No Soul for Sale: A Festival of Independents closed yesterday at Tate Modern, but you can still learn more about projects spaces on Project Space Survival Strategies, a research project by the artist Elysa Lozano for Autonomous Organization, produced in collaboration with Invisible Venue.
There’s also Artist Run Gallery Spaces of the Bay Area, a Google Map created by Narangkar Glover (co-director, Rowan Morrison Gallery).
Closer to home, there are lots of art shows worth checking out… On my list:
This film screening in conjunction with We have as much time as it takes sounds interesting. If you haven’t had a chance to see the show (to which I contributed Unlimited Promise), the gallery’s open late…
Tuesday, May 18, 7–10 pm
Wattis presents Another Time
A one-night-only screening of James Benning’s 2005 film One Way Boogie Woogie / 27 Years Later in Timken Lecture Hall. The film portrays an industrial, blue-collar town, in the filmmaker’s hometown of Milwaukee. The first 60 shots of the film–depicting factories, lonely railroad tracks, and desolate construction sites–were captured in 1977. Twenty-seven years later Benning returned to restage the film shot-by-shot, revealing the transformation of the landscape over time. One Way Boogie Woogie / 27 Years Later is exemplary of Benning’s distinctive cinematographic language, including extended shots that prolong anticipation.
CCA Wattis, 1111 Eighth Street @ Irwin, San Francisco
Leah’s delightful and intriguingly odd stripey, colorful paintings…
May 13–June 30, 2010
Time Will Tell
Solo Show by Leah Rosenberg
18 Reasons, 593 Guerrero St., San Francisco, CA 94110
Immersive light and video artists’ projects.
May 14-July 3, 2010
Jars Filmed Inside (Elaine Buckholtz Solo Show)
Perception Projection Delay (Hunter Longe Installation)
Triple Base, 3041 24th Street, San Francisco, CA
Gallery Hours: Thu-Sun 12-5pm
The inaugural show at Intersection’s new downtown space! A little bird told me it’d be good!
May 19 – July 3, 2010
Let’s Talk of a System
A group exhibition featuring work by April Banks, Sergio De La Torre & Vicky Funari, Suzanne Husky, Laura Parker, Favianna Rodriguez, James Reed and Banker White.
Intersection 5M, 901 Mission Street @ 5th, San Francisco, CA 94103
Hours: Tuesday through Saturday 12 to 6pm / First Thursdays: 12 to 8 pm
Opening reception: Wednesday May 19, 2010, 6-8pm
If I were Bugs Bunny, I’d burrow my way to London today, and re-surface Thameside just in front of the Tate Modern. After dusting myself off and gliding past stunned tourists, I’d visit No Soul For Sale, A Festival of Independents:
The festival will bring together over 70 of the world’s most exciting independent art spaces, non-profit organizations and artists’ collectives, from Shanghai to Rio de Janeiro, to take over the iconic Turbine Hall with an eclectic mix of cutting-edge arts events, performances, music and film on 14-16 May 2010.
Alongside venerable alt spaces like Artist’s Space (NYC) are groups like Arrow Factory (Beijing), cneai (a French org devoted to artist’s multiples), Green Papaya Art Projects (who hosted my work, along with that by Stephanie Syjuco, Mike Arcega, Reanne Estrada, and Megan Wilson in Galleon Trade international art exchange in Manila in 2007) and The Royal Standard (a Liverpool-based collective, whose past directors include Laurence Payot, who participated in This & That International Mail Art Swap).
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After that, I’d jump onto a Tate ferry to visit the Douglas Gordon exhibition at Tate Britain (thru May 23).
In 2009, [Gordon] was commissioned to create a site-specific work at Tate Britain, to be installed in the Octagon and alongside Art and the Sublime, a display of historic sublime works in the adjacent gallery. These spaces are remarkable for their austere, neo-classical grandeur, with barrel-vaulted ceilings and a central dome designed to make the gallery a ‘temple of art’. Gordon’s response was to utilize and animate the architecture itself with a complex yet cohesive installation of over eighty text-based works entitled Pretty much every word written, spoken, heard, overheard from 1989… (2010).
On one level, the effect seems to articulate Gordon’s idea of art operating as ‘a dialogue between artist and viewer’, hence many of the texts address us directly, employing ‘I’, ‘You’ and ‘We’. On another, it underlines the artist’s fascination with language and its potential for ambiguity, obscurity and multiple meanings.
My first proper solo show, Irrational Exuberance (Asst. Colors), opens tomorrow (Friday) from 7-10 pm.
Join me at Sight School, an artist-run storefront directed by Michelle Blade, located at 5651 San Pablo Street at Powell/Stanford in Oakland.
I’ve been making art for this show for months. The ideas behind the works have been germinating for a year or more. I’ve spent every day this week preparing the gallery, installing the art, reminding myself to breathe, and giving thanks for friends and family.
I’ve never run a marathon before, but I imagine that there are similarities to the process of getting ready for this show. I’ve been singularly focused on it for so long that it’s hard to believe that the opening’s here already.
So much painting this week in preparation for my show at Sight School (opens Friday).
No time to read, but next up is:
“Allen Ruppersberg: What One Loves About Life Are the Things That Fade” By Allan McCollum
I can listen to this podcast while I paint:
“Art and Cognition” by art historian Thomas McEvilley for the Slought Foundation
Tomorrow night (Thursday, May 6), We have as much time as it takes opens at the Wattis. My text and light installation, Unlimited Promise, will make its superterranean San Francisco debut.
In June, one of my ideas for an art project will be on display in an exhibition called Unrealised Potentials at Cornerhouse in Manchester, UK.
So this morning, I was tickled to read this interview with David Shenk (“Why genius isn’t in the genes,” by Robin McKie, Guardian.co.uk, May 2, 2010), which ends with the phrase, “unactualized potential.”
Shenk, the author of The Genius in All of Us (Icon), advances the idea that genes get too much credit for genius and talent. Instead, we ought pay more attention to personality and psychology. According to Shenk, attitudes like drive, motivation and resilience are important factors:
For example, they looked at how [professional] violists practise. To the untrained eye and ear, it seems obvious: they all do a great deal of practising – hours, hours and hours. But if you look very carefully at those who end up being the best, you discover – by doing intensive tracking of them – that they do practise more, and better, than those in the class below them.
That is a theme that extends to all achievements. There is a quantitative and qualitative difference in the practice undertaken by the super-greats – say in basketball – and the mere greats. They work hard at being great. It isn’t bestowed at birth.
I read this as an affirmation of what I learned about professional practices in the arts — to be successful and sustain a lifelong career, artists have to have a sense of agency; that what one does matters, that one’s destiny as an artist is not limited to being in the right time at the right place, being friendly with the right people, or making the trendiest/most outrageous art.
Instead, first, one makes the art that one wants to be making; then one plans and partners with others strategically to find success, however it is personally defined. As Shenk said, it’s valuable to “work hard at being great.”
If you can’t get enough art at the MFA shows, I’ve also got a mini program of art events happening nearly every week this month. Join me on a short tour of ICAs, alternative non-profits and artist-run spaces.
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Opening Thursday, May 6: We have as much time as it takes
Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice Thesis Exhibition
I’m looking forward to exhibiting the light and text installation Unlimited Promise at the Wattis. Participating artists: Nina Beier and Marie Lund (Berlin/London), David Horvitz (USA), Jason Mena (Puerto Rico), Sandra Nakamura (Lima), Roman Ondák (Slovakia), Red76 (Portland, Ore., USA), Zachary Royer Scholz (San Francisco, Calif., USA), Tercerunquinto (Mexico), Lawrence Weiner (New York/Amsterdam), and Christine Wong Yap (Oakland, Calif.,
USA).
May 6–July 31, 2010; Hours: Tues. & Thurs., 11 am–7 pm; Wed., Fri., & Sat., 11 am–6 pm
Reception: Thursday, May 6, 2010, 6–9 pm
Wattis Institute, 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco, CA
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Design by Dan McKinley
Cloud No. 3, 2006, collagraphic monoprint, 22 x 30 inches / 56 x 76 cm
I’ve donated a large framed print to support this art organization committed to contemporary art by emerging artists.
Saturday, May 8; 6–10:30 pm [see the schedule]
Preview Exhibition: May 3–6, 2010, noon–6 pm
Southern Exposure, 3030 20th Street, San Francisco
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Opening Friday, May 14: Irrational Exuberance (Asst. Colors): Solo Show
New installation, sculpture and work on paper inspired by discount culture and popular psychology.
Exhibition: May 14 – June 12; Gallery hours: Wed.-Sat., noon – 5 pm
Opening Reception: Friday, May 14, 7–10 pm
“As Is: Pop Art & Stuffhood” Closing Reception and Dialogue with special guests including critic and curator Glen Helfand and artist, writer and theorist Ginger Wolfe-Suarez: Saturday, June 12, 2–4 pm
Sight School, 5651 San Pablo (at Stanford), Oakland, CA
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Opening May 28: Lending Library at Adobe Books
Lending Library is a group exhibition curated by Dena Beard featuring tools, materials, and resources from artists Amy Franceschini, Colter Jacobsen,
Kevin Killian, Tom Marioni, Emily Prince, Stephanie Syjuco, and Christine Wong Yap. [Can I just say what an honor it is to be included with this group, which includes a newly-minted Guggenheim Fellow?]
May 28–July 2, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, May 28, 2010, 7-10 pm
Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, 3166 16th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Then, during the first weekend in June, come to Lake Merritt, where 20 third graders from the City of Oakland’s Lincoln Square Recreation Center will be giving away 1,000 balloons in my largest public project/social sculpture to date.
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June 5: The Great Balloon Giveaway: Here and Now
One-day event: Saturday, June 5, 12-4 pm
A site-specific installation and social sculpture at Camron-Stanford House (c.1876), Lake Merritt, 1418 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, CA 94612. T-shirts sponsored by Oakland-based retailer FLINC.org.
Invisible Venue and Mills College Art Museum present
Here and Now
Curated by Christian L. Frock
Also: Elaine Buckholtz, “Out of the Blue (Mills Hall Reconsidered),” 2010. A site-specific light installation at Mills Hall (c.1871), Mills College.
Floor Vahn, “Sonic Pardee Home (Reconstituting Memories of Pardee Past),” 2010. A site-specific sound installation at Pardee Home Museum (c.1868), 672 11th Street, Oakland, CA 94607
June 10
Various locations, Oakland, CA
Closing Reception: Saturday, June 26, 8-10 pm, Mills Hall
Like sudden, vibrant wildflowers, art shows are popping up all over. The drought is on Spring Break. MFA shows and a new art season are here.
Get your fill of art, art and more art at the local MFA openings:
Mills College
“Between You and Me”
May 2−30, 2010
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 1, 6:00−9:00 pm
Mills College Art Museum
(Last year, I popped into Dana Hemenway’s studio; she was working on some amazing, tiny porcelain reproductions of things like picture hangers. A great maker of odd objects.)
U.C. Berkeley
“No Right Angles”
May 21, 2010 – June 20, 2010
Berkeley Art Museum
S.F. Art Institute
May 15-22, 2010, daily from 12:00 to 6:00pm
Vernissage: Friday, 14 May 2010 from 6:00 to 8:00pm
Herbst Pavilion, Fort Mason, SF
[Oops! The SF State one just passed?]
CCA
May 6-15, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Opening reception: May 6, 6-9 p.m.
CCA’s San Francisco campus
(I’m attracted to Hillary Wiedemann’s perceptual experiments, and strong photography by Josef Jacques and Suné Woods. Full disclosure: I’m participating in the Curatorial Practice MFAs’ concurrent opening.)
R+D 