago. He runs the exhibition space Julius Cæsar with Dana DeGiulio, Colby Shaft, Hans Sundquist & Molly Zuckerman-Hartung. He edits, on occasion, the pdf arts journal "BDBBDB" In December Leclery will stage "Polar Bear Village: A New Holiday Spirit" at The Suburban... in Oak Park.
> JULIUS CÆSAR
> BDBBDB
> SUBURBAN

Erik Wenzel
Wednesday, October 6, 6pm
For the first Evening Academy Erik Wenzel will present ideas relating to the subject of a book he recently co-edited and contributed to: Internal Necessity: a reader tracing the inner logics of the contemporary art field (Sternberg Press 2010). Theses ideas, along with concepts of memes, knowledge production/transmssion & how things that don’t make any sense are more interesting to think about than things that do, not only apply to the exhibition but provide a frame for the subsequent Evening Academies.

Weeding the Vinyl

2010-09-21T23:16:00.007-05:00

From the Nomadic Studio Flickr Photoset.

I am excited to have a piece up as part of the Stockyard Institute’s Nomadic Studio at the DePaul University Museum. This Thursday evening Thea Liberty Nichols will host a panel discussion focusing on writing that is worth checking out. Unfortunately I will not be able to attend, but “Erik Wenzel’s Bullet Points About Art” will be on view in the form of a vinyl text piece. (notes on the piece follow information on the panel discussion below).

The DePaul University Museum is located in the library building at 2350 North Kenmore, in Chicago.
> LOCATION
> EXHIBITION
> NOMAD

This Thursday 9/23, 6-8pm – Form and Content of Writing with Thea Liberty Nichols, Patrice Connolly, Claudine Ise, Abraham Ritchie & Bert Stabler - Panelists will engage in a casual discussion that examines the form (newsprint, published monographs, online journals or blogs) and content (criticism, interviews, exhibition reviews, press releases or scholarly essays) of their writing. Their individual practices, including the texts that inform and inspire them, will be examined alongside the colleagues and organizations with which they collaborate. In conjunction with Studio Chicago, the ways in which their studio environment, and indeed the city itself, contextualizes their practice will also be explored.

Claudine Isé has worked in the field of contemporary art as a curator and writer. Isé was Associate Curator of Exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. Assistant Curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and an art critic for The Los Angeles Times. She currently writes for artforum.com, art:21 blog, ARTnews, New City, and badatsports.com.

Abraham Ritchie is a writer as well as the Editor for ArtSlant: Chicago, the creator and administrator of The Chicago Art Blog on the ChicagoNow network and WordPress, and also writes for NewCity. He has previously written about art for Madison Newspapers, Inc.

Thea Liberty Nichols is an arts administrator, independent curator, and writer who lives and works in Chicago. Along with managing Intuits Study Center, she also acts as Co-Director of 65GRAND

Patrice Connelly is the Curatorial Associate for BMO Financial Group’s Corporate Art Collection where she crafts catalog texts describing and contextualizing the art works in their holdings. She has been contributing freelance art exhibition reviews to NewCity since 2008.

Bert Stabler is a teacher, writer, curator, and artist living in Chicago. He feeds on the living.

Notes on Bullet Points on Art at DePaul Museum

Erik Wenzel’s Bullet Points About Art
2009, ongoing
Text
Material manifestation variable, vinyl lettering this instantiation.

From email correspondence:

Thea: In the doc you sent me, there are no actual bullet points, am I missing something or is this a canard?

Erik: Hold on I have to look up canard. [ ... ]

There are no literal bullets, like dots. It will appear much as it did in the PDF. It will say, “EW's bullet points...” and then the list starts. The only difference will be where the line breaks are and I am going to use Rockwell font.

I guess it might be a canard since it falsely reports that there will be bullets. But I don't think you actually have to have the graphic balls for them to be bullet points. Bullet points are short statements, they are sentences but punchier, more forceful and authoritative. Sol Lewitt wrote sentences, I write bullet points.

Why Are We Celebrating?

2010-09-10T00:21:00.006-05:00

So I came up with some picks for the new season of art openings. Just like everyone else. There’re a whole slew of openings this weekend. I always think it’s kind of stupid for a city that doesn’t have all that much going on art wise to blow it’s load all at once. It won’t have its stamina back until late spring and then it’s time for Artopia-opolis. I can hardly wait.

I was asked to conjure up some picks on ArtSlant. “Oh boy, this will be fun!” I thought. I proceeded to think of what I was going to "pick" all week. Then was sitting with my computer at my friend’s house waiting for the Labor Day party to start. “Son of a bitch, I don't even know what to say. Do I even need to say why I picked stuff? Just go see this shit. Well, I have to write something. Why does everyone always do 'picks' anyway? What's the compulsion to make lists? God dammit, why did I pick all these things?” Not surprisingly, I sound like an idiot. Even though I completely stand behind my selections, I sound like an idiot. Well, I guess mainly just right here:

“The MCA has strong holdings of Minimalism, up through Post-Minimal, conceptual and all the way up to the contemporary. Carl Andre, Richard Serra, Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Bruce Nauman, Gabriel Orozco, Liam Gillick and Aernout Mik among others. Organized on the theme of work that confronts and relies on its audience.”

Of course it has all that shit, it’s a contemporary art museum! Those last two things aren't even technically sentences. I was trying to explain the fact that I find it impressive that the MCA has such a strong collection of seriously boring art. I love seriously boring art. It’s the basis of almost all contemporary art that isn’t based on Pop Art (which gets your attention very quickly but then becomes very boring) or based on blindly carrying on as though the last 50 years didn’t happen. 60 years now that it’s 2010. Or as those motherfuckers that want to sound futuristic and olde-timey at the same time say, "twenty-ten."

I think my brain just gave up. You can only read so many press releases that explain what the art is going to do to you when you see it. Or what kind of questions the artist is asking. All you can think is, “No! Art can’t do that! How the fuck does it do that? You’re just telling me it’s doing that. This artist isn’t challenging shit!” That’s why I like Liam Gillick so much. There was no better moment than seeing his colorful metallic cages–“screens” they’re called–in the MCA with wall texts saying they were about some South American university’s research into the production of cars in Northern Europe. “Are you serious? It’s a brightly colored playpen. What does this have to do with that stuff you’re talking about on the wall? Oh, shit. Now I’m thinking. No one said anything about me having to compare and contrast.” But that was point. Or for me it was.

Seriously boring art is the best kind of art, it makes you think about stuff in ways you don’t want to, but probably should. And if you give it time, it ends up being the best kind of stuff to think about. Ideally, you can’t help yourself. It nags you; I guess that makes it seriously irritating art.

But this isn’t something you want to think about at an art opening. Certainly not on the big opening night of the season. Which is really just like Halloween for a very specific segment of the population. If you aren’t there to buy or sell the art, which most people aren’t, you certainly aren’t there to wonder aloud, “Do you think that ideas are like viruses that enter our brains only for us to spread them to more brains and that this is really the only true mode of production in this day and age?” No, you’re there to drink and smoke and fuck. At least I am. It’s a battle of the wills. I actually have been thinking about ideas in that way, mainly because of a book that I can’t decide if I agree with. But I also know its Friday night and that everyone else, fucking “normal” people, just go out to be social and have fun. And going out to meet people and have a good time sure beats thinking about stuff.

> ARTSLANT PICKS

2010-09-08T01:15:00.006-05:00

"Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings."

Heinrich Heine, in his 1821 play Almansor referring to the burning of the Qur'an during the Spanish Inquisition.

Helvana

2010-08-17T11:05:00.006-05:00

I'm in Bern, the Swiss capital for the launching of Internal Necessity: a reader tracing the inner logics of the contemporary art field, a book I co-edited and contributed to. Below are some images from my recent exhibition "New 'N' Lonelier Laze" at DOVA temporary. More documentation is forthcoming.

> IMAGES

And a review by Paul Germanos
> CHICAGO ART REVIEW

New 'N' Lonelier Laze

2010-06-14T22:33:00.014-05:00

This is the final week of “New ‘N’ Lonelier Laze” at DOVA temporary.
Open Wednesday, July 21st through Saturday, July 24th from 12Noon to 5p.m.

Images of the show/media coverage:
Amelia Ishmael on > KCLOG
Paul Germanos on > FLICKR1 > FLICKR2 > FLICKR3

...a reductive pursuit promising at least a video and some objects... - Steve Ruiz, Chicago Art Review

Wenzel, a local artist and critic who's a U. of Chicago alum, conjures a show from a deliberately sparse "collection of things": a new video and some objects. - TimeOut Chicago

June 25 - July 24, 2010
Opening reception - Friday, June 25, 6 - 9p.m.

DOVA temporary is pleased to announce "New 'N' Lonelier Laze" an exhibition by Erik Wenzel. The show is a continuation Wenzel's reductive turn: creating a viewing situation from a selection of an increasingly sparse collection of things- in this case a new video work and some objects. A musical component will also be present during the opening in the form of a selection of songs played in alphabetical order by title.

Erik Wenzel is an artist living in Chicago. He received his MFA from The University of Chicago in 2009 and his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. Recent solo exhibitions include "Warm For Your Formalism" at DOVA temporary and "Belief in Doubt in Painting" at 65GRAND (Chicago) both in 2009. This Fall Wenzel will present "Live A Little, Live Ennui" at the President's Gallery of Harold Washington College. He is currently editing and contributing to “Internal Necessity: a reader tracing the inner logics of the contemporary art field” to be published by Sternberg Press in August.

DOVA temporary
5228 South Harper Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60615
Wednesdays - Saturdays, 12 Noon - 5p.m.

This exhibition is made possible by the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago.

Le grande fünfundsechzig

2010-06-11T17:11:00.004-05:00

Where walks a traveler?
Yon thither Sixt'y Five Grand!
Wayward up the trech'rous step,
Worn round as stones of centuries-old.
Verily on barley dram shall we sup
Ne'ermore, ne'ermore,
alas,
Tonite.

Sigmar Polke, Capitalist Realist

2010-06-11T11:20:00.005-05:00

Sigmar Polke (German, 1941 - 2010) Moderne Kunst 1968

One of the greatest living artists, the Oscar Madison to Gerhard Richter's Felix Ungar, Sigmar Polke has died.

Sigmar Polke (German, 1941 - 2010) Higher Beings Command: Paint the Upper Right Hand Corner Black! 1969

The Owl Box

2010-06-02T18:31:00.003-05:00

Click the small play button on the lower left. Watch it in full screen. Leave it on for a while.

Webcam chat at Ustream

RUN FROM FEAR/FUN FROM REAR

2010-05-13T02:33:00.010-05:00

Somebody said “art” and I thought they meant “Art-Art”.

So I just watched the premiere of Fear No Art Chicago on WTTW11. It is essentially the same thing as Metromix or 190 North – shallow human-interest features that showcase local businesses and entrepreneurs with a clever or creative twist. This is perfectly fine, but the big problem with Fear No Art is that it’s allegedly about “art” and opening up the audience’s perceptions and attitudes about what art can be. The pilot episode consists of a blues guitarist*, a fashion designer & a restaurant. These are all creative professions, but none of it is Art. There’s Art with an “A” Art and there’s “the arts”. Music is one of the arts. Fashion is more of an applied art, like graphic design. And then cooking, which I guess is “the culinary arts.”

Don’t mistake my position as being conservative, far from it. I posit that it is the show that’s conservative. The interests of the show are incredibly pedestrian, average and safe. To even graze the surface of challenging a general viewing audience’s “fears” about art would require a much more conversational and verbal discourse, think Check, Please! That would be ideal, since it engages an expert host with people from various backgrounds. But the format is the standard method of a host going out on the town and visiting friends, hearing some music, trying on some dresses and tasting some food.

Banner promoting the MCA, Chicago photographed by R.L. Segal

When I first got the email, I thought it would be more along the lines of classics like Check, Please! or the well-researched productions about Chicago’s myriad histories Geoffrey Baer puts together. With it’s title I thought contemporary art content was a given, especially since it’s lifted from the Museum of Contemporary Art. I understand, and even applaud the idea of bringing attention to art practices beyond traditional painting or sculpture. But rather than going in an expansive direction, this show opts for the conventional. There is nothing fresh or new about covering things that already have plenty of representation in the media. And it is not as though this fashion designer is trying to be considered in an art context, or that the chefs are trying to be anything other than avant-garde cooks (if anything they are going for the “scientist in the kitchen” gimmick). But this is all moot because in no way does the show engage in any sort of discourse, let alone about art. Should I be mean? I’ll be mean. Here’s an example. It’s not that mean, it’s just some dialog from the segment at the restaurant:

Host: “So you see this as an artistic production?”
Chef: “Yes [… it’s] an open forum, an open canvas.”

And again, this light approach to interesting local creativity is fine, but not under the pretense of expanding cultural horizons or fostering open dialogue about challenging cultural production. But maybe I am taking this all much too seriously. Maybe it’s just a nice show about art-like things. While I don’t expect hardcore art theory from PBS and WTTW I do expect more than this.

The saddest bit of all is that the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation is one of the show’s lead sponsor. The Driehaus Foundation used to award Chicago’s most generous and prestigious prize for artists, going to one established and one emerging artist but discontinued it after 2008. Other lead sponsors of Fear No Art Chicago include the Chicago Fashion Foundation, Fashion Studies at Columbia College and Le Cordon Bleu colleges.

* I missed the first few minutes, so I don’t know if his paintings, which are, “abstract in nature; raw, organic, primitive, and completely original in [their] approach” were discussed or not.

> FEAR — NO ART — CHICAGO

Fair Enough

2010-05-06T00:39:00.002-05:00

A look back at the weekend of Artropolis and all the events around the art fairs:

Suggestions for people titling articles they’ve written about art fairs: No Fair, Fair to Middling, Fair Play, Unfair, All’s Fair in Love & War & Art Fairs, Fair Weather, Renaissance Fair, Standard Fair, Fair Warning, Fair Trade, Fair Use, Fair Reporting, Fair Grounds, I Hate This Art Fair & It Makes Me Want to Stab Myself in the Face

Having not been contacted by NewCity I am lead to believe yet another year as an artist in Chicago has passed & I have failed to "break out".

Putting on my "Fuck you, you fucking fuck" t-shirt & heading to the Artropolis preview party.

"You know, I really have enough contemporary art in my collection. I'm looking to acquire a new lover."

"You are absolutely beautiful, you look like a Mary Heilmann wrapped in a Judy Pfaff!"

There’s a video installation in the Art Chicago cafe of a montage of kids' studios & with that Sigur Ros song “yooo-ooo-00000” playing.

Waiting for the right situation to say, "This makes me want to set fire to my eyeballs and bury them in manure."

"I can't even see what's good anymore." David Bowie as Andy Warhol

Gold painting with one drippy white cloud and another painting by someone else of a lady's head on a sloppy yellow & orange & black pattern.

Nice little shiny old oil painting with rectangles of mud maroon and cold cream.

Cardboard stapled frames, shirt sleeves, Kippenberger.

The guy who does dripping corporate logos.

The mirrored fountain parking garage bottomless shaft.

Those bowls of fruit are unforgivable.

This booth smells like plastic because all the art is plastic. This booth is playing smooth jazz on a boombox to go with the art.

   That woman's dress shamefully, artfully, presents her breasts.

Extra long exposure photos of people fucking in a blur. Required to make this work: light kit, tripod & a "lover".

So I've seen the exact same Sigmar Polke & some palace interior photos that I saw two years ago.

Wolf Kahn has owned sexy neon garishness for decades. And he's not even ironic about it.

Peter Plagens' painting looks like a glowing review of a show of work by Carroll Dunham, Willem deKooning & that one New Order album cover everyone always cites as brilliant design.

I thought it was about what it looked like it was about.

   Mr. Burns: "Oh, yes, sitting–the great leveler. From the mightiest pharaoh to the lowliest peasant, who doesn't enjoy a good sit?"

Michael Ian Black: “The point of jigsaw puzzles seems to be to spend hours and hours assembling an image you can already see on the box.”

"He would go to the opening of a drawer" – often remarked among Andy Warhol's friends.

Sol Lewitt Merzbow Pulse Demon wall mural blowing the eyes out the back of my head like yellow hyper balls.

Not to worry. I'll kill the lot of you. Shut your gob. Stop crying, you're getting on my wick. Who were you talking to?

"Man Walking" a Chuck Close Ab Ex style painting from his Jr. college days sold for $8 to make rent in '60 now $100-150K on Antiques Roadshow.

"This has been a complete disaster.”

I can't believe I went back a fourth time but I needed advice.

   "The fair was good for us. It was fun.”

"Thank you for shopping Art Chicago, the floor is now closed."

Pour One Out

2010-05-01T15:50:00.003-05:00

If you go anywhere tonight post-Artropolis, make sure to stop at 65GRAND for David Ingenthron, Light:Snacks. This will be the last event held in their current space before they relocate.

Opening Reception:
Saturday, May 1, 2010
7 - 10p
1378 W Grand Ave
> INFO

Also, if you haven’t noted already, I’ve been sending out random observations and quips as I make my way through the weekend of art fairs & cetera on twitter. You can see a feed to the right, or follow directly here
> @ARTORIDIOCY

Filed from the Art Chicago Press Room

What's NEXT After the MFA?

2010-04-28T23:35:00.011-05:00

I will be on a panel in the Next Art Fair’s Talk Shop:
New Insight Public Program
After the MFA

This Friday, April 30, 2010
1 – 2pm
NEXT Talk Shop, 7th floor
Merchandise Mart
222 Merchandise Mart Plaza, Chicago, IL

Rising artists will discuss the MFA and how it has shaped their practice, career and outlook on the art world in a town hall style discussion with students exhibiting in the New Insight exhibition.

With
Pamela Fraser, Moderator
Curtis Mann, Scott Reeder and Erik Wenzel, Panelists

These days I work exclusively in the medium of panel discussions.

> NEXT TALK SHOP & CONVERGE
> HOW TO GET THERE

Information Exposition

2010-04-21T16:41:00.012-05:00

“Join us to amplify micro-movements and nowtopian ideas!”

As part of VERS10N’s NFO XPO I will be participating on the panel: Art Criticism Roundtable

This Sunday, April 25, 2010
2:30 – 4pm
Benton House / 3052 S Gratten Ave, Chicago, IL
Admission for the NFO XPO is $7 adults / free for youth

With
Stephanie Burke thegallerycrawlandsomuchmore
Jeriah Hildwine Art Talk Chicago
Damien James Bad at Sports
Laurie Rojas Platypus Review
Steve Ruiz Chicago Art Review
Erik Wenzel ArtSlant

Relevant links: Chicago Art Criticism • Bert Stabler

> VERS10N

Fire in the Sky

2010-04-15T13:55:00.003-05:00

This is a nice piece of video worth watching as an interested viewer.

Artist Visiting

2010-04-05T19:38:00.008-05:00

As part of a monthly visiting artist program at, I am giving a giving a talk this Thursday (April 8) at Harold Washington College followed by a workshop based on a piece by Robert Barry. The public is welcome to either or both parts.

Harold Washington College
30 East Lake Street
Chicago, IL

Thursday, April 08, 2010
Lecture: 11am – 12 Noon, Room 1115, 11th floor
Workshop: 12:30 – 3 pm, Room 829, 8th floor

Erik Wenzel • Steppingfilter • 2010 • digital photograph • courtesy of the artist

Erik Wenzel received his MFA from the University of Chicago in 2009 and his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. He is a Teaching Fellow in the University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Arts. Wenzel’s recent exhibitions include: “[RE]-VIEW” curated by Maggie Taft and “Warm For Your Formalism”, both at DOVA temporary in Hyde Park; and “Belief in Doubt in Painting” at 65GRAND in Chicago. Wenzel writes about art and culture for ArtSlant and has maintained Art or Idiocy?, an art & culture blog, since 2004. Wenzel is currently editing and contributing to “Internal Necessity: a reader tracing the inner logics of the contemporary art field”, a book based on the Sommerakademie 2009 residency held this past August at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland.

> FACEBOOK EVENT

Artist, Dealer, Cats

2010-03-14T01:23:00.005-06:00

The relationship between artist and dealer is a complex one. In the following true-life conversation Art or Idiocy? takes an in-depth look at the intricate nature of this complicated back and forth in the case of scheduling a studio visit.

ARTIST: So I know you said you are all fatigued from doing studio visits, but would you consider stopping by the kitchen to see some objects and what's nots? And see what the opposite of what Jake looks like. (1)

DEALER: Can I bring Jake?

ARTIST: Does he attak other katzes?
Winsor gets along with other cats, or at least he used to live with some. (2)

DEALER: He tells me what is art and what is just stuff.

ARTIST: NICE.

DEALER: It helps.

ARTIST: You should definitely bring him. This will put his mettle to the TEST.
Winsor has given up and now just shits in a box. Which also happens to be in the same place as my studio.

I have these two scratching posts next to each other; they kind of look like that Barnett Newman sculpture of zips [Here I (to Marcia) 1950].

DEALER: Jake knew the difference between a log and a work of art made out of a log.

ARTIST: Whoa. What was the difference?

DEALER: One was just a log.

ARTIST: Heh. Was this in Rob’s studio?

DEALER: Jake never really leaves the apartment.

ARTIST: Yeah, nor Winsor.
One time he got lost, it was the scariest saddest thing!
One Saturday in the wintertime I was all set to go somewhere but remembered something just as I walked out the door. I got side tracked for I don’t know how long. Then I heard off in the distance this cat yowling. I thought to myself, “awww, someone’s cat is really lonely!” And then I was like, “that sounds like Winsor.” I turned around and saw that I hadn’t latched my door all the way, so it opened all the way up. And in my old apartment the door would close off half of the apt. when it was open. So he must have gone to get some food and water or use the toilet and wandered out into the hall.
I found him at the bottom of the stairs all huddled and cold.
OK I have to go home and make sure he’s safe and sound right now!

DEALER: That's a sad story.
Winsor, however, forgot about it within ten minutes.

ARTIST: I know; that’s a good point. It still haunts me, though. I’m paranoid he’ll get lost.
So when do you think you can come over?

DEALER: I will have to think about it.

NOTES:
1 The dealer’s cat, named for Jake Berthot, is longhaired and raccoon-like.

2 The artist’s cat, named for Robert Ryman’s Winsor series—which in turn was named for the paint the Ryman used, “Winsor White,” made by the British company Winsor & Newton—is shorthaired and ferret-like.

Production Site, Deaccessioning & Cream Puffs

2010-02-26T00:09:00.004-06:00

Tacita Dean • Section Cinema (Homage to Marcel Broodthaers) • 2002 • courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris, and Frith Street Gallery, London

Some new reviews are up on ArtSlant:
Production Site: the Artist's Studio Inside-Out at the MCA, Chicago
February 6 - May 30, 2010
> REVIEW
> MUSEUM SITE

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Museum Collections and "Deaccessioning" at the DePaul University Art Museum
January 14 - March 19, 2010
> REVIEW
> MUSEUM SITE

Beard Papa’s!
> fresh’n natural cream puffs

Images on flickr
> Photoset

Rodney Graham • Dead Flowers in my Studio • 2009 • courtesy Donald Young Gallery, Chicago

In the Year 2020

2010-02-12T23:43:00.005-06:00

The session of the College Art Association conference everyone seems to be talking about the most is the one on painting that has about 90 artists on it. I'm going to it, but I am also particularly interested in this one:

Society of Contemporary Art Historians
Contemporary Art History in 2020

Saturday, February 13, 12:30 PM–2:00 PM
Regency B, Gold Level, West Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago

Chairs: Matthew Jesse Jackson, University of Chicago; Andrew Perchuk, Getty Research Institute
Hannah Feldman, Northwestern University
Amelia Jones, McGill University
Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Harvard University
Robert Storr, Yale University

Ann Craven studio, Galerie LHK, France, January, 2009 > LINK

Studio Art Open Session
Painting

Saturday, February 13, 9:30 AM–12:00 PM
Grand A, Gold Level, East Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago

Chair: Michelle Ann Grabner, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Ann Craven, Yale University
Anoka Faruqee, California Institute of the Arts
Peter Halley, Yale University
Rebecca Morris, Pasadena City College
Thomas Lawson, California Institute of the Arts
Judy Ledgerwood, Northwestern University
Sabina Ott, Columbia College Chicago
Scott Reeder, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Molly Zuckerman Hartung, independent artist, Chicago
Susanna Coffey, independent artist, New York
Carrie Moyer, Rhode Island School of Design
Jon Pestoni, independent artist

I couldn't not post this • Ann Craven: Shadow Moon

Situational Frustration

2010-02-11T18:17:00.004-06:00

If you aren't in Chicago for the CAA conference then this won't make much sense to you. I wish I were going to this, it looks awesome. Except I am signed up for a workshop on grant writing. It seems like all the CAA sessions I want to go to are all at once. I am particularly interested in "The Situationist inverse of Relational Aesthetics." Although I'm not sure we've really established what Relational Aesthetics is outside of saying, "Rirkrit Tiravanija and Liam Gillick and those guys."

Art as Event
Friday, February 12, 9:30 AM–12:00 PM
Columbus KL, Gold Level, East Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago
Chair: Nadja Rottner, University of Michigan, Dearborn

Mass Action, Aleksei Gan, and the Social Aesthetics of Russian Constructivism
Kristin Romberg, Columbia University

Antiart, Nonevent: The Situationist Inverse of Relational Aesthetics
Jennifer Stob, Yale University

Rolywholyover to theanyspacewhatever: John Cage's Compositions for Museums, or Relational in Retrospect
Sandra Skurvida, Bard College, Fashion Institute of Technology, and School of Visual Arts

Inducing Spirits: Oscar Masotta’s Apperceptive Participant
Daniel R. Quiles, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Situational Aesthetics and the Art of Participation
Kirsi Peltomaki, Oregon State University

Discussant:Irene Small, University of Ilinois, Urbana-Champaign

Just So You Know

2010-02-10T00:27:00.006-06:00

Sure, we all know the College Art Association Conference is being held this week in Chicago. But where exactly in Chicago? The most specific answer I could find on the conference website is on the PDF of the press release which says it’s at the Hyatt Regency, but lists no address. So I Googled it only to find two Hyatt Regencies in Chicago. One on Wacker and one at McCormick place. Incidentally McCormick place is hosting the Chicago Auto Show this weekend. I won’t hold you in suspense any longer:

The College Art Association Conference
Hyatt Regency
151 E Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL
Feb 10 – 13, 2010

I don't know, maybe I'm an idiot. Even under "Conference Hotels" while it lists the Hyatt Regency, it doesn't specify that that is thee hotel. So I just thought I'd post the address for anyone planning on attending that doesn't know where it is. Now you know. Never mind. On the endless lists of sessions it says "Hyatt Regency," so maybe you put two and two together, cross-referencing the "conference hotels" page. Whatever. As for where "Columbus GHIJ, Gold Level, East Tower" is, you're on your own. I think we're all fucked, because if it's one thing I know about intellectuals and artists, it's that practical things like way-finding are not a strong suit.

> CONFERENCE SITE

The Growing Divide

2010-01-26T02:29:00.010-06:00

So I was at NBC.com to see if you can still watch video clips from Conan O’Brien, which you can.* I found this out after the site, which oddly still has a winter wonderland theme, finally loaded. I was doing this after talking to my mom on the phone. She said that Conan was not funny at all, and that NBC could have saved a lot of trouble if they just called her first. She described him basically the way everyone else except P.J. O’rourke describes Jay Leno. “He’s not funny,” simple, self-evident, how can you argue?

I was laughing hysterically. This was because she said, "I think it's generational. People like me, or even younger than me, don't find him funny. And I'm pretty sure that I would be very offended if I knew what all those hand gestures and codes were supposed to mean."
"What? You mean when he dances around and makes funny noises?"
"You know, he makes gestures with his hands. And he licks himself."

I told her the best thing young people have done is make older people so paranoid that they think that everything means something obscene. She said he acts like someone who should be in an adult Special Ed class to learn how to act in public. I told her he was a master of his craft.

Then I went to NBC.com and was asked to fill out a survey. The worst thing was, I was instinctively inclined to say I didn't hate a lot of stuff I do hate because I was afraid everyone would say that. NBC and the internet would be forced to admit that no one likes shitty ads or exciting content on websites and no one buys anything because of a dumb commercial forcibly interrupting the videos they are watching. If anything it turns us against said product. It is something we deal with because it could be worse. They could realize how useless it is and they could make us pay for content. I love the internet, but nowhere near the amount required to willingly and directly pay for content. I don’t know if you look at content on the internet. You are right now. It’s not that great and there’s a ton of it.

Here are some highlights from the survey:

Which of the following have you ever done at the same time?

Visited NBC.com on a computer and on a mobile device
Watched NBC TV and visited NBC.com on a computer and on a mobile device
Watched NBC TV and visited NBC.com on a mobile device
Watched NBC TV and visited NBC.com on a computer
Watched NBC on TV and read texts/emails from NBC or sent texts/emails to NBC
Watched a channel other than NBC on TV and visited NBC.com on a computer

Why do you do these activities at the same time?
My answer: Well, my friend was sending me links of Jimmy Kimmel completely owning Jay Leno and taking him off guard on Jay’s video questionnaire skit "10 at 10." You know, the one where Jimmy says, "C'mon Jay, Conan and I have kids, you only have to take care of cars."
> 10 at 10
> Jay Sylvester Clinton

Then she sent me the link to the Jimmy Kimmel episode of him doing the entire show in a spot-on imitation of Jay Leno, and a little Bill Clinton and Sylvester the Cat. Then it turned out they were re-airing that show on CBS or ABC. So I changed to that channel and watched clips of the times Conan O’Brien had skits with Jordan Schlansky on your website.
[Which I highly recommend you check out]

And finally
How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements about surveys on NBC.com?
NBC.com has more surveys than other sites
Surveys on NBC.com are annoying
Surveys on NBC.com make me visit the site less often
Surveys on NBC.com are entertaining
Obviously, I strongly agreed with the final statement

* Oddly no one has updated the site. So it claims tonight we had Eddie Murphy, Angela Kinsey & Bonnie Raitt. Tomorrow Zach Braff, Bear Grylls and Tony Bennett.
> Conan Clips
> Most Expensive Sketch (Involving a Picasso)
> Most Cherished Moments

What's the Frequency, Kenneth?

2010-01-05T22:25:00.005-06:00

Kenneth Noland (1924–2009)
Kenneth Noland, Color Field painter extraordinaire, Post Painterly Abstractionist par excellence, died today in his home in Maine.

> ARTFORUM OBIT

2010-01-04T00:00:00.013-06:00

"Imagine if everything that 'strikes us' were allowed to pass our lips! Not to speak of jumping off our notepads out of our desk drawers! The world would sink under the weight of casual impulses and no selection would have taken place."

010110 1110

2010-01-01T23:53:00.003-06:00

Wed December 31, 2008, 7:41 pm: is sitting this New Year's out

Mon January 12, 2009, 9:16 pm: is disappointed, but sadly not that surprised by the Democrats and their complete and utter spinelessness.

Wed January 14, 2009, 7:17 pm: was again accidentally making great art and not realizing it.

Mon January 19, 2009, 9:26 pm: now has DTV. i.e. the converter box.

Wed January 28, 2009, 11:16 am: has a cat with the sniffles

Mon February 2, 2009, 10:24 am: that stupid groundhog

Tue February 3, 2009, 12:05 pm: would rather be looking at that book of ugly paintings from the 70s.

Sun February 8, 2009, 6:28 am: was looking for reasons to live, and it was all Jesus shit

Wed February 11, 2009, 9:33 pm: "Kantian" has officially been changed to "Kanty"

Tue February 17, 2009, 10:23 pm: is Belief in Doubt in Painting

Fri March 6, 2009, 11:31 am: Let's split the country: all the Republicans can bitch, criticize & cut taxes in their little half & everyone else will get to work & fix the other half

Fri March 20, 2009, 9:54 pm: is going by 65GRAND Saturday at 3 to hang around and talk about the end of the belief in doubt in painting.

Sun March 22, 2009, 1:26 am: no longer believes in doubting in painting.

Tue March 31, 2009, 11:13 pm: My dad sent me a pamphlet to apply for a show in San Antonio. In it is a note that says, "this is only for artists within 75mi of San Antonio. Sorry."

Mon April 6, 2009, 8:02 pm: the failure to avoid expressing is its crispy non-expression

Thu April 9, 2009, 9:52 am: lives notoriously well, responsibly

Tue April 21, 2009, 9:55 am: u need to shut up....(i'm not talkin 2 any of yall)hez messeages me like a dumb slut sayin fuk me fuk him

Mon April 27, 2009, 10:17 pm: Throbbing Gristle does it with the lights on

Thu April 30, 2009, 1:45 pm: well, the dodgy street people that are only in it for the booze are definitely planning on coming to my opening.

Sat May 2, 2009, 12:50 am: whatever. ...Cats

Tue May 5, 2009, 9:32 am: if my thesis defense was to have had a title, it would have been "Belief Then Doubt in Erik"

Sun May 17, 2009, 6:13 pm: will never have time to care.

Wed May 27, 2009, 2:58 pm: Relational Aesthetics was published on January 1, 1998.

Sat May 30, 2009, 12:40 am: Dear Jack White, should I put my Dead Weather downloads on my Raconteurs playlist, or should they get their own?

Wed June 3, 2009, 2:54 pm: Winter Is Over. (If you want it.)

Sun June 7, 2009, 9:09 pm: Life isn't over. Life is just beginning.

Sat June 13, 2009, 12:49 pm: Art Master

Sun June 21, 2009, 12:35 pm: is losing the studio.

Tue June 23, 2009, 2:23 pm: Strange Days Are Coming / Strange Days Are Here

Thu July 30, 2009, 5:14 pm: Live Aus Berlin

Sat August 1, 2009, 7:45 pm: The time is currently "of life."

Thu August 13, 2009, 3:52 pm: I don't want to leave and I can't wait to get home.

Mon August 17, 2009, 8:59 am: Smashing Pumpkins is the soundtrack of summer. (Esp. Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness)

Thu August 20, 2009, 8:48 am: In my inbox this morning: "Erik, Children Are Hallucinating On Tamiflu."

Thu August 27, 2009, 10:34 am: Moving has moved from "trauma", to "frustrating inconvenience" in my view on life.

Sun September 6, 2009, 12:24 am: I want what's worst for everyone.

Tue September 8, 2009, 12:14 pm: Well will you won't you want me to make you I'm coming down fast but don't let me break you

Thu September 10, 2009, 12:22 am: loves watching the people he sort of elected to represent his interests fumble through the most basic of pressing concerns with their pudgy dick fingers as they keep their secure jobs.

Fri September 18, 2009, 4:33 pm: packing up art in the "home studio" for storage. I don't have enough space to "think"

Sun September 27, 2009, 4:06 pm: Does "Sophie's World" cover Marx, Kant, Wittgenstein and Hegel? I just sold my "Complete Idiot's Guide to Philosophy" on Amazon, and now I feel even less epistemological than usual. Although no longer being at UofC takes some of that pressure off.

Sun October 4, 2009, 12:35 pm: "Thee, Beatles," luv, not "Beatles."

Mon October 5, 2009, 7:58 pm: Why are "nonetheless" and "nowhere" words, but "nolonger" isn't?

Tue October 13, 2009, 12:34 am: I have a heater pointed at my bed. My cat is lying directly in between it and me. Eventually he will face the other direction and toast his other side.

Fri October 23, 2009, 10:26 am: There is something interesting about moving through airports & how it is the most regulated & restricted zone in terms of who is allowed in & how they are monitored. And yet we all wander through these spaces aimlessly & then you come across a Harley Davidson leather apparel store next to your gate.

Sat October 31, 2009, 2:36 pm: I cannot expend any creative effort on any sort of costume.

Tue November 3, 2009, 7:31 pm: Either the world is conspiring against me or it's just a consensus of indifference. In any case the results are the same.

Tue November 17, 2009, 11:29 pm: I just received my first ever email addressed "Professor Wenzel"

Fri November 20, 2009, 4:54 pm: Cut me in quadrants, leave me in the corner.

Sun November 22, 2009, 12:00 pm: In the days when you were hopelessly poor, I just liked you more.

Sun November 29, 2009, 10:50 pm: Honey, We Can't Afford to Look This Cheap

Mon December 14, 2009, 11:57 am: REP. KITTEH (D) IS IN UR HEALTH INSHURENCE STEELIN UR PUBLIC OPSHUNZ

Sun December 20, 2009, 9:23 pm: Bah! Humbug! |:(

Wed December 23, 2009, 2:07 pm: "It's beginning to look a Lot like Christmas/All the live long day."

There Are A Number of Directions You Could go With This

2009-12-24T01:19:00.007-06:00

At Christmas time it's hard
But when you're having fun
There's a world outside your window
And it's a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing
Is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring
There are the clanging chimes of doom

And there won't be snow in Africa
This Christmas time

The greatest gift they'll get this year is life
Where nothing ever grows
No rain nor rivers flow
Do they know it's Christmas time at all?

Underneath that burning sun
Do they know it's Christmas time at all?

Collage by British Pop artist Peter Blake

"I'm not afraid to say that I think Band Aid was diabolical. Or to say that I think Bob Geldof is a nauseating character. Many people find that very unsettling, but I'll say it as loud as anyone wants me to. In the first instance the record itself was absolutely tuneless. One can have great concern for the people of Ethiopia, but it's another thing to inflict daily torture on the people of England. It was an awful record considering the mass of talent involved. And it wasn't done shyly it was the most self-righteous platform ever in the history of popular music." - Morrissey

Unimpressionable Youth

2009-11-28T01:58:00.006-06:00

“Monet would be a good one to start with,” says the mother to her young son, handing him a book at the Art Institute gift shop. The boy, about eight or nine, starts looking at the book and immediately exclaims, “Awwwwww I’ve seen her stuff before!”
“His stuff.”
“It’s just that it’s so boooooring!”
The mom lets out a pronounced and exasperated sigh.
“What? What did I do?!” Says the kid in response to the mom’s extreme resignation.
“Nothing. I’m just laughing to myself.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve never ever heard anybody say that Monet was boring before.”

Billionaire Barbers Club

2009-11-12T22:46:00.015-06:00

"Well hello there, baby." said the matronly white woman at the ticket stand.
"Hi. Is this were I can get a shuttle ticket to the St. Louis hotel?"
"Sure is, baby.
Now this is your ticket for the ride today, baby. This one is for your return, you hang on to it, baby. Put it in your wallet.
The shuttle stops over there, baby. Be about a 20 minute wait."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome, baby. You enjoy yourself in the Big Easy."

Chris Sullivan • Underperforming Billboard Deams (Bubble Car Wash) • 2009 • courtesy of the artist and Slight Publications

I was recently in New Orleans again and made my way to some exhibitions at the the local institutions. In addition to Skylar Fein at the New Orleans Museum of Art (details below) I saw "Hot Up Here" at the Contemporary Arts Center. Organized by CAC Visual Arts Director Dan Cameron, "Hot Up Here" is in a series of exhibitions collecting work by artists in the NOLA vicinity.

Cameron founded Prospect New Orleans, the biennial that had its inaugural outing from late 2008 to early 09. Cameron is still curating the programming for its second edition, while local arts and culture leader Barbara Motley is taking over as Executive Director. P.2 is set to open in November 2010. Although slightly smaller than its predecessor, P.2 will still be the largest exhibition of its kind in the US. If it is anything like P.1, it will run circles around the Whitney Biennial. A multi-venue experience spread throughout such a visceral city as NOLA is bound to beat out the flea market the WiBi [sic] has become.

My review of "Hot Up Here" is on ArtSlant. I also have a short essay/editorial focusing on traveling through the city via streetcar along with a consideration of the invigorating mash up of architectural styles one finds.

> IT'S HOT AS HELL UP IN HERE
> HUH IMAGES
> A WALK THROUGH THE CRESCENT CITY

Sklyar Fein: Youth Manifesto is on view through January 2 of 2010 at the New Orleans Museum of Art and definitely worth seeing. You may remember Fein as one of the standout acts in the inaugural edition of Prospect New Orleans which closed earlier this year. My review is up on ArtSlant. I also have some images from this excellent show on Flickr.

installation view of View Skylar Fein: Youth Manifesto at the New Orleans Museum of Art

> EVEN IN HIS YOUTH
> IMAGES

What does it mean that in researching this article I found the Dead Kennedy's "California Über Alles" is playable on Guitar Hero? I can't tell if that's good or bad, or ironic or not. I don't even know any more.

The Fall of the Wall, It Happened Today in the Past

2009-11-09T20:06:00.008-06:00

20 years ago today East Germany acknowledged that the Berlin Wall essentially meant nothing. This historic moment was carried out in the aesthetic visage of massive crowds gathering on either side, helping each other climb the wall, champaign popping and finally hammers giving way to cranes in the removal of the barrier. It was a powerful signal that heartened many and was basically the point of no return in the fall of Communism.

I took this photo while visiting this past summer. To the left is the Spree river. This is at the end of the East Side Gallery, where a stretch of the wall is preserved and artists do rotating graffiti murals. Behind the view of this photo is the Kreuzberg Bridge. The wall on one side was just a concrete barrier, on the other was the last in a series of defenses including carpets of raised spikes called "Stalin's carpet" spring-loaded shrapnel guns, land mines and barbed wire. It was not built to keep people from the capitalist West out of the Workers' Paradise, it was meant to keep people in. It was essentially a prison were attempting to leave the East could land you in jail indefinitely if you weren't killed first.

It has made me think government today. It doesn't really matter what the ideology is, there is just a certain leaning certain governments have. The Eastern Bloc was not Communist in any sense other than name. Just like Popeye's saying they have "home cooked" biscuits. I don't think the names of political affiliations mean anything, it is how business is carried out. Leaders either promote personal liberties or they seek to withhold them based on irrational ideology. Whether it is to save the workers from the capitalist pigs or save the nation from the godless homosexuals, repression is repression.

> NOV. 9, 1989 WITH PETER JENNINGS
> MORE IMAGES ON FLICKR

Christophe Girot • Sinkende Mauer (Sinking Wall) • 1997

.

Problem perspectives of a short scenario

2009-10-27T14:20:00.005-05:00

I tried to create some kind of framework for looking at Liam Gillick's show "Three perspectives and a short scenario" now on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. I didn't want to just explain what each element supposedly "meant," which wouldn't be true anyway, since describing an object's origin does not describe its meaning. Nor was it possible to jump into analysis without A) research on the artist—his ideas, the ideas of others he is interested in, and the ideas others have about him—which I only have begun to delve into, or B) still having to explain at least some of the basics, which are complicated. I don't know if you would call it a review, more of a discussion, or a view somewhere between and overview and an in-depth view. A subsurface view. A scratched surface view.

ARTSLANT
IMAGES

The 39 Steps

2009-10-14T18:19:00.009-05:00

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle • untitled, papavera somnifarum, from the installation Nocturne (white poppies) • commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York • 2002-09 • artificial poppies • dimensions variable

This past Sunday, Industry of the Ordinary staged a happening entitled 39 Verbs at Packer Schopf Gallery, part of Chicago Artists Month. Featured Chicago Artists Month artist Candida Alvarez's work was one of the first seen upon entering the space. As much a post-painterly dissection with overtones of Robert Ryman, it was a sign of resignation: "I'm Done," curved around the surface of raw linen, sandwiched between the edge of the support and the edge of a smaller canvas smooshed, face-first to the linen one. The verb given to her to interpret was "provide."

The story is over at ArtSlant. In some ways writing about this was closer to covering a social event than an exhibition. Especially since so many of Chicago's well-known "cultural workers" were participating and and/or in attendance. It felt a little like Scene & Herd on Artforum.com.

> Review
> Event Page

Dan S. Wang • Verb #1, Conclusions • 2009 • letterpress & stone seal • edition of 22 • 18 x 14 inches

Reviews

2009-10-08T15:08:00.009-05:00

Up now on ArtSlant:

From left: installation view of SUBSTANCE (for Julian) by Tilman • courtesy of The Suburban • installation view of elena Trepp Appear to Disappear • courtesy of the artist and Andrew Rafacz • Zak Smith • drawing from We Did Porn • courtesy of Tin House Books

SUBSTANCE (for Julian) by Tilman at The Suburban
>Review • >Venue

Selena Trepp Appear to Disappear at Andrew Rafacz
>Review • >Venue

Zak Smith We Did Porn published by Tin House Books
>Review • >Book

Julian Dashper • Left: untitled • 1996 • Right: Artfrom • 1992 • Dashper took an ad out in Artforum reading "Artfrom New Zealand" instead of "Artforum International" a subsequent ad went on to review the imaginary exhibition.

In my review of the show at The Suburban I refer to statements Julian Dashper made at his talk last year the University of Chicago’s Contemporary Art Workshop*. I have more notes from his talk that I think are worth sharing here:

Known more for interest in footnotes rather than the main story.

Suspect of canonization from underneath: the younger artists saying an older one is cool.

Uses the activity of Minimalism, politics of the reductive, to not show much. “I show a lot, but I don’t show much when I show.”**

I encourage you to make the most of your situation. Use them saying “NO” as gunpowder.

Shows CV as a work of art, it is for sale. Printed on black paper. Like porn, you have to look at it very closely. People are obsessed with CV’s but don’t admit, like porn.

I painted a painting and then spent my time sanding it off.

Leaves lights where they were from last show.

Recorded the last 15 minutes of the Venice Biennale.

Leave blank spaces in exhibitions. “Breathing spaces.”

At university you aren’t making art, you’re studying it. It’s like you are student of medicine.

What is your public?
I view it as an awful word “art literate” or “gallery-goer.” But also people on the street, they are informed by artists… There is not one truth, but series of truths. I don’t believe the artist necessarily owns the meaning, it is cumulative.

* CAW is a joint venture of the Art History and Visual Arts departments at the University that tries to bridge that uncanny valley between theory and practice. Dashper, in town for The Suburban project spoke to CAW at the invitation of a colleague from New Zealand.

** That’s the way he said it, and I like the way it sounds. The doubling up of “show” is interesting. What he is saying is that he participates in a lot of shows, but the amount of work he shows in those exhibitions is sparse. This for him was based in Minimalist aesthetics/politics. It also, for me, fits into the aspect of his practice of “not being there,” but in a way that absence is present. Much like leaving empty “breathing spaces.” That is a sound installation tactic everyone thinking about putting art out in a space to be looked at should take to heart.

We Watched Porn

2009-10-06T12:12:00.018-05:00

Mandy Morbid & Lystra Making A Tentacle Porn Movie (triptych) • Zak Smith • courtesy Tin House Books

On ArtSlant I have a review of sorts of a book about life, and life in “alt-porn” told through engaging paragraph-long sentences and intricate drawings on bits of paper by Zak Smith (aka Zak Sabbath). Although in the book he admits following the porn name game rules it should be "Starchy Third." I’m new to reviewing books, his book is about being new to porn, so it works out well, I think. If you haven’t noticed, the much-derided hipster onslaught has invaded everything, and now hipsters are making their own porn. Vivid, a major pornhouse, has it’s own alternative division, Vivid-ALT (which produced some of the films Sabbath has appeared in) is like the Urban Outfitters of porn. I say that over American Apparel, or Forever 21, which are much pornier, because Urban Outfitters has a better and more varied sense of design and it’s pretty arty, like Vivid-ALT.

How arty is Vivid-ALT? It is lorded over by an art school graduate whose nomme de porn is Eon McKai (you might get the reference.) Looking at any number of videos by people—who are about the same age with the same neo new wave musical tastes—in art galleries and exhibitions that put forth that youthful, ironic, decadent, way-too-skinny, tight-pants-ed, sexy with black and neon squirted on top milleu, it makes sense there is that kind of porn out there. Compare Cody Critchloe’s BOY on view at the Smart Museum’s "Heartland" with McKai’s D<3D. And like everything in the alternative mainstream niche, it might be incredibly radical and feminist or misogynist, or art, or selling out. No one’s sure. What’s nice about porn, though, is there is a certain degree of straightforwardness. When it comes down to it, it’s all about fucking and you can’t deny it. Whether it is better in some way then regular porn, or more alternative, or sexually liberating or art or just like everything else that appeals to a certain audience that’s convinced itself it is somehow different than every other demographic, all that is extraneous.

Pixie Pearl • Zak Smith • courtesy Tin House Books

In this way, McKai’s two features on art school (Art School Sluts, his first porn, and the remake Art School Girls Are Easy, his latest) are amazing and brutal in the way Art School Confidential was: opening up the private workings of a world full of creative dreamers who are all “gonna make it” to the ridicule of a wider audience. Any lingering sincerity you might have had about the romantic academy were young artists mingle and make are skewered with the all-too-true lines that start off the previews for both movies: “My name’s Mia, on days I feel like it, I go to art school.” God damn it, I went to art school every day, because I felt like it. That’s why I have this fucking blog instead of Chlamydia.

But we’re here to talk about the book by Zak Smith, which is about a lot more than porn. Here are some choice excerpts:

So where do you register that complaint, and what do you do with all that wasted experience?
The only place to put wasted experience to use is in art, and the only place to register a complete with the order of existence is art.
You draw it. I saw that. I’m registering my complaint–and I have made it pretty, since all things that are useless had better be pretty.

I think men must seem really like dogs to women—hungry and large, often slobbering—as a species, unpredictable and sometimes dangerous … but as individuals, predictable and clockwork and cute... Some are tiny and harmless, some are harmless and big as bears, but all have predatory, long-boned bodies with teeth and claws essentially made to hunt and hurt smaller things. To deliver yourself sexually to an unknown one must be like putting yourself at the mercy of a strange, large, imprecise, and hairy animal that you can just only hope is well-trained. Straight men should imagine how much differently they’d behave if their lovers were—to scale up—wolves.

On the message of Star Wars (the original three, of course):

[M]aybe you squabble among yourselves, maybe you believe in the Force or maybe you don’t, maybe you worry about the odds or you kiss your sister or maybe you speak in enigmatic noises only your friends can understand, maybe you worry too much or maybe you are inarticulate and hairy, but in the end you all have a role to play in the fall of the empire, which is evil…

Zak Smith • courtesy Tin House Books

And finally, since I’m sure you are curious about what it’s like on the set:

It’s quickly obvious that, from the point of view of Rebecca Black, my job is to be a dildo, and that as long as I behave essentially like a dildo and do only that which dildos do, she is capable of having toward me an y of the surprising and subtle array of emotions a woman might reserve for all the dildos in her life, corrected for style, size, color and consistency.

This is probably the best context I’ll ever have to bring up this final note. Young artists are always knocking boots with pornography. Scottish artist Lucy McKenzie has cited Cosey Fanni Tutti (of Throbbing Gristle) as an inspiration. And has followed in her idol’s footsteps, posing for famous cult fetish photographer and friend of Sonic Youth, Richard Kern.

Both photographs by Richard Kern • left: Lucy McKenzie, 1997 via T. Tex's Hexes • right via Italian Vice
Painting: Lucy McKenzie • untitled • 2005 • courtesy the artist & Metro Pictures, New York • via Tate

> Review
> Tin House
> Eon McKai
> Alt Porn on Wikipedia

Un-Learning Modernism

2009-09-28T16:45:00.001-05:00

Recently I began noticing that interest in Modernist aesthetic approaches seemed to be cropping up. The trends that interest me are described not by what they are, but what they are next to. Not a “return,” “re-examination” or “re-evaluation” but something near that. Certainly not “re-vival” or “re-birth.” Maybe “resuscitation.” But then, only of very specific elements. In my schizophrenic statement for my recent exhibition at 65GRAND, I stated:

That is the condition of art, and painting in particular, that most weighed down and burdened of all the media, a consciousness of its own history and its need for, or habit of, self-criticality. So Modernist, but is that not what art after Modernism does too? It is almost exclusively engaged in self-criticality. And it seems there is a generalized trend brewing, not a return to the Modern, but an increasing interest in sifting through the trash heap and salvaging, repairing or reconsidering aspects of the Modernist project that have promise of a new relevancy.

Basically, I believe art is always in a condition of self-examination and evaluation. At different times it is called different things, indeed this is because at different moments there are different aims and ends, different areas being scrutinized. A lot of it is contextual and situational.

Even in the short time I have started to notice this sort of instinctive examination of the bits and pieces of Modernism many colleagues are doing, it has become overwhelming. And unfortunately it is confused. There is now a wholesale wave of Modernism crashing down to such an extent that it as though it never went away. And all the generic understandings are returning with it. Modernism, or any other moment can never really return because time has moved on.

I was, and perhaps still am, interested in the idiosyncratic approach to Modernism. For me it is at times the personal aesthetic mindset of living inside a Barnett Newman, an imaginary one that embodies all the best Newman’s, and then having that sort of overlay in how I look at the world. That is the kind of use Modernism has. Not a tired re-hashing of the conflation of architecture and art or talking about the Bauhaus. And especially not the naïve utopian ideals about the world-healing power of the perfect marriage of art and design. There is nothing new or useful to dragging those ideas from the back of the top shelf of the closet.

Admittedly my aesthetic fascination with Modernism, and my taste, are limited to a very narrow period with a very narrow number of artists. This is based in an accurate understanding of said artists and their period—as accurate as is possible for anyone looking to a historical moment they didn’t directly witness—but I quickly go astray. Not out of laziness or ignorance, something I would accuse sincere proponents of a re-release re-mastered re-issue of Modernism, but out of an internal necessity to mine the past for use in the present. That is the point of art, if there is to be anything gained from looking at Modernism, it is in its use as material. And so when I am interested in Modernist art, and I am interested in the work of certain artists at present utilizing it, it is in a moment of synthesis.

Looking at bits and pieces of the Modern to use in one’s own practice is not based on prescribed historical criteria, or accuracy. It is based on an intuitive and personal understanding eccentrically related to one’s own aims and agenda within an artistic project. In short it is the synthesis of Modernist and Postmodernist approaches to art making, that is neither nor.

I am not interested in some sort of reverent resurrection or some violent antagonism. Those are safe and established zones in which to act and it would be very hard to come up with anything useful in either mindset. In both cases it is a mistake to think of Modernism as one thing. Modernism had many nuances, sidetracks and variously opposing elements. So Modernism is not one idea you can bring back, or one you can kill. That is why I would encourage any discussion around Modernism to be as specific and precise as possible. That just might not be possible though, because these days when we speak of art, we only speak in generalizations.

As it stands at the moment I am inclined to purposefully distance myself from “the Modern” in general and painting in particular.

Talk Talk

2009-09-25T15:05:00.010-05:00

I will be doing a lecture this weekend as part of Julius Caesar’s “Fest Fest” fundraiser about the ideas and art that transpired during the residency I was at in Bern, Switzerland in August.

Space Space installation by Ethan Breckenridge in the Zentrum Paul Klee Forum.

Erik Wenzel
“Talk Talk”

Saturday, September 26
3:30 – 4:30 p.m.
3144 West Carroll Avenue, 2G
Chicago, IL, 60612

Wenzel will present a lecture on the Sommerakademie 2009: “Internal Necessity,” held this past August at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern Switzerland and curated by Tirdad Zolghadr. The talk will cover the art and experiences of the Sommerakademie. Overarching themes related to “Internal Necessity” from the Sommerakademie such as Labor and Free Time, Im/materiality, Withdrawal, and Specificity will be introduced and lead into an open discussion in which everyone is welcome to participate.

More information on the Sommerakademie:
> Internal Necessity

Full listings of the “Fest Fest” weekend’s events, including a “benefit auction”:
> Fest Fest

All events are free and open to the public. Donations are accepted.

On Openings

2009-09-11T14:24:00.005-05:00

WHENEVER I HAVE GONE THERE, THERE HAVE BEEN EITHER SO MANY PEOPLE THAT I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO SEE THE PICTURES, WHICH WERE DREADFUL, OR SO MANY PICTURES THAT I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO SEE THE PEOPLE, WHICH IS WORSE.

– Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Reading List

2009-09-10T16:02:00.010-05:00

As we head into the Oh-Nine/Oh-Ten gallery season I'm happy to have some reviews up on ArtSlant. I've covered "Constellations" at the MCA and Michael Ruglio-Mursell at Gallery 400. There's also a "flavor pick" for Gallery 400's ongoing video program.
> CONSTELLATION PRIZES
> PROJECT X II
> REFLECTIONS

Garth Weiser • untitled (Red Figure No. 1) • 2008 • acrylic & acrylic gouache on canvas • 235x211cm
Courtesy the artist & Casey Kaplan • via frieze.com, now in the MCA's collection • on view in "Constellations"

There are also a number of artists having shows that are up now or opening this weekend I've recently written on. Here's some critical framework, contextualization or "please read things I've written."

Paul Nudd kicks of Western Exhibitions' season with VOMITROMITON. This is my review of his show, "Dirty," with Casey Wasniewski at the Hyde Park Art Center in the summer of 08.
> DIRTY BOOTS

John Opera, along with Curtis Mann & Stacia Yeapanis, is currently in MP3 II the second installment of exhibitions and catalogs from the Midwest Photographers Project at MOCP. This is my review of Opera's show "Zoar and Other Works" which inaugurated Andrew Rafacz's program last fall.
> BLACK FOREST

Robert Davis / Michael Langlois have the current 12x12 at the MCA, Into the Void, and the inaguaral show, In Our Likeness: Portraits of Illumination at Monique Meloche's new space. Meloche is trying out a new location, Wicker Park, and a different opening scheme, Sat 4 - 7P. This is my review of Rob and Mike's show "House of the Rising Sun" at the Cultural Center from earlier this year.
> AND GOD I KNOW I'M ONE OF THEM

Two Scott Reeder's painting are included in "Constellations" at the MCA. A recent project of the collective Milwaukee International (Nicholas Frank, Scott Reeder, John Riepenhoff, Elysia Borowy-Reeder and Tyson Reeder) was at Rowley Kennerk this past December.
> THERE'S STILL SOME PRESENTS TO OPEN
> PRESENTS TENSE IS GRACE

_

Warm For Your Formalism

2009-08-20T15:52:00.003-05:00

I have put up a slideshow of images from my recent exhibition, Warm For Your Formalism at DOVA temporary, which was my MFA thesis show for the University of Chicago.

> SLIDESHOW
> PHOTOSET

Internal Necessity

2009-07-28T16:01:00.004-05:00

I'm in the Newark airport. I'm on my way to Berlin and then Bern. I'll be participating in Sommerakademie 2009 hosted by the Zentrum Paul Klee in the Swiss capital.

The Sommerakademie 2009 is directed by:
Tirdad Zolghadr

Installation in the Forum/ZPK and in the LOGE/Stadtgalerie:
Ethan Breckenridge

Fellows:
Gürsoy Dogtas (DE)
Claire Feeley (IE)
Linda Franke (DE)
Agnieszka Kurant (PL)
Bettina Malcomess (ZA)
Mariangela Mendez Prencke (CO)
Uriel Orlow (CH)
Judith Raum (DE)
Shirana Shahbazi (IR/DE)
Oraib Toukan (JO)
Ricardo Valentim (PT)
Erik Wenzel (USA)

Speakers:
Fabienne Eggelhöfer
Bruce Hainley
Marianne Keller
Vasif Kortun
Suhail Malik
Andrea Phillips
Hans Rudolf Reust
Peter J. Schneemann
Carey Young

> SOMMERAKADEMIE

Slanty

2009-07-24T16:10:00.007-05:00

I have some reviews of exhibitions currently on view up on ArtSlant. Along with a comparison of some summer movies to acts of performance art.

The Definition of IS • Taylor Hokanson & Chris Reilly • 2009 • interactive single-channel video installation • dimensions variable • courtesy of the artists
> Definition of Is

Installation view of I Don't Care About the Rest of the Year by Megan Plunkett at Golden Age • courtesy of Golden Age
> Then I Don’t Care

Santiago Sierra
3 PEOPLE PAID TO LAY STILL INSIDE 3 BOXES DURING A PARTY
Vedado. Havana, Cuba. November 2000

The cigarette-smoking man in this image of a Santiago Sierra piece looks strikingly like MCA Chicago’s former chief, Robert Fitzpatrick.
> Beuys v. Mann, Sierra v. Brüno

-

140 Modern Moments

2009-07-07T13:09:00.002-05:00

The Art or Idiocy? photographic journey through the Art Institute of Chicago's new Modern Wing now has 140 images.

> MOD WING PHOTOSET

2009-06-19T19:20:00.003-05:00

More photos from the Modern Wing are posted on Flickr.
> MOD WING PHOTOSET

See it Again, For the First Time

2009-06-06T15:02:00.003-05:00

No Signal: Matthew Metzger (left) and Mike Schuh (right) in the hot seat during their public talk for their MFA thesis exhibition: No Sudden Moves.

[RE]-VIEW
Curated by Maggie Taft
June 5 – 9, 2009
Hours: Sat – Tue • 12 – 5pm

DOVA temporary
5228 S Harper Ave
Chicago IL 60615
web

Participating artists • Matt Metzger, Mike Schuh, Erik Wenzel, Nessie Ruiz, Amy Babinec, Kimmy Noonen, Dan Paz, and Marilyn Volkman

DOVA temporary presents [RE]-VIEW, showcasing work from 2009 graduates of the University of Chicago MFA program in visual arts. Curated by art history graduate student, Maggie Taft, the exhibition features work in a wide range of media including sculpture, video, painting, installation, and photography. Acknowledging the conditions giving rise to this show, the exhibition is both a literal review of the work the graduates produced during their time in the MFA program and also a thematization of this concept of re-view as a concern for both art production and productive viewership. The eight participating artists explore this notion in a variety of ways, including in terms of memory, reproduction, documentation, disorientation, nostalgia, and mapping. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

The MFA Grind

2009-05-31T19:34:00.007-05:00

No Signal: Matthew Metzger (left) and Mike Schuh (right) in the hot seat during their public talk for their MFA thesis exhibition: No Sudden Moves.

The Newcity has a cover feature by MFA programs in Chicago by Rachel Furnari, pick up a copy. The University of Chicago is discussed along with Northwestern, Columbia, UIC and SAIC. You can read it online, but the hardcopy is worth getting, the cover features a great painting of Survivor's re-release of "Eye of The Tiger" from Rocky III by Matthew Metzgrrr! Inside are more images than online, such as my ORANGE MONOCHROME installation and a picture I took of some awesome art conversation at my MFA show opening, smirks, flailing hands and all. Now it's obvious why I am suggesting picking it up. Anyhow, it is a good article, it isn't puffy or bitter. And Furnari poses a valid question: (the bold is my emphasis)

[S]tudents like Wenzel aren’t idly griping when they ask about the sustainability of the currently thriving apartment-gallery model or wonder about the logic of a dominant anti-institutional, anti-commercial genre of art-making when there are not many significant institutions or markets to be resisting. What are the aesthetics of resistance when the putative mainstream is a temporary fiction made up of an endlessly renewable slate of one-offs and cookouts? Is this a radical condition of possibility or an enervating cycle of optimism and disappointment?

> BURGEONING

Matthew Metzger • Re-release: Discourse • 2009 • acrylic & oil on panel

.

Chicago is Modern Again ...For the First Time

2009-05-13T21:20:00.010-05:00

> MORE PHOTOS ADDED (5.23.9)
To view them at full scale click the little "all sizes" button above the image on each photo's page.

The Modern Wing of the Art Insitute of Chicago, which opens this weekend has a lot of new work and old favorites. See some of what is on view in my photoset on Flickr. There was a lot to see, so I will be posting new ones over the coming days. Check back regularly.
> TAKE THESE MODERN WINGS

The Art Institute of Chicago has begun the unveiling of its new Modern Wing. Culminating in a free admission weekend and food drive. The museum will be free its entire first week of operation.
> MAY 16 - 22

The moment no one is sure who anyone is supposed to be and what anyone is saying is supposed to mean everything is working perfectly.

2009-05-01T00:19:00.003-05:00

> OUR LITERAL SPEED

The University of Chicago. Not UIC Since 1892.

2009-04-26T13:13:00.003-05:00

The University of Chicago Department of Visual Arts 2009 MFA Thesis Exhibitions are coming. The University of Chicago Department of Visual Arts 2009 MFA Thesis Exhibitions are here:

APRIL 24 - 28
Matthew Metzger and Mike Schuh: No Sudden Moves

MAY 1 -5
Nessie Ruiz: selections from another norm
Erik Wenzel: Warm For Your Formalism

MAY 8 - 12
Amy Babinec: Belleville

MAY 15 - 19
Kimmy Noonen: SOME KIND OF EVIDENCE

MAY 22 - 26
Danielle Paz: tippingpoint

MAY 29 - JUNE 2
Marilyn Volkman: Holding A Time Like This And Other Voiding Bodies

JUNE 5 - 9
[RE]-VIEW
group show curated by Maggie Taft

Exhibitions are open Sat - Tue • 12 - 5pm
All receptions are held on the opening date, always a Friday, from 6 - 9pm

DOVA temporary
5228 S Harper Ave
Chicago IL 60615

> DOVA temp
> mfa09
> facebook group

Non-Production

2009-04-02T14:46:00.005-05:00

“It was Strau, after all, who wrote a catalogue essay for the 2006 exhibition ‘Make Your Own Life: Artists In & Out of Cologne’ celebrating what he termed the ‘non-productive attitude’, the kind of social recognition that artists could attain without having to produce ‘art works’ to show for themselves.” (Elena Filipovic, Frieze 109, September 2007)

This seems like an incredibly pertinent and interesting approach to an art making practice today. The very shift in terminology to “practice” as a catch all for whatever art things artists do is symptomatic of this. Or the way “work” rather than “artwork” or “art object” is being conceived of and deployed in discussions on art. Not to be confused with the older, post-everything politicized notion of everyone in the art world being a “cultural worker.”

The big questions now seem to be “who are the artists and what are they doing?” and “where is the art and who is making it?”

Josef Strau • Year in Review Lamp • 2003 • (image from Greene Naftali website, picture quite possibly taken in Strau's Galerie Meerrettich)

From 2002 to 2006 Josef Strau ran the Galerie Meerrettich, a glass pavilion inside the box office of what used to be an avant-garde theater in Berlin. As an artist-run space it was even paltry, no press information. Like most artist-run spaces it had no funding and no regular hours. Perhaps he did the favor of not posting any to begin with, because most alternative spaces claim to have hours they seldom keep. Maybe because it was in Berlin, or maybe it is the way Filipovic describes it, but Galerie Meerrettich’s pathetic qualities coupled with its cult status and well-attended events and openings seems more like a careful aesthetic gesture of art into art world rather than standard alternative art party fair. It is worth noting that “alternative space” now only means the well-established alternative to running a commercial, professional gallery. What’s the alternative to the alternative space? Running an apartment gallery like a commercial gallery with proper lighting and regular hours? What does the institutional critique of the “alternative space” look like?

Installation view of Josef Strau Don't Climb the Pyramids at Greene Naftali Gallery • 2006

“I reckon that the radar still hasn’t fully registered Strau, at least in part because his art works – he does occasionally produce things – are so curiously discreet, demanding and ungainly that they aren’t the easiest items for collectors to snap up, or for press releases to encapsulate (Ibid)." Indeed, the press release for Josef Strau’s show organized by Maxwell Graham at Rowley Kennerk, which opens Saturday, April 4 at 6pm doesn’t say any more then what I’ve just told you in this sentence. I’m interested to see what will be there. Will there be an art situation, or just a motion toward Josef Strau and his stature of influence in the form of an object or two? Either way, it will probably involve lamps.

> KENNERK
> frieze
> NAFTALI

Hurrah, the Butter is all Gone!

2009-03-06T13:33:00.002-06:00

This 1935 photomontage by John Heartfield has been coming to mind a lot. Obviously during the Bush Administration with the cutting of nearly all funding in favor of the war and its no-bid contracts. But now, just the sentiment of its main phrase. It fits the ironic joys of our time. If you can't find anything to be joyful about, find joy ironically in what is most obviously wrong. So as I look at the country, and the Republicans' concerted effort to not only maintain the idiocy of the past years, but make sure any new policies are strangled at birth if not stillborn, I look to the future and say: "Hurray! The butter is all gone!" Ah, but we still have our tax cuts, our over $250K/year tax cuts.

What else can you do? Sure criticizing is easy, especially if you represent a way of life that got us here (conservatives). But there's also the possibility that any of the new ideas won't work either. We could all be fucked no matter what. With all the comparisons to the Great Depression and The New Deal and that time of worldwide economic collapse, people leave a few things out. No one, at least in the developed nations, is standing in line with a sack of money hoping by the time it's their turn there is still a loaf of bread available and that the cash they have is enough to pay for it. That was literally the case around the world in the 30s. The other overlooked part, but I'm sure there are some people secretly getting excited, rubbing their hands together in anticipation, is that the last catastrophe was solved by another, worse catastrophe, World War II.

"Nothing mobilizes capital like war."

If you've ever wondered what the rest of it says:
[Hermann Goering] in his speech in Hamburg: "Ore has always made an empire strong, butter and lard have made a country fat at most.” > SOURCE

Disclosed Studios

2009-02-27T14:14:00.002-06:00

This Sunday Midway Studios at the University of Chicago will be disclosed to the public. Make a day of it, the Renaissance Society is also having the opening for Paul Chan (4 - 7P).

> REN & STIMPY

Paint That Shit Gold, or Silver, If You Can't Afford Gold

2009-02-25T11:53:00.005-06:00

UPDATE
You probably have heard by now that shortly after this was announced, the owners sold the building. It is now to be named the Willis Tower. I think Chicagoans' loyalty to the name "Sears Tower" is an example of capitalism fully integrated into every day life in Debordian sense. Stop and think for a moment. That Sears Roebuck & co commissioned the building to be made and owned naming rights, a form of branding and advertising, until 2003. They haven't had offices in that building for over 15 years. This is basically a question of brand loyalty here, to one company over another. A local, historical business enterprise over one from the UK. People will call it the Sears Tower for years. And if it remains black, won't the name changing be less of a difference? In a show of meaningless but fun subculture populism, a facebook group has formed to call it the Wesley Willis Tower, in honor of the deceased outsider musician. Also be sure to visit the "going green" link about a great way to fix a bald mountain.

> WBBM update

So apparently the Sears Tower is considering painting itself silver. Well, the owners of the skyscraper are; but it's always odd to think of a company whose job it is to be a building, not to do something else and is just located in a building. Why are they wanting to paint it silver? To stimulate the economy. But not as much as painting it gold would. The economy is too weak to handle the tallest building in America being painted gold. It seems like a trashy idea for sprucing up the skyline. Consider it the skyscraper equivalent of those bathtub covers that Empire Today will glue on top of your grungy old tub and shower. "Why build something new when we can just paint it classy silver?"

This mockup is great. On the left it looks like a 1950s film effect for a nuclear bomb going off. On the right, the building is covered in frost.

Actually the real reason has something to do with being environmentally responsible, but still doesn't make much sense. Perhaps the idea is reflective silver is more energy efficient than black. The Sears Tower is seeking a “silver rating” from an environmental group, so maybe it is just to say, “we’re almost first in environmentalism.” In any case, it is retarded. Maybe they should just paint it green, like the mountain in China. Or have Katherina Grosse do it:

Ikon Mural Project at Birmingham Central Library

> WBBM
> GOING GREEN

BELIEF IN DOUBT IN PAINTING

2009-02-18T16:35:00.004-06:00

My exhibition Belief in Doubt in Painting opens this Friday at 65GRAND. It was only a few years ago but it feels like ages since first visiting the space a few years ago to write about it and getting to know Bill Gross, the director, as a result.

I also have an interviewed by What to Wear During an Orange Alert? (hey, another site that ends with a question mark), a fine site and publication outfit that covers art, literature and music. If like obsessive discussions about the nature of art and what might be the implications or motivations behind my show, then you'll like this interview.
> ORANGE ALERT

Studio view: panels from The White Room • 2009 • canvas boards, acrylic paint & gesso, shrink wrap, metallic binder clips and anodized aluminum shelves • dimensions variable and Green Monochrome/Brackish Dip • 2008 • acrylic on canvas

ERIK WENZEL: Belief in Doubt in Painting
February 20 - March 21, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday, February 20 (7-10PM)

65GRAND
1378 W Grand Ave (entrance on Noble)
Hours: Fri + Sat 12 - 5:30P and by appointment

Interview with Hans Haacke and Other Reviews

2009-02-15T02:45:00.007-06:00

I am taking a bit of a hiatus from writing. One reason is my exhibition at 65GRAND, BELIEF IN DOUBT IN PAINTING, which opens this Friday, February 20. I do want to take a moment and direct you to some recent reviews for ArtSlant and an interview I was excited to conduct and am pleased is now available for viewing.

Hans Haacke • Shalopsky et al Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real time Social System, As of May 1, 1971. • from thefileroom.org
First, check out the interview I conducted with Hans Haacke when he visited the University of Chicago last year for ArtSpeaks hosted by the Open Practice Committee. Other than saying "um" a lot, I think I did a good job. I got to ask him a lot of questions. One of which that I thought was casual, turned out to lead to answer dispelling rumors and myths about his infamous cancelled Guggenheim show. It occurs near the end, so listen in with intent ears and know you've had the spoiler alert. Revisionist history, straight from the artist's mouth.
> HAACKE

Still from the video projection Healing Colors, Musical Notes (w/ Jim Dorling) • 2008 • 29 min. 37 sec.
> Scott Wolniak Ungray: Color Light and Other Balms

Davis/Langlois • Dads • 2008 • 0il on canvas • 34 x 60 inches, 2 parts • monique meloche gallery
> Davis Langlois: House of the Rising Sun

Matthew Higgs • Look at Me • 2007 • framed bookpage • 13.5 x 10.5" • ed. 1 of 3 • courtesy of Murray Guy • as seen in "Presents" curated by Milwaukee International at Rowley Kennerk Gallery
> Presents

Cut the Pig (and then give it stitches)

2009-02-09T23:18:00.004-06:00

ARTINFO follows up, and now I am too, on funding for the arts cuts in the Stimulus Bill. The provision for $50M for the National Endowment for the Arts has been restored to the bill that just passed.
> GOOD NEWS

ARTINFO reports that one of there’s at least one thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on, that the arts are, “wasteful and non-stimulative projects." Also, they comparably waste taxpayer money the way “gambling facilities; aquariums and zoos; golf courses, swimming pools, and parks; and highway beautification projects,” do.

This is an amendment to the stimulus plan that Republicans won’t let out unless it completely ruined and packed full of tax breaks for the rich. The measure proposed by Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), won 73 – 24. Democrats who supported the amendment include: Diane Feinstein of California, Charles Schumer of New York, Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.

It specifically “prevents ‘any ... museum, theater [or] art center,’ from sharing in the bailout.”

If you’re one of those internet action types, the Americans for the Arts are doing an e-campaign.
> ACTION!
> ARTINFO

Golden Parachutes for the Art World

2009-02-03T12:52:00.003-06:00

Run a major bank into the ground? We have a bailout for that. Run a major contemporary art museum into the ground? We have another museum for you to try your hand at:
> “'Jeremy was far and away the best person' for the Nasher position."

ALSO
February is FREE at the Art Institute of Chicago, so see all the art you can before you have to pay for it again (they've actually been making Februaries free for a while now).
> Bailout for the cash-strapped museum goer

NAGAS

2009-01-23T03:01:00.008-06:00

Erik Wenzel • Life up to This Point (detail) • 2008 • fabric • courtesy of the artist and 65GRAND

My colleague Matthew Metzger and I are representing the University of Chicago in the North American Graduate Art Survey which opens this weekend in Minneapolis. NAGAS, as it is called was juried by Christopher Atkin, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Art Department at Macalester College. "In addition to teaching, his interest in visual cultures inform his exhibition reviews, essays, are large-scale research projects. He received his MA & MRes degrees from Goldsmiths College, University of London," state the organizers of NAGAS. Students selected are from MFA programs across the US and Canada such as Yale; Tyler School of Art; Hunter College; the Art Institute of Boston; the University of the Arts, Pennsylvania and RISD among others.

If you happen to find yourself in The Land of Ten Thousand Lakes, do come by. It's been literally 20 years since I left. I remember the late summer/early fall afternoon the family car pulled out of Toledo Circle in Bloomington, Minnesota. [cue improvised sound effects and Garrison Keillor describing the scene with quaint phrases and a hint of deadpan sarcasm] We headed down to Chicagoland for the second time in less than two years. This time for good; and this time to the South Suburbs. I'm looking forward to returning and plan to visit sites like the Walker Art Center. There will probably be photos of this excursion in the future as well, so that is something for you to look forward to.

North American Graduate Art Survey
Juried by Christopher Atkins

January 20 – February 19, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday, January 23, 6-8:30 pm

Katherine E. Nash Gallery
Regis Center for Art
University of Minnesota
405 21st Ave South
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Open: TU - SA: 11A - 7P
(612) 624-7530
> NASH

P-Head

2009-01-21T12:12:00.006-06:00

Installation view of a piece by Patrick W. Welch.
A set of forty-some images from the exhibition Art Legend: Miniature Paintings 1997 - 2007 by the late, great Patrick W. Welch is up on the Art or Idiocy? Flickr page. The images are also viewable as a slideshow. It is a fairly comprehensive tour through the show at this Hyde Park alternative space.
> P-SET
> P-SHOW

This weekend marked not only the celebration of MLK and the inauguration of a much-anticipated, well-loved and much-needed new President. Sunday was also the close of Prospect.1 in New Orleans, commemorated with what else, a Jazz Funeral. How appropriate, not only for the biennial, but for this time in the city and the nation as a whole. Images from P.1 are forthcoming. If you haven't had a chance to read my reviews on ArtSlant, the links are below.
> P.1
> P.2
> P.ESSAY

NO, I am Not Signing That Petition

2009-01-16T01:28:00.008-06:00

You have probably gotten at least seven email forwards imploring you to sign a petition to have President-Elect Obama appoint a Secretary of the Arts. It was all started because of a comment Quincy Jones made on a radio show stating that the next time he talked to Obama he would "beg" for a Secretary of the Arts.

My first impression was disinterest. I don’t really like “The Arts” as an idea. I am not interested in many of “the arts.” And I am not interested in lumping theater, literature classical music, popular music, fine art, visual art, whatever it is that I do that’s art and all the rest of it into one big marketing wet dream for a brighter tomorrow.

A significant concern about appointing an “Art Czar” or “Art Tsar” (the threat of that term coming into vernacular is enough reason to oppose it) is agenda. In the art world there is a lot of bickering about people and institutions having “aesthetic agendas.” Certain artists or types of art getting more love than others. Imagine the effect the agenda of a cabinet-level chieftain would have on the cultural production of this country? What sort of things would receive support, what sort of things would be excluded? Obviously there would be need for impartiality.

Clearly this and many other concerns would be addressed, at least in a cursory manner, in a petition supported by Quincy Jones and widely reported by several news outlets. Maybe the details of the proposal would be so boring that I only read the first paragraph.

Except the petition, in totality reads:

To: President Barack Obama
Congratulations and thank you for all you do.

Your good friend Quincy Jones said: "...next conversation I have with President Obama is to beg for a Secretary of Arts."
[November 14th 2008 WNYC interview by John Schaefer on "Soundcheck."]

We the undersigned support Quincy Jones' plea.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned

If you count the classy ALL CAPS BANNER AT THE TOP, then it also says:

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD! PLEASE INVITE AS MANY AS POSSIBLE TO SIGN! MAKE IT A GOAL TO GET AT LEAST 3 OTHERS TO SIGN. LET'S ALL WORK TOGETHER FOR A BETTER WORLD AND FUTURE! PRESIDENT OBAMA WILL NEED MASSIVE NUMBERS OF GRASSROOTS SUPPORT TO HELP HIM IMPLEMENT LONG LASTING AND POSITIVE CHANGES.

That’s the petition. That is why I am not signing this overblown chain letter. I think there are more pressing matters for the incoming administration, and I don’t think having this position is at all necessary. It actually makes me cringe a little. It is akin to asking for a Secretary of Religion.

Over at The Art Newspaper David A. Ross has a pretty good list of suggestions that are concise, clear thought out and give some detail. Number 9 of the 10 things addresses the whole Secretary issue. I disagree with him on proposing a position that high, but maybe if his blurb were the petition I’d have signed. Even with his single multiple-clause sentence, Ross has done a far more thorough job in outlining the idea than the author of the petition, Jaime Austria.

> THE TEN FIRST STEPS THAT BARACK OBAMA COULD TAKE TO RENEW THE ARTS

All Around

2009-01-06T12:27:00.005-06:00

Looking north near the US Mint Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans

Lot’s to report today. Probably the largest chunk of writing I’ve done in one session is up on ArtSlant. First is the report from New Orleans. Reviews of the Contemporary Arts Center and US Mint venues of Prospect.1 and an essay on the city are on the Worldwide site.
> WAREHOUSE Dist.
> US MINTY
> BYWATER

Installation view of Presents curated by Milwaukee International at Rowley Kennerk Gallery

And from Chicago: David Schutter at Tony Wight, Ulf Puder at Kavi Gupta and Presents at Rowley Kennerk.
> CHICAGO REVIEWS

Ulf Puder • Rückbau • 2008 • oil on linen • 59 x 79 inches • Kavi Gupta Gallery

Coincidentally, tonight PBS airs The Old Man and the Storm, a report on post Katrina New Orleans from Frontline. This will be good, and depressing. Frontline is one of the best, perhaps only, in-depth and carefully researched programs out there today. It is much lauded for things like “journalist integrity” and “objective reporting” and rightly so. Frontline gives you the information you might not want to hear, but need to be informed of. And it does it in a way that is as free of agenda and spin as you can get. You should be able to watch online.
> OLD MAN & THE STORM

P.1

2008-12-29T18:51:00.005-06:00

I was just in New Orleans in a futile attempt to view all the art at the myriad Prospect.1 venues. I'm working on a piece for ArtSlant, and will be posting from my seemingly endless stream of photos on Flickr, so stay tuned.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
• This could easily surpass the Whitney Biennial in the coming years.
• If you are a famous video artist today, you are making elaborate works requiring huge casts and crews, hoping to conquer cinema.
AND:
• Every time I go to New Orleans I wish I'd planned to stay at least two more days.
• Maybe art and culture do serve a unique purpose and can contribute to the greater good.

Ten for Year End

2008-12-26T16:20:00.003-06:00

I have culled through all the year's events, mostly in art and culture, and generated a list of the best for cultural worker Britton Bertran. It's not perfect, I forgot to mention The Dark Knight, which makes Tim Burton's Batmen look like quaint and campy. But it is a solid rundown from my perspective. Bertran has been inviting loads of people to contribute, all are worth checking out: Eric May of Roots & Culture; Jackie Terrassa from the MCA; Stevie Greco of Donald Young and the Chicago Indie Rock organizing scene; Anthony Elms of White Walls, Gallery 400 and countless other art activities; and the list goes on, so have a look around.

> I HATE THE 'EIGHT
> BERTRAN PROJECTS

Last Looks

2008-12-17T12:39:00.004-06:00

Patrick W. Welch • The End is Nice • 2008 • enamel & acrylic on panel • 3 x 5 inches • gescheidle projects

This may the last chance for a long while to see the work of an extraordinary artist who passed away a few months ago. This is particularly a special opportunity to see the work as a solid and coherent whole.

Patrick W. Welch: Art Legend, Miniature Paintings 1997-2007
Closing Reception Sunday, December 21, 2008
11A – 2P
1407 E 54th PL, Chicago
773.363.5935

You should be able to view a collection images from this memorial show HERE.
> PATRICK on GESCHEIDLE PROJECTS
> I KNOW MORE THAN YOU EVER WILL
> GRAVE DUBZ & SMOOV BRAINS
> REVIEW

Patrick W. Welch • Me and You • 2008 • enamel & acrylic on panel • gescheidle projects

Another exhibition on view to be sure and stop by before it closes, is sadly the work of another friend who passed on this year. The exhibition of photographic works of Daniel Johnson closes this Saturday at 65GRAND

Daniel Johnson: Sweet Dreams and Garbage
Friday & Saturday, December 19 & 20, 2008
12NOON - 5:30P
1378 W Grand (entrance on Noble)

I want to note I am promoting these shows because I believe in the art of both Welch and Johnson. These artists’ created strong bodies of work — productions tragically cut short — that deserve as wide an audience possible. Of course they are friends and I want to preserve their memory, but the art itself is worth the attention regardless of the biographical aspects.

"We'll find out who's serious, now that there's no money in it again"

2008-12-04T13:11:00.003-06:00

— Richard Johnson, banana-tit-helmet sculptor

The Art Newspaper has daily editions for Art Basel Miam... and videos too. The young couple adorably smooching in the background between the old collectors being interviewed is kind of funny.
>Art|Basel|Miami|39|Beach|08

"There’s nothing here, but there is."

2008-12-04T01:18:00.005-06:00

My interview with Matt Stolle is up on ArtSlant. It's an engaging conversation where we discuss Ad Reinhardt, systemic painting, the project or projects of post Abstract Expressionist modernist painting and the apparent return to or reappraisal thereof by a growing number of younger artists, monochromes, The Monochrome and signs that won't signify— Pretty heavy shit.

> RACKROOM

The Hours...you will spend

2008-12-03T01:32:00.004-06:00

I recently stumbled upon this video that Brad Troemel posted on his blog. It was directed by Tony Kaye, who directed American History X; it stars Sienna Miller and the art direction was done by Damien Hirst. It is by far one of the worst examples of human expression I have ever seen and I can’t recommend it enough. Ever since I saw it I have been telling everyone to watch it.

Confused as to what I thought, a friend asked, “so is it good? Or is it so bad it’s good?” “No,” I replied, “it’s terrible, but the joy you will get from the hate it brings out in you is like an addiction.” And it’s true. The video clocks in at seven minutes and forty seconds, but it goes by fast. There are videos I like that are half as long that I get bored watching. See the Light by The Hours is so pretentious, self-important, vain, clichéd and unimaginative that it is farcical. Farcical on a level rarely attained. This is achieved by the whole-hearted commitment on the part of all the key participants, the director, the actress, the art director and the band whose song it’s a video for.

The best parodies are things that are parodies of themselves. The most satisfying and devious laughter is at something that doesn’t realize in the slightest how funny it is. There are any number of scenes in popular comedy that play out the way successful, shallow and self-absorbed celebrities horribly fail at being serious artists, but this is better. Because this video is literally an attempt, a successful one it feels, at making a work of depth and substance. The humor comes from watching it; from the viewer seeing it’s absurdity and humor, and the piece itself carrying on as though it is a heart breaking work of staggering genius.

Studs

2008-10-31T18:52:00.005-05:00

More memoriams today as we also learn of the passing of one of Chicago, and America's, greatest writers, Studs Terkel. In freshman essay writing we read and excerpt from Working. I remember being fascinated with the style of writing and the way in which Terkel made the mundane jobs of those he interviewed so captivating. Later I had the fortune of meeting him when I graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. Studs, along with Lucy Lippard & Suzanne Ghez received honorary degrees. Terkel after a generous introduction delighted the audience with an excited utterance, a story of growing up in Chicago. He said more, but the only thing I remember is, "When I was a boy growing up on the North Side, I lived in a hotel with my mother where she was a maid. I would sit in the corner diner in the hotel and OHH GOD! they had the best cherry pie! I have tasted anything so good in my entire life!"

A few years later, my dad, an old timer in his own right, was sitting in the waiting room of his cardiologist at RUSH University Medical Center and who should walk in but none other than Studs Terkel. He sat down and started chatting with my dad. "You're Studs Terkel," my dad said in amazement. "Last time I checked," replied Terkel. It turns out they, and Studs' son, all had the same doctor.

Don Baum Says Chicago Needs 1922 - 2008

2008-10-31T14:03:00.007-05:00

UPDATE: There is a memorial exhibition on view at the MCA until January 25th.

Don Baum • Sphinx • 1991 • "Sandwich" series • found paint by number painting/construction • 16 x 20 x 1 inches • Carl Hammer Gallery

Iconic figure of Chicago's Hairy Who heyday Don Baum has died. Artforum.com has the story.

> OBIT
> EXHIBIT

Patrick W. Welch

2008-10-21T23:56:00.004-05:00

An artist, a colleague, a mentor and friend has died. I don't have anything else to say right now other than how sad I am, and what a loss it is to the practice of making little things that insulate us from the unbearable harshness all around, little things we sometimes call art.

Patrick W. Welch • Last Page • 2008 • enamel & acrylic on panel • 3 x 5 inches • gescheidle projects

His emails always closed with, "getting away with it since 1965." Perhaps that is a fitting epitaph:
Patrick W. Welch, Getting Away With It 1965 - 2008.

Opening this Friday

2008-10-06T20:26:00.004-05:00

For a little promotion in my own self interest, a show I have been working on is opening this Friday:

REVOLUTIONS
Opening reception: Friday, October 10: 6:00 – 9:00 pm.
October 10 —November 1, 2008

Artists include Amy Babinec, Matt Metzger, Kimmy Noonen, Dan Paz, Nessie Ruiz, Mike Schuh, Marilyn Volkman & Erik Wenzel

Curated by isthmus

Ferris Gallery
5228 S. Harper Ave
Chicago IL 60615

Hosted by DOVA temporary

Presented here is an array of artists creating work in a variety of media that playfully addresses the concept of "revolutions," resulting in a multiplicity of interpretations: abstract, formal, technological, social and political. One goal of this project seeks to establish a curatorial tradition based on continuous change, rotation and re-figuration. Ferris Gallery points not only to the revolutionary LA space, but also the great wheel in Hyde Park, both of which sought to signal their locale as a cultural destination. As a whole, isthmus presents a negotiable set of constraints regarding the notion of "revolutions" and its contemporary context.

>EXHIBITION WEBSITE
>OPEN PRACTICE COMMITTEE as seen in Artforum

The Collapsing Economy is Like... A Work of Art

2008-09-30T02:12:00.004-05:00

From The Colbert Report, Wednesday, September 24, 2008:

Stephen Colbert: Now why $700,000,000,000 exactly, when these days you can purchase a bank for 3 pounds of ground chuck and an old bicycle wheel? Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke explained...
Ben Bernanke: Just as when you sell a painting at Sotheby’s you don’t know... nobody knows what it is worth until the auction’s over. Then people know what it’s worth. I think it’s the same thing.
Stephen Colbert: Art is an excellent analogy.
Because I think a lot of people are looking at our economy right now and saying, “my five year old could have done that.”

Cute Load

2008-09-24T22:29:00.008-05:00

This Thursday I have video in a screening at mini dutch (a space with the brilliant motto "another apartment gallery"). Curated by Catie Olson, the program is entitled Cute Load. My piece, Unpacking Playtime, examines alternative structures of painting and the ostensible impossibility of pushing it forward. Also taken on is the argument many an uninitiated viewer expresses at the sight of modern and contemporary art, "my BLANK could do that!" In this case, it's testing if that's something my cat could do. Using a "Kitty-Casso" cat painting kit I received for Christmas, my cat and I set out to make a masterpiece. So you have serious aesthetic investigation and a funny animal video.

Thursday September 25 @ 7:30p
mini dutch
3111 W Diversey Ave
More info:
> SPIDERBUG
> PASS THE MINI DUTCHY

Confronting the Contemporary

2008-09-17T19:00:00.006-05:00

Installation view of Gary Hume's exhibition, Door Paintings, at Modern Art Oxford

I recently read the review of the exhibition of Gary Hume’s career-starting Door Paintings at Modern Art Oxford on Artforum.com by Ana Finel Honigman. While the review is clear and concise, I disagree on the interpretation of the work and it seems terse, even for a short review. Granted, I have not seen the exhibition, but I have indeed seen Hume’s work, including his Door Paintings, and am familiar with his work. I encountered Hume first at Sensation in 1999 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. A distinct memory is the introductory wall text leading into the exhibition space seeking to draw attention away from the few scandalous pieces. It essentially pointed out that while there were strange and unusual works, on the whole the exhibition was mainly comprised of painting, and that was the core of Sensation.

It was strange unsettling painting like I’d never seen before. It was about as far away from the directness I was accustomed to in the German Expressionists and the Abstract Expressionists. Even the sparse sensibilities of Cy Twombly were no preparation for this. I was interested in Frank Auerbach, not The Day the World Turned Auerbach, 1992, by Glenn Brown. Since then I have grown to love his work, the strange faux brutal ironic party paintings of Martin Maloney and the sleek and gaudy sheen of Hume. At the time, I found Hume’s painting symptomatic of, not, “as candy, a sweet reprieve from the diet of otherwise bitter and rough YBA work that sustained the English art scene throughout the ’90s,” as Honigman states. Sensation was a strange unsettling trip for a young artist, and right in the center were Hume’s disquieting paintings rendered in colors no one should ever have invented, let alone placed next to one another. I remember leaving the exhibition and thinking, where were all the paintings that were supposed to be there? Looking back at the catalog, it was evident there were some, but they didn’t register as painting to me. They were all removed, withdrawn painting. You had Marcus Harvey’s Myra, 1995, a comment on a nanny child serial killer that to Britain was what Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgn Mary, 1996, was to Rudy Guiliani and Christians in America. Harvey’s Myra was not a painting so much as a conceptual art object that took the form of a painting. It’s funny, I forget Ofili was even in the show. He is mainly remembered as a scandal, not an artist. His reputation now seems separate from that. Of course there was also Jenny Saville and her awful giant nude paintings. I hated those. The thing is, there wasn’t any painting in the show I liked. I wanted to like it, I did, but there was nothing for me at the time. Sensation was full of painting that made me think these people hate painting. That is a common refrain these days. But it is really a question of taste. It’s like Jeff Koons, you may not like his work, but would he really be keeping up with it, all these years, and to such a level of perfectionism if he hated art? It’s a little absurd to think so. People are at odds over taste.

In short, Sensation was my first real encounter, face to face, with postmodern art. Art that was completely removed from modernism. I was about to say, “art without faith, art without out emotion, art without sincerity.” But none of that is really accurate. Even the faith bit. That, I think is the most common misconception of art that is deemed “postmodern.” A term which now seems to just be another period on the timeline, approximately 1980-2000. The reality is that postmodernism is just is all those things. It IS art with emotion, sincerity and even faith. Those concepts are just embodied in new and strange ways. Postmodernism tries to define or position itself in opposition to those ideas, but results in affirming them, or engaging them in its own way. It is a mistake of modernism to think that it embodies all those things and that other periods do not. Art throughout time has had all the romantic qualities that modernism seems to have laid claim on, these ideals shift, and their forms change.

Gary Hume • Dream • 1991
+ enlarge

This uneasiness is never felt so much as in relation to painting. For many reasons it has come to be the medium that symbolizes “Art.” And as such becomes a subject of intense contemplation. The “death of painting” is part of the cycle of death that occurred repeatedly throughout the 20th century and continues on today, a tradition in itself. Like most traditions it persists despite being constantly disproved. There’s death of modernism, now being re-examined or recycled for its useful parts; the death of all “Art,” which continues to be created; and the end of history. The Soviet Union may have fallen, but China and North Korea persist, Russia is retreating into authoritarianism, and the new enemy to war with indefinitely is fundamentalist Islamic terrorism, or just the Middle East in general.

The bad boy Neo Expressionism of the late 70s and 80s isn’t postmodern at all. Even calling it by that name perpetuates all the “neo’s” and “isms” of the modern. And the artists associated with it are not ironically being the macho man painter, they are embodying that modernist character, just in a big 80s way. Maybe that anachronistic urge to revive or return to the era of a heroic Picasso-esque myth can be viewed as a signal that “painting has died.” But it is certainly not postmodern. The painting in Sensation, that was postmodern, and interestingly revived the medium, since it was such a true and marked change from the likes of Schnabel or Baselitz as well as proper modernism.

The Young British Artists finished grad school 20 years ago this year, and put together that Freeze show, ushering in a new era of hip youngsters mixing art, curating, partying and money with the MFA, or post graduate study as it is termed in the UK. But some of the art really is good. Sensation is thee example of that epoch, specifically, those odd, odd paintings.

While technically paint on canvas, to me the similarity ended there. I was young, and I’m sure many have their own examples of such an encounter as a young artist. For me, and I think a lot of others, this was a time when we were still moderns. We knew of art in the museums, and new there was “contemporary art.” But didn’t really think it mattered. When you are eighteen there is you, your friends, and Picasso, Matisse and Dali [i.e. the dead artists of history]. You are completely ignorant of thinking of what “now” is or might be. This isn’t necessarily confined to the young though. Plenty of people of all ages carry on this way far into their adulthood.

Gary Hume • Door • 1988 • Hume's first "Door Painting"
+ enlarge

Sensation was, in a sense, someone taking me aside and saying, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but there has been 50 years of art going on since deKooning that you need to be aware of.”

Nowadays the prospect of a survey of Hume’s Door Paintings is something I’d very much like to see. The doors, more than any of his other paintings, seize the viewer. Compared with them, the birds and the models, contour paintings in the same sickly sweet sherbet color scheme are easy stuff. Those graphic works are digested thusly, “interesting drawing, big, household enamel on aluminum, get it, it’s attractive, next.” They are palatable because people are familiar with birds and plants and the human figure. And they are rendered in a pleasant way, in line drawings and bright colors that relate to what is popular today. Look at the design and color schemes in trendy magazines or stores; Hume’s paintings fit right in. The doors, to a certain extent, fit in as well. But the doors, they are much more problematic, and deceptively simple. Their sense of space and their use as a tool for philosophical contemplation on space, proportion and representation is of considerable interest which goes beyond mere attractiveness.

I was baffled when I first saw them. I didn’t even know how to look at them; this was, in a way, a whole new language for me. They obviously reference the abstraction of Malevich, Mondrian and Barnett Newman, but why were the shapes arranged like that (both in the paintings, and as a group of panels) and in those colors? The title was Dolphin Group No IV, 1991, what the fuck was that all about, how do these have anything to do with dolphins? It never occurred to me that these could be read as both pure geometric abstractions AND representational. I tried to understand them the way the “soft abstraction” of early modernism is based on reality. Making an image that, as crazy and “abstract” as it is, is still a representation of something rooted in traditional uses of space, has the base concept of “painting as a window,” and is named for the subject it is a painting of. So even the style of titling was new to me. I didn’t get the paintings’ relationship to doors until much later, their patterns seemed like an arrangement of shapes that were based on some order, but one I didn’t get. I was convinced that it somehow referenced some idea of “dolphin” in some recondite way.

Gary Hume • Dolphin Group No IV • 1991 • gloss paint on MDF board • 4 panels, total 222 X 643CM
+ enlarge

Of course then the faces come out of them. The ones with the circular windows look like skulls. Honigman describes them: “Twin circles, placed side by side at the top of many of the panels, resemble vacuous eyes, giving the doors a friendly anthropomorphic appearance, and the simple patterns are soothing and sweet.” I can see that a little, in reproduction. But when you see them in person, and you see your own reflection, blurred a little, it’s not the same. Those vacant eyes are dead, if you get the idea of a face at all. The doors are quite impenetrable, the surfaces so solid and smooth that the viewer is cut off. In some ways they are impossible to see, since they reflect so much of the room they are in. Quite hospital like. Where the colors are gaudy, and everything is reflective, shiny and clean. Not at all what Honigman says, “his paintings’ glossy shine, pleasant palette, and clean surfaces are antithetical to their maudlin and distressing inspiration.” I find the paintings take all the discomfort created in an institutional setting and distill it. Perhaps the colors’ pleasantness is derived from their ubiquitous popularity, but to me it is just that harsh colors and combinations thereof have become popular. The sensation produced is repulsion and attraction.

This is also brought about by the space the Door Paintings create. The colors of the various shapes fight against one another in an optical way although we know where the figures and the ground are once we are trained to look at them that way. The doors, when in non-objective mode, appear as a solid field on which smaller shapes reside. Or they appear as an endless void that is either infinitely deep or incredibly shallow in which parallel forms exist. This is what happens when you witness a true two-dimensional moment in a three-dimensional world. Your brain refuses, or is unable, to ignore the question of which form is on top and how far apart are they from the ground. And is the ground another flat plane or is it like outer space—a limitless void that recedes indefinitely? It’s not possible to look at anything as purely two-dimensional.

Further complicating this troubled operation is the fact that these are based on real objects, and painted at a 1:1 scale. The colors are all wrong to look like doors with windows and metal plates. So in many of the paintings it is impossible to think of it as a door because all that spatial formal relationship stuff is going on at the same time. Then there’s the way doors, especially those with metal plates rather than knobs or handles, function as super flat, near two-dimensional objects in our world. So while you are thinking about the visual play of the forms, you are thinking about the way doors are the same thing, but in real life, not a colorful painting. Doors lend themselves extremely well to this operation of two versus three dimensions. And in proportion, doors are also reasonably painting-sized and shaped, that’s why all these ideas of perception can effortlessly slide back and forth on top of one another. When you bring in contour drawing, that sort of representationalism, with birds, plants or people, it doesn’t work. You are looking at flatness of course, but it is the old way of thinking about space rendered in two-dimensional form. There is a fundamental shift, because even if you were to render a bird at the size it is in real life on a panel that is bird-shaped, the bird is still round and three dimensional and the painting is not. With the doors, the paintings are OF and ARE what they represent. Doors, as flat as they are, are still slightly three-dimensional. And paintings, as flat as they are, are also three-dimensional. This is why the doors work and with the contour drawing paintings look nice but are easily apprehended.

Gary Hume • Four Doors I • 1989/90 • oil on canvas in four parts, 7FT 10 1/8IN x 19FT 5 7/8IN • from Artforum.com

Some of the doors are hung in groupings as multiple paneled pieces. This in some ways shuts down some of their door-ness and places them further in the art object world. But they exist oddly there. A painting of a door, on its own, as a door is one thing. But a bunch of doors, all side by side. That again stirs things up for me. Now I have to look at is as a multi-paneled abstraction. And I always wonder where to draw the line. Is this some big arrangement of shapes, or is this a group of discrete paintings all hung together?

The paintings’ opticallity is thoroughly modern, even Greenbergian. That they are doors, and are directly related to their objectness, is not. It is also interesting to think how places like hospitals resonate with modernist architecture and design: cold, simple, clean, austere and sterile, just like the door paintings.

While this essay has focused on the painting, in particular Gary Hume’s, in Sensation, the exhibition as a whole marked one of the significant moments as a young artist where I was forced to confront contemporary art and ideas. It may not be as crucial to a total history of recent art as it is in more own personal development, but it stands as a noteworthy exhibition nonetheless. From its receptions in various contexts, to the implications of public and governmental response, the problematics of Charles Saatchi’s involvement to the wide breadth of work itself, Sensation, and its catalogue is something I find myself returning to often. The opportunity to learn new ways of seeing something as old hat as painting via Hume’s work, is just one example.

Gary Hume • Jim (Little) • 1991 • enamel on aluminum • at Matthew Marks, New York booth at 2007 Art Basel Miami Beach • photo by Joanne Mattera

> ARTFORUM
> MOD ART OX

The End is the Beginning

2008-09-03T23:48:00.019-05:00

FROGATE UPDATE Artforum.com reports in its International New Digest that according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung the Pope in fact did not in fact condemn Martin Kippenberger's Fred the Frog sculpture. "The statement that allegedly came from the pope was in fact a response from the Vatican’s state secretary to a letter from Pahl." Readers will of course remeber Pahl as the local magistrate that went on a hunger strike in protest of the Kippenberger work until he passed out.
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WEEKENDERS ON OUR OWN
While the wreckers of civilization—not Throbbing Gristle, the Republican Party—are having their [satirical comment removed at the request of the RNC] convention Art or Idiocy? is reporting on art.

The major weekend for art in Chicago is typically considered the one in the spring when some iteration of a fair or fairs takes place, but the real time of year is September. Like elsewhere, the first Friday of the month marks the start of the gallery season, along with the new primetime television shows.

THURSDAY 9/4

VONZWECK is closing. Has closed. I thought it ended in the spring, but coincidentally, this weekend begins with its last show. Hosted by Anthony Elms and Jacqueline Terrassa, this final hurrah is a group exhibition of all the previous solo artists. Knowing Philip von Zweck, this might be the end of the space as such, but hardly will be the last we hear from him.

Opens (6pm)
Starts Thursday Sep 4
Thursdays (6–9pm) through September 25 and then that's it!
VONZWECK at the Barn (2845 W Altgeld St)
> VONZ

FRIDAY 9/5

Angles in America
Curated by Terry R. Myers
Rhona Hoffman opens with a group show with Mary Heilmann, Jim Isermann, Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Overby, Laura Riboli, and Jennifer West. I’m particularly interested in Heilmann’s work as well as what Myers has put together. Myers is a critic and historian I enjoy reading, and his focus on Heilmann’s Save the Last Dance For Me from Afterall is on my reading list.

Opening 5 – 730p, up through 10/11
118 N Peoria
> R-HOFF
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Rowley Kennerk keeps getting more cerebral withQuién esta? he said, but no one spoke back.
There was someone there and they had been there. There was no one there. There was someone there and they had been
there and they had not left but there was no one there. And brings artists whose work I’m eager to see: Marcel Broodthaers
Jan Dibbets, Gaylen Gerber, David Lieske

I talked to him once about the frustration over seeing shows and whether or not to review them badly. “You can always dog me,” he said, “I won’t take it personally.” The only problem is that Rowley Kennerk consistently puts on some the best shows I’ve seen, and has one of the most solid programs.

Opening 6 - 8p, up through 10/11
Rowley Kennerk Gallery
119 N Peoria St #3C
> ROWLEY
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At 65GRAND, a space I’m affiliated with, is Brain Kapernekas’ first solo exhibition with the gallery, Deadfall. Kapernekas’ work is easy to describe in one sense, but impossible in another. Works that appear to be straightforward representational images seem to function as pure abstraction. It is dissociation. To look at paintings by Brian Kapernekas is to experience the sensation of losing your grasp on objects and images you think you understand. It is a sense of alienation from icons of world around you, light coming through barns doors, campfires, Martian landscapes. There, that’s a good explanation. He also does sculpture, while the subjects are more sinister, skulls, crows and on, they aren’t nearly as disturbing to view. They are in fact humorous and playful, which the paintings are a little bit too.

Opening 7 – 10p, up through 10/4
1378 W Grand, entrance on Noble
> ALLCAPSNOGAPS
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I had heard Western Exhibitions was moving, possibly to one of the spaces inhabited by Three Walls, and apparently it has. Just as a summer exhibition in the old mercilessly hot factory space sweated on beyond the entry through the unlit derelict Lisa Boyle space, final show still on the wall, the move seems to have just come about with little fanfare.

The first exhibition in the new space is Stan Shellbarger’s second solo with the gallery, Walking Books. Shellabarger makes performative conceptual art focused on the body. Using adjectives that are apt, but perhaps repulsive, I would describe it as old school hardcore performance art. Shellabarger seems firmly rooted in a tradition coming right out of the 60s and 70s, and carries the powerfully reductive torch of body art onward.

Opening 5 – 9p
119 N Peoria St, 2A
> WX
---

Continuing on the abstraction summer group show, Thomas Robertello has a solo show entitled Places to sit and conquer by young New Yorker Patrick Berran, a painter keeping the fires of Helen Frankenthaler and Jules Olitski (maybe a little Jonathan Lasker) burning while fronting the punk band Apeshit. Apeshit, an excellently named band, recently performed at the Whitney Museum, so they might be an art punk band.

Opening 6 – 9p, up through 10/4
939 West Randolph Street
> ROBERTELLO
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Margot Bergman, who takes thrift store paintings and makes them truly bizarre, in the manner of Asger Jorn or Enrico Baj presents new work in The Dust Blows Forward, The Dust Blows Back at Corbett vs. Dempsey. The title of the exhibition, I am told, derives from a Captain Beefheart lyric.

Opening 5 – 9p, up through 10/11
1120 N. Ashland
> CvsD

SATURDAY 9/6

Lloyd Dobler continues the Chicago spirit of worthwhile apartment galleries with a solo show of work by Autumn Ramsey, painterly paintings in the quirky “contemporary” mode appear to have a touch more than the average fare. Plus they got the info on the show up on their site, unlike many, many other commercial spaces in the city.

Opening 6 – 10p, up through 10/18
1545 W Division, 2nd Flr
> SAY ANYTHING
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I’m on the fence about the work of Jason Meadows, but that’s based on work from 2005. At Shane Campbell we’ll see where the work has gone in the past three years.

Opening 6 – 8p, up though 10/11
1431 W. Chicago Avenue
> SHANE

SUNDAY 9/7

If you can make it to the fourth day of this weekend, on the far west side is devening projects + editions. The main event is Jin Lee’s photos, floating world, which are kind of boring and average, but have a certain quality that you can’t easily dismiss. In the “Off Space” is said, unsaid, work by Aline Cautis. Her nests of diagonal lines built up through layering of watery media produces an argyle-like pattern that is attractive, sympathetic and a little bit omionous, like being trapped by one’s own obsessive hopes and anxieties.

Opening 4 – 7p, up thorugh 10/8
3039 W Carroll, 3rd Flr
> DP+E

Jesus Frogging Christ

2008-08-29T23:19:00.004-05:00

Grass roots political action is not what it used to be. It seems like lately the only people protesting, or getting any attention for protesting, are conservatives in favor of repression, moralization and censorship. It’s a reversal, it seemed like the people who used to be rebellious and engaged in public actions were against imposed morals and values. What an exciting thing for a long established politician to turn his back on his party and become an “independent.” Unfortunately in America this means you are Joe Lieberman and have decided to be more conservative and status quo, not less. What an insult to the term “independent.”

Christians are amongst the most vocal and numerous of protestors for conservatism today. The Protestants [sic] are more about moralizing and are vocally against women’s reproductive rights for example. Catholics on the other hand, perhaps feeling they have no moral high ground to stand on, go the cultural angle. Although Evangelicals love themselves some good offensive dirty sacrilegious sex art. Recently Catholics have been against the film The Golden Compass, calling it anti-catholic. I don’t know about the film, but the book, and its author are expressly against Catholicism and organized religion. It was a minor curffuffle, but it would have been really great to hear the filmmakers say, “yes, it is, fuck you. Deal with it, we have a different opinion. Get over it. Move along.”

The latest is yet another tired art scandal, because all the other ones were so successful in the eyes of God, winning so many converts and saving so many souls. Religious opposition to art presumably comes from the First, Second and Third Commandments, “Thou shalt not have any god before me. Thou shalt not worship false idols or carve graven images.” And finally, the big one, “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain.” This particular case reported by Artforum.com is a plague of Biblical proportions and it involves frogs, but in the form of a sculpture, not raining down from the sky along with locusts and blood/water.

Martin Kippenberger • From Fred the Frog • 1990 • of course none of the stories bother to tell you exact details like title medium and date

Pissing off Christians, particularly the kind prone to calling off work and making some signs out of yardsticks and poster paint, is as easy as being hypocritical on a Sunday. And who better than German artist Martin Kippenberger and his crucified frog, it’s eyes goggling and its tongue hanging out? Why just thinking about it, a sculpture on view in a museum in Italy, is a mockery to Christ and human dignity. What would be offensive to believers is that it is a graven image of Jesus Christ, a false idol, and it mocks him, ridicules the name of God. Well, sort of. It is really just a frog on a cross, it’s not like he has a beard and a crown of thorns. In a way, it mocks idolatry itself, poking fun at the idea that you are some how closer to the Trinity when you have a representation of him hanging in your house or around your neck. This is at the heart of Iconoclasm throughout history, groups of Christians fought over whether or not it is breaking the Laws of God to make a statue or painting of Jesus.

At one point the museum shrouded the frog in all the press coverage, attempting to "cover up" the piece in all the controversy it started.
People were still offended.

But, as in most cases like this, people are much more reactionary than having some sort of studied basis for action or attitude. Knowing there are some passages in the Bible that can be brought out later to justify the outrage if need be. The Passion of the frog has led to protests in the Italian city where it is on view and of course the Pope has condemned it. It’s hard to believe there was a time when that meant something, thank you very much Martin Luther, aha another German. [Although it was the Protestant Reformation that led to a famous period of Iconoclasm] Now Popes spend their days meaninglessly condemning things, lying about the effectiveness of condoms and blessing Ferraris. And recently sort of apologizing for all the sexual abuse. It is so ridiculously simplistic and easy. Artist: “OK, crucifixion, lets make fun of it.” Catholics: “Oh no, the symbol of my god is being mocked!@#$% time to flip out!” Artist: “that was easy.”

Like Ghandi before him, local politician Franz Pahl went on a hunger strike against this froggy atrocity taking place in his region. Then he fainted and was taken to the hospital whereupon he discontinued his act of heroic protestation. This is beautiful, doesn’t anyone realize that this actually makes the piece better and even further proves the point that organized religion leads to mass absurdity? It’s a little startling.

Martin Kippenberger • Fred the Frog Rings the Bell • carved wood and steel nails• 1990 • Initialed, dated and editioned on frog's tongue:"MK90 7/7" • Zwirner & Wirth

Pahl has stated “This decision to keep the statue there is totally unacceptable […] It is a grave offense to our Catholic population” (Artforum.com) Are you fucking serious? You are really offended by this ridiculous frog? I mean come on, you have to be a fucking idiot to not get some sort of irony and playfulness out of the piece. Really, it is not some sort of serious attack on God. In fact, it is poking fun at those who’d take it seriously. Way to be completely and utterly complicit in a joke.

At this point, a piece like Kippenberger’s is not a direct attack or some sort of defiant gesture aimed at an all-too-powerful system, that would be a moot point. But some believers still cling fiercely to their beliefs and do very silly things in order hoping to prove their devotion. And politicians still cater to their demographics trying to secure votes. Therefore Fred the Frog, part of a series of works depicting the amphibian on the cross in wood and other media serves as a not just a stupid and hilarious sculpture, but as a catalyst. It is proof of stupidity. With all the things going on the world, and in your own personal life, why would a sculpture of a frog cause you to drop everything? Answer: people are easily offended, especially if it involves religion, and especially by art that doesn’t seem to be some sort of still life or black & white photograph. And it is easier to rile up people into making a showy demonstration of their beliefs rather than to actually live up to them. When agitating the common man just about anything can be leveraged for the desired effect. Forget that the frog doesn’t have any offensive genitals and isn’t doing anything lewd. Forget that it is from 18 years ago; it is mocking religion, and it is by a German and therefore must be stopped. So this is perfect tool to stir up the public on nationalist and religious grounds. Never mind that the Pope is German.

This sort of powerful symbolic thinking, “the world is in decline, our culture is sick, our morals are being degraded and this is exemplified by a mockery of Christ in our local museum,” is a strong argument that has a long history of use. Think of that embarrassment for anyone claiming to be Christian, Jesse Helms, and his underlying agendas in the late 80s. Or the often-cited Degenerate Art exhibition in Germany leading up to WWII. “Our culture is infected with Jews, Gypsies and Bolsheviks, that is why you are standing in a line with a bag of money hoping to afford a loaf of bread, and that same infection of culture is seen in these ‘artworks’” went the Nazi rhetoric. Now more than ever, it is evident that a strong image and a lucid mantra are all it takes to corral people in just about any desired direction.

Martin Kippenberger • Zuerst die Füße [First the Feet] • 1990 • Luhring Augustine

And this is why it is so troubling when controversy sprouts up like this. Maybe one instance isn’t that significant, but it adds up. And the trend today seems to be going towards a regression of cultural mores. Whenever this happens you have to wonder what the motivations for those involved are, what the agenda is. Sure there are always a number of true believers that are genuinely committed to the fight. But all-too-often their outrage is just used for another purpose.

Aside from the obvious troubling nature of censoring art for a religious and political agenda, this sort of banal scandal also encourages mediocre artists. For every brilliant frog on a cross there are about a thousand paintings of naked chicks hanging on crosses in a goth tattoo art gallery somewhere. What is interesting about this case is that Kippenberger is a well-established artist. Often it seems like artists you’ve never heard of are doing something with the cum and getting in trouble for it. And then the general public thinks that is what contemporary art is about.

By the way, thus far, the museum has not bowed to the pressure to remove it. “Alois Lageder, the museum’s president, said the decision to continue to display the statue was made to ‘safeguard the autonomy of art institutions’” (Artforum.com). Of course in the end, this is all backfiring on the opposition, revealing them for overacting to a harmless little frog and exposing countless new pairs of eyes to the wonder of the Kippenberger's art. Martin Kippenberger died in 1997, but not before making peace with the world, he also created Martin, into the Corner and Shame on You, 1989. Almost as if in anticipation the frog controversy?

Vampirismusphobie

2008-08-29T03:21:00.003-05:00

The Art Newspaper reports on what sounds like an awesome show that is categorized as “Curious Decorative Medieval Old Master.” It’s an exhibition about Vlad III Dracula at an old castle in Austria, Schloss Ambras.

Vlad III Dracula was “Prince of Wallachia in what is now Romania, a vassal of the Hungarian kings. Voivode is the medieval Romanian term for a regional commander, which position Vlad held intermittently in addition to his princedom (1448, 1456-62 and 1476), and the name 'Dracula' is a diminutive derived from the Imperial Order of the Dragon, the order of knights to which Vlad and his father, Vlad II (1390-1447) both belonged.” (Art Newspaper) The museum’s website goes on to explain “Dracul” was what his father was called “Dracula” was the son’s nickname in the dragonian brotherhood.

From the museum’s website:

Based on the historical person of Vlad Tepes aka Dracula the exhibition is devoted to clashes between Christians and Ottomans in Southeast Europe and finally the Vampirismusphobie [vampire superstition] in the southeastern fringes of the Habsburg monarchy.

In addition, literary and cinematic realizations of the topic, portraits of almost all the Wallachian Voivodes, representations and weapons of Ottoman and Christian heroes of the 15th and 16 Century, reports, treatises, and academic disputes about vampirism give a varied picture of this subject which has fascinated people for centuries.

Another goal of the exhibition is to show a more total history of the figure, namely his role in the formation of Rumania. Vlad III Dracula in his homeland was revered as a hero, whereas the West, beginning with scholars of the time, painted him in a distinctly different light.

The Schloss Ambras is home to a collection that includes The Chamber of Art and Curiosities. In it is the infamous portrait of Dracula. Other highlights include a painting a man who's been impaled through the eye by a cheerful striped lance and another famous painting, a portrait of a nobleman with hypertrichosis universalis, hirsutism or werewolf syndrome.

Don’t be scared, but the Dracula exhibition closes on October 31st. Cue: Tocatta & Fugue in D Minor.

> ART NEWSPAPER
> AMBRAS

Permanent Collection Intervention & Other Stories

2008-08-06T01:10:00.005-05:00

If you haven’t made it down to Hyde Park recently, I would like to suggest you make the trip. Visit the Smart Museum, if not to check out the excellent Idol Anxiety show. [Which I reviewed for ArtSlant, see below] Then to see On Paper, a group curatorial project engaging the museum’s permanent collection I participated in with six other graduate students from the University of Chicago under the guidance of Stephanie Smith, Director of Collections and Exhibitions, Curator of Contemporary Art.

Works by Ad Reinhardt, Erik Wenzel, Robert Smithson & Danielle Paz during installation.

From our essay:

We approached the project by establishing a set of criteria and themes gleaned from a critical discussion of recently acquired work by Michael Rakowitz, which is also on view [...] From this starting point, we came up with the following:

PAPER: as material and subject;

CIRCULATION: alternative modes of exchange and movement;

POLITICS: contemporary culture and events as subject; and

RECONTEXTUALIZATION: items that have attained the status of art through changes in context.

With these notions in mind, we each culled through the Smart Museum’s database and selected artworks that spoke to the group’s concepts and our own aesthetic sensibilities. Through a process of debate and discussion we arrived at the works you now see. We also collectively designed the display.

As practicing artists, we also sought to engage this project with our own work: pieces were chosen or created in response to the themes and works selected. This allowed us to interact with the history of art in a deeper way, literally situating ourselves in the conversations.

Artists included are:
Matthew Metzger, Kimmy Noonen, Danielle Paz, Vanessa Ruiz, Michal Stawarz, Marilyn Volkman, Erik Wenzel (graduate students)
And:
Rudolf Baranik, Walker Evans, Hans Haacke, Martin Kippenberger, John Latham, Pablo Picasso, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Smithson, Carol Summers, Kara Walker, H.C. Westerman (permanent collection artists)

On Paper is on view in the permanent collection galleries of contemporary art through the end of August.

Also, I have been writing reviews again, this time for the new website ARTslant. It has bureaus in Chicago, LA, New York, San Francisco and Europe. In addition to reviews and other features, you can start your own profile whether you’re an artist, run a space or anything else.

Finally, I want to plug the DOVA temporary gallery, which is a project of the UofC’s visual art and art history departments. Through Saturday, August 9th is an exhibition of work by Zach Cahill who received his MFA from the program in 2007. He has also been interviewed on the blog, Between Bigwood and Brush. Opening next Friday, August 16th, is an exhibition centered around the events of May 1968 in Paris organized by students in the art history department. I don’t know if you call them students, maybe they are PhD candidates. Just like On Paper was organized my MFA candidates. At any rate.

> SMART
> ON PAPER ON FLICKR
> ARTSLANT
> MY SLANT
> CAHILL INTERVIEW
> CAHILL INFO

Pussy Doodles!

2008-07-24T02:26:00.002-05:00

Saint Elsewhere

2008-07-23T01:31:00.004-05:00

The one thing I hate the most about living in Chicago is all the great art that I don’t get to see because it isn’t shown here. Of course a lot of great art—I define that as something I’m interested in or something that seems relevant to a large audience in one way or another—does indeed get shown here. Both work by people living here and by artists from around the world. But really, there is a whole 148,300,000 square km of land filled with art and we see a fraction of a clipping of a fingernail’s worth. People involved in the arts leave Chicago for any number of reasons. But I would have to say the fact that I can only read about the stuff I am really, truly most interested in is at the top of my list that has me constantly thinking about far off lands.

Institutions and galleries in this city bring in a lot of art to the city that I am grateful for having the opportunity to see. But in this Midwestern Mecca it is largely safe work. “Safe” in the sense it is crowd-pleasing and inoffensive. I’m not saying I want Mapplethorpe and Serrano, although how often does that work, work 15 – 20 years old, get shown here? I’m thinking more of stuff that is just not very exciting (but is exciting to me). Something like an On Kawara show. I can only imagine the reaction from the general public, the populist newspapers and much of the vocal art crowd would have. So instead, were I able to afford it, I’d have to go to Dallas and see On Kawara: Ten Tableaux & 16,952 Pages. At a museum that in the past four years, among highlighting art from Texas, the Southwest region and crowd-pleasers like J.M.W. Turner has hosted exhibitions of work by Ellsworth Kelly; Robert Smithson; Jim Lambie; Duchamp, Cornell, Johns, Rauschenberg; Robert Ryman; Allora & Calzadilla; Gabriel Orozco and Phil Collins.
> KAWARA
> PAST

Chicago has a lot of excellent shows come through, and a fair number originate here as well, but that is an impressive list Dallas has. And frankly the shows that do come aren’t of artists that I, personally, would die to see. If only the Ryman, or the Kawara had come to anywhere near Chicago. I have my own specific list of top of the heap artists, but I’m pretty sure that there are a lot of people here with their own favorites that are disappointed every time a traveling museum show they would love to see flies over head between coasts. And like me, a lot of us are too poor to travel. Or at least travel every time an interesting show comes up. Whereas were I living in New York I could have popped down the New Museum this past spring I could have seen Tomma Abts, an artist whose work I am immensely interested, especially after hearing her Society for Contemporary Art talk at the Art Institute, but have never had the pleasure of seeing in person. Something infinitely important to her body of work in it’s scale, installation and physical surface. And then I could have come back in May for a discussion between Tom Nozkowski and Dana Schutz about abstraction. Of course this fall is the Mary Heilmann retrospective, To Be Someone, which would also be great to see.
> ABTS
> HEILMANN

Again, these are choices that are not shared by all art lovers, but that is also the point. Chicago with it’s limited venues for art, specifically contemporary art, is forced to show a wide but shallow breadth of work. It’s also ridiculous to characterize Chicago as an entity in the same way it is to characterize New York as some singular brain trust hell bent on world domination. The community of art institutions here, though, must have an eye for what shows are coming up, and have come, and think diversification; both within their own programming, and at other venues. This may or may not be the result of a secret meeting held in the antechamber below the Hancock Building miles beneath the Earth’s surface at the crest of an inverted pyramid. At any rate, I see a cross section of what is out there between the various museums and art centers, but only occasionally something that really “kicks my ass.” In cities that are literally choking on art, you have more opportunities to see a lot more of the work you have an art boner for along with a lot more of all the other stuff. So even if I am not that into Banks Violette, I can see a big show of his work and know what the fuck is going on.

Tomma Abts • Lübbe • 2005 • 48x38cm • greengrassi

This isn’t something that will change any time soon. The new wing of the Art Institute promises to be a major boost, and I’m all for it. At least institutionally, Chicago seems on a steady, if all too slow, upward trend in presenting work from the outside world, but it’s nothing to hold your breath for. And that’s fine, this will never be a major art metropolis. Part of the local angst lies in this being a big world class city, we have the business, the architecture, the design, the science, why not art? Chicago is the middle child, bigger than the many small art centers that dot the map, but perpetually too runty to be counted amongst the megalopolises.

The other aspect of this that is so troubling is the peer pressure to drink the Kool-Aid and proclaim that Chicago is the real art capital. And believe me, it is nothing short of taking crazy pills to hold that belief. I have lived here in the city for 8 years, and spent my formative years in the south suburbs. I did a lot of growing up here as an artist and as whatever you categorize all the other ways I’m involved in art. And there is a point, many points, that you realize you are not “where it’s at” in the art world. This isn’t necessarily bad, and you can always move to where you think it’s at. Some prefer to not be there. Many successful international artists live here, or in that expanse we call Chicagoland. But you realize that, for all its strong points, this city is not number one. It’s not even number two anymore. It’s tied for third. You make peace, you say, “well, I’m here, so I’ll figure it out.” Or you decide to leave. Or you get this weird pressure that wants you deny your taste for video art or Jackson Pollock or whatever and replace it with the Imagists and proclaim from on high, “No! This is the greatest city with the greatest art on earth!” And then you end up part of any number of groups of people who come off a lot like Robert Mugabe’s government.

Mary Heilmann • Surfing on Acid • 2005 • oil on canvas • 60x48in • Orange County Museum of Art

Have you ever seen his broadcasts from the Zanu-PF headquarters? The richest man with his rich loyal army addresses the nation on what looks like a cable access show from 1982 in a country where a pair of shoes costs a billion dollars. That is an extreme comparison because Mugabe is a dictator with blood on his hands and with Chicago it’s just art. But the image of a senile old man clinging ever more violently to a delusion that the rest of the world can see for all its absurdity is pretty apt for many aspects of the scene here in Chicago.

If Andy Were President

2008-07-21T14:30:00.000-05:00

The Simpsons on Corporate Sponsorship

2008-07-16T23:27:00.002-05:00

In the episode “Make Room for Lisa," Homer takes the kids to an exhibition of artifacts and cultural treasures of American history (including Abraham Lincoln's hat, the Constitution and Fonzi's jacket) from the Smithsonian Institution. Entering the museum, Lisa notices that it is sponsored by the Omnitech cellphone company. Lisa asks why the government would need funding. "Museums lose their soul when they take money from corporations," she says. The Omnitech rep replies, "the government needs to spend its money on more important things, such as anti-tobacco programs, pro-tobacco programs, killing wild donkeys and Israel."

This Day in History: A Genius Was Born

2008-07-15T15:56:00.005-05:00

Today is my birthday. It is also Rembrandt's.

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn • Self-Portrait in a Cap, Open-Mouthed • etching
> History Channel

BREAKING NEWS- Broken Art

2008-06-09T19:28:00.003-05:00

The previously unnamed Vija Celmins painting destroyed by a museum guard at the Carnegie museum in Pittsburgh has sadly turned out be the one owned by The Art Institute of Chicago.
Art or Idiocy? received the tip earlier today and is now confirmed by the Chicago Tribune.

Vija Celmins • American, born Latvia, 1938 • Night Sky #2 • 1991 • oil on canvas, mounted on aluminum • 18 x 21.5in • Ada S. Garrett Fund, 1995.240

Its future is unknown. Reports have contradicted as to whether it was "slashed" or "gouged." And the Carnegie's conservators have been reported to have said it is "a total loss." Although now it is in conservation at AIC. This is especially sad since Celmins just visited the Art Institute last year to give the A. James Speyer Memorial Contemporary Art Lecture. The invitation card featured the painting on it.

This calls to question not only who would do this, and to a painting like that, but who hired this person? The old model of the museum officer, an employee of the museum, not a rental service, is long gone for the most part. The perpetrator is, according to the Trib, a contracted guard. One wonders, what sort of background checks were conducted? Did he ever mention wanting to destroy works of art? Of course it is callous to assume a guard from an agency is not as capable or caring as one hired by the museum proper, but it does raise questions as to how rigorous the hiring process is. Indeed, being brought in as a "loss management worker" at a Walgreens is very different than working a public art museum.

> TRIB