II. Dallas, San Antonio & Houston: An Interview with Wendy Red Star, whose work is currently featured at and/or gallery, Noli Me Tangere: A Kick to the Nuts and a Pat on the Back, A Letter from Hills Snyder & Urs Fischer and Tam Van Tran at Blaffer Gallery
III. New York: Lothar Hempel: Umbrella at Anton Kern Gallery
IV. On Roller Derby: I Don't Think We're in Kansas Anymore!
V. Announcements!
I. Austin: Over + Over and Again + Again at AMoA, SLAPstick at Lora Reynolds Gallery & Remembrances of Repressed Burial Fantasy at Okay Mountian
Over + Over and Again + Again at AMoA
On view through August 6, 2006
Melissa Warak
This summer, Austin Museum of Art presents two complimentary exhibitions that explore themes of repetition and time. Over + Over: Passion for Process assembles contemporary objects that range in scale from the palm-sized paper sculptures of Nina Katchadourian to the fourteen-panels of Chakaia Booker’s 1997 wall installation. Recalling the “ready-made” aesthetic of Marcel Duchamp and the Dadaists of the early twentieth century as well as the use of everyday objects found in Pop art of the 1960s, most of the artists in Over + Over use banal materials to create painstakingly intricate forms that privilege process.
AMoA’s adjunct curator James Housefield notes in the exhibition brochure that the repetitive use of materials in each work included in Over + Over brings to the audience a renewed cognizance of process. We all recognize, for example, the material basis of Tom Friedman’s Loop (1993-1995), a sculpture made of spaghetti, or of Lisa Hoke’s brilliant Gravity of Color (2005), a wall installation of colored plastic and paper cups, but this recognition also brings forth the issue of time. One cannot help but imagine how long it took the artists to assemble these intricate works. Artists in the Whitney Museum of Art’s 1969 exhibition Anti-Illusion: Procedures / Materials—one of the earliest to focus almost fully on works made of unconventional materials—embraced an “anti-form” aesthetic in allowing their unusual materials to create their own structure. In the works of Over + Over, however, the artists present an almost equal emphasis on pre-determined form and materiality, the results of which are often humorous and dazzling.
Over + Over wonderfully complements Again + Again: Cycles in Video and Light, a smaller exhibition of mostly recent video pieces that also includes the late Nam June Paik’s Zen for TV (1963 / 2000). As in Over + Over, the themes of time and repetition, sometimes of a single form, action or motif, re-emerge in the video work of Again +Again. Many of the works exhibited, including Paik’s Zen for TV, Jennifer Steinkamp’s Paint the Lily I (2004), Burt Barr’s The Long Dissolve (1998) and Barna Kantor’s standout Retinal Massage 1 (2004), emphasize long duration and require a Zen-like concentration through the slow cycling of static forms. Other videos, like Dane Picard’s Vincent Van Gogh: 42 Self Portraits (2004) and Christian Marclay’s Telephones (1995), have more urgency to their pace. With ample seating space in this exhibition, visitors are given a rare opportunity to view these videos comfortably and in their entirety. My only critique of the viewing experience is that only Christian Marclay’s video has a soundtrack. I would have preferred to see it isolated from the other videos as the repeated sounds of ringing telephones and movie characters shouting “Hello?” kept me from concentrating on the other videos.
The videos of Again + Again demand a certain discipline for viewing through their strong optical draw; to recall Duchamp’s phrase, they serve as “delectation for the retina.” Many of the works presented are highly retinal, as acknowledged by the title of Kantor’s Retinal Massage I, but also in the technological grasp of opticality as seen in Jim Campbell’s LED on glass Portrait of Claude Shannon (2000), a reference to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Bell Labs scientist who theorized about the breakdown of information into bits. In Zen for Head, we find the perfect collision of science and metaphysics in the single line of light shown on a 1960s-era television set. Similarly, Kantor’s Retinal Massage I manipulated two overhead projectors to produce a play of light by repeating designs in green and white. The work is delightfully analog, but just as meditationally appealing as Steinkamp’s digitally-produced field of lilies.
Do yourself the favor of first watching the videos and looking at the sculptures entirely and then going back to read the wall texts, which I found too pervasive in both exhibitions. No doubt, the analyses presented in the texts were well done and concise, but instead of supplementing the viewing experience, more visitors read the wall texts (irritatingly, they often did so aloud) and practically ran from one text panel to the next rather than watching the video. I am not convinced that this level of didacticism actually encourages people to visually engage the art. Do we really need to be spoon-fed meaning for works that can be enjoyed purely on their own terms?
Melissa Warak studies art history at The University of Texas at Austin and co-owns the vintage vinyl shop Friends of Sound Records.
SLAPstick at Lora Reynolds Gallery
On view through June 24, 2006
Risa Puleo
The few long videos in the exhibition use canonical narratives and community involvement to govern their structures. For Blot Out the Sun (2002) and The Problem of Possible Redemption (2003), Harrell Fletcher integrated into communities surrounding a garage in Portland, Oregon and a senior center in Hartford Connecticut, respectively, asking members to narrate passages from James Joyce’s Ulysses as they want about their daily tasks of pumping gas and playing bingo. Each reading unpacks Joycian puns and parodies in poignant ways, i.e. not funny. Charles Atlas’ The Son of Samson and Delilah (1988-1991) references both series killer David Berkowitz and the Saint-Saën’s opera about the eponymous biblical couple. Samson and Delilah serenade each other in front of a desertscaped stage complete with a working girl’s supply of Trojans as a homophopic serial killer raids an 80s-era disco, shooting dancers who fall dead with comedic timing. Atlas calls attention to an indiscriminate killer of lovers, AIDS, in a style parodying summer camp horror films. Preening transvestites + decapitation and copious amounts of fake blood = very funny, but serious.
Dance comes up again in the work of Yvonne Rainer and Nina Sobell, but instead of dancers from New York troops as seen in Atlas’ video, chickens are the stars of the scene. In Rhode Island Red (1968), Rainer presents a scene from a commercial chicken coop. Shot in 16mm black-and-white film, the chickens undulate rhythmically to a pace created by individual and group movements in reaction to eac other. Situated next to Rainer’s projection, Nina Sobell’s Chicken on Foot (1974) and Hey! Baby Chicky! (1978) focuses on one chicken. Both Sobell and the chicken are filmed without adornment—Sobell is nude, the chicken, plucked, as they engage in an intimate dance in preparation for cooking. A strategy of seventies feminist art, Sobell to use humor to call attention to the absurdity of gendered social roles.
Other, shorter videos read as one-liners. Actions, irrational and pathetic, like the Mads Lynnerup’s untying a shoelace with an erection or Ger Van Elk’s attempt at erasing ripples in a stream caused by his inflated yellow rubber boat, are established, enacted and recorded. Though thirty years separates these two works, they both employ procedural approaches. The cycling of the videos in programmed loops moves these absurdist dilemmas into tasks of seeming futility. For instance, John Pilson’s protagonist Mr. Pickup (2001) is a business man who, in three screens, struggles against a stream of papers and files that swims through his awkward hands. Only seven minutes long, Mr. Pickup’s failure to redeem the sanctity of his office and restore a sense of order ostensibly endures beyond the length of the video into an eternal recurrence, at least through the end of the day when the monitors are turned off.
Risa Puleo is a contributing editor for ...might be good and she coordinates testsite, ...mbg's sister project.
Remembrances of Repressed Burial Fantasy at Okay Mountain
Closed May 31, 2006
Sally Mauresmo
My initial impressions of Jason Villegas’ show Repressed Burial Fantasy at Okay Mountain involved Disney and anxiety, not that the two are mutually exclusive. I remember Bambi’s mother’s death eliciting the same sort of uneasy entertainment that I felt while navigating through Villegas’ work. To continue with this rather cumbersome analogy, I think mystery and concealment play a big part in the emotional resonance of that famous doe’s demise. We hear buckshot and a gasp, but we miss the act. In the same way, Villegas deftly obscures some narrative elements to offer us a more shocking revelation. Our epiphany does not come by way of a straightforward declaration by the artist.
In the gallery, we are confronted with drippy wall paintings of crawfish (among other seemingly sanguine crustaceans), Le Tigre-branded cell phones and a mound of Styrofoam detritus that calls to mind Trenton Doyle-Hancock, another subscriber to the temple of personal mythology. Dividing the space, there is a handsome wall painting of an intergalactic scene involving a reclining curmudgeon and the video Celestial Situations. Without any narrative-leaking headphones, we are permitted to question why these vastly different creatures coexist within Villegas’ universe. I think Villegas is probably a fan of channel-flipping.
But for all the different methods he employs and the different characters he calls upon, Villegas successfully creates a bumpy visual cadence that works. The show is a cacophony of images that perhaps shouldn’t be seen in tandem. Villegas also makes nature drawings that look like Audubon if Audubon was an absinthe-swilling swinger. At first, I thought these faux-naive renderings of animals were the weakest part of the show because they seemed self-conscious in a way that the other works are not. However, these delicate little moments are the only place where I see Villegas drop his bombastic creator persona. When he does this, his work takes on an inward quality that offers an unusual contrast to his other, more self-assured pieces.
Repressed Burial Fantasy also seems like a genuine response to life in a baffling Wal-Mart epoch. Maybe I think Villegas’ work is sincere because it isn’t simple. He seems to undermine our culture of consumerism while simultaneously exalting it. He doesn’t necessarily take a stance; he just seems a little sweaty and confused after a long day in the cereal aisle, like the rest of us. Villegas even designed t-shirts with an alligator logo that expels fire from its reptilian ass. I am going to buy one. Oh, the satire.
In summation, Bambi’s world changed the moment he became aware of his mother’s death. In a split-second, his insular little universe became infinitely more complex and perhaps more sinister, too. Bambi became a man…or a buck, or whatever. Although he saturates us with seductively glossy kitsch, Villegas’ work is also corporeal, messy and feral. Its post-Bambi, and that’s nice to see with so much cool, anesthetized art around.
Sally Mauresmo is a writer based in Austin, Texas.
|
Austin Museum of Art
www.lorareynolds.com 823 Congress Ave. Austin, Texas tel. 512.495.9224 www.amoa.org Lora Reynolds Gallery 300 West Ave. #1318 Austin, Texas tel. 512.215.4965 Okay Mountain 1312 E. Cesar Chavez, Suite B Aiustin, Texas www.okaymountain.com |
II. Dallas & Houston: An Interview with Wendy Red Star, whose work is currently featured at and/or gallery, Noli Me Tangere: A Kick to the Nuts and a Pat on the Back, A Letter from Hills Snyder, & Urs Fischer and Tam Van Tran at Blaffer Gallery
An Interview with Wendy Red StarWendy Red Star is an artist whose work appears at and/or gallery in Dallas. Since May 19 her work has shown alongside Roy Stanfield's. Earlier this week, Wendy took time to respond to some questions that we had about her work.
…might be good: Could you tell us a little bit about your series The Four Seasons? (This is the series from which the cover image of this issue of ...mbg comes.)
Wendy Red Star: The main motive behind my work is humor and using humor as a tool to get to bigger underlying issues. I'm originally from Montana and I grew up on the Crow Indian reservation in south central Montana. I'm half Crow Indian and half Irish. I grew up immersed in Crow culture but with a dual perspective. Most of my art explores this experience of being from two worlds and some of the issues that occur within that territory. The Four Seasons series was my investigation into the world of natural history museums.
I moved to Los Angeles in 2004 from Montana right after I graduated from Montana State University in Bozeman. I was struck by the lack of natural environment in the city of Los Angeles and I was also lonely for home. I decided to go searching for something familiar so I took a trip to the Los Angeles Natural History museum to look at the Native American section. I saw one of my Crow ancestor’s moccasins on display in a glass case. Seeing my ancestor’s moccasin in the glass case felt very odd and misplaced. I wanted to analyze this feeling further but couldn’t quite piece it together. I strolled by the dioramas and found the same cold quality as my ancestor’s moccasin. I decided to construct my own version of a diorama and convey the way they made me feel. I fabricated four elaborate sets one for each season complete with plastic, inflatable, woodland creatures and 70’s photo mural mountain ranges. I photographed myself in the middle of the curious natural history like dioramas.
…mbg: Do you work from any models or pull from specific source material, or have you come to these compositions more intuitively?
WRS: I would say a mixture of the two. It all depends on the piece and what affect I’m trying to achieve with the work. My main source of inspiration always comes from my Crow ancestors. My environment and surroundings always play a part in my work. Los Angeles has been a great muse for me. I also rely on museums of all types as source material. I pay particular attention to the way they install work. I’m currently obsessed with Shelly Niro’s work she is a member of the Mohawk Nation. She is a filmmaker/visual artist/photographer. One of my favorite pieces she has done is a short film titled Honey Moccasin that examines contemporary Native identity.
…mbg: Obviously these images are hyperbolic in their depiction of a stereotype. Is there ever a measure of honesty or even factually accuracy within the parody, though?
WRS: The measure of honesty comes from the human in the photo/scene. In my work I make sure that I am extremely culturally specific and only deal with my tribe. To go even further, I only take responsibility for my opinion as a mixed blood Crow woman and would not wish to speak for the entire Crow tribe let alone the entire Native American population. A common misconception among people in general is that “Indians” are all the same. Indians wear feathers and bells and dance around in their breach cloth doing rain dances and speak to the animals. This generalization of “Indians” by the public to describe different Native communities is called “Pan-Indianism”. Pan-Indianism happens all the time in the media; for instance look at ads for American Spirit cigarettes and the Land ‘o Lakes depiction of an Indian woman on a butter tub, not to mention the mother of all generalizations: Hollywood films. I hold the movie industry responsible for most of the world’s racial stereotypes.
…mbg: Were these the pieces that you showed at the Fondation Cartier?
WRS: I did not show The Four Seasons series at the Fondation Cartier. They chose photo documentation of a series of tipi installation I did in undergraduate at Montana State University. The documentation was inspired from the words of the great Crow Chief, Sits in the Middle of the Land, explaining Crow territory: “The Crow Country is where I set my tipi,” he said. “When I set my tipi, I use four poles. One pole rests at the western slopes of the Black Hills, another pole rests at the banks of the Big Lake in the Mountains [Yellowstone lake], the third pole rests near the Big Falls of the Big River [Great Falls], and the forth pole at the junction of the Yellowstone and Missouri. That’s my land”. The Crow reservation once held thirty-five million acres of land. Twenty-seven million acres of that land were taken away by the treaty of 1868, when the reservation was cut down to eight million acres. We currently have 1.8 million acres of the original land remaining to us. I felt as though I had the right to place my tipis amongst the harsh Montana State University architecture in celebration of my people and our struggles. Each installation was installed in several different spots around campus for a week at a time. The finial installation I installed on the MSU football field on the fifty-yard line. I erected seven tipis without the canvases in a row that faced off with a giant eight foot tall football helmet.
…mbg: What’s your connection to and/or gallery or Texas?
WRS: I was contacted by Paul Slocum one of the owners of and/or gallery who saw some of my work online. We started communicating via e-mail about doing a two-person show in May. and/or gallery just opened in January of 2006 and after talking to Paul about his gallery, it sounded like a very progressive space, so I was very honored and delighted that he asked me to be in the third show that they put on this year.
…mbg: Did you have any opportunity to work with Roy Stanfield?
WRS: Roy Stanfield and I have not had a chance to meet but I’ve enjoyed seeing our work together in the space.
…mbg: What else are you working on these days? I know you’ve just installed your MFA exhibition at UCLA.
WRS: My most recent work is an installation piece titled Balóowappaache, the Crow word for television, which literally translates to “moving papers.” I made a structure that mimics a contemporary Crow sweatlodge on the outside but when you enter the space it turns into my grandmother’s living room. I’m still playing with the idea of natural history museum setups. Inside the lodge there are two chairs that sit in front of a television and t.v. stand. On the walls of the lodge I pinned pictures of my family almost like wallpaper. I burned sage and cedar so it smelled like an actual sweat and there is a heat that causes viewers to perspire when they sit in the lodge for a while. I wanted to make it really cozy for the viewer so they would feel at ease when they entered to watch the film.
The film starts with a movie titled Soldier Blue shot in 1970 and directed by Ralph Nelson. I used the last scene in the film depicting the San Creek Massacre that happened in Colorado in the year of 1864 against the Cheyenne Indians. The scene is very gruesome and uncomfortable to watch. After the massacre, I cut to my footage [from a trip ] I took on my reservation during one of my school breaks. The footage ranges from beautiful landscapes and horseback riding to trashy government housing and local powwow events. I wanted to show people what has happened to Indian people in the past and how native people are living today.
Noli Me Tangere: A Kick to the Nuts and a Pat on the Back
James Bae
On rare occasions, one’s slide into a night’s gentle dejection can be a welcome boon of recognition for another. Fate was serving drinks on such a particular evening in Austin a few years ago when a young, well-trained curator I have been friendly with through the years was, for precision’s sake, lamenting the comparative losses of her “youth,” “passion,” and “love for art.” At the ripe age of 27, blessed with a natural sense of grandiosity, these farewells-to-an-era! were perceived by her as a tremendous loss. With the night getting increasingly messier for her (I was the designated driver), and with her achieving certain insights about her viduity offered only to be immediately dispelled by the acolyte cum usurpers making a coral ring around her (“You are still sleek and innovative!”), and further dangerously fueled by Schlitz beer in her cocktail glass, she uttered these words in non-sequitur: “San Antonio can be the Next Big Thing.” What uncanny intuition!, I thought. Like a smoke ring that’s touched, however, the thought dissipated without much comment. When the Verve’s “The Drugs Don’t Work” started playing through the PA system, a look fell on her face telling a desperate need to call a mother. Posthaste. Our night was soon over.
Granted, she didn’t even know where San Antonio was, and by the end of the night was most likely geographically hazy about knowing that she was in Austin, but like art itself, or having a resolute belief in promises, whether as an individual or in societal forms, beginning investigation in to the depth of San Antonio’s mounting art scene requires a leap of faith. I doubt she ever visited, apart form a de rigeur stop to Artpace. That seems to be the summary disposition of San Antonio itself: an art scene of knowable girth, ample creativity, and one lone brand commodity outracing the efforts of the social whole. Not that, it seems, the whole seems to be paying attention. This has its good and bad effects.
It does not take much to see art in San Antonio. One need only walk in the King William area to understand the diversity of practices within the southern strip of the city (there is, it seems, nothing consequential to see north of the Finesilver Gallery on Camaron). If San Antonio has a Greek limb, it’s in such latitude of acceptance of different mediums of art—an open willingness to explore identities of art—that stands as the hallmark of the scene, where nearly any style, from painfully saccharine performance art to uniquely erudite constructions of performance itself (see Hills Snyder), can be accommodated as strange bedfellows under one roof. It appears that a tourist can get a money-shot gist of San Antonio walking around First Fridays at the Blue Star Arts Complex. Whether one can get anything meaningful out of it depends on the visitor’s ambition.
While history might indicate San Antonio to have a long record of supporting the arts, one bug in the ointment that still indicates San Antonio has yet to arrive is in the do-it-yourself aesthetic of most spaces. This is surely one of its great strengths as well as a weakness. One hates to admit that more often than not making art takes money. If 0 = 1, the problem’s dead, but it’s surely not going to help you pay the bills to buy canvas and wood, nails and beer, though beer is the ambrosia lubricating the manifest good time of a First Friday. It has to, because the art is sometimes lacking. Not that this is a centrally San Antonio problem. Part punk, part bipolar, this seems what San Antonio art is: just fucking do it. Though this has the collateral damage of art kept consistently in povera, this model’s worked for some time. But, hey, when in San Antonio… fuck it.
A person asked me once what could be done with two million dollars to promote art in San Antonio. It’s a simple enough question to answer. Set up a fund, create a guideline for submissions, let the have-nots play with the lucre afforded to the haves until its dry. Would this help? I am not sure, though it could help define what sort of route a collective social energy of the community can do when given an opportunity to stretch towards a show that seemed impossible due to commerce functions. Perhaps a grant system would help to solidify a continuity of solid shows, though this could be the complete opposite. Who said money could buy taste? I was walking with a friend in the George Yepes and Robert Rodriguez show of devotional paintings of Salma Hayek at Blue Star, a show so offensively haunted by the specter of cheese (its Glamour Shots opening night sponsored by a local car dealership, who used the Blue Star parking lot as a bait-and-switch deplorium), they should have re-titled the show from Solamente Salma to Pimp My Virgin. Like a Mercury Mystique, the paintings had no aura, let alone being either sleek or innovative. I don’t know if I was affected that terribly by the show, or the latent Catholic schmaltz within it, but I witnessed in pain a gaggle of authentically non-descript gallerinas from a chi-chi space later that night at a magazine party and thought of Magdalene. They stood there like mannequins, staring with bridled spite. I kept muttering noli me tangere, which, in the local parlance, translates to “Keep San Antonio Lame.”
James Bae is a tourist in your town.
A Letter from Hills Snyder
Dear Might Be Good:
It occurred to me after responding to last issue's Single Question re: Artpace, that since I was indulging the fantasy of selecting a single group of residency artists, I might as well extend the charade and choose an entire year of three groups, so here they are, including those I mentioned last time:
Randy Wallace, San Antonio
Steve Roden, Los Angeles
Gilles Barbier, Marseilles
Ken Adams, Austin
Trevor Winkfield, New York
Stephen Bush, Melbourne
Justin Boyd, San Antonio
Syd Straw, Weston, Vermont
Alain Bublex, Lyon
In other news ...
Hills Snyder recently received an Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Travel Grant from the Dallas Museum of Art for travel to Peru. Karen Mahaffy and Katrina Moorehead were also awarded travel grants. Hills' proposal is below:
Urs Fischer and Tam Van Tram at Blaffer Gallery, The University of Houston
On View through August 5, 2006
Erin Smith
Urs Fischer and Tam Van Tran both like to jump back and forth across the line of what is and what could be. So much so that the current show at the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston could thus be alternatively named “Meditation on Capture the Flag: An Exercise in Two Parts” with very little false advertising. While the scores of third graders arriving to the gallery may be disappointed at first, their disaffection would evaporate quickly as they confronted Fischer’s shimmying, animated objects and Van Tran’s psychedelic technoscapes. The real titles of the exhibitions, Mary Poppins (Fischer) and Psychonaut (Van Tram), point to the playful and imaginative undercurrent buoying the works. While Fischer’s haphazard sculptures evince an overt, raucous humor in comparison to Van Tram’s neurotic grid motif, both artists’ works encourage a line of thought reminiscent of pre-teen popcorn parties, stolen Coca-Cola, and a precocious obsessing over possibilities.
Fischer, hailing from Munich via London and Amsterdam, blends formal commentary with fun-house accessibility through haphazard, rough-hewn constructions and visual tricks in Mary Poppins, a site-specific installation consisting of five pieces (six if the floor and walls count). While the installation itself feels a bit spare, the works are energetic and cheeky. In Chagall, Fischer places a faux-ladder constructed of foam on springs and sets it shaking through a hidden motor so it appears to be chuckling. The works, mostly constructed out of every-day materials, all invite personification: The precariously reassembled and super-glued antique table and chair of Addict evince an effort “to keep it together,” while a coy Camel Lights packet, sheepishly crawling across the floor thanks to a motorized arm above, resembles a cute family pet in Nach Jugensteil kam Rocoko. The titles of the works point to Fischer’s ability to play well with others in a historical sense and imbues the work with a thematic expansiveness that runs counter to the apparent frivolity. With a verbal nod to everyone’s favorite magical nanny, Fischer proves the concept—transforming the work-a-day domestic into the slyly fantastic—to be as much adult as it is adolescent.
Using bold synthetic colors and overlaid grids, Tran creates futuristic landscapes and topographies worthy of Ursula Le Guin or Neal Pollack. The first grouping of works, created from 2000-2003, resonate with a fervent dedication to the laser-light future and nearly glow in piques of orange, purple and lime. Taking the science-fiction element to its pop apotheosis, a few works quietly evoke the signature shape of Darth Vader’s helmet. Taking the term “psychonaut,” coined by Buddhist studies scholar Robert Thurman to describe the process of investigation through which contemporary individuals and societies achieve enlightenment, as the title of his exhibition, Tran sets the thematic bar pretty high. While one might classify the earlier works as exceptionally talented head-shop art (titles like Neosoul only help lead one to this conclusion), Tran’s more recent works speak more to the artist’s stated purpose more effectively. In his most recent series of work on paper, he complicates his futuristic city motif by executing it in plant materials like cholophyl, beet juice and spirulina, sacrificing the grid in favor of a looser overlay of organic and mechanical shapes. Similarly, Tran’s most impressive efforts operate at the intersection of the organic and the futuristic as in Beetle Manifesto XII, wherein he creates large dynamic, symmetrical wing-like shapes by layering painted paper.
While Tran holds his materials strictly to the task at hand, Fischer enjoys wrestling with and abdicating authority to his. He creates an arc by manipulating the familiar (broken furniture, cigarettes) out towards the astonishing. Tran crosses the same ground by traveling in the opposite direction, starting with the overtly extraordinary and showing it to be made of plant material, staples, etc. Standing in the middle of this circle, we are reminded once again that things can always be more than they seem.
Erin Smith ... watch out!
| and/or gallery 4221 Bryan St., Suite B Dallas, Texas tel. 214.824.2442 www.andorgallery.com Blaffer Gallery, The Univerity of Houston 120 FIne Arts Building Houston, Texas tel. 713.743.9530 www.hfac.uh.edu/blaffer/ |
III. New York: Lothar Hempel: Umbrella at Anton Kern Gallery
Lothar Hempel: Umbrella at Anton Kern Gallery
On View through June 24, 2006
It’s been a rainy week in New York, so perhaps it was an appropriate time to check out Lothar Hempel’s show, Umbrella, at the Anton Kern Gallery. The unfortunate fate of my own cheap umbrella, which after only minimal use has become a tangled mass of broken metal and torn nylon, certainly had me thinking about the show’s theme as I made the wet trek to Chelsea.
Umbrellas operate through an interplay of positive and negative space. Positive: the taut layer of fabric held over our heads; negative: the protective shadow it casts in which we are shielded from the elements. Like the Heideggerian jug, the umbrella is equal parts presence and absence--each one predicated on the other. When choosing his show’s leitmotif, Hempel must have had the divided nature of the umbrella at the front of his mind. The works in this show push and pull the viewer through a calculated series of visual assertions and withdrawals that echoes the theme’s dialectical properties.
Hempel is best known for his large-scale paintings of single figures, five of which are displayed in this show. These vibrantly colored characters are always shown in profile, nimbly perched on top of a precarious support (e.g. the top of a tree, a slab of rock, a tightrope, etc.). These paintings appear to draw from Japanese sources in their composition. The cartoonish yet vacant facial expressions recall those found in anime. Beneath the tightly drawn faces, the characters’ bodies blossom in a dazzling array of interlocking geometric and curvilinear shapes. The precise seams connecting these two-dimensionally rendered segments give them the appearance of elaborately folded origami constructions. The intense foregrounding of these figures and the crisp finish of acrylic paint on aluminum imbue these figures with the visual immediacy of actors on a stage.
Punctuating the wall space between these portraits are a series of smaller geometric abstractions on diamond-shaped aluminum panels. These works--all entitled Umbrella--consist of brightly colored, concentric arrangements of squares. The title of these works equips them with an unexpected curveball. What initially appear to be geometric abstractions in the vein of Frank Stella now become representational paintings. Could we be looking at a bird’s eye view of the umbrella toting characters in the portraits? Close looking further deflates expectations as one realizes that these works are not paintings at all, but rather photographs of paintings which were mounted on aluminum panels after printing. The photographic medium gives these works a distant, absent quality that starkly contrasts with the confrontational presence of the portraits. This give and take between visual immediacy and withdrawal continues with Wesen, a larger, sculptural iteration of this series composed of black velvet fabric and a tentacled coral centerpiece. The inviting tactility of this work further confuses the boundaries established by Hempel’s umbrellas.
A number of Hempel’s installations fill the gallery’s floor. The most effective of these is Reflex, a series of connected mirrors that dissect and splice the viewer’s reflection into a composite image that echoes the portraits’ segmented bodies. This work smartly implicates the viewer in the dialectical visual drama mounted on the walls. Two other installations, mise-en-scènes populated with photographic cut-outs of figures, contribute little to what is otherwise a show with a very strong pulse.
In an interview in the show’s catalogue, Hempel recalls a German cult from the 70s and relates it to the attitude he wishes to achieve with his show: “[Its] members stared into the sun for days while on LSD to achieve a certain trance-like visionary state. All of these people finally went blind. I hope the figures in my exhibition do exactly the opposite.” It is difficult to imagine what such an “opposite” could be. Perhaps it is a condition between divine transcendence and abject immanence--a state of perpetual betwixt and betweens where one is always struggling to stay dry.
Matthew Levy is a graduate student of art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.
| Anton Kern Gallery
532 West 20th Street New York, New York tel. 212.367.8135 www.antonkerngallery.com |
I Don't Think We're in Kansas Anymore!
Alex Codlin
Walking into the Playland Skate Center on Austin’s Burnet Road on the first Sunday of months March through September isn’t like walking into the roller rink of your youth. Yes, it still smells like a musty gym locker, but gone are the awkward teenager moments, legwarmers and bad 80s songs to slow roll to with your latest crush. Instead, there is a never ending supply of Lone Star tall boys, tattoos and hot Rollergirls. This Sunday is the latest bout of the Texas Rollergirls, the best flat track roller team in the country that inspired a resurgence of Rollerderbys around the country. Last Sunday, the Hell Marys, a team of catholic school girls gone to the dark side, play battled the Honkytonk Heartbreakers, a team of good ‘ole country girls in Daisy Dukes, for a spot in the finals. My favorite team, the Hustlers, pimped out in purple and silver satin, dueled the visiting Kansas City Roller Warriors. In a nod to the away team, the theme of the night was KC/TX in the style of AC/DC coupled with the Wizard of Oz. One of the game announcers, Whiskey L’Amour, dazzled as Dorothy in a tiny checkered dress and glittery red shoes.
Rollergirl matches are a spectacle of girls who know how to kick ass. Dressed in their team costumes, each girl chooses a Rollergirl name that becomes her badass alter ego. Some of my favorites include Sedonya Face, Jen Entonic, Miso Fresh, Pussy Velour and Rice Rocket with her number of 3e8, the equation for the speed of light. On the roller track, each girl takes on the persona of her Rollergirl name and forgets who she is in the world outside the roller rink. Many of the players have mundane day jobs like nursing, teaching or are ad execs, but on the track, they can become whoever they want.
Rollergirls is all about power: the power to be a strong woman, the power to be outspoken and subversive, the power to beat the boys at their own game and, foremost, the power to kick some ass. One of my friends refuses to come to bouts with me as he thinks Rollergirls is demeaning to women and turns them into sexual objects. I’d be lying if I said that none of the girls were hot, as a lot are. They become even hotter the more they fight and carry on during the matches. Audiences aren’t filled with leering men with hard-ons, but rather a completely mixed group of rockers, grandparents, frat boys, kids, hipsters and everyone else in between. Guys in the audience respect and fear the Rollergirls as they know that they would be whooped if they tried anything. Girls in the audience wish they had the guts and tenacity to get out there on the track.
When I went to my first bout last year, I thought all the shoving and violent fights were just for show, until a Rollergirl got whacked by the flailing skate of her opponent. With blood gushing out of her nose, she sat on the sideline for the rest of the first half and then returned bandaged and wearing a face mask. Turned out that she had broken her nose, but nothing could stop her from finishing the game. The announcers proudly yelled that this wasn’t the first time she had faced injury and that she had previously played with a broken arm, foot and, most disturbingly, a fractured skull. Clearly these fights aren’t just for show with those kinds of injuries!
Although there were no injuries last Sunday, it was still a wild ride. The highlight of the night was the bout between the Hustlers and the Kansas City Roller Warriors. No visiting team has yet to beat a Texas Rollergirl team, but could the Hustlers, who used to rule the league, but who haven’t won a game this season, thrash the girls from Oz? The sanctity of Texas’ record wasn’t only on the line: During the February Dust Devil Tournament in Tucson where the Texas Rollergirls All-Star team spanked their opponents to win the national crown, one of the Kansas City Roller Warriors stole the signature Mexican zarape blanket from Texas announcer Julio E. Glasses. The K.C. girls have held the zarape hostage ever since, forcing Glasses to change costumes. No longer a Latin lover, Glasses now dresses up as an ice cream man. With Texas pride and the zarape on the line, only one team could win the bout, unofficially named the Zarape Bowl.
The first half of the bout was a cat-and-mouse game with the Hustlers taking the lead and the Warriors taking it back. The second half heated up with a ref who seemed to have no understanding of Rollerderby rules, which caused the world’s biggest and probably oldest Hustler’s fan to make crazed gestures like a crackhead with Tourette’s to the crowd’s roaring amusement. Warrior Rollergirl Princess Slay-ya created a stir by sending the amazing Dinah Mite skidding across the track. Dinah Mite got her revenge in the second to the last jam of the night where a firmly shoved elbow to Warrior’s face sent her flying to the floor and to her doom. The crowd screamed in delight, fists were pumped in the air and Dinah Mite saved the day ensuring a 73-63 victory for the Hustlers. Texas Rollergirl pride was kept intact and the zarape triumphantly returned to Julio E. Glasses. Damn, I wish every Sunday night was like this!
Alex Codlin is an art history grad student at The University of Texas at Austin, but really wishes she was a Rollergirl. She wonders if she can get her act together and learn how to skate in time for the September 17 Texas Rollergirl tryouts. Just in case, she has selected the name Pablo Kick Ass-o.
| Texas Rollergirls Rock-n-Rollerderby
www.txrollergirls.com |
V. Announcements:
Somber News: Luis Jimenez Died Tuesday at Age 65
Beloved sculptor and University of Texas alumnus Luis Jimenez died two days ago while working in his Hondo, New Mexico studio. We at ...might be good are saddened by this great loss.
Exciting News: Paul Chan on the Cover of Artforum's Summer Issue.
Here Comes CAM
Contemporary Arts Month 2006 kicks off June 30th with The Bungalow Project. Artspaces and curators from around the country have been asked to mount an exhibition in one of eight bungalows motel rooms at the Johnson Courts Motel 3. Four Austin spaces have chosen four Austin-based artists: testsite, a project of Fluent~Collaborative, presents work by Cauleen Smith; The Donkey Show, Heather Johnson; Art Palace, Ali Fitzgerald; Okay Mountain, Jared Steffensen. Other invited spaces include 500X from Dallas, duchamp ta mere out of Portland and Jack the Pelican from Brookyn. To find out more about this and other upcoming CAM-related events, checkout the CAM calender online.
Austin
Opening June 16: New American Talent: The Twenty-First Exhibition at Arthouse. Catch NAT 21 faves Rebecca Ward and Kurt Domenick Mueller at The Donkey Show in Float and Tape through July 30.
Opening June 17: Summer Fling curated by Ali Fitzgerald at Art Palace.
Closing June 17: Sugarcoated, curated by Lisa Choinacky and Katherine McQueen at Women and their Work.
Opening June 22: Candice Briceno: Nevermore at Women and Their Work.
Opening June 24: Hitten Switches, The Volcom book tour featuring, Michael Sieben and Travis Millard at Okay Mountain.
Closing June 24: SLAPstick, curated by Christopher Eamon at Lora Reynolds Gallery.
Through June 27: Ars Ipsa: Hold That Elevator at Dougherty Arts Center.
Opening June 29: Ismlessness, Conrad Kofron & Vincent Martinez at Gallery Lombardi.
San Antonio
Opening June 15: WindowWorks by Ethel Shipton at Artpace.
Opening June 23: Chris Sauter: Pioneer at Finesilver Gallery.
Also Opening June 23: Sala Diaz
Through June 30: Dazzle, with work by Susan Cheal and Douglas Holmes at Cactus Bra.
Texas and Beyond
Closing June 16: I Can’t Quite Place it…,curated by Elizabeth M. Grady and featuring Roy Stanfield at Smack Mellon , Brooklyn.
Opening: June 18 th, John Szarkowski: Photographs at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Through June 18: Joseph Havel: A Decade of Sculpture, 1996-2006 at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Through July 1: Liliana Porter at Sicardi Gallery, Houston.
Through July 14: A Brighter Day at James Cohan Gallery, New York.
Lectures and Events
June 16: Los Lobos in concert at the Dallas Museum of Art. Free to the public.
June 17, 3 pm: Talking Art with Aimee Chang, curator of New American Talent 21 at Arthouse.
June 17, 9-5 pm: Digital Blitz at The Harry Ransom Center. Photographer Dan Burkholder teaches workshop participants how to use digital technology to create alternative process photography. $140 and online registration required.
June 22 at 7 pm: Yoshua Okon discusses his exhibition Poli IV, currently on view at the The Blanton Museum of Art. This will be the first event in the Blanton's new Artistic License series. Free to the public.
Lecture June 29: Barry Powell, Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, presents Alphabetology at The Harry Ransom Center
July 1 at 7 pm: Live music by Prom Night, Sigma Prime, Mugsy Flows, & Sound Owner at Gallery Lombardi.
Workshops: A series of monthly artists’ workshops beginning this June and running through September. Visit Austin Art in Public Places for more details.
Calls for Entry
Deadline June 20: Volitant Gallery seeking submissions for summer show.
Deadline July 5 and 6: Annual juried exhibition at the Lawndale Art Center.
Deadline September 1: Artpace Open Call Guidelines are available for 2008 residencies.
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Fluent~Collaborative is a speculative non-profit initiative established to increase awareness of new developments in the contemporary visual arts and the ideas and issues that inform contemporary culture. We are a place where a critical and creative mix of visual, media and performance artists join authors, filmmakers, musicians, architects, poets and other diverse communities outside of the arts to enable a new awareness and sophisticated discernment of changing thought and culture around the world. ..might be good is a contemporary art biweekly produced by Fluent~Collaborative that reaches over 4,000 international subscribers via email and at our website: www.fluentcollab.org/mbg. An independent voice based out of Austin and San Antonio, with a team of writers covering exhibitions from Paris, France to Marfa, Texas, …might be good encourages close looking, smart writing and brave thinking about art.
Situating itself between an exhibition space, an open studio, a temporary residency program and a private home, testsite explores new ideas in contemporary art through the initiation of collaborations. An artist and a writer are invited to create an experimental project that develops out of conversation, fruitful exploration and healthy doubt.
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