More opportunity

Thanks to Myungwon for posting the exhibit opportunities. I invite you all to consider making a proposal for the Foundation Lecture series for fall, 2010. We'll be focusing on the idea of the studio and how it varies form discipline to discipline and over history.

More information can be found at my blog. Thanks!

entries:“"Regionalism: New Art By North American Printmakers,"

Hello,

We have been asked to be one of the curatorial teams for an exhibition titled, “"Regionalism: New Art By North American Printmakers," at the Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts gallery in Eugene, Oregon (www.divacenter.org).

The whole thing, ideally, will be like a visual map of what printmakers are doing in different places in North America. Hence the title. Also, the work doesn't necessarily have to be prints. Though everyone in the show would be a "printmaker," printmakers don't always make prints. Ideally, all of the work in the show will have been made within the last two or three years.

We are looking for:

-small to medium sized work, maybe on paper, maybe not.
-work may not necessarily be prints.
-unframed.
-created within the last two or three years.
-the exhibition will probably be salon style—ish.

We will be jurying from digital slides emailed to us. You can submit up to 2 pieces. Your slides must be:

-300 dpi.
-jpg format
-the longest dimension can be a maximum of 6 inches.
-name your files such as: lastname_title1.jpg and lastname_title2.jpg
-email slides to jcbggom@gmail.com by March 1st.
-in your email message, include a list of slides which describes: Slide number, Title, Medium, Size, Year.

We will let you know of any accepted pieces through email by March 10th.

The show opens on April 22nd, but work must be in Oregon by March 26th.



You can check out the gallery (Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts) at: www.divacenter.org . For submission inquiries, email us.

Best,
JenClare Gawaran & Gualberto Orozco for Regionalism Exhibition




-- If you have any questions don't ask me ask jcbggom@gmail.com

Armory Show / Whitney Biennial 2010

Armory Show
http://www.thearmoryshow.com/cgi-local/content.cgi

Whitney Museum Biennial 2010
http://www.whitney.org/Exhibitions/2010Biennial

IPCNY Entires by March 5th

New Prints 2010/Spring

Call for Entries Deadline - Friday, March 5, 2010

International Print Center New York is pleased to announce a call for submissions of newly created artists' prints to be considered for exhibition in the NEW PRINTS Spring exhibition opening in May 2010. In keeping with our mission to promote the greater appreciation and understanding of the fine art print, IPCNY presents a selection of new prints four times per year.

Criteria for selection are:

• Only original fine art (limited edition and unique) prints are eligible; reproductions of other artwork such as drawings or paintings are not acceptable.
• Selections will represent a broad diversity of sources, geographical and otherwise.
• Prints must have been completed within a year of the submission deadline.

The number of entries IPCNY receives is always expanding. The Selections Committee changes each time, therefore we strongly encourage all individuals who have submitted in the past to submit again.

THERE IS NO ENTRY FEE. Independent artists, workshops, publishers and dealers are all welcome to submit recently completed print projects. Please refer to the Submission Guidelines.

An artist acts as sole juror for all New Prints Spring exhibitions, and this artist will be announced in the coming weeks. Selections will be made by mid-March. All artists whose work has been selected will be notified immediately by phone and/or email. A list of artists selected will be posted on IPCNY's website. If you have not heard from us by March 22nd, please check the list of names on the website.

Artists and publishers whose work has been selected will be responsible for the framing and delivery of work to IPCNY by April 20th. IPCNY will cover the return cost of delivery of prints being shipped within the US. IPCNY will cover up to $50 dollars in return shipping on works being shipped internationally. Packaging must be provided by the lender for work being shipped outside of New York City.

With this 35th presentation, IPCNY continues its role as an ongoing venue for the rotating display of exciting new prints. We look forward to seeing your recent projects. Thank you.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Due to the increasing number of submissions it is important that you carefully follow the guidelines below when preparing your materials, or your submission may be disqualified.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Materials must be received by March 5, 2010	All submissions must contain an image list, included as a word document or plain text document on the CD, as well as a hard copy printout. The list should be presented as follows: Title the list document file: artist last_artist first.doc The list must be headed with the name of the submitter and complete contact information: address, phone number and email address. Publishers, please include a new form for each artist submitted. Each list entry should be numbered corresponding to the number on the digital images. The list should include: Entry number, artist’s name (first last), title, date completed, medium, edition size, dimensions: (Length x Width in inches) plate size, paper size, printer, publisher. Example: 1) John Smith Love Song, 2009 Lithograph with chine collé. Edition: 25 Plate: 25" x 25", Paper: 30" x 30" Printed by Master Editions, Inc. Published by the artist
NO PHONE CALLS.
Send images in digital format on a CD (no DVDs) labeled with the submitter's name. DO NOT SEND ORIGINAL ARTWORK, ENCLOSE BINDERS, FOLDERS, OR ANY MATERIALS OTHER THAN CD AND IMAGE LIST. A maximum of five works per artist is allowed. There is no size limit.
IMAGE REQUIREMENTS: Images must be clear, professionally presented, and accurately represent the work. Images must be in jpeg format, the largest dimension (length or width) should be 1000 pixels. Image resolution must be set at 72 dpi. Name each image as follows: artist's last name_first name_entry number. (For example; smith_john_01.jpg,smith_john_02.jpg, etc )

Mail to: IPCNY, New Prints Program, 526 West 26th Street, # 824, New York, NY 10001

Artists' presentations online

This is an interesting site where artists and design entrepeneurs raise money for their projects. I'm really taken with this video by Jane Palmer, a friend from SAIC who has a great textile design and dye shop. I'm quite convinced that this provides a model for presentations that will become more common...

Enjoy.

Change of plans for March 5

On March 5, we'll meet at the Crane Arts Building to preview the exhibit Medium Resistance, curated by Philip Glahn, Nicholas Kripl, and Richard Hriko in response to the Philagrafika events and the NCECA (National Council for Education on Ceramic Arts) conference.

Please meet at the entrance to the building at 4pm on March 5.

The Use Of the Everyday As Ornamentation

The connection between Gunilla Klingberg's piece at Moore and my own work makes me instantly interested in what she's doing, how it makes me feel, and ultimately whether or not I judge it to be "successful." First, I am impressed by large scale works and all five of the artists at Moore hit that soft spot for me. Not realizing Klingberg's piece would be at the doorway of the foyer made me stop in my tracks as I walked toward our meeting. One thing Gerard asked us was to think about the architecture of the building and how the art worked in that specific setting. For me, these riot-proof, stark, spartan spaces are great for displaying work because the do not compete with the piece in question. They are just like the gallery being a white cube.

So, I want to start my accessment saying that I started off LOVING the Klingberg piece. I loved walking through it, seeing it from far away, then getting so close you almost cannot see it anymore, and then seeing it in reverse on the inside of the building. Light, too, is a very powerful friend to this piece. It only heightens the dramatic nature and scale.

But I was dissapointed by what Klingberg wrote about the piece. While I would not pick Krispy Kreme as the ultimate example of the death of small business, stores like KMart and Target are very loaded for me. The piece was inherently political. And when you read what Klingberg writes about her piece, she is more interested in taking the ubiquity of logos, the fact that they are so pervasive, we don't even see them. For her, the ornamentation of the logos is about making the everyday more beautiful.

I am not certain that these logos are so benign. There is a lot of evidence that these businesses provide sub-par jobs. They kill off their competition and then become the ONLY option. They blur regional differences by streamlining their products in every store. There is something SO political, and so ripe for the taking in Klingberg's piece that to merely say it is about taking boring stuff and making it interesting misses the point.

When I look at the piece at Moore, I see a playful rearrangement of companies that could potentially sue her pants of for using their registered trademarks without consent. I see someone poking fun at capitalism. Even if she doesn't.

For me this is one way that using ornamentation is very successful. You are using the everyday, like Virgil does with interior design, but the building blocks are unlike anything you would ever see. And the whole inversion is playful and subversive. Referencing ornamentation is a great way to take a stance on the political or question our cringe-factor or repurpose something that creates a lot of environmental issues and give it new life. Ornamentation is a very powerful tool, perhaps more powerful than the artist using it is aware.

Some follow up

I wanted to post a few things as follow-up to today's visit to Moore.

First, a little reader's guide to beauty. As I mentioned, this was a huge 'issue' in the art world at the end of the 1990s through the beginning of the last decade. The Elaine Scarry essay I used to introduce the topic of ornament was one among a huge number of recent writings on the subject. Here's a brief bibliography:

• Beckley, Bill (editor). "Uncontrollable Beauty". Allworth, 2001.
• Benezra, Neal. "Regarding Beauty:A View of the Late 20th Century". Hirshhorn Museum, 2000.
• Hickey, Dave. "The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty:. University of Chicago Press, 2009 (revised and expanded from 1993 edition) (added: A really awful overview appeared in the March 14, 2009, issue of Newsweek. A link is provided on the understanding that you will use this only as a thumbnail sketch of his ideas)
• Gilbert-Rolfe, Jeremy. "Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime". Allworth, 1999.
• Steiner, Wendy. "Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in 20th Century Art". University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Next, I wanted to address an idea that came up a couple of times in our conversation - that idea of subjectivity as it relates to the perception of beauty. This is a worthwhile thing to mention as we are a small but very diverse seminar. Really, do we really have anything in common? Before we get to that level of detail, I think it's important to approach this through theory. Semiotics tells us that anything meaningful has two simultaneous properties - it's arbitrary (there's nothing that divinely ordains that a cake symbolizes a birthday) and it's conventional (we all agree that the cake is a fitting way to celebrate Jose's birthday. This paradox, fundamental to all forms of signification, is often forgotten in academic debate. One the one hand, there are those who skew to the arbitrary side, saying that if nothing has any fixed meaning, all interpretation is hyper-subjective. This is as inaccurate as saying that there is one authoritative meaning for any given image or text. Though we may differ in terms of taste in specific objects, as a culture we have some common ground about the idea of beauty and what is or ought to be thought of as beautiful, or the words themselves would be meaningless. Art's job is often to achieve consensus where none existed before (Scarry, 8). So though we may find different things beautiful, the plurality of these examples doesn't diminish the fact that we approach the idea of beauty in similar terms.



Finally, to the idea about 'quality of life' and how we might (conventionally) think about it. Let's not try to take the job away from those who do it. The term originates in economics and describes the non-monetary factors that enhance life. Clearly, the arts have limited economic benefit. A primary argument for their existence in a market economy is the QOL benefits they confer upon their audience. Some of those benefits we explored today - visual pleasure, etc. Others, including social cohesion, economic revitalization and others, are the topics of the conference next week. In transition from this week to next, and in preparation for next week's meeting, I want you to think about the role your work plays, if any, in quality of life issues, and whether such issues are actually within the range of art to affect.

Readings

There was a little confusion about where to find the readings for February 26 and the supplementary readings about exhibits. Here's a link you may want to bookmark...

Space

I have to admit I miss understoud a big part of the exhibition. I guess the space was not perfect to receive this kind of work or the artist didn't do his job correctly by putting small texts on display. I think the subject bellong with the historical center, how can the artist capture our attention differently? As a spectator, if no one is there with me to explain the entire concept, I would never ever have any idea of the connection between each showcase.

Some remarks on Duke Riley's exhibition

I have been thinking a lot about the Duke Riley exhibition at the Historic Society of Pennsylvania. First off, I recognize that my comments are completely subjective. I understand people might completely disagree with me, but the truth is, I bet they won't. Duke Riley needed an editor or a few guinea pigs to look over that exhibition before he put it up. If he had reached out to someone, I think he would have been told to make the bulk of the pieces on display a little more vivacious. The biggest problem I had with the exhibition was that there was little compelling me to read everything. Had I not been there with a class, knowing we were going to discuss the piece in more detail, I would have read even less than I did.

So, the question I want to raise is, how important is it for an exhibition to be captivating? How important is it for art to be pleasing to look at? Or, if not pleasing, compelling? Eye-catching? Alluring?

The bulk of Riley's exhibition fall in a handful of glass enclosed cases. Inside he has a mish-mosh of reproductions of authentic and fabricated documents, articles, and photographs showing his family lineage to the small island between Camden and Philadelphia: Petty Island. The documents seem tea-dyed, folded and crinkled, torn and burned, in order to give them the universal appearance of being old heirlooms. While the strategy for aging these documents was not necessarily well or poorly done, what stands out are the labels for these documents. Riley took large index cards, tea-dyed them like he did the other documents, and typed the signs using a manual typewritter, pushing and pulling at the text so that it is slightly irregular and clumsy.

As I write the description of these index cards, they sound more charming than they actually are. In reality, they just stand out as being a little silly--historical or scientific museums do not and have not used such cards to label their exhibitions. The result looks more like a middle school presentation than the falsification of actual documents. Perhaps if he had committed to making the documents look really old and thought more about what a real museum would use to label these items, the result would have been more convincing. Or maybe if he had committed more to the silly, comically inept labeling of these documents, to bring more attention to their authenticity, it would have been effective. But, not committing either way just makes the whole thing look sloppy.

Pinned up, clumsy documents in glass cases does not catch my eye. The few non-text based items were also less than alluring. The only parts of the exhibition that I really enjoyed were the plates on the mantel and the short video that combines an interview with a family member and images of Riley and an assistant painting the tops of the massive oil containers on Petty Island to match the plates. Maybe if he had used the plates or more stills of those tanks throughout the exhibition, placing the "royal" family members next to their relatives, maybe I would have been more interested. But as it was, I felt repelled by the cases.

So, the question is, does it matter? Some people will look more closely than I did. Some people do not have the same aversion to text heavy exhibitions. Some people might delight in the lack of aesthetics in the cases. My thinking is, though, that few people will. So, if we can just pretend that we know that very few people will read everything and get out of the exhibition everything that Riley intended, does that make it any less successful? Does the audience have to like/get/spend time on a piece for it to be "any good?"

I have no idea what the artist would say. I can only speak for myself. I would be really disappointed if, after all my hardwork, people wouldn't even engage with the work. While I know the romantic notion that artists make work for themselves, because they have this insatiable need to create, is a highly seductive idea, the truth is most artists I know are trying to communicate something. If no one is listening, what is the point discussing your point of view?

The sad thing about Duke Riley's exhibition for me is the fact that I really like the idea behind it all--finding out about this off-kilter family history, the history of an island located in the Delaware River that was once the home of a reclusive pig-farmer and now is owned by Venezuela, a country that has strained relations with the United States, is just super interesting. For this reason, I wish Riley had shown his exhibition to some trusted critics and mentors. I think they would have told him that the exhibition did not do his concept nor his work any justice.

Arts & Quality of Life Research Conference

Our February 12 meeting includes a plan to visit the Temple University's Arts and Quality of Life Conference.

You must register for the conference by Wednesday, February 10. Follow this link to their website to register. Don't wait. Do it now.

Pepon Osorio is presenting at the conference. I propose we watch his talk and meet afterward to discuss it. We'll deduct the time at the conference from our class meeting time that day.

Please email me with any questions.