See: Art Season again

Though it feels like the dead of winter, there are lots of art shows and events on the horizon, on both coasts.

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Ortega y Gasset, the artist’s collective I am in, will have a new home at the Old American Can Factory in Gowanus! Exciting exhibitions are lined up for this Spring. Don’t miss them; sign up for updates!

3/13–4/12: Thinking & Touching Time, curated by Zahar Vaks, Ortega y Gasset Projects @ Old American Can Factory, Gowanus, Brooklyn

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2015: Land and Sea’s project space, Oakland, CA:

AS A SPACE, LAND AND SEA WILL TAKE A STANCE TO LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD, BY USING OUR LITTLE PLATFORM TO PRIMARILY PRESENT WOMEN, LGBTQ AND FOLKS OF COLOR. ITS OAKLAND. ITS 2015. LETS SEE WHAT HAPPENS.

Little Syria Parade, in Lower Manhattan’s first Arab-American neighborhood, envisioning an early-20th century Manhattan skyline.

2/25: Edge of Arabia presents Brian Zegeer’s Little Syria Parade, Lower Manhattan
2/27–3/27: Michelle Blade: If the Spirit Moves You @ ‘Pataphysical Society, Portland, OR

2/28: Art + Process + Ideas (A+P+I) residency Open House at Mills College, Oakland, CA

Works on paper by Anthony Ryan (left) and Annie Vought (right).

3/6–28: Annie Vought & Anthony Ryan @ Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, San Francisco

Through 3/8: Trajectory @ Van Der Plas Gallery, LES, NYC

Through 3/19: Hydrarchy: Power, Globalization, and the Sea @ SF State Fine Arts Gallery, organized by Mike Arcega

4/4: Who We Be: Superpanel on Art, Protest and Racial Justice, with Jeff Chang, Alicia Garza, Ben Davis, Steven W. Thrasher, and Christian L. Frock, moderated by Elizabeth Travelslight, Bay Area Society for Art and Activism @ San Francisco Main Library

Art & Development, Community

parallels

Some connections between projects in Oakland, California, USA and Birmingham and Manchester, England, U.K….

Simon and Tom Bloors' exhibition at Eastside Projects, Birmingham UK, 2009

Eastside Projects is an artist-run space, a public gallery for the City of Birmingham and the World. It is organised by a founding collective comprising Simon & Tom Bloor, Céline Condorelli, Ruth Claxton, James Langdon and Gavin Wade, who first conceived and now runs the space.

Eastside Projects is a new model for a gallery, one where space and programme are intertwined: a complex evolving programme of works and events starting from radical historical positions. We aim to commission and present experimental contemporary art practices and exhibitions. The artist is invited to set the existing conditions for the gallery. Work may remain. Work may be responded to. The gallery is a collection. The gallery is an artwork. The artist-run space is a public good.

We aim to support the cultural growth of the City.

James Sterling Pitt, installation view, Sight School

Sight School is an artist-run exhibition space directed by Michelle Blade. The space began from a desire to create dialogue around new modes of living and being in the world in order to reveal connections between art and life.

As Michelle and I have worked together on Irrational Exuberance (Asst. Colors), I’ve gotten a better sense of her vision for Sight School. She’s committed to her local neighborhood—she makes a point to get to know her neighbors, put up flyers at local businesses, and support the growth of the Golden Gate Arts District (an emergent auxiliary to downtown Oakland’s wildly popular Art Murmur). She is highly invested in community—her decisions that structure the gallery and space are often driven by generosity and openness. She’s got a keen sense of contemporary practice in art. I get the feeling that the gallery is something like a commons for art experimentation; that her aim is to provide a site for artists to do experimental projects that would be considered untenable elsewhere. She seems interested in this as an experiment, thinking of every next move as an opportunity to innovate. This is not merely another gallery; she’s stepping out of the white cube by hosting one-night events, mutual learning projects and discourses. So when I re-visited Eastside Projects’ mission statement, particularly

The artist is invited to set the existing conditions for the gallery.
The gallery is an artwork.
The artist-run space is a public good.

it occurred to me that ESP and Sight School might be kindred spirits, with their energetic, unruly collectivity.

The director of ESP is an interesting curator and artist’s book instigator named Gavin Wade. In an interview on NYFA.org, Wade says that American artists differ from their UK counterparts because we’re less

willing to interact and collaborate and allow their work even to sit on top of someone else’s. There’s a certain individuality here; New York is so much about standing alone.

That interest in interaction, collaboration and experimentation that challenges artworks’ autonomy will be at work in Unlimited Potentials, an exhibition organized by Manchester-based curator and performance artist Mike Chavez-Dawson at Cornerhouse.

The show is comprised of several ambitious components, including loads of collaborators (including Wade), a project instigated by Liam Gillick, dozens of contributors (myself included) and a talk with Kwong Lee, the brilliant director of Castlefield Gallery, an important MCR artist-run space (their recent exhibitions include shows by David Osbaldeston and Leo Fitzmaurice and Kim Rugg).

Last year, when I exhibited my installation, Unlimited Promise, at an open studio at the end of the Breathe Residency at Chinese Art Center in Manchester, Mike Chavez-Dawson told me about Unrealised Potentials. I’m excited to play a small part in his forthcoming exhibition, especially when you consider the themes of resisting finished-ness in artwork in We have as much time as it takes at the Wattis:

We have as much time as it takes questions and highlights expectations of achievement, productivity, and established systems of management that make up the programs and academic mission of the Wattis Institute and CCA. … The works embody circular processes, resist completion, welcome change, and refute demands for definable results and resolution. They challenge the conventional form of the art object and the traditional parameters of exhibitions.

I’m excited that this conceptual investigation and expansion of exhibition-form-making is occurring in so many spaces around the world right now. In conjunction with more traditional viewing experiences, viewers of art are being offered more ways to think about art, participate in exhibitions, and complete the speculative thought processes artists begin.

Art & Development

Zeitgeists, LA art, Mysteries

Frieze, January-February 2010. Source: Frieze.com.

Even critics who hate contemporary art reckon on [the zeitgeist]—it allows them to use a small handful of particularly loathed examples in order to damn an entire system.

—Dan Fox, “Spirit Guide: The Many Uses o f the Zeitgeist,” Frieze, January-February 2010.

If I had a nickel for every time someone cited Damien Hirst’s diamond-covered skull as everything that’s wrong with contemporary art….

There are certain sectors of the art world that crave a useful social role for art. Other see art as an activity making important contributions to intellectual discourse. Many look to art for pleasure. And then there are those who appreciate all of this seriousness, but crave the trappings of the entertainment industry too—fame, power, money, glamour, hierarchies, cultural parochialism. One year the art world is interested in this, the next year it’s interested in that. It wants to party, it wants to be scholarly. Markets go up, markets go down. … Everything changes and nothing changes…

—Fox, cont.

Fox’s tone might be interpreted as weary, or maybe even cynical. But I like to think that this passage is the art critic’s equivalent of the maxim, This too shall pass. Chasing the next trend in contemporary art, and comiserating about contradictions in the art world’s collective behavior, isn’t worth the time. Paradox happens.

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Glimpse a tiny peek at the massive (9×14′ and up) photographs in Andreas Gursky‘s new exhibition at Gagosian Beverly Hills in “Andreas Gursky makes a long-distance connection” by Suzanne Muchnic, LA Times (March 6, 2010). They’re really a sight to behold.

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Gary-Ross Pastrana, rule of thumb. Source: LATimes.com

Check out another great LA Times art review—this one of Minimum Yields Maximum, a group exhibition curated by Gina Osterloh and written by Leah Ollman.

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Laura Collins-Hughes inaugurates a new series on alternative arts spaces with a profile of the very artist-friendly non-profit Southern Exposure for ARTicles, the blog of the National Arts Journalism Program.

I had a great time at SoEx’s Monster Drawing Rally, and was really pleased with the result of my hour (OK, 70 minutes) of cutting and collaging. Photos are forthcoming.

Brice Bischoff, Bronson Caves, 2010. Source: SoEx.org

Alchemy, SoEx’s next exhibition, looks like it’s gonna be killer. Curated by Sarah Smith, the artists include Ellen Babcock, Brice Bischoff, Michelle Blade, John Chiara, Randy Colosky, Adam Hathaway, Christopher Sicat, Lindsey White. I suspect there will be many nicely executed photographs about magic in the mundane, and some unabashedly transcendentalist paintings and works on paper. A few years ago, I found San Francisco’s glut of dreamy, semi-ironic, new-age-y paintings terribly insincere and pretentious in their faux-naïveté. I’m still averse to woo-woo-for-woo-woo’s-sake, and laziness regardless of how it’s stylized. Alchemy presents highly capable artists and I’m looking forward to this show. Maybe I’ve sipped the Kool-Aid and it tasted great…. Drink it all in at the opening, Friday, March 12, 7-9pm, concurrent with the opening of Alison Pebworth’s Beautiful Possibility.

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Image: Michelle Blade. Source: basebasebase.com

…Along those same lines, Michelle Blade‘s work can exhibit an earnestness that is anachronistically un-ironic, but I really loved every minute of viewing Blow as Deep as You Want to Blow, her solo exhibition at Triple Base Gallery (through March 21). [Full disclosure: she’s a collaborator of mine; I constructed the lightbox in the show.] She’s turned her high attention to materials and craftsmanship towards transcendence, patterned rugs and metaphysical books. Deploying opalescent paints and vellum marked on both sides, she’s created physical experiences of radiance. It’s Romanticism for 2010. Go see it in person. The front room is great, and if the back room, filled with accomplished works on paper, is not enough, there’s even more works on paper spilling over in a portfolio on the flat files. Inspirational work ethic and spirit-informing content matter.

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Perhaps that’s why mystery, now more than ever, has special meaning. Because it’s the anomaly, the glaring affirmation that the Age of Immediacy has a meaningful downside. Mystery demands that you stop and consider—or, at the very least, slow down and discover. It’s a challenge to get there yourself, on its terms, not yours….

The point is, we should never underestimate process. The experience of the doing really is everything. The ending should be the end of that experience, not the experience itself.

—J.J. Abrams, “J.J. Abrams on the Magic of Mystery,” Wired Magazine, 17.05, April 20, 2009.

Art & Development

Recent, future, random

A random round-up of things I’ve seen or are looking forward to:

RECENT

Robert Irwin‘s rambling, 50-MPH monologue at Mills College. I couldn’t sum up what he said — comparing Modernism to a cup of Coke, and proposing an array of realms of art rather than a hierarchical pyramid — but I’m pretty sure it was brilliant. I should probably re-visit Lawrence Weschler’s biography of Robert Irwin, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees after all the other books I’m reading, or intending to read (Ranciere’s The Future of The Image and Beyond Visual Perspective by Gaetano Curreri-Alibrand. Yikes!). Cheers to Mills for bringing such an influential and erudite artist to the East Bay.

Valentine’s Day Celebration at Glide Memorial Church.
I’ve lived in the Bay Area all my life, but I am taking time to appreciate quintessentially San Franciscan experiences like visiting Glide, a Unitarian church whose openness, political activism and community service is a prime example of powerful faith-based progressive work. M and I attended the service on the suggestion of a friend, who was performing an excerpt of The Erica Chong Shuch Performance Projects‘ Love Everywhere, a beautiful, tender dance/theater/music performance on love and marriage equality—the civil rights struggle of our time. It was really profound to have the time and space to celebrate love in all of its manifestations—unconditional love, the love of one’s community, to love fiercely and courageously—on Valentine’s Day. (How many red teddy bears does anyone need anyway?) More often, what’s needed is a reminder to look beyond your immediate situation towards community, and to be in spaces where you are accepted as you are. To love and be beloved.

Collaborative installation by Chris Bell, Elaine Buckholtz, and Floor Van Herreweghe at SF Arts Commission Window Space, 155 Grove Street, San Francisco
For Chain Reaction 11, artists were invited to nominate other artists to exhibit at SFAC. One chain went beyond the call and developed a collaborative installation that fills the window site with a sculpture, video and light work, and spills onto Grove with a moody, Sam Shepard-esque musical component. It’s wonderfully unexpected and surreal, and it’s one of my favorite art things that I’ve seen of late. I urge you to visit it, especially at nighttime. It’s on view 24/7 at 155 Grove Street through May 16.

Future

Friday, February 19, 7-10pm: Opening Reception
Blow As Deep As You Want to Blow: New Work by Michelle Blade

Triple Base, 3041 — 24th Street, San Francisco
Exhibition: February 19 – March 21, 2010

Weird bad paintings; don’t come to this if you leave your sense of humor at home.
Denim on Ice: paintings by Keith Boadwee / Erin Allen / Isaac Gray
Steven Wolf Fine Arts, 49 Geary St., Suite 411, San Francisco
Exhibition: February 19 – Mar 20, 2010

Art & Development, News, This & That Mail Art Swap

Involved, Socially and This & That opens

Thanks to Dina and Joyce at Triple Base, Michelle Blade for having me in the show and compelling me to go one step beyond only exhibiting a work, M for love and support despite my week-long installation myopia, and the countless friends, supporters and mentors who attended, the opening reception for Involved, Socially seemed like a success.

It was well-attended, with a constant flow of people, and lots of time spent looking at art, reading texts and having good conversations.

I feel like both projects that I contributed, This & That International Mail Art Swap (a curatorial project in the back room featuring 32 artists) and Unlimited Promise (an installation in the basement) were strong, so I’m content.

Sandwich board typography by Mylinh Nguyen, via Michelle Blade. Window: project by David Horvitz. You know it's San Francisco's Mission District by the taqueria and bicycle.

The main (front) part of the storefront held several artist's projects; This & That was in the back room. Yuen Fong Ling's fluourescent posters, commanding JOIN US, are visible from the street.

Amanda Curreri's and Sally Elesby's project - a line of iridescent glitter is drawn across the gallery.

Left, works by Mark McKnight. Right, t-shirts by Amanda Curreri.

Photographer Seth Lower (far left, sethlower.com) inspects This and That; Jeronimo Roldan and Marcella Faustini and friend inspect Amanda Curreri's/Sally Elesby's correspondence (center). Jessica William's art (right). Not pictured: David Horvitz' letters about the Indian Ocean.

Photographer Seth Lower (far left, sethlower.com) inspects This & That; Jeronimo Roldan and Marcella Faustini and friend inspect Amanda Curreri's/Sally Elesby's correspondence (center). Jessica William's art (right).

This and That, with works by Crowe and Rawlinson, Tan, Chavez-Dawson, Churchill, Hongisto, Blackmore, Chen, Staincliffe and Hall.

This & That, with works by Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson, Tattfoo Tan, Mike Chavez-Dawson, Joshua Churchill, Eric Hongisto, Simon Blackmore, Susan Chen, Daniel Staincliffe and Antony Hall.

This and That, works by same artists as previous photo, plus Anading, Bell, Payot, Brumit and Wagner, the Bloors, and Carollo. Lower corner, a moment for our sponsor.

This & That, works by same artists as previous photo, plus Poklong Anading, Chris Bell, Laurence Payot, Jon Brumit and Sarah Wagner, Simon & Tom Bloor and Michelle Carollo. Lower corner, a moment for our sponsor.

Scott Oliver's Lake Merritt Walking Tour.

Verity-Jane Keefe's project on a housing estate in Barking, East London.

Verity-Jane Keefe's project on the estate in Barking, East London.

Works by Oliver, Keefe, Hattori, Glover, Pest.

Works by Oliver, Keefe, Taro Hattori, N. Sean Glover, Pest.

Works by Ryan, Woff, Sherry, Griffiths, Ma, Kabot, Kaplan, Yu.

Works by Anthony Ryan, Jenifer K Wofford, David Sherry, Mary Griffiths, Ivy Ma, Sarah Kabot, Scot Kaplan, MM Yu.

Works by O'Malley and Ling. Below, the spread.

Works by Susan O'Malley and Yuen Fong Ling. Below, the spread.

This & That artist Anthony Ryan takes home court advantage to inspect potential swap selections.

This & That artist Joshua Churchill, looking uncharacteristically dodgy, powers N. Sean Glover's cardboard record player.

Churchill also tries out David Moises' Ego Shooter, but he's too fast for the camera.

Mik Gaspay -- mikgaspay.com -- sports a This and That-like cardigan.

Painter/photographer Mik Gaspay -- mikgaspay.com -- rocks a This & That-like cardigan.

This & That artists Taro Hattori and Scott Oliver discuss amongst themselves.

Naomi Vanderkindren -- vanderkindren.com -- browses MM Yu's Book of Sleep.

Naomi Vanderkindren browses MM Yu's Book of Sleep. (Naomi's photographs can be viewed at vanderkindren.com.)

A visitor inspects Antony Hall's Hele shaw cell experiment.

Yuen Fong Ling's posters in background.

MJ-jacket sporting Vice leans in to hear Joshua Churchill's sound project.

A viewer reads N. Sean Glover's instructions for the cardboard record player.

Back room. Painter Marci Washington and mixed media artist Justin Hurty, and others. marciwashington.com. justin.hurty.com

Main gallery. This & That artist Chris Bell talks shop with Naomi.

Amanda Curreri's glitter line, a few hours later...

My installation, Unlimited Promise, in the basement. Produced during the Breathe Residency at Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester, UK.

Spillage.

Thanks to all the artists in This & That for being such interesting artists and exhibiting professionalism, generosity and flexibility. Big thanks to Chris Bell, Joshua Churchill, Taro Hattori, Ali Naschke-Messing, Anthony Ryan, and Scott Oliver (who helped tremendously by installing his multi-part work) for coming to the opening. Thanks also to Susan Chen, who dispatched patience and editorial advice.

Involved, Socially runs through September 6th. Gallery hours are Thurs-Sun 12-5pm. For more info visit basebasebase.com. To learn more about This & That International Mail Art Swap, visit mailartswap.christinewongyap.com.

Meta-Practice

Do’s and Don’ts

Christine Wong Yap, Do's and Don't's (excerpt), 2009, poster, dimensions variable.

Want the whole poster? It’s a page in a new publication to accompany Involved, Socially an exhibition at Triple Base Gallery curated by Michelle Blade. Involved, Socially opens August 7th.

Community, News

The Shop

The Silverman Gallery in San Francisco is launching an exhibition called The Shop, which is

a curated exhibition/ pop up shop featuring artist editions, prints and other ephemera. In the spirit of Fluxus, DIY and punk, THE SHOP explores the ongoing dialogue between printed culture and artistic production, tracing the ways in which self-produced multiples blur the divide between art and commerce….

Featured artists: Ari Marcopolous, Bozidar Brazda, Matt Keegan, Tammy Rae Carland, Ryan Foerster, Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade, Christina McPhee, Job Piston, Joseph Akel, BLAND, Aaron Krach, Luke Fishbeck, Marc Arthur, Neil Ledoux, Susan Silton, Yuval Pudik and many more!!!

I love artist’s editions and multiples — I’ve been making them for some time now, and it’s an odd corner of the art world to operate in, because it acknowledges both that artists should be paid for their work and art can be affordable.

I’m really excited about the show, and will definitely make it at some point to see it — but I won’t be there on the opening, because it coincides with the opening of Involved, Socially, at Triple Base Gallery, and if I may shamelessly self-promote it, it’s an exhibition curated by Michelle Blade featuring the works by Amanda Curreri, David Horvitz, Mark McKnight, Jessica Williams and Christine Wong Yap.
August 6–September 6, 2009
Opening Reception: August 7, 7–10pm
Triple Base Gallery
3041 24th Street, San Francisco, CA
gallery hours: Thu-Sun 12-5pm

I’ll be showing a new installation and my first curatorial project — an international mail art swap among multi-disciplinary and conceptual artists. I find the practices of invited artists completely intriguing and hope you will too.

R+D

On Be(com)ing an Artist, Citizen and Arts Community member, by Christine Wong Yap

Tag Archives: Michelle Blade