HEyeRMEarS is a nickname used by artist Josef Cseres to document experimental and improvised music. Cseres, who lectures in Slovakia and Czech Republic, is interested in archiving artists who touch on the discursive and nondiscursive modes of expression. One such presentation was the improvisational violin works of Jon Rose, Violin Factory and Double Indemnity. I had the chance to listen in on some of the tracks from Rose’s album which Josef is archiving during the artist talk held at Post Museum on 19th August 2010. 

Documentation of R.I.T.E.S. #7 performance at The Substation, Singapore. 2010. Courtesy of Jason Lee.

In this talk, Josef shared that his appearance in Singapore was purely accidental. Having made plans to swing by Southeast Asia, he contacted Lee Wen, a Singaporean performance artist whom he had met in an international conference. At that time Lee Wenwas involved with an emerging new platform for experimental and improvisational musicians called Rooted In The Ephemeral Speak (R.I.T.E.S). It was a match waiting to happen, and Josef was invited to perform at the next R.I.T.E.S presentation.

Josef performed with a suitcase and a typewriter which were nostalgic elements rarely seen in today’s times. In this performance, he went on the mundane and monotonous task of typing words. He also integrated spoken word into the performance via a speaker that was drumming out muffled recordings of an unknown person reading letters of the alphabet which Josef proceeded to type out. He asked the audience to read from books he had laid out on chairs in the performance space at The Substation Theatre. The audience members read these books aloud and Josef kept typing. When they were done, Josef ended the performance with a lighted tea candle placed next to these typewritten sheets laid out on the floor. But this was not the end of the show — Josef retreated to the back of the wall where there was a board and using some chalks he wrote, “Terrorists destroy buildings. Tourists destroy places. Artists destroy both.” Josef was not done. He used a rubber stamp with the words ‘The Lazy Anarchists’ and stamped them on the papers he’s laid out near the tea candles in a public display of criticism against how young artists do not lay claim to anarchism as a critical response to the status quo anymore. Josef, who confessed to being a university lecturer weary of the institutionalized way of teaching art, was sending a non-verbal message about the monotonous and droning style of academia, education and learning in today’s contemporary times.

Documentation of R.I.T.E.S. #7 performance at The Substation, Singapore. 2010. Courtesy of Jason Lee.

In his artist talk, Josef admits that academic discourse does not satisfy him. He finds the arguments and discussions to be contradictory between those who practice art and others who interpret art. He went searching for alternative ways of expressing himself by dabbling into installation works in the past. When asked to explain the reference to the Greek god Hermes, Josef shared that it was a topic for his thesis which was devoted to mythology. He connected with Hermes, known as an ancient God who takes care of all travelers and thieves, as he was an unconventional God known to deconstruct the norm.  The other known phenomenon about Hermes was the winged shoes he wore to travel between the mortal and immortal world. It was Hermes who had influenced the use of ‘hermeneutics’ in language which translates to the study of interpretation. Cseres’ deeper desire to look for different interpretations of music and art is not a new finding amongst artists whose visions are far more stretched and far-sighted. There was little show of works from the museum aside from Jon Rose’s albums but a book documenting some images of violins were passed around to the audience as a sample of what the museum does.

Rooted In The Ephemeral Speak (R.I.T.E.S) is an artists-initiative organized as a platform for new ideas and artists in sonic art, time-based and performance art-related practices.

DailyServing.com selects two notable artists each month from the submissions we receive to be featured in our series, Fan Mail. For a chance to have your work appear below, with an article written by one of the DailyServing contributors, please submit a link to your website to info@dailyserving.com, subject: Fan Mail. You could be the next artist in the series! (We will try to contact chosen artists prior to publication, but please be sure to check the site everyday.)

Lee Gainer, "Cassandra" from Workin' Hard

Lee Gainer utilizes the time-honored representation of the dedicated employee, phone-to-ear, as the basis of her new collection. Backgrounds vary, depending on the nature of the organization and the duties of the associate. This snapshot, ubiquitous to the point of being absurd, suggests that a corporation places high value on customer service, and provides access to courteous, efficient employees with pleasant speaking voices and problem solving skills. This image abounded in nearly every industry during the second half of the twentieth century, and has become endearingly archaic. (Note: Coiled phone cord of land line.)

For her most recent body of work, Workin’ Hard, Lee Gainer culls photographs from various business websites and literature, printing the selected imagery with her HP Z2100 printer on 8″ x 10″ satin paper. She then alters the appropriated image with gesso and several layers of acrylic, carefully isolating the hand of the subject that holds the receiver. The artist’s modification of the casual office portrait draws attention to the prolific over-use of this image, challenging its validity as a marker of the white-collar system. Gainer’s socio-cultural observations “invite the viewer to consider the cultural expectations of social status, gender roles, age, race, morality, tradition, and sexuality,” as stated on her website. Each portrait in Workin’ Hard is given a first name as a title, subtly undermining the corporate pretense of “personal” service. The faces of the subjects are obscured.

Lee Gainer, "Jr." from Workin' Hard

Gainer’s past projects include Two Month’s Salary, a series which addresses the widely held wedding industry belief that a woman’s engagement ring should be worth approximately two months of the purchaser’s salary. Using this industry equation and the most recent salary data gathered from the U.S. Department of Labor and Payscale.com, Gainer presents twenty prints, each print representing a specific occupation (i.e. Radiation Therapist, Funeral Director, Patrol Officer) and some suitable ring choices. The occupation titles are listed in elegant script below nine engagement rings. View the series here.

Gainer’s work, simple in aesthetic and execution, prompts the viewer to decode visual data and reassess promotional images encountered in everyday life. The artist lives and works in Washington, DC and is currently a resident artist at the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, VA. Her work has been featured in The American Prospect, The New York Times, and The Exposure Project.

Rise of Rebellion: DailyServing’s latest week-long series

On our last day of our latest week-long series Rise of Rebellion, we revisit the work of Matias Faldbakken as a quintessential example of unruly and subcultural aggression – vandalism, graffiti and destruction – in a body of work that makes you reconsider the role of social and political uprising in our culture, and subsequently, the world of Contemporary Art.

This article was originally published on December 13, 2009 by Seth Curcio.

Norwegian visual artist and writer Matias Faldbakken is currently exhibiting a new series of works titled Shocked into Abstraction at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, UK. This presentation marks the artist’s first major UK exhibition, and continues his interest into subcultures, vandalism, destruction and abstraction. Working through a variety of media including film, sculpture, installation, photography and wall painting, Faldbakken deliberately transforms acts of destruction into abstract and aesthetic forms. Within these works, acts of social and political aggression are nullified by manipulating the potent gestures into works of art.

The exhibition contains illegibly sprayed block letters in silver spray paint directly on the gallery walls. The letters have no defining edges and thus bleed together to form an reductive abstract painting. The gallery also contains a stack of Marshall amps which are sold as empty functionless shells. The amps are mere stand-ins for their would-be powerful counter parts. Through this piece the artist highlights the use of sound as an act of aggression by subcultures, while also casting light on the deafening silence of the piece as a minimalist form.

Shocked into Abstraction will remain on view at Ikon Gallery through January 24, 2010. The gallery produced a video with the artist that further explains many of the works on view.

Rise of Rebellion: DailyServing’s latest week-long series

I recently worked on a photo shoot with arguably America’s most prominent metal band. During the fourteen hour work day, I had the privilege of witnessing these icons in action amidst thousands of objects, instruments, images and banners that celebrate the band’s nearly three decades of prominence. As the day progressed, I watched as a band member lovingly called his mom to tell her what the day holds. I saw the wife of the aging guitar player tenderly paint the balding head of her husband black in a vain attempt to preserve the appearance of youth and vitality. What was instantly apparent was the first-hand deterioration of the aggressive spirit of rebellion as it aged over decades. No one can deny the use of masquerade and theatrics in heavy metal culture, but what is rarely seen is the softer side of this unruly behavior, which was something that I was privy to that day. When thinking about this softer side of metal and its rebellious association, it occurred to me that rebellion is an act best suited in short bursts, rather than sustained in perpetuity. I recently sat down with Ben Venom, an artist fascinated with the rebellious nature of metal, black metal, the occult and southern identity, to talk about his work. Venom employs many of the symbols and images associated with these defying subcultures, and by creating handmade quilts, pillows, flags and banners, the artist is able to celebrate and mock these cultures simultaneously.

Seth Curcio: Ben Venom seems like an all too convenient name for an artist with rebellious southern identity and slant towards black metal. Is this your real name?

Ben Venom: No..Venom has been my nickname since I was a teenager. I grew up going to a lot of punk rock and metal shows in Atlanta, GA, and it came about from hanging around the that scene. Everyone had some obscure nickname, mine just stuck and never left.

Later, I started to incorporate my nickname into my artwork more and more while I was at the San Francisco Art Institute pursuing my masters degree. I was tired of having my last name misspelled (Baumgartner) in exhibition catalogs or postcards for art exhibitions. Plus, so many people already knew me as Ben Venom, it seemed like a natural progression and of course a much easier name to spell!

SC: Much of your new work uses imagery and materials that are related to black metal as the aggressive epitome of an already masculine sub culture. You physically unite imagery from this movement by sewing it together into quilts, flags and banners. Where do you derive the source material?

BV: The source material is collected from attending concerts, reading, and researching certain aspects of metal culture. For instance, Sam Dunn, Canadian anthropologist and heavy metal fan, has produced two documentaries that explore the origins of heavy metal music from early bands such as Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath, to current bands like Slayer & Mastadon. I recently read Lords of Chaos and just bought Only Death Is Real (An Illustrated History of Hellhammer and early Celtic Frost). These books offer an inside look into what goes on behind the scenes or after the music dies, literally, HA! More specifically, a few pieces are directly inspired by bands that use corpse paint. Influenced by the likes of Alice Cooper, KISS, and the Misfits many black metal bands paint their faces with black and white shapes to mimic inhumanity or death. I re-design these shapes into forms that mimic faces or objects associated with metal or the occult. I was initially inspired to start quilting after seeing the Gees Bend traveling exhibition, which showcases handmade quilts from a very rural region in Alabama. I had a lot of old Heavy Metal t-shirts hanging in my closet and thought it would be interesting to make a metal themed quilt from them. The result was a 6′ x 9′ quilt constructed with over 35 vintage heavy metal t-shirts from my own collection and a few purchased on Ebay. The quilting pattern (Red Stitching) forms a Pentagram shape when viewed from a distance. The quilt is entirely hand-made using a basic sewing machine and took roughly 3 months to complete.

(more…)

L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast
A weekly column by Catherine Wagley

Rise of Rebellion: DailyServing’s latest week-long series

We continue our week long series, Rise of Rebellion, by taking a look at how resistance and rebellion overlap.

Brian Bress, Masked images. Courtesy LACE.

On the back left wall of Pepin Moore’s gallery space–the same endearingly domestic space that, just a few months ago, belonged to China Art Objects–there’s a noirish print by Brian Bress. It’s hanging in Second Story, a low-key exhibition that features a sampling of the artist’s multiples that will be shown in the upstairs loft once the  gallery’s official season begins. It depicts a bust that,  I think, once belonged to Natalie Wood. But the face has been obscured by torn strips of  paper and it’s the obscuring that matters most. The print recalls Irving Penn’s Saul Steinberg in Nose Mask (1966) or Marcello Nizzoli’s Portrait of a Woman (1936), a photograph in which a smiling female face is half covered by white paper and colored with green and red crayon. It resists beauty, but it’s still elegant.

This particular print feels like a distilled version of Bress’s more unruly installation and video work, and the crinkles in the brownish and purple paper that cover the face particularly resonate with the surfaces of Disaster Family, a limbless fantasia of felt figures that Bress included in LACE’s 2008 exhibition, Against the Grain. There’s something violent about Bress’s refusal to give figures flesh or features–it obscures individuality while internalizing intimacy and resisting the outside world.

Brian Bress, "Disaster Family," from Against the Grain, 2008. Courtesy LACE.

Resistance was more or less the point of Against the Grain; it aimed to subvert a stiff political aesthetic in favor of something more sensuously contentious. It responded to Against Nature, a 1988 exhibition  curated by Dennis Cooper and Richard Hawkins, and both shows took their titles from different translations of A Rebours, a melancholic French novel by J.K. Huysmans about a sickly nobleman who withdraws from society to live alone with his own exquisite sense of decorum. But only a few pieces in Against the Grain–Bress’s was one, along with Julian Hoeber’s series of glitzy bronze heads–came close to the seductive recalcitrance of Against Nature, which confronted the problem AIDS posed for artists who wanted to be provocative without being polemical.

By 1988, the clean-edged, unambiguous Silence=Death icon, designed by AIDS activists in New York, was already circulating. The back cover of Against Nature’s catalog echoed the slogan but did so by superimposing a seraph script over an  image of an apothecary dressed in a black-beaked, plague-resistant gown (he could have easily figured into Bress’s Disaster Family). Against Nature didn’t reject the political dimensions of sickness in general or AIDS in particular, but it did favor ornamental musings on beauty, bodies and illness and its fidelity to taste seemed strangely aggressive.

"Against Nature" catalog, back cover, 1988. Courtesy LACE.

In his catalog essay for Against Nature, which reads like fiction, Dennis Cooper navigates his desire for a man named Pierre, who is purportedly trying to help Cooper out by writing about the exhibition. The two men move back and forth in cagey,  often tangential dialogue. In the end, Pierre makes it clear that he’d rather not get too close to Cooper; it’s not because he’s afraid of AIDS but more because he just doesn’t know what to be afraid of or what to want in general. When Cooper reads what Pierre has written, he realizes it’s unusable:

(It’s a description of Pierre in very hackneyed, glowing terms . . . it doesn’t have anything to do with this show, [and there’s no way I’m going to print it] as beautiful as Pierre looks today, even upset. But he’s my friend so I’ll tell him he’s perfect.)

The essay, like Pierre, is evasive and uncertain. It resists pontification, though written in a moment that seemed (and was) politically dire, and it resists indulgently.

Indulging in ambiguity can be dangerous–you risk being misunderstood–but it’s indulgence that made Against Nature so timely and rebellious.

Rise of Rebellion: DailyServing’s latest week-long series

Today, Bean Gilsdorf looks at some of the artists that have broken the art world’s mold in her latest article Rebellion, Four Ways, as a continuation of our week-long series Rise of Rebellion.

Not long ago I had a conversation with a fellow artist.  “I’m thirty years old,” she said, “and I’ve never really rebelled.”  We talked about what rebellion means; it turns out that while I was imagining the traditional route of sex/drugs/rock-n-roll, she had something tamer in mind: “I was thinking about not bathing for a while.”  I admit that I laughed out loud.

She and I were both thinking about social nonconformity in general, yet there are forms of revolt more specific to art and its milieu.  True rebellion is a personal action, a stance to take against the machination of a system whether overt or hidden.  When people talk about “the art world” they refer specifically to the capitalist market-driven system of exchange that takes place in the slim area of overlap between makers, dealers, and buyers.  It’s a system of production and consumption like many others that relies on indoctrination, social pressure, and buy-in to a set of assumptions.  In order to succeed in this world artists must play the game and follow the rules—all very insidious in a field that is purported to be about freedom and expression.  Winners learn to play well and are rewarded for running within the confines of the maze and pressing the lever at the end. But the “art world” is not art, and never should the two be confused.  Below are some of the tacit rules of the art world and the iconoclasts who break them.  Consider this food for thought.

Paul Chan, The laws are my whores (2009). Suite of nine drawings, charcoal on paper, 39.5 x 27.5 inches each.

Paul Chan, Oh why so serious? (2008). Plastic and electronics, computer keyboard, 3.25 x 18.5 x 8 inches.

Paul Chan, Waiting for Godot (2007). Performance view, South Ward, New Orleans.

1.) Make all your work recognizable.  A body of work is consistent and easily identified.

You’re a brand, and if you want to sell you need to make your brand instantly recognizable—just like a Louis Vuitton handbag or an Apple computer.  Tell that to Paul Chan, the 37 year-old auteur of videos, sculpture, drawings, paintings, light projections, computer fonts, and the co-stager of five site-specific performances of “Waiting for Godot” in post-Katrina New Orleans.  There is no “recognizable” here, no direct sense of continuity from show to show or even piece to piece; if you didn’t read the wall label you might not know who made the work.  There is only a joy of making; freedom of expression, indeed.

Cady Noland, SLA #4 (1990). Silkscreen on aluminum, edition 4/4, 78 3/8 x 60 5/8 x 3/8 inches.

2.) Promote your brand incessantly: lectures, residencies, studio visits, and visiting-professor gigs will help you advance.

It’s true that for most artists there is a social context to the work: after all, if no one knows what you make, how will they know if they like it or not?  But is it true that one must exploit every connection, every opportunity, every possible avenue for social growth to create a career in the arts?  Ask Cady Noland…oh, but you can’t.  The reclusive artist won’t answer your email and won’t work with you if you she doesn’t trust you. Despite her many successes, Noland dropped out of the art world; self-promotion is not a game that she plays.  In a 1994 review of Noland’s work, critic David Bussel wrote with keen prescience, “Anyone can be made into a hero or villain because minor celebrity is just another disposable object of mass consumption.”  Despite Noland’s reticence to engage with the public, her work continues to be in demand.

Dana Schutz, Blind Foot Massage (2009). Oil and acrylic on canvas, 36.25 x 34 inches.

3.) Hit the big time: get rich, develop a waiting list, and hire a cadre of laborers to keep up with the demand.

(Bonus points if your laborers live in “developing” countries and you make this part of your schtick.)  This is the model proposed by Andy Warhol and adopted by Jeff Koons.  Some, like Kehinde Wiley and Takeshi Murakami, even make it an overt part of their practice to manage a hive of workers.  In the overheated atmosphere of the art world, it’s easy to think that the artist who doesn’t meet the production quota dictated by collectors is a species of failure.  It is said that Dana Schutz makes all her own paintings (unconfirmed by her gallery at the time of this publication), waiting list be damned.  For an artist of her stature to do so is a very passionate and hopeful gesture, proof that rebellion isn’t always some kind of adolescent sneer: sometimes it’s just sticking to one’s principles.

Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present, (2010). Performance at MOMA, New York.

4.) Be famous, get old, drop out.

You’ve got enough money, and maybe university tenure.  This is the time to take it easy: make work that just repeats your best years ad nauseum, or even stop working altogether.  Disproving this are John Baldessari and Marina Abramović, who continue to work hard and push beyond previous limits.  Baldessari is 79 years old; in the last five years he designed the exhibition Magritte and Contemporary Art, had strong new work at his show at Sprüth Magers (Berlin) earlier this year, and currently has a long-overdue retrospective, Pure Beauty, at LACMA.  Abramović, now 64, describes herself as “the grandmother of performance art.”  Performing The Artist is Present this past spring at MOMA, she asserted the right and privilege of the artist to continue to explore her own work, to mine it and delve ever-deeper into unknown territory.  This is the benefit of utilizing a lifetime of knowledge, growth, and experience to make innovative art.  May we all be so blessed.

Rise of Rebellion: DailyServing’s latest week-long series

As we continue our week long series Rise of Rebellion, we take a look at the cyclical nature of conflict and growth through the work of Philip Guston and the wisdom of Peter Clemenza in our latest article by Andrew Tosiello.

Philip Guston. "Oasis", 1957. Oil on Canvas. 61.5 x 68 in.

To be perfectly honest, I’m probably the last person who should be writing about rebellion. Not only am I beginning to comfortably occupy a full-time job and its attendant material security, but it has been a long time (if ever) since I’ve really stuck it to the man. More importantly and the main reason that this essay begins as quasi-apology (to the reader and the editors) is that, truth be told, I’m not fully convinced by rebellion as an effective strategy for wholesale change. (Sorry Daily Serving. I hope this won’t negatively impact future writing opportunities!)

It’s not that I don’t want to believe in rebellion, believe me. I do. In my heart I long for uprising and the final, decisive casting off of oppression after intense struggle —I’m a romantic. Unfortunately, that desire just doesn’t seem to be sustainable when I really consider it.

Rebellion, to me, suggests a fight against an existing system with the goal of toppling it and replacing it for good. It’s a dialectical process with teleological implications. Revolutions aren’t aiming for half-measures, they’re not seeking compromises and they certainly don’t anticipate their own downfall at the hands of future insurgents. Rebellion’s appeal lies in its all-in quality. It provides a sense of security about one’s (hell, the world’s) destiny being within one’s power and that it will be that way forever.

I want to make it clear that I don’t think that standing up for what’s right isn’t necessary or justified. It is. I do want to draw a distinction, though between protest and rebellion. In many ways, they’re similar, but they’re not the same. Where protest seeks to modify a system, rebellion seeks to overthrow one; consign it to the dustbin of history. Protest stands a chance of working (and has worked) and of producing lasting change. Rebellion, well, you know where I stand.

Philip Guston. "Daydreams", 1970. Oil on Linen. 180.0 x 203.5 cm

In 1970, Philip Guston debuted his now famous figurative paintings at the Marlborough Gallery. It was a shocking turn from pure abstraction by one of its most respected practitioners. It was enough of a rebellion for Hilton Kramer to title his review of the show “A Mandarin Pretending To Be A Stumblebum,” and for Marlborough to drop him from its roster. Yet, Guston described the change in his work as resulting from a sense of moral duty to directly engage with the world and its politics.

It would be foolish to try and cast Guston in the role of a revolutionary leader striking a blow for figuration and then to discredit him by pointing to the failure of Neo-Expressionism as a lasting movement. Guston’s rebellion was purely a personal one, it would seem and he can’t be blamed for those he inspired. Of course, this myth of the rebel Guston can be deflated when the fact that those late paintings were a return to his earliest themes and had developed out of his experience making his lyrical abstractions. Additionally, his late paintings did not render hollow his previous work, but rather strengthened it by suggesting the existence of those same themes, only submerged or sublimated in paint. Guston was not a rebel, but someone committed to growth, no matter what the cost. This growth, of course, was achieved only through struggle, but not one which was aimed at toppling or overthrowing, but building and enriching.

This is one view of a productive, if not rebellious, engagement with struggle against established modes. As the two sons of Vito Corleone plan the first salvo in an inevitable mob war in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, the fat caporegime Peter Clemenza tells them, “These things have to happen once every ten years or so. It gets rid of the bad blood.” This sentiment not only proves Clemenza’s veteran status, having endured previous conflagrations, but presents an anti-romantic view of such struggles, assigning them no more purpose than to relieve building tensions. It is an odd sentiment in a book that valorizes violence and decisive action as means to achieving one’s destiny.

Clemenza’s comment demonstrates an understanding of this war not as a part of a teleological process, leading to a final, lasting resolution, but an unending, though productive, cycle of strife and peace. In contrast to the sons who see war as fated and fraught with unalterable consequence, Clemenza views it as an almost neutral occurrence with little lasting effect.

Rather than seeing art through the eyes of Clement Greenberg who saw a history of rebellions leading to a final purity, one can imagine a series of struggles which purge bad blood, produce new alliances, allow for new ideas and subtle change. It seems to be both realistic and hopeful, but it isn’t rebellion.